SiteGround is a leading WordPress hosting service provider. They offer automatic WordPress upgrades, built-in WP caching, CDN, one-click staging, and more. They are one of the few companies that provide location-specific hosting with 5 data centers globally.
SiteGround Review – The Good, the Bad, and the Everything Else
SiteGround Review: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Having data centers in 4 continents, SiteGround provides a superior site experience to your visitors regardless of their geographical location. SiteGround is one of the few top hosting brands that’s not been acquired by Endurance International Group, a leading web hosting company.
SiteGround stacks up against the competition by providing the latest speed technologies and proactive security practices with all their hosting plans. They offer enhanced performance with NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7, and free CDN.
They also offer optimized solutions for different open source applications including WordPress and Magneto.
If you need a great hosting service, which is stable, secure, and super-fast, SiteGround is the best choice.
- Free auto daily backups
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Files are stored in SSD (Solid State Drive) storage as opposed to HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
- Regular price $14.99 / mo. but our users pay $3.99 / mo!
- Get started with SiteGround today!
SiteGround Cheap Hosting Review
SiteGround offers cheap hosting, also known as shared hosting, which is the best option for users who are just starting out and need an affordable hosting solution. With cheap hosting, many websites will share resources of the same server, which makes the cost low.
Although it’s SiteGround’s cheapest hosting option available, there’s nothing to be concerned about since your files and data will be secure on the server.
SiteGround offers 3 different shared hosting plans: Startup, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
The Startup plan allows you to host only one website which is great for bloggers and websites of small businesses. With all other plans, you can host multiple websites.
With every SiteGround cheap hosting plan, you get dozens of one-click installers for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. that help you quickly start a website.
The GoGeek plan offers geeky advanced features like PCI compliant server, WordPress and Joomla staging, and one-click git repo creation.
SiteGround doesn’t have VPS hosting (virtual private server) plans, but they do offer cloud hosting plans, which is an in-between solution for sites that outgrows shared hosting but can’t afford to have dedicated hosting.
- Free auto daily backups
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Files are stored in SSD (Solid State Drive) storage as opposed to HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
- Regular price $14.99 / mo. but our users pay $3.99 / mo!
- Get started with SiteGround today!
SiteGround WordPress Hosting Review
SiteGround offers WordPress hosting solutions for users who want to host their site on a managed hosting environment. There are no significant differences between shared and managed WordPress hosting plans, except your site will be operated under a WordPress optimized ecosystem. This makes it much easier for WordPress users.
SiteGround is officially recommended WordPress hosting provider by WordPress.org.
With WordPress hosting, you’ll get an additional layer of protection from WordPress specific vulnerabilities. Your core WordPress and installed plugins will be automatically updated to prevent threats from any known vulnerabilities.
- Free WordPress install with WP-CLI enabled
- Auto WordPress updater
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Proactive security
- Regular price $14.99 / mo. but our users pay $3.99 / mo!
- Get started with SiteGround today!
SiteGround WooCommerce Hosting Review
If you want to set up an online store with WooCommerce but are not sure about the hosting requirements you’ll need, you just have to choose a SiteGround WooCommerce hosting plan. With SiteGround’s WooCommerce hosting, you can quickly build an online store without having to install WordPress and WooCommerce on your account.
Just sign up for a WooCommerce hosting plan and launch your eCommerce store by logging into your WordPress dashboard. You’ll get all the essential tools including free SSL, Storefront theme preinstalled, and hassle-free WordPress management.
You can choose a WooCommerce hosting plan for as low as $3.99 / mo.
- WooCommerce + Storefront installed
- Auto WordPress updater
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Proactive security
- Regular price $14.99 / mo. but our users pay $3.99 / mo!
- Get started with SiteGround today!
SiteGround Reseller Hosting Review
SiteGround’s best reseller hosting is geared towards web designers and developers who want to maintain their clients’ websites on a long-term basis. With a reseller hosting plan, you get all the powerful tools you need to succeed in your reseller hosting business.
You can start as low as $81 per credit for a year and get special domain name deals.
To join the program, you just need to order 5 reseller credits. One credit is equivalent to 1-year hosting. When you purchase more credits in bulk, you’ll get high discounts. Since reseller credits never expire, you can use them anytime to launch or renew hosting accounts for your clients.
Best of all, with SiteGround’s reseller hosting, you get white-labeled cPanel and private DNS upgrades.
- Start by purchasing 5 reseller credits
- 1 credit per activation
- Reseller credit never expires
- Special domain name deals
- $6.69 / month
- Get started with SiteGround today!
