GreenGeeks is the industry's leading eco-friendly web hosting provider. Based out of Los Angeles, California, they have a global workforce that provides a better web hosting experience to customers spanning over 150 nations. IsItWP users can get an exclusive 60% off hosting and a free domain name.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks Review: Do You Really Need Green Hosting?
GreenGeeks is the World’s #1 green energy web hosting provider. As a brand, GreenGeeks emphasizes their commitment to the environment. Based out of Los Angeles, California, they have a global workforce that provides a better web hosting experience to customers spanning over 150 nations.
Most data centers consume large amounts of energy and more than half of that energy is utilized for cooling and air conditioning. To reduce their carbon footprint, GreenGeeks puts back 3 times the power they consume into the grid in the form of renewable energy.
GreenGeeks is also committed to providing super fast web experience to their customers. Regardless of your plan, you’ll only get SSD storage, which is proven to improve the performance of your site. You’ll also get some of the best speed technologies such as PowerCacher – an inbuilt caching technology to serve your application efficiently and free CloudFlare CDN integration – one of the best CDN networks built to speed up your site.
With GreenGeeks, your satisfaction is guaranteed or you’ll get a full refund. You can try out their hosting risk-free for 30 days. If you’re not fully satisfied with their service, you can request a full refund within 30 days of your hosting subscription. You will own your domain name even after your hosting account cancellation.
- SSD storage for all plans
- Free domain registration
- Eco-friendly data centers
- No hidden fees
- Regular price $10.95 / mo. but our users pay $2.95 / mo!
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
GreenGeeks Cheap Hosting Review
GreenGeeks has only one cheap/shared hosting plan. With GreenGeeks, you can host unlimited domains with unlimited storage and bandwidth. You’ll also get 24/7 dedicated support around the clock via email, live chat, and phone without an extra cost.
The cheap hosting plan also comes with a 1-click installation wizard for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. You’ll also get access to the free drag and drop website builder that enables you to quickly launch a website, with no coding involved. With the builder, you can select from hundreds of fully-customizable templates in dozens of industries. The builder is mobile-friendly out of the box and you can also integrate a shopping cart to sell your products.
GreenGeeks allows you to register a brand new domain name or transfer your existing domain to GreenGeeks free of cost. You can also avail their free website migration when getting started.
GreenGeeks’ platform is highly scalable which allows for seamless computing resource upgrades when a need arises, eliminating the need for much higher cost upgrades to Virtual Private Servers (VPS).
GreenGeeks is a PCI compliant hosting provider. That means you can accept payments on your site without having to worry about credit card theft or misuse.
If you need an eco-friendly hosting service, GreenGeeks is the best fit. Partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation, they invest 3 times what they consume in the form of renewable energy for the grid.
- Free domain and site builder
- SSD hard drives
- Free CDN
- Unlimited domain hosting
- Regular price $9.95 / mo. but our users pay $2.95 / mo!
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
GreenGeeks Dedicated Hosting Review
With a dedicated hosting, you’re renting a physical server exclusively for your website. As you won’t be sharing your server resources with any other sites, you get full control and flexibility. That means you can configure the server specifically for your individual needs.
With GreenGeeks’ dedicated hosting, you get 10,000 GB Transfer and at least 1 X 500 GB SATA Drive. One of the downsides is that their dedicated servers are not instantly provisioned. You’ll have to contact the support team first before you can set up a dedicated server.
All of their dedicated servers use Server-grade Intel processors, hard drives, and equipment. As they are committed to the environment, their servers are offset 300% by wind energy by partnering with Bonneville Environmental Foundation.
All of their servers are housed inside a state-of-the-art data center facility. They regularly invest in top-notch hardware and infrastructure to ensure their dedicated servers are top of the line. Their well-planned infrastructure is one the reasons they’re a great dedicated hosting provider.
Your hosting server will be monitored remotely by data center technicians and engineers. Their servers are powered by the most power-efficient processors by Intel. Their network is aggregated through Cisco and Juniper switches.
Overall though, GreenGeeks’ dedicated server offers the best value for your money.
