SiteGround Review: Here’s What They’re Good (And Not So Good) At

What Makes SiteGround Stand Out?

If you’re the type of consumer who prefers the creative boutique to the big box brand then SiteGround should be on your web hosting shortlist.

Many hosting companies are getting gobbled up by large firms. Sometimes the special qualities that define a host get left behind in the process.

By contrast, SiteGround’s pride in ownership surfaces in its:

• In-house developed hosting solutions.
• Frictionless scaling for small businesses.
• Advanced optimization of their hosting architecture to offer excellent performance and speed.
• Software solutions are available for improving performance and tightening security, such as artificial intelligence to protect your website from hacks and operating system improvements that have become part of what’s known as the Linux Kernel.
• An enthusiastic community where SiteGround staff meet and mentor users around the world, and sponsor WordCamps, Joomla Days, and other tech conferences, in major global cities.
• Well-trained in-house customer support staff. By contrast with most web hosts, you’ll see who you’re speaking with, view their name, see how many customers they’ve assisted, and how customers have rated that individual’s service.

SiteGround displays an authentic commitment to helping their customers succeed in their online ventures. The company also goes above what’s normally expected of web hosts to include its own malware/virus scanning software and isolation technology that prevents infected websites from taking down other websites on a given server.

SiteGround Hosting Types

SiteGround offers pretty much everything you would expect a web host to offer. There are several shared and cloud web hosting packages, as well as managed WordPress hosting plans to choose from.

They also offer special packages designed for resellers, WordPress users, and even enterprise clients. In fact, their customized solutions are one of the most popular features.

Hosting options with SiteGround include:

1. Shared hosting
2. Cloud hosting
3. WordPress hosting
4. Reseller hosting

SiteGround Shared Hosting

Their StartUp shared hosting plan features 10 GB of storage, unlimited emails, allows for one website, handles network traffic of up to 10,000 visitors a month, and supports web performance and security service Cloudflare.

Below, we’ll show you how the pricing and features of this StartUp plan compare to the entry-level plans offered by other hosting providers.

SiteGround also offers many other hosting packages in addition to the StartUp plan — these plans come with additional resources and features.

SiteGround WordPress Hosting

Many people think of WordPress as just a blogging platform, but many businesses depend upon it for a whole lot more. In fact, the most popular e-commerce software application in the world is WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin.

With WordPress, you can do pretty much anything you want.

SiteGround WooCommerce Hosting

Although many businesses start just wanting the equivalent of a business card online, they often grow. Maybe your business is already at that point. There isn’t much difference between selling products in your brick-and-mortar store and selling them through your website.

There is only one extra step to selling online: shipping. What’s amazing about SiteGround is that it allows you to do this with their lowest-cost plans, where you will have access to Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and more.

You can even do drop shipping, where you sell things you don’t even keep in inventory. It’s possible that your e-business will grow faster than your brick-and-mortar store.

For those who are running WordPress, WooCommerce is available to turn your existing site into an e-commerce site.

If your e-commerce hosting needs are particularly demanding, you should strongly consider SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. It offers hosting resources and features that are powerful enough to handle the traffic of high-volume online stores.

SiteGround Cloud Hosting

SiteGround’s Cloud Hosting plans are a distinct step up from their \Shared and WordPress plans. Unless your business is already very well established on the internet, it is unlikely you would need them.

On the other hand, if you have a lot of visitors to your site or you need to do a lot of calculations or store a lot of data, the Cloud plans offer quite a lot.

They start with the Entry plan that provides 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of memory, and 40 GB of SSD storage space for $100 per month. And they go up to the Super Power plan that provides 16 CPU cores, 20 GB of memory, and 160 GB of SSD storage for $400 per month.

All of the cloud plans provide 5 TB of data transfer per month. Cloud hosting is often a good alternative to dedicated hosting. When your business reaches the point of needing this, the support staff can be very helpful in making your decision.

SiteGround Reseller Hosting

SiteGround offers a reseller plan for businesses that wish to host websites as their primary business or who wish to add hosting as an extra. For example, a web designer might want to offer hosting to their clients.

