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 is the only hosting company I would ever consider using. I’ve used them for 2+ years and every single time I need help they have gone above and beyond my expectations. They resolve my problems quickly and every customer service agent I’ve ever interacted with is amazingly helpful, polite, and professional. A+++
Excellent support. Very quick and helpful response whether phoning or raising a ticket through the website. Support guys really do do their best to exceed expectations.
good support,… but i”m still waiting myerror have solved
Siteground Support is really Supersssss helpful and professional!!! Appreciated to you guys all the while with helping in settling my problem, thanks for the prompt respond and the patient of help, so far I tried with so many hosting company, I can say Siteground Support are the best!!
Highly recommend to all of you who are still look around for the best Hosting Provider. Siteground is your best choice, I swear.
It is great to always have an experienced technician each time. I have never had to escalate to the ‘next tier’ as with some other providers.
I had zero issues until I moved to using siteground- we have had nothing but issues since. We thought we were upgrading. I really am shocked.
Fantastic servers and support!
Very helpful support, quick servers
The best, most human, most generally technically advanced help i have ever seen, in over 15 years of doing websites on many different hosting companies. Better than godaddy, hostgator, greatdanehosting, bluehost, dreamhost, etc. i’ve had them all. If they do not solve the problem, well i haven’t seen it yet.
I found the service very helpful and prompt as always when I have had anything that I have needed to speak with them. I have always had friendly and very helpful staff every time I have got in touch with them about anything no matter how big or small. Would recommend Siteground to anyone who owns a website and wanting a great hosting company for it.
best support. fast & reliable. I was used to a 24 hours delay for my queries on dreamhost.
was surprised to receive call within hour of my query. online chat always available and helpfull.
Impressive to get such a quick chat support response at 9.00 am UK time. The operative did a quick check on our broken site, reported the issue and escalated it to the advanced tech team. By 9.05 we felt we were in good hands.
I’m new to SiteGround, but so far I am happy, especially with the support. Much better than my old host. I also noticed that GoDaddy employs people who are not computer literate, and the help is not good.
I’m still new to site ground, but I had a pretty big mess when I got here. They went right in helping me get everything fixed! Thanks!
SiteGround is honestly the best company I’ve worked with in the past 3 years. GoDaddy has horrible customer service, their hosting accounts are slow & crash, Bluehost is expensive & has cancellation policies built in behind the scenes if you are unhappy with their services. SiteGround by far is the best
I really appreciate the GREAT customer service I get from SiteGround. I am very computer illiterate and with their help and guidence I have built my own site 🙂
SiteGround offers some of the most robust email solutions available at an affordable price level. We use the GoGeek offering at our firm and their attention to detail in both support and service is unmatched. If you enjoy having all the options and features at your fingertips but also like to have experienced support engineers to guide you from time to time then this is the hosting partner for you. Their library of tutorials are very thorough and easy to understand when you need it.
NOT A FAN! Siteground puts a limit on execution requests and then takes your site offline without a proper warning. Hurt our business bad. It was very strange that we started getting hit by a lot of bots that were using up our execution requests, and then Siteground comes in and says we should either do something to limit the requests or upgrade to a more expensive plan that allows more execution requests. Hmmmmm. Very interesting. Provided NO help whatsoever on reducing the execution requests other than directing us to an article to read.
I am going to host my site on SG and that is after i checked out almost all the other major hosts. The price-value is the most competitive.
What’s more to add?
I had Hostgator and Bluehost etc before finding SiteGround. They give me some hope for a better world, super awesome support and a packed bag of host candy. 😉
cheers/Stephan
WOW!
I just registered a new domain and joined SiteGround yesterday. As a novice with WordPress, I was a little intimidated and needed help right out of the gate. I chatted with a wonderful help desk representative (who actually had a sense of humor!) and helped me solve the problem immediately without making me feel stupid for needed to ask simple questions. My wait time in the chat window was less than 20 seconds.
That would have been enough to make me a happy, but 30 minutes later I got a follow-up phone call from a Site Ground representative who introduced himself and said he had noticed that I was a new customer who had already contacted the site for help and wanted to reassure me that if I needed help at any time — no matter how often or for any matter — they would always be there to help me.
I’m blown away. After only a day, I’m ready to recommend SiteGround to everyone I know who needs a web host.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to leave reviews about SiteGround. I read dozens of comments before choosing my web host and I’m glad I listened to you!
I was in desperate need of a new hosting company for a 30-60k site that went down on another platform. siteground staff was alway extremely helpfull and their direct line was available whenever I needed it.
My site was up and running with NO technical intervention from my part within 14 hours after it went down.
I am very gratefull and hope to be a long term client from here on.
Thank you
Siteground are amazing. I moved to them from Bluehost and have never looked back. Not only are their packages great value for WordPress. but their customer service is second to none. On my old hosting I waited hours for any kind of response. With Siteground, I get immediate webchat with real people who are very friendly and helpful. Pretty much all of my support tickets are answered and resolved within about 15 minutes. I have seriously never experienced such incredible levels of customer service.
I just switched to SiteGround this evening, and I’m frankly impressed by their amazing welcome, and a very quick, sympathic and efficient support immediately. I hope this will be as powerful with their servers and hosting, I guess there is no doubt about it ! 😉
I will come back to comment after a few days of services…
I love these guys, they make my work a lot easier. I do web design for clients and also have my own website and I’m starting to use SiteGround exclusively because they’re my favorite. I pretty much never leave reviews unless i’m very happy or pissed but I couldn’t be more happy with SiteGround. I’m always amazed by the fact that when I call, they answer immediately (let’s be honest, very few places do that), if i need tech help, they always have someone online to handle it. The prices are cheaper, the service is better, and they have a nice set of tools and help available. All of that stuff is great but what made me take the time to write a review is the service. I need something, they answer and its handled immediately, done deal. That’s impressive and thus warrants a nice review. thanks