- Up to 2 X 500 GB SATA drive
- 5 IP addresses
- Up to 10,000 GB transfer
- Offset 300% by wind energy
- The pricing starts at $169 / mo.
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
GreenGeeks VPS Hosting Review
GreenGeeks VPS hosting is the best in-between hosting option for websites that need more resources than a shared hosting but can’t afford a dedicated server. With VPS, you get more control of your server than hosting your site on a shared hosting account.
All VPS plans come with their VPS management control panel, which allows you to control all aspects of VPS. You’ll also get cPanel/WHM license, allowing you to easily manage multiple web hosting accounts, email accounts, MySQL databases, and more.
VPS hosting is quickly provisioned. After your identity’s been verified, you can start using your VPS account within 60 seconds. GreenGeeks also offers free nightly backups. This means they’ve got you covered in the worst-case scenarios, giving you peace of mind.
With their VPS plans, GreenGeeks offers you four cores, up to 150 GB SSD storage and 3000 GB premium bandwidth. You can also migrate your site to GreenGeeks, free of cost if you’re migrating from one of their competitors.
Your VPS will be provisioned on blacklist free IP’s. You’ll also get access to eNom domain reseller account, a $995 value. This way you don’t have to create a separate reseller hosting account for registering, transferring, and managing domain names for your customers. Their smart support team will be there to help you along every step of the way.
- Proprietary VPS management portal
- Free quick provision
- 50 GB to 150 GB SSD storage
- 1000 GB to 3000 GB bandwidth
- The pricing starts at $39.95 / mo.
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
GreenGeeks WordPress Hosting Review
GreenGeeks’ WordPress hosting plans come with all the features you could ever want from a hosting provider. Whether you’re an absolute novice or a veteran WordPress user, you’ll find their hosting plan’s features immensely useful.
GreenGeeks automatically updates your WordPress install to help protect your site from potential vulnerability threats. They also back up your data automatically every 24 hours, giving you peace of mind. They provide top-notch support and everything you need to run a successful website.
They are also committed to keeping your site secure by deploying custom security rules and zero-day vulnerability fixes.
GreenGeeks deploys latest technologies on their WordPress hosting such as PHP 7, SSD storage, free CloudFlare CDN integration, and a lot more.
If you’re after an all-in-one WordPress hosting solution, that is affordable and also comes with WP-CLI, SSH, Git, and custom PHP.ini, then GreenGeeks is your best bet.
- Free WordPress migration
- Free CloudFlare CDN integration
- Free WordPress enhanced security
- 1-click WordPress install
- Regular price $10.95 / mo. but our users pay $2.95 / mo!
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
GreenGeeks Reseller Hosting Review
GreenGeeks also offers reseller hosting, which is one of the best choices for businesses that are looking to earn some extra income by adding hosting service to their portfolio. With GreenGeeks, you can get hosting accounts for as low as $2 per month.
Your entire account can enjoy the latest speed technologies including SSD storage arrays, free CDN, and more. If a certain account is found to use more resources than the others, you can easily allocate more resources just to that account without hassle.
All accounts come with WHMCS license that allows you to manage and invoice your clients.
You can also customize your DNS with private name servers and customize your control panel, so your customers will never know they’re hosted on GreenGeeks.
- 25 cPanel accounts with the basic plan
- WHMCS License Included
- Wholesale account pricing
- Wholesale domains
- Regular price $34.95 / mo. but our users pay $19.95 / mo!
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
Features
(5.0 / 5.0)As a hosting provider, the vision of GreenGeeks is to deliver the best eco-friendly hosting experience to customers. After trying their hosting plans, here’s what we liked about GreenGeeks:
SSD Storage
The hardware used for data storage can have an impact on the performance of your website. Most hosting providers offer old spinning Hard Disk Drive, GreenGeeks offers SSD storage. Since SSD doesn’t have any moving parts, it’s proven to improve your site’s performance.
Free Domain
You don’t necessarily need to register a domain name separately since they offer a free domain when signing up.
Eco-friendly data center
Most data centers consume large amounts of energy and more than half of that energy is utilized for cooling and air conditioning. To reduce the carbon footprint, GreenGeeks puts back 3 times the power they consume into the grid in the form of renewable energy.