Features
(5.0 / 5.0)SiteGround comes with a unique set of features that help you create a blazing-fast website with ease. Let’s take a look at some of the important features you need to look for when hosting a website.
Free SSL
With every SiteGround hosting plan, you get a free SSL certificate. When you host your website on the SiteGround platform, a free standard SSL certificate is automatically enabled without any effort.
SiteGround integrates with the Let’s Encrypt project to provide SSL certificates to its users. An SSL certificate protects user data and helps meet search engine requirements to improve website rankings.
Free Cloudflare CDN
SiteGround offers a free CDN which enables the website to load from the nearest data point for a user. Cloudflare’s CDN, clubbed with SiteGround hosting, ensures your website loads quickly and has the fastest response time.
Free Email Service
SiteGround lets you create a free email address with your domain name. There’s no limit to adding email accounts to your hosting plan.
The email tools include a user-friendly webmail interface, email forwarding option, autoresponders, and more. They also support SMTP, POP3, and other email protocols to deliver your emails smoothly.
Super Caching
By default, SiteGround enables a caching system for all users on their servers. This means your site will load faster than usual from the memory of the server.
It comes with a SuperCacher service to further improve the website loading speed. This service is available specifically for their premium plans (GrowBig and GoGeek).
Free Auto Daily Backups
Many web hosting services don’t back up your site on a daily basis. However, all SiteGround plans come with daily automatic backups, ensuring you don’t have to remember to back up your site regularly.
You can also generate on-demand backups from SiteGround’s provided tools. This service is free on the premium plans and costs a minimal fee on the starter plan.
Website Transfer Tool
When moving a website from one host to another, you need to be careful of traffic, security, backups, and many other things. SiteGround offers a free WordPress plugin that works magically to move your WordPress website without affecting your content or configuration.
SiteGround also provides a professional website migration and transfer service. This is a paid service where a team of experts will move your site while you sit back and relax.
SSD Storage
SiteGround uses solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) for storage. Since SSDs don’t have moving parts, they’ve been proven to improve site performance compared to websites that use HDD storage.
Advanced Security
Security is the key concern when hosting a website with any provider. SiteGround provides free in-house SSH to restrict user account access for your hosting.
It gives an encrypted connection to your hosting account, so web developers and website admins can access the web server in a secure environment. These security features also help manage large files and databases securely.
SiteGround Hosting Pros:
Let’s take a look at how SiteGround stacks up against the competition:
Choose Your Data Center
Even with a shared hosting plan, you’ll be asked to choose your preferred data center. This way, you can ensure your site is hosted on servers closer to your audience geographically.
Amazing Customer Support
SiteGround is well-known for its superior customer service. Best of all, you don’t have to wait more than a few seconds for the next available operator because they have additional support staff in all shifts, so there’s always someone to pick up the live chat. With the GoGeek plan, you’ll get priority support.
Unmetered Bandwidth
The bandwidth is unmetered meaning you’re not charged based on the bandwidth. SiteGround’s StartUp plan, GrowBig plan, and GoGeek plan come with an unmetered data transfer that you can use as much as you like.
Money-Back Guarantee
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all their plans. This will allow you to test the service and tools with full options for up to a month and if you feel SiteGround isn’t the host for your site, you can request a full refund.
The refund doesn’t include the domain registration fees. The domain name will be your property anyway.
SiteGround Hosting Cons:
Here are some limitations of SiteGround Hosting…
Expensive Plans
Compared to other hosting providers like Bluehost, SiteGround’s pricing is a bit expensive. However, SiteGround offers several unique features than Bluehost for faster page rendering.
No Free Domain
Unlike popular web hosting services, SiteGround doesn’t offer free domain names with their plans. If you’re starting your website, this will be an additional cost to your budget.
Performance
(5.0 / 5.0)SiteGround Uptime Guarantee and Speed Tests
SiteGround ensures a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Best of all, if you ever experience more than 0.1% downtime on a yearly basis, you will be compensated.
To provide our users with real facts, we built a WordPress test site environment and perform several speed tests using the following tools:
- Pingdom
- Load Impact
- Bitcatcha
According to Pingdom’s website speed test, our test site loads in less than a second for a server in Dallas, Texas. That’s faster than 95% of all tested sites.
Apart from Pingdom, we also used a testing tool called Load Impact to figure out how SiteGround handles visitors during a traffic surge. Load Impact sent some virtual users (VUs) to our site and gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time.
In the chart, you can find a blue line (VUs active) which shows the number of virtual users sent to our SiteGround site and a green line (VU load time) which represents how much time it would take to load a web page for a user.