SiteGround’s reseller prices start at $6.69 per month. All of their reseller plans allow you to host an unlimited number of customers.

SiteGround Plans and Prices

SiteGround offers a wide range of hosting solutions; from shared, VPS and dedicated servers, to cloud and WordPress hosting. Here is an overview of their plans and current price list. For the latest and most up to date prices visit SiteGround’s website.

SiteGround Money-Back Guarantee

SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you cancel within 30 days of joining, you get a 100% refund.

Domain names, admin fees, and add-ons are non-refundable. Most web hosts give you some sort of credit equivalent to the fee you paid but with SiteGround, you can have a credit applied to your account or a full refund back to your credit card.

If, however, you decide to cancel after the 30 days, you’ll only receive a pro-rata rate for what’s left on the term.

SiteGround Coupons, Discounts, and Deals

SiteGround is an affordable and exceptional web host thanks to their fantastic support, uptime, focus on security and server speed. Not only that but they also offer the most feature-rich hosting available.

Take advantage of this SiteGround coupon to save up to 73% off shared hosting plans.

SiteGround Hosting Plan Feature

SiteGround is widely recognized as a top hosting provider. They’re officially recommended by both WordPress and WooCommerce, and they’ve partnered with some of the most popular theme providers (Envato, Elegant Themes, etc.). SiteGround is well on its way to becoming a household name like GoDaddy.

SiteGround’s commitment to heavily enhance its technology and fine-tune its behavior has allowed them to develop powerful speed tools exclusively available for its clients.

Supercacher, which is one the best features of Siteground, increases the number of hits a site can handle and boosts the website loading speed.

Supercacher is continuously being innovated with the recent launch of Dynamic (full-page) caching which is now available on all plans, giving between 50%-500% boost in WordPress performance.

You’ll also get the new compression algorithm provided by Brotli to help compress websites to allow them to load faster. SiteGround has enabled Brotli by default on their Site Tools servers so websites hosted by them could get up to 15-20% speed gains.

SiteGround also offers the new Ultrafast PHP setup that gives 30% more speed and reduces TTFB (available on GrowBig and GoGeek) for all sites including the newest edition of MySQL setup that is deployed for faster database query processing.

SiteGround is a gem when it comes to reliability and quality web hosting services. Their strategy is to provide services that are specially crafted to every client’s unique set of individual needs.

Site Tools

SiteGround recently replaced cPanel with their own in-house developed Client Area and Site Tools.

With this new interface, it’s easier to manage your sites. SitGround built their new interface using REACT as a single application, allowing you to work efficiently while accessing your account through any device.

Cloudflare CDN

Each of these datacenters utilizes high-end hosting technology and practices. For example, they use multiple power feeds to prevent electricity outages, and multiple carriers to prevent interruptions to network connectivity. With these best-in-class datacenters, you get high availability, low latency, and exceptional reliability.

This network is amplified by the Cloudflare CDN. CDNs (content delivery networks) make up-to-date copies of your website on a regular basis and store them in cities around the world.

This is so a web visitor can access your site from a datacenter location nearest to them. The result: your site loads quickly.

Cloudflare currently has locations in over 200 cities across more than 100 countries, from Reykjavík to Riyadh, from Baghdad to Boston.

SiteGround for Small Businesses

SiteGround is especially good for small businesses for many reasons.

Just Starting Out?
If you are just starting a brick-and-mortar business, you want a website for the same reason you want a sign above your shop: To say, “We’re here!”

When people hear of a business, the first thing they do is look it up in a search engine. You want them to find a simple site telling them what products and services you provide plus your location and telephone number.

A Host Your Business Can Grow With
SiteGround offers you the ability to grow without moving to a new hosting company. Moving hosts is time-consuming and there could be problems. Whenever possible, it is good to stick with your current host. SiteGround makes that easy.

SiteGround provides many hosting options so moving hosts should never be necessary. You can begin with their dirt-cheap StartUp shared hosting plan and grow to anything you want: The Super Power Cloud Hosting plan or hundreds of dedicated servers to create your own cloud with OpenStack.