No Hidden Fees
GreenGeeks doesn’t upsell any hosting addons when purchasing a hosting account. With their shared hosting plan, you can host unlimited domains. You can also utilize PowerCacher, an in-house caching technology built for serving your applications efficiently.
Added to all this, Greengeeks also plants a tree for every web hosting plan you subscribe to. You get a 30-day money back guarantee on all plans.
Performance
(5.0 / 5.0)GreenGeeks Speed Tests and Uptime Guarantee
Choosing a reliable web hosting provider is one of the first things you should do to make your site blazing fast.
To test the performance of their hosting servers for our GreenGeeks review, we created a test site on top of WordPress, using the default Twenty Seventeen theme and dummy content for theme development, including images.
We used 3 different testing tools – Pingdom, Load Impact and Bitcatcha – to see whether GreenGeeks lived up to their promises.
According to our Pingdom’s website speed test, we found that our test site loads in just under a second for our user based in San Jose. That means the site is faster than 94% of all tested sites.
We also wanted to analyze how GreenGeeks handles a traffic surge during peak hours.
For our traffic surge test, we used a popular testing tool, Load Impact, and sent some virtual users (VU) to our site. They gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time to see how the server handled it.
In the chart below, you can find blue (VUs active) and green lines (VU load time) which represent the number of virtual visitors sent to the testing site and the time it took to load the web page for the respective number of users on the site.
Our test site performed almost consistently regardless of the load. No downtime was recorded throughout the test.
GreenGeeks Server Response Time
From the above two tests, we’ve analyzed how our site performed and also recorded the uptime and response time. In those tests, we loaded all the content of our web page, including images, which can also have an impact on page load time. This makes those tests slightly inaccurate when measuring a server’s response time.
To test the server response time, we’d have to conduct a more accurate test by ignoring the content of our site.
We decided to run a test using a tool called Bitcatcha, which works a bit differently from other website speed testing tools. With Bitcatcha, you can analyze server response time around the globe by ignoring the content of the site.
It averages the loading speed from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
With this test, we’d get a broader overview of how our server responded globally to the page requests.
Here are the results:
The response time was particularly great in the United States. However, it was comparatively slower in India and Asia Pacific but loaded still under a second.
Support
(5.0 / 5.0)GreenGeeks Customer Support
GreenGeeks provides 24/7/365 US-based technical support via phone, live chat, and email/tickets.
After subscribing to any of their hosting plans, you’ll get access to GreenGeeks’s dedicated support center from which you can manage all of your support tickets.
GreenGeeks has been well-known for their rapid response times. For ticket-based support, the average resolution time is around 15 to 20 minutes.
Their extensive knowledge base helps walk you through every aspect of building a website on your own, without having to spend your time on the live chat. They also have a separate Website Tutorials section where you can find detailed step-by-step tutorials on hundreds of topics about building a website.
Ease of Use
(4.0 / 5.0)Built on cPanel, GreenGeeks has a custom interface that lets you easily manage your website and server without hassle.
You’ll also get access to Softaculous, a leading 1-click website script installation wizard for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Pricing
(5.0 / 5.0)GreenGeeks Plans and Pricing
No matter which GreenGeeks plan you’re choosing, you’ll get SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain name
When you’re starting out, we recommend going with the starter plans in the respective categories. You can always upgrade your hosting account as you grow.
PLAN | DISK SPACE | BANDWIDTH | PRICE |
Shared Web Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | $2.95 / mo. |
WordPress Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | $2.95 / mo. |
VPS 2 GB RAM | 50 GB | 10 TB | $39.95 / mo. |
Dedicated Entry Server | 500 GB | 10,000 GB | $169 / mo. |
Reseller 25 | 60 GB | 600 GB | $19.95 / mo. |
FAQs
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their websites, we’ve answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about GreenGeeks:
Why should I choose GreenGeeks to host my site?
GreenGeeks is engineered to perform while being environmentally friendly. They offer multiple hosting options that perfectly match your needs and budget. For fast page loads and maximum redundancy, they use Solid State RAID-10 Storage Arrays and the latest speed technologies like PowerCache, free CDN, etc.