SiteGround performed almost consistently except for a spike when there were 50 users on the site. It quickly recovered and page load time remained steadily low even with more users.
It’s worth noting that the site never went down during our speed test. Take a look at the report below.
SiteGround Server Response Time
The content on your website has a huge influence on page loading time. For instance, if your site has too many images, it will take more time to load than a lightweight site. In fact, images account for most of the downloadable bytes in a typical site.
To get accurate results, instead of the analysis of page load time alone, we decided to test the actual server response time by entirely ignoring the content of our SiteGround site.
To track our SiteGround server response time, we used a tool known as Bitcatcha. Bitcatcha works differently from Pingdom.
Bitcatcha ignores the content of your page and records the page loading time 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.
From the result, it’s evident that SiteGround is the perfect choice if your target audience is mostly located in the United States. In the United States, the server responded in just a fraction of a second. In all other locations, except Japan, the server responded within less than a second.
If your target audience is mostly located in Japan, it’s in your best interest to move your site to their Asia-Pacific data center for the best results.
Support
(5.0 / 5.0)SiteGround Customer Support
Most hosting providers advertise excellent customer support, but SiteGround actually delivers it. SiteGround’s customer service team is well-known for its quick response time and for resolving customer issues quickly.
SiteGround offers 24/7 support via 3 modes: tickets, live chat, and phone.
With SiteGround, you don’t have to wait more than a few seconds for the next available operator. They also have extensive documentation that walks you through every aspect of web hosting with SiteGround. You can also find a webinar series where they share hands-on knowledge on industry trends.
Ease of Use
(5.0 / 5.0)SiteGround allows you to manage your website and hosting account with cPanel.
They also offer dozens of one-click installer for popular website scripts such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
You’ll also get a basic drag and drop builder with every SiteGround hosting plan to create a website the way you want.
Pricing
(5.0 / 5.0)SiteGround Pricing
SiteGround offers one of the most competitive prices in the industry for its level of service and performance.
To make it even better, they’re offering our users an exclusive discount if you use our SiteGround coupon code.
Here are some of the hosting plans offered by SiteGround.
PLAN | DISK SPACE | BANDWIDTH | PRICE |
Shared Hosting Startup | 10 GB | Unmetered | $3.99 /mo. |
WordPress Hosting Startup | 10 GB | Unmetered | $3.99 /mo. |
Cloud Hosting Entry | 40 GB | 5 TB | $100.00 / mo. |
WooCommerce Hosting Startup | 10 GB | Unmetered | $3.99 /mo. |
Reseller Hosting | 10 GB | Unmetered | $6.69 /mo. |
FAQs
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their website, we have answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about SiteGround.
Why should I choose SiteGround to host my site?
Below are a few features that make SiteGround hosting sets apart from its competitors:
Even with the basic shared hosting plan, you’ll get…
- Free auto daily backups
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Your files will be stored in SSD (Solid State Drive) storage as opposed to HDD (Hard Disk Drive), which doesn’t compromise page speed and overall performance.
- You’re allowed to choose from 6 different data centers of SiteGround for the best performance.
- Unlike most other hosting companies, SiteGround never hard sells hosting addons when you purchase a hosting account.
Which SiteGround plan should I get?
It depends on your hosting needs. If you’re just starting out, we recommend you choose one of SiteGround’s shared hosting plans. If you want to quickly launch a WordPress site without having to install WordPress manually, you may choose a website hosting plan. If you’re after an online store powered by WooCommerce, you may choose one of their WooCommerce hosting plans designed to handle eCommerce websites.
Where are SiteGround servers located?
Here’s a list of the SiteGround server locations:
- IOWA, USA
- London, UK
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Frankfurt, DE
- Singapore
- Sydney, AU
Can SiteGround handle high traffic?
SiteGround is capable of handling high traffic around the clock. They offer different hosting packages to their customers and it all depends on which plan you’re on. If your site is found to consume too many resources, they’ll request you to upgrade to a higher plan.
Can I upgrade my SiteGround plan later?
Of course! When you’re starting out, you can choose the most basic plan. As you grow, you can always upgrade to a higher plan per your needs.
Does SiteGround offer a month-to-month payment option?
SiteGround does not offer month-to-month payment options for their shared plans. For higher plans like dedicated servers, they do offer monthly payment options. However, it’s important to note that they offer significant discounts for longer-term deals.
Can I create subdomains in SiteGround?
Yes, you can easily create subdomains in SiteGround using the cPanel.
Do I have to register my domain name with SiteGround?