They also offer Enterprise Hosting, where they will build a server for your exact needs and then manage it for you.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
At this point on the internet, most hosts provide a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for all sites hosted. This means that information sent between the server and the visitor will be encrypted. You will see this in the URL, which will send data via HTTPS as opposed to the non-encrypted HTTP.

But if you are selling things on the internet, you need an SSL that is specific to your site. This also requires that your site has its own IP address. SiteGround provides these types of SSLs for you.

If you aren’t selling products online, you will not need an SSL certificate beyond the one that SiteGround provides. The same goes for your IP address.

Additional SiteGround Features, Bonuses, and Extras

Other great features offered at SiteGround include:

• Developer features such as GIT integration, site staging, WP-CLI integration.
• WordPress and Joomla toolkits for all websites. These tools automate a wide range of tasks from changing domain addresses, to resetting admin passwords, to fixing file permission issues.
• An easy-to-use interface that incorporates all the necessary information under one web page.
• HTTP/2 technology for boosting the performance of HTTPS websites.
• Features for freelancers and agencies such as collaborator (clients can use their own admin area instead of needing your account’s login credentials) and white-label (offer SiteGround hosting as a service to your clients without SiteGround branding).

Bonuses/Extras
Additionally, SiteGround has a layer of security in place that ensures whatever plugins and themes you install are clean and safe as well as a securely encrypted connection to your website. This layer of security protects sensitive information on your site by making it difficult to hack.

Users can also pay a regular fee for SiteGround’s “SG Site Scanner.” This service checks your website daily and immediately notifies you if your website has been hacked or injected with malicious code.

Other great bonuses from SiteGround include:

• Free website builder
• Regular software updates to keep your website functioning at its best
• Freedom to chose the server location closest to your users
• Premium support option
• Advanced caching technology for super-fast speeds
• A 30-day cancellation window

How is SiteGround’s Performance and Uptime?

Server downtime is the worst enemy of any business site. This is because any time your website goes down (even for as little as 30 minutes), you lose potential clients, lose the faith of your current clients, and may drop in your SEO ranking.

That’s why it’s advisable to go with a web host that offers no less than today’s average of 99.9% uptime.

Uptime Guarantee: 99.9%

SiteGround offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and gives you a credit if they fail at achieving this. This means that if their uptime drops below 99.9%, they will give you a free month of hosting. For every 1% uptime below 99.9%, they will provide you with an extra month of service free.

Our experience is that SiteGround rarely has this issue. So what you get is solid web hosting instead of refunds.

Real-Time Monitoring

Unlike web hosts who track their servers in intervals of 1-5 minutes, SiteGround performs real-time tracking.
As a result, they detect server problems the instant the problems occur so they are fixed much faster. This real-time tracking coupled with the innovative server technology ensures minimal downtime.

Performance and Response Time

Many of us get confused between uptime and response time.

Uptime: Uptime is the amount of time \ the server is available.

Response Time: Response time is how long it takes the server to send out a web page. Just as with its uptime, SiteGround provides excellent response times.

This is made possible because SiteGround only uses the latest technology in all its server hardware. User accounts are also moved occasionally from old hardware to new upgraded, faster servers to ensure flawless performance for all of its hosted websites at all times.

Fast Website Load Times

The company is one of the fastest web hosts out there with load time speeds ranging from 20 milliseconds to over a second.

Speed technologies provided include:

• The Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network).
• Supercacher. You can choose between static or dynamic caching, or Memcached. (Memcached is a powerful open-source caching system.)
• SSDs (solid-state drives) are used on all accounts. These are superior in speed and reliability to HDDs (hard-disk drives).
• NGINX: Web server technology that accelerates your site loading time.
• HTTP/2-enabled servers. This is the newest network protocol and it contributes to speed.
• PHP 8: PHP is a server-side scripting language, typically used to create dynamic website content. This version of PHP has been found to boost speed considerably. Also, SiteGround’s GoGeek and cloud hosting plans have ultrafast PHP enabled.
• QUIC: This technology allows your pages to load fast even when the visitor has a slow internet connection.
• Brotli Compression Algorithm: Brotli is a next-generation compression algorithm that significantly reduces the size of data that’s being moved from the server to the visitor.
• SG Optimizer: This WordPress plugin was developed by SiteGround and is exclusively for SiteGround users. It includes a number of features for improving your WordPress site’s performance.