Which GreenGeeks plan should I get?
It depends on your hosting needs. GreenGeeks offers a wide variety of hosting plans ranging from shared hosting and dedicated servers. When you’re starting out, you can choose their shared hosting plan. As your needs evolve, you can switch over to a higher plan.
Where are GreenGeeks’ servers located?
GreenGeeks is a US-based company. Their data centers are located in Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, and Amsterdam.
Can GreenGeeks handle high traffic?
Yes, GreenGeeks can handle high traffic around the clock. However, make sure to choose the right hosting plan that meets your goals. If you’re found to consume more resources than you’re allowed to, they’ll request you upgrade to a higher plan.
Can I upgrade my GreenGeeks plan later?
Of course! The shared hosting plans provide you with unlimited web space and data transfer. But you’re allowed to use the resources only for operating a small business website. If your site is found to consume more resources than usual, you’ll be asked to upgrade your hosting plan.
Does GreenGeeks offer a month-to-month payment option?
Yes. GreenGeeks offer month-to-month payment options for their shared plans. The downside is that you’ll have to pay a $15 setup fee if you choose the month-to-month billing. You can waive the setup fee by choosing an annual or a higher plan.
Do I really get unlimited resources with GreenGeeks?
Just like any other hosting providers, GreenGeeks provides you with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Keep in mind that you’re allowed to consume resources only for operating a small website.
If you’re running a small website or blog, there’s nothing to be concerned about because you’ll have enough system resources to operate it. If you exceed usage, you’ll be politely asked to reduce the usage or upgrade to a higher plan.
Do I have to register my domain name with GreenGeeks?
GreenGeeks waives off the domain registration fee when subscribing to a hosting plan. However, you’re not obligated to register a domain name with them. You can use Godaddy, NameCheap, or any of your preferred domain name registrars for domain registration.
Does GreenGeeks offer a free website builder?
Yes! You get a free drag and drop builder to quickly launch a website on your GreenGeeks account. Alternatively, you can also use a website builder platform like WordPress to launch your site.
Does GreenGeeks sell any hosting addons?
No, GreenGeeks doesn’t upsell any hosting addons when purchasing GreenGeek’s hosting plan.
How good is GreenGeeks’ support?
GreenGeeks offers 24/7 support via 3 modes: Live chat, phone, and email ticket. The average resolution time for an issue is 15-20 minutes for ticket-based support. They also have an extensive documentation that helps walk you through every aspect of web hosting.
GreenGeeks vs Other Hosts
Wondering how GreenGeeks stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
Final Recap
GreenGeeks is the world’s #1 green energy web hosting provider. Their vision is to provide blazing fast web experience to their customers and they emphasize their commitment to the environment as well. If you’re not fully satisfied with their service, you can request a full refund within 30 days of your hosting subscription.
GreenGeeks provides a wide variety of hosting options from shared hosting to fully managed dedicated servers. GreenGeeks is also a PCI compliant hosting provider, so you can securely accept payments on your website.
If you’re looking for an eco-friendly web host that offers all the features you need to build and host your websites, GreenGeeks is the best choice.
- SSD storage for all plans
- Free domain registration
- Eco-friendly data centers
- No hidden fees
- Regular price $10.95 / mo. but our users pay $2.95 / mo!
- Get started with GreenGeeks today!
I’m new to GreenGeeks but not to shared web hosting. I’ll admit that I had a tad more difficulty getting my WordPress site up and running because the GG setup required a few extra changes to some settings that I wasn’t accustomed to. BUT, as a result, I ended up contacting their online support quite a bit.
So, I feel like I have a lot of experience with the speed and quality of their support and I would highly recommend them. They always responded immediately and solved every issue I had. Compared to other hosting services I’ve used, I would say their support is way better. As someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience or knowledge with the ‘backend’ side of website hosting and setup, their cPanel interface is basically the same as other services but their support is way better.
Overall, I definitely recommend.