No, you do not have to register your domain with SiteGround. You can use Godaddy, NameCheap, or any of your preferred domain name registrar.
Does SiteGround offer free SSL?
Yes, SiteGround offers free SSL with all of their plans. eCommerce plans come with dedicated IPs and private SSL.
Does SiteGround offer free CDN service?
Yes, SiteGround has a partnership with Cloudflare CDN to provide free content delivery network (CDN) service to all its customers. This will help speed up your website loading time for users in different locations in the world.
Do I need to purchase the addons that SiteGround offers me?
No, you do not need to purchase any addons at the time of purchase. Should you decide that you need them later, you can always add them to your account.
How good is SiteGround support?
SiteGround offers 24/7 support via 3 modes: Live chat, phone, and ticket. SiteGround is well-known for its speedy response. Unlike other hosting providers, they don’t make you wait more than a few seconds for the next available support agent. Their extensive documentation helps you walk you through every aspect of web hosting.
Can I create an eCommerce site on SiteGround?
Absolutely! SiteGround’s WooCommerce hosting plan comes pre-configured with all the things you need to start an online store.
SiteGround vs Other Hosts
Wondering how SiteGround stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
Sorry, we do not have any comparison data for this web host.
Final Recap
SiteGround is the best choice for users who need an excellent customer support without compromising on server performance and page speed. SiteGround offers SSD storage for all hosting plans as opposed to HDD like other companies, which has proven to boost the server’s performance.
On top of that, they spend a lot of resources on training, hiring, and managing a great support team. Unlike other web hosting service providers, SiteGround’s support team does not shy away from application-specific questions.
If you want a web hosting provider that keeps the perfect balance of latest technology and excellent customer support, SiteGround is the best bet for you.
- Free auto daily backups
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSLs
- Files are stored in SSD (Solid State Drive) storage as opposed to HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
- Regular price $14.99 / mo. but our users pay $3.99 / mo!
- Get started with SiteGround today!
Siteground has great products por less. Excelentet customer service that answers you ticket in less thant 10 minutes. I couldn’t be happier with the them. My sites were under attack and they helped me to overcome the attack and pinpoint where and how to fix the holes in my site that allowed the attack. My site was up an running within minutes, tanks to the support of siteground. I recommend it if you are looking for great and fast support, excelente hosting and services and no least great pricing. Thank you Siteground.
Their service is absolutely amazing. I did a lot of research on hosting companies and I am truly grateful to have found siteground. I would have never gotten through building this website without their great support and chat system. I have zero web design knowledge and zero knowledge on the language of php they helped me so much. Keep up the good work!
The support is just amazing, live chat is fast and reliable. I would recommend Siteground to everyone who like fast support and services
I’m using Cloud VPS now for more than 1 month, and i’m very pleased about the fast and professional support of siteground team members. They not only provide good technical support, but also today supported me in working out the best strategy to transfer multiple site(s) from another shared hosting provider to siteground Cloud VPS. They take the time needed, are to the point and you can rely on their experience. Keep up with this good support !
For personal use it will be good, but business pls dont use Siteground.
still the problem is not solved. As startup we thought Siteground will help us to grow but for it really make our entire system down for 2 days and still continuing. Dont know when they are going to solve this 🙁 .
Perfect support. Excellent. We are very happy and the site is so fast. Ans so fffffaaaaaassst support. 🙂
Extremely helpful service. Cleared everything up in a friendly manner.
We swapped over all our hosting and email to Siteground a couple of years ago and I can honestly say they are fantastic. The first time I contacted them was at 9.30pm UK time and within minutes, they had looked into the problem and sorted it out. Again, today, within seconds someone was there to help, with my problem solved within 10 minutes. If only all customer service experiences were so good!!!!!
Exceptional service, always available for help, polite, knowledgeable, and I’m happy I found SiteGround ~ ;->)
Great place to do business with, (and I am not even a customer yet) I am looking forward to being part of them, I’ve chatted with them several time and they have been GREAT. very knowable and their patience level is awesome…
Time and time again – doesn’t matter which rep I speak to, these guys are seriously on their customer service game.
16 chats before you in the queue? BAM! Still answered in 30 seconds.
Tricky question that first line can’t resolve (which is rare), support ticket created BAM! Replied to within 15-20 minutes.
If decent customer service is one of your criteria for finding a host, take a good hard look at SiteGround.
1st technical help ticket submitted at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night on a holiday weekend. Response within 5 minutes with fix and also HOW the fix was resolved. Are you kidding me?!?! I thought I’d have to wait at least until the next business day to get any kind of response. Wow, I’m impressed!