How Does SiteGround Keep Your Site Secure?

SiteGround deploys sophisticated intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems that continuously scan for, and block, malware, and viruses.

Their proprietary systems enable them to fix problems immediately and foresee problems in order to take proactive action. This is unlike certain other web hosts, which perform their scans once a day or once a week.

Artificial Intelligence Defends Against Rogue Bots

In April of 2017, SiteGround launched is artificial intelligence (AI) platform to block malicious bots. Bots engage in brute force attacks that use massive server resources in an attempt to hack the login to a website.

Soon after the AI launch, SiteGround ‘s Hristo Pandjarov stated “We are already seeing amazing results from the operation of the system. Each hour it blocks between 500,000 and 2 million brute-force attempts across all our servers.”

Protection Against Hacking

Additionally, SiteGround has a unique isolation system in place, which protects your website from hacking if someone else’s site on your server is compromised.

SiteGrounds managed WordPress hosting handles plugin and core updates for you. Since outdated plugins are frequently lead to hacks, this service is beneficial to WordPress users.

This SiteGround security video playlist illustrates some of its main security strategies.

Datacenter Security and Hack Alerts

Server security is your web host’s responsibility. But you are responsible for your website or application’s security. Poor coding leaves doors open to hackers.

SiteGround offers Hack Alert, an early warning system developed by GlobalSign o help you. Hack Alert informs you of hidden malware in your site before the malware activates.

SiteGround’s datacenter security includes:

• Redundant electrical supply via UPS (uninterruptible power supply); multiple power feeds, and power generators.
• 24/7 human monitoring of servers
• Biometric access points
• Access control man traps
• Bulletproof lobbies
• Video surveillance

SiteGround even goes as far as having replacement components for all server parts as well as replacement servers on hand to ensure performance is never compromised for too long.

Does SiteGround Handle Site Backups?

All SiteGround plans offer free backups and “restores” (restoration to an earlier version of your website). Specifically, you get free automatic daily system backups and 30 automatic daily backup copies.

Restoring your site to a previous version is easy: It only takes a single click.

• Instant backups and restorations are free on all plans.
• On the GrowBig plan, you can also schedule backups (“on-demand backups”) to occur at a specific time.

On-Demand Instant Backups

You can choose to create an “on-demand” backup instantly, at any time. This option is available for free on GrowBig plans and higher. Situations where this comes in handy include before you publish significant changes to your website.

When you create an “on-demand” backup, you get the option to back up particular files, folders, emails, or your entire account.

How is SiteGround Help and Support?

Another of SiteGround’s strengths according to the web host’s users is quality customer support help that’s professional, fast, and friendly.

Over Staffed Support Team

SiteGround deliberately places more than enough customer service representatives on each shift to ensure your questions and issues are addressed quickly whether you choose the route of live chat, email, tickets, or phone support.

This over-staffing of customer support representatives sees SiteGround reply instantly to phone calls and live chat queries while submitted support tickets at most wait 10-minutes for replies.

SiteGround also has a wide array of tutorials and webinars in its customer support arsenal. They feature useful basic and technical information on just about every web hosting topic.

Advanced Priority Support

Advanced Priority Support is a premium feature prioritizing your service request above others, and assigns it to the most experienced team members.

This premium customer support was launched in late March 2019 and is available on the GoGeek plans and higher.

Quality Customer Service

For us, the best thing about SiteGround is its customer service. Sure, they have all the infrastructure you could ask for. But most business operators aren’t computer experts: That’s why the SiteGround ensures their support team are experts.

Not only that, they are keen to help you make the best use of your site. They don’t see their jobs as simply answering your questions and moving on to the next call. Instead, they act more like partners. Your Support Team Member will help you figure out your options and will often install software or otherwise change your site for you.

This may all sound like hype, but we’ve had extensive experience with SiteGround and many other hosting companies. SiteGround’s customer service is some of the best we’ve ever experienced.