Awesome that GreenGeeks is so energy friendly, but my experience is less than stellar. I am not familiar with WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, which is what they push for their website development platform. I had called in advance to subscribing and asked how difficult WordPress is to learn. The service rep told me it’s a great program and requires a mild learning curve. Well, I spent 6 hours trying to learn it to create my civic, informational only website. No blogging needed. What a nightmare and waste of time. So I switched to Drupal and then tried Joomla. GreenGeeks could not offer me any support with the three platforms. You’re on your own. So I cancelled after two days of my multi year subscription that was paid in full. I need something more user friendly and with a provider that has some in-cling about their platform. GreenGeeks contacts me asking to give them another try and suggested their drag and drop site builder, which nobody had mentioned prior. I had not had a chance to try it out and a day later they e-mailed confirming my cancellation request, but they’re withholding $15 for a registration fee. Keep in mind I paid in full and already had a domain through Melbourne IT. Green Geeks quotes a stipulation in their terms and conditions, which you can find online and I forwarded to their billing department asking them to clarify where it states the $15 to be withheld. I don’t see it. Several hours later and no reply. Time will tell if they do. If they don’t credit the $15 then I’ll file a complaint with my credit card company and get all my money back. There are a few posts online about people experiencing the same when asking for a trial period refund.
If you are a WordPress, Drupal or Joomla pro, then GreenGeeks would be great for you. If you’re a pro with these and want a blogging website, then GreenGeeks would be fine for you. If you’re not familiar with these platforms, don’t expect anyone at GreenGreeks to help you. They’re clueless and their reps admitted they get quite a few calls about people frustrated with WordPress. I called a few times and yes, their customer service is friendly and very easy to get through to and they all speak fluent English. There are other much more user friendly website hosts and interfaces you can consider. Of course, beware of GreenGeeks sneaky billing practices if you cancel during your trial period. Stand your ground!
I’ve used GreenGeeks to host my personal site for about 5 years now and have had no trouble doing everything I need.
The few times I’ve had to get some support, customer service has been timely, polite and useful.
Plus, I love that it’s eco friendly!
Great customer support. Best I have ever had from a hosting company. Don’t ever change as I have referred most of my clients to GreenGeeks now, so my business is dependent on GreenGeeks remaining a stellar hosting company. If that ever changes it will be easier to just retire than move all of my clients.
Green Geeks is amazing when it comes to support! Every time I have had an issue with my websites they have helped me to sort them out, and they even offer the option to backup your site for you for a small fee which gives me peace of mind and I don’t have to figure out how to do the technical stuff (I’m pretty techie, but I’m no website developer :))!
I have nothing but good things to say about green geeks and I highly recommend them to all of my friends and family!
I have been very impressed with their customer service. They have been quick to respond to my issues, and always very courteous and knowledgeable to get the issue solved.
One of the cools things that originally attracted me to go with Green Geeks for web hosting is the fact that they use renewable energy sources.
I have not been disappointed with then, and they continue to be rock solid in their web hosting, systems, and superior customer service.
We have been using Greengeeks since 2012, that alone should say enough. We were looking for a company that kept environmental issues in mind as that is where we were heading as company ourselves as well as in our personal ives. We host several websites with them (wordpress and html) and their friendly support and patience to resolve and explain issues (whether it be tech or billing) in a more than timely manner is also one of the main reasons we are still with them today, we have sent support tickets at all hours and (we are on the east coast) each issue dealt promptly with most of them having to do with things we had done accidentally to disrupt our own service or did not know how to go about configuring. They are proactive with securing their platform and customers and with that rest assured and look forward to continuing our relationship with them. Keep up the great work guys!
GreenGeeks offers incredible products and services. I have been a client for over 7 years.
Great customer service.
24/7 available to help with any issue.
Over 99% service availability.
Knowledgeable support agents.
Green services.
Low prices.
I am really enjoying the service.
Do yourself a favor and sign-up now with greengeeks for your hosting needs.
I first found GreenGeeks when I was looking for an alternative to GoDaddy hosting. First thing to catch my eye was the wind powered server farm, next the pricing was ultra competitive.
Six years later I love their rapid tech support for advanced configurations and very rare (non-scheduled) outages.
Best web hosting decision I ever made.
I’ll echo what everyone here has said, GreenGeeks are the best! Their service and support are leagues above other hosts I’ve previously tried and their commitment to environment makes them the perfect partner for my business.