I have just started hosting my site with SiteGround and I am a very happy customer so far.
The support team is excellent, friendly, dedicated and very, very, patient and kind.
The prices are alright too.
Every time I need help or advise they astound me how quick, freindly, professional and helpful they are. Definitely the best providers I have dealt with to date 🙂
I moved my hosting to Siteround a little over a year ago now and my life just became easier after that. So far I still have to run into trouble …. knock on wood..
The small things for which I needed their support have all been solved within 30 minutes. Needed them today to transfer a domain from Godaddy to SG which usually can be done via website but Godaddy (once again) made a mess …. SG solved the problem in a chat that lasted less than 9 minutes …
Asked a lot of question, chat for almost an hour to get whatever info i need, SiteGround has the best Support Team! thank you guys! keep up the good work
Not that good.
My first problem with siteground is about the cost, the fist year they offers you a good price but when you are going to renew they charge you the regular price that is on small print when you start, siteground regular price is very high for the service that they give. You can get more from other without being cheated after the first year. Siteground is the only hosting company that rise the price to the double after a year and charge it automatically.
Second, I bought a VPS cloud hosting, the tech support was not the best, they made a lot of mistakes with the migration and the configuration of the server and as a result we had complete days out of the air.
I just switched to SiteGround and have no idea about moving the website. So far i have had almost instantaneous Chat support that really has been helpful.
I am now nearly 3 years with Siteground. I used other hosting services before for my clients.
I have around 50 Reseller accounts, some dedicated servers and some other accounts.
Siteground is by far the best in term of support / response time and server up time. Never in the past years have I been called by a client that their site is down which used to happen frequently with other providers.
My only complain is the more or less non existing love for resellers.
Yes they have the reseller accounts but those are quite limited. You can’t sell a GoGeek or Dedicated Server to your customer as you can’t make any money on it. I don’t understand that. Why should I sell it if I can’t make money?
We are an IT Outsource company, so we want to keep all accounts under our reseller account in order to manage them for our clients. Thus an affiliate program doesn’t work for us.
That’s a shame. I would love to sell more accounts to my clients but I need to make money.
Hi Brad, we are sorry to hear about your experience with our service. 100 visits a day is indeed a very low number, there must be another reason for the errors received. We wll be glad to review your case in detail and assist you in resolving it. If you send us more details at news [at] siteground.com, we will make sure to help you further.
The visits outlined on the plans details page (10k monthly visits on StartUp, 25k on GrowBig, 100k on GoGeek) are not strictly set limits. They are only approximate values so that people can get an idea when choosing a plan and decide which one will best suit their needs. A well optimized website can have much more visits than the listed here.
Your website might have been limited due using too much other resources. We’re assuming since you mention you had a small website, that your hosting plan was a shared one – as you know, that means you share the server resources with other clients. So naturally when our system detects that you are using too many resources, compared to the other users on the server, and endanger the performance of all websites on the server, it sends alerts out to you. Our team is always available and helps customers with additional information about the resource with excessive usage and provides tips how to resolve the issue, or suggests a plan that is more suitable.
If you are willing to discuss further, you are most welcome to get in touch with the Customer Care team. Regards!
Do not host with siteground.com. I setup a small affiliate website to promote Aliexpress products. It started to get 100 visitors a day and I received an email saying that I was using to much bandwidth and now my website just displays a 503 – Service unavailable message.
If you have a website that gets no traffic it might be ok but otherwise don’t waste your time and money.
Switching to SiteGround has been relatively smooth. The problems I’ve had have been resolved in minutes with great explanations from their team.
I really appreciate the easy SSL installation and support of tools like Git and wp-cli, but I would like to be able to configure their SG-Git a bit more (not have my entire WP install under version control). The GUI and automation tools are a breeze to use, though, and make setup quick and easy.
My site is faster and more secure now that I’ve moved to SiteGround, and I expect I’ll be using them for quite some time.
After an in depth chat about technical details, siteground is far better than my current host. Siteground is well known in the market for years and years and this gives you the trust that you can rely on them since you are in good hands.
Pre-sales customer service was excellent.
I like everything about siteGround. The short contact with them, I already fell in love with their products and technology. I know for sure I will be spending more time to learn more about them.
The support system and people who worked in are really something else, they are so patient and professional, I think they are from the Mars. I kept thinking this will be the time they all going to jump on and screaming at me and saying something very nasty. They haven’t yet, and I think they will not. because they are a selected group.
Site Ground has always been great, helping me as I needed it. I’m in no way an expert, but you would not know it for the supporting staff is so fine.