Another area where the SiteGround support team helps is when spammers visit your site. Users had this problem with SiteGround. But rather than upgrade, they worked with one of the web host’s technicians.

The Tech made various changes to the site to limit the damage done by the spammers. The user followed up by reporting, “…I haven’t had a problem since.”

What Are Some Good Alternatives to SiteGround?

How Does SiteGround Compare to WP Engine

You might be wondering why anyone would choose a managed WordPress host like WP Engine when it costs so much more than SiteGround. WP Engine only does WordPress hosting and so all of their hardware and software is tuned to host WordPress.

This focus on WordPress provides many advantages, but the biggest is page loading speed, which search engines take into account in their rankings.

On the other hand, SiteGround offers a number of services that WP Engine does not — like email. For most business users, SiteGround will be fine. But for some, the extra cost of WP Engine is more than worth the extra cost.

What Are the Other Best SiteGround Alternatives?

SiteGround is a rock-solid hosting provider and will impress you. However, the best SiteGround alternatives are

• Bluehost
• InMotion Hosting
• GreenGeeks
• HostGator
• Media Temple

Who is SiteGround the Company?

In 2004, three university students launched SiteGround in Sofia, Bulgaria — now dubbed the “Silicon Valley of Europe.”

Current CEO, Tenko Nikolov, started working as technical support at SiteGround back in 2004 when he was a law student.

SiteGround is now one of the largest independently owned hosting companies, with an international presence supported by six datacenters and over 600 employees.

Overall, more than 2.6 million domains are hosted on their servers.

SiteGround caters to small businesses, startups, enterprise clients, and bloggers who value:

• State-of-the-art quality hosting
• Smart custom solutions
• Advanced security and performance
• Easy-to-use interface
• And affordable pricing

Instead of competing in one of these areas, SiteGround’s strategy is to provide all five.

Growing businesses can choose fast cloud hosting that auto-scales (automatically handles traffic spikes). WordPress users can get their plugins and core updated regularly for them and get hosting on a platform optimized for the CMS.

Although they are well-known in the industry for their WordPress expertise, SiteGround also offers optimized hosting for Drupal and Joomla as well as for e-commerce platforms like Magento and PrestaShop.

Their web hosting plans are tailor-made for speed and security and come with features like free daily backups and restores, 24/7 support, 99.99% uptime and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Plan prices begin at$3.69 per month.

Datacenters and Network

SiteGround has datacenters in Chicago, the UK, the Netherlands, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Singapore. For optimal performance, we recommend choosing the datacenter closest to where your visitors are located.

Frequently Asked Questions About SiteGround

Is SiteGround a Good Web Hosting Company?

There’s almost nothing you could want more from a web hosting company. SiteGround is expanding fast; one-third of its user base are new customers. According to their annual customer surveys, over 95% of participants are willing to recommend SiteGround’s services.

Does SiteGround Have Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth?

Many hosting companies offer “unlimited” disk space and bandwidth. However, this is deceptive. What the statement means is that the host does not monitor your usage of disk space and bandwidth.

But, if your site uses resources to the point where it is causing a drag on other websites hosted on the same server, you will find yourself cut off.

SiteGround provides a set amount of disk space and a rough idea of how many website visitors the plan can service per month. The benefit of limiting resources is to secure better performance for everyone. Otherwise, one user would be able to abuse the server and mess up performance for everyone else on the same server.

If you have too many visitors, you may need to upgrade your plan

What Are SiteGround Nameservers?

To use your existing domain name (that is registered elsewhere) with SiteGround you need to locate your DNS settings.

To do this you need to log into your “Customer Area” While logged in, go to the “My Accounts section” and click on the “Manage” button.

The nameservers (i.e. ns1.xxx and ns2.xxx) will be listed there.

Why Does SiteGround PageSpeed Matter?

Google PageSpeed is a measure of response time. But it is more complicated than you might think.

For example, a site might have a great page speed on desktop computers, but a poor rating on tablets or mobile phones. The SiteGround support team helps you get the best PageSpeed possible — on all of your devices.

 

Does SiteGround Have Customized Hosting Solutions?