I’ve been using green geeks for almost 8 years now. Unlike other services, their customer support and attention to help is unmatched by other companies. If you want the best hosting provider, go with them!
I was drawn to GreenGeeks initially by their priorities, as I’m concerned about the energy footprint of my web development business.
While the 300% green energy commitment is still meaningful to me, I’ve stuck with them because of their solid uptime, their transparency in the uncommon instances where something has gone wrong, and their technical support, which has more than once assisted me in keeping legacy code running properly.
I recommend GreenGeeks without hesitation to both clients and colleagues.
I came to GreenGeeks originally, not because they’re eco-friendly, but because I continued to have problems with other hosting servers over the years. What I don’t need are the frustrations of unscheduled downtime and hosting-caused issues.
As I wanted to have more than a single site, I choose GreenGeeks reseller plan and that was nearly seven years ago. Sure, there have been minor hiccups, but when they’ve happened, GG has always admitted when it was their issue and fixed them immediately and when I caused the problems, they helped me with finding resolutions.
There are a number of low-cost hosting companies, but what distinguishes GG from them is the excellent customer service.
I have been with GreenGeeks for many years now. I started with them because of their eco friendly outlook which is very important. There are normally no problems however on the few occasions where there has been one, the support has been rapid and friendly, especially for someone who really doesn’t speak computer language. They have been patient and helpful. So put the two together eco friendly and great support you don’t need to look elsewhere.
I’ve been a client of GreenGeeks for several years ago, GreenGeeks is a great company. support team is very fast, useful and professional.
I love this company and I recommend it to every one looking for a good rate, professional support team, great hosting specifications, and friendly behavior with their clients.
Chose to host my personal site with them first because of the eco-friendly nature of the service, then moved my reseller account with them because the support team was friendly and the hosting service solid.
Haven’t looked back since. They are especially good at notifying you when/if someone has hacked or dumped malicious files on one of your accounts. Also very accommodating on the odd chance that your site/one of your sites might require special tinkering regarding config in order to work properly.
Life-savers.
Even when brief outings happen, support staff is friendly and tries their best to help. 100% recommend.
I’ve dealt with quite a few hosts over the years, and GreenGeeks have been very solid for me so far.
-k
I have used Green Geeks as my hosting solution for many years now. The dashboard is useful and easy, CPanel is always up to date, database version is always the latest, and the customer service is top notch and quick! I have never, in something like 8 years, had a downtime issue on the server. Any hack attempts are brought to my attention immediately, and the mail server is very quick. All in all, a hosting decision that was initially based on the ‘green’ aspect of the company has turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Thanks Green Geeks! Keep doing what you’re doing!
GreenGeeks has been a helpful and reliable hosting service for me. I have had very few issues over the years – but those that I’ve had were quickly resolved. How nice to do business with a group of people that actually care about their customers.
I’ve been using GreenGeeeks for over 10 years, and they’ve never failed me. My site runs smoothly, and the websites I’ve developed for clients and host with GG are praised.
GreenGeeks provides everything I’m looking for in a hosting service – reliability, great customer service, excellent technical support, easy user interface and the flexibility to provide my customers any services they ask for. Pricing is very competitive. I’ve been designing and hosting web sites for 20 years and GreenGeeks has been my number one choice since 2010.
I’ve been long time customer and have been extremely satisfied with this hosting service. My site has never been down, so I can’t speak for customer service or technical support, but the price has always been right.
Green Geeks has hosted our website/email at the Sustainability Leadership Institute from the very beginning. Steady, reliable, customer-service oriented and, well, green. Thanks Green Geeks!
Always been provided good service and customer care. Highly recommend GreenGeeks 🙂
I have been a GreenGeeks customer since 2009 and have always had prompt, efficient, and friendly service. I recommend them highly!
I’ve had several sites hosted by Green Geeks for the last 8 years. Their service has been great:
-The interfaces are intuitive
-The handful of times of I’ve dealt with tech support, my issues have been resolved quickly and professionally.
-My interactions with the business side of Green Geeks has been pleasant and professional as well.