The web host does this by selecting hardware, crafting server architecture, and developing custom software solutions in a way that’s innovative.

SiteGround has made a name for itself as one of the best developers of game-changing technologies in the field of web hosting.

Does SiteGround Have Email Hosting?

Email hosting is available through all SiteGround’s shared hosting plans. These allow you to have an unlimited number of email addresses at your domain.

What Kind of Support Do I Get With SiteGround?

SiteGround’s support is available 24/7 and you can contact SiteGround using live chat, toll-free phone calls, and email.

Customers on the GoGeek plan or higher get “Advanced Priority Support” which means your service request is prioritized above others and routed to the most experienced support team members.

What Languages Does SiteGround Support Speak?

SiteGround customer service is only provided in English. However, they do have a Spanish-language YouTube channel in addition to an English-language one.

Where Are SiteGround Servers Located?

SiteGround’s datacenters are in Chicago, the UK, the Netherlands, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Singapore. In addition, they provide the Cloudflare CDN to all customers. This expands their network to over 200 nodes in cities around the world.

Does SiteGround Offer VPS Hosting?

SiteGround provides cloud hosting instead of VPS hosting. Cloud hosting offers very similar specifications to VPS hosting, with the ability to scale up your plan on-demand.

All cloud hosting packages are fully managed.

What Is SiteGround’s Cheapest Hosting Plan?

SiteGround’s cheapest plan is $6.99. They offer a risk-free trial with a 30-day money guarantee. This means that you get a full refund as long as you cancel within the first 30-days.

Does SiteGround Have an Uptime Guarantee?

SiteGround offers all customers a 99.9% monthly uptime guarantee. If their service drops below 99.9%, they offer a free month for every percentage point below their guarantee.

In our experience, you will never need a refund because of SiteGround’s impressive ability to meet its target uptime.

Can I Install WordPress on SiteGround?

Yes, WordPress can be easily installed on SiteGround. SiteGround also has a dedicated WordPress hosting plan.

Which SiteGround Plan Is Best for WordPress?

SiteGround’s WordPress hosting plan is a managed hosting solution for your WordPress websites. It includes the free transfer of your existing WordPress website to SiteGround with no downtime guaranteed.

If you are a Joomla or Drupal fan, they also have tailor-made web hosting plans for Joomla and Drupal.

Does SiteGround Have Affordable WordPress Hosting Packages?

SiteGround’s WordPress hosting plans are very similar to their shared plans, but they are focused on WordPress. So if your site is going to be based on WordPress, you are best off going with one of these. They are the same price (and even have the same names) as the shared plans.

There is nothing business-oriented about these plans relative to the shared hosting plans. They all will work well for most small businesses. But again, if you plan to sell products online, you should pick the GoGeek plan, because it is PCI compliant.

SiteGround’s WordPress plans include:

• Automatically managed WordPress updates
• Automatic backups and free restores
• Dedicated WordPress support, including automatic updates of the WP core, free plugins, and basic troubleshooting
• Staging environments are available with the GrowBig and GoGeek plans
• Blazing speed using SuperCacher available with GrowBig and GoGeek plans
• Heightened security for WordPress-related vulnerabilities

Does SiteGround Have Packages for Other CMS Beyond WordPress?

The second most popular CMS is Joomla. In some ways it is worse and in others it is better. In general, Joomla is more flexible, but it is harder to use. There are hosting companies that specialize in Joomla. SiteGround offers Joomla-specific hosting, but it is not something they advertise.

SiteGround hosts Magento too. Magento is an e-commerce platform. Whereas WordPress needs something like WooCommerce to make it an online store, Magento comes out of the box with these capabilities.

However, like Magento, Joomla is complex for those just starting out. But the extra effort might be worth it.

Does SiteGround Have Hosting Package Extras?

Some hosting packages come with special features such as Cloudflare CDN, priority support, and unlimited websites. All plans offer free daily backups and restorations. If you wish to find out the specifics of every hosting package on offer, SiteGround’s official web page is a good source.

Of particular interest to small business owners is that SiteGround’s GoGeek package is PCI-compliant. If you plan to sell things through your site, you will need this.