Our Verdict
SITEGROUND HOSTING OVERVIEW
SiteGround was founded in 2004 headquarted in Sofia, Bulgaria. Aaccording to the latest information, Siteground has provided website hosting services to over 1.8 million domains worldwide. The company offers shared hosting, domain registration, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers.
SiteGround has increasingly gained market share around the world, including the United States. This is due to their excellent service and their focus on the customer experience. According to Google Trends, the popularity of SiteGround has grown significantly over the past 6-7 years.
SiteGround is also known for giving back to the community, such as sponsoring WordPress communities around the world. They sponsored 49 WordPress camps in 18 countries with sponsorship fees of over $ 150,000.
SiteGround has a clear and sustainable business philosophy in which they place a strong emphasis on user experience, not just profits. Their vision is to provide users of the site with a complete experience.
FEATURES
SPEED:
431 ms (January 2020 to December 2020 average)
UPTIME:
99.99% (January 2020 to June 2020 average)
SUPPORT:
Knowledge base and 24/7 live chat
APPS:
WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3, Joomla, HTTP/2, NGINX
OTHER AVAILABLE FEATURES
Geo-redundancy
Daily backups
DDoS protection
Site Scan
1-click app installs
Unlimited traffic
Scripts and databases
Marketing tools
Email accounts
Auto daily backups
PROS AND CONS OF SITEGROUND HOSTING
The Pros Of Using SiteGround Hosting
1. Officially recommended by WordPress
With over 80% of the 2 million domains hosted by SiteGround being WordPress, it’s no surprise that it works well with WordPress.
As a result, they have developed and implemented many WordPress specific features such as SG Optimizer, WP Auto Update, and Supercacher.
Other web hosting companies offer packages specifically designed for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. However, if you look closely, you can see that these are just extensions of shared hosting plans.
SiteGround, meanwhile, offers a specially developed software package from scratch for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
2. Extremely fast servers
SiteGround is constantly improving its speed, and they were one of the first web hosting providers to equip all their servers with SSDs. For example, when SiteGround previously released PHP 7.4, Bluehost was still running PHP 7.
SiteGround was also one of the first web hosts to solve the problem of slightly slower HTTPS pages due to the validation of encryption certificates for each request.
SiteGround implemented TCP 1.3 and the OCSP stapling method which passed this check to the web hosting server, thus eliminating the delay.
Recently, SiteGround was one of the first web hosting providers to introduce QUIC. This technology handles requests differently from other HTTP protocols. The result is that people with slow internet connections or long latency lose and packets with will see significantly improved performance in terms of transfer speed.
One of the latest developments was the move to the Google Cloud Platform, which now hosts all its customers on Google servers, once of the fastest servers in the world, in fact it is the same server on which Google hosts its websites as Google. com, youtube.com, gmail.com etc.
However, large companies like Apple, Netflix and Sony use Google Cloud servers instead of managing their own data centers. Google has a lot of experience in this regard and this is one of the reasons why it is better to use their servers.
3. Excellent uptime
SiteGround guarantees 99.99% uptime (your website uptime), which is not uncommon. This guarantee is largely needed in the industry.
While many web hosts promise, not everyone can. Some are approaching, others are so far away.
However, SiteGround not only justified the guarantee but also exceeded our expectations. Of course, as always, we personally tested the company’s performance for this test SiteGround. Based on our experience, SiteGround has 99.99% uptime with only a few short breaks. And not only is it impressive, it’s almost unbelievable.
Furthermore, they use Google’s cloud servers, which are the most trusted servers in the world, and companies like Apple and Netflix use them for their websites.
4. Award-winning 24/7 support
SiteGround offers 24-hour customer support. They respond to customer inquiries in English and Spanish, and their website is located in nine territories.
You can get them through live chat, ticket sales, and phone support. They agree to send an initial response to inquiries within 10 minutes.
In our experience, they keep that promise. Of course, sometimes it takes longer to resolve a problem. In most cases, issues were completely resolved within hours, even though they were referred to multiple technical support agents. And while you wait, you are always informed.
5. Beginner-friendly user interface
The Siteground dashboard is very easy to use. Users can easily access cPanel with just one click. They have their internal cPanel which allows users to easily navigate and explore different elements.
6. High-grade security
Security is one of the most critical aspects of any web host. You will appreciate that in addition to the cheap prices and the exceptional performance of the site, Siteground also excels in security.
The Cons Of Using SiteGround Hosting
1. Relatively expensive compared to most other web hosting providers
SiteGround has some great deals for new customers, but when it’s time to renew, the prices are much higher than their competitiors, which makes them a little more expensive than the competition.
For this reason, an increasing number of users who do not renew but switch to other web host choices. Besides, Siteground does not offer a monthly payment plan. The shortest billing cycle is one year. Some users are irritated by this restriction.
2. No free domain name
3. Free website migration in only included with high-end plans
4. Storage limitations
The small amount of storage available on the shared hosting plan is another problem most users have with SiteGround. If your site grows over 40 GB, you will need to move to more expensive cloud hosting plans.
HOSTING PLANS
StartUp
StartUp only supports one website, while GrowBig and GoGeek support unlimited websites. If you choose to upgrade to GrowBig and GoGeek, you will get more bandwidth and storage as well as other advanced features.
All hosting plans are powered by technology NGINX web server which is one of the most advanced and advanced options available today. This allows SiteGround to outperform its outdated competitors and stay one step ahead of them.
GrowBig
In addition to the features that are included in all shared hosting plans, the GrowBig plan includes SuperCacher, the company’s own caching system. This is a great way to cache static and dynamic web pages (as well as database queries) for fast delivery to users.
The GrowBig plan also allows you to host an unlimited number of websites on your account and other features include on-demand backups and one-click test server.
If you run an eCommerce site, the GoGeek plan is your goal – it is PCI ant compliant by default.
GoGeek
GoGeek users also receive priority support. Your inquiries will be forwarded to SiteGround’s most experienced technical support staff.
Finally, the GoGeek plan offers more speed and processing power as there are fewer websites hosted on its server.
WordPress Hosting
SiteGround offers a special set of shared hosting plans for WordPress users. It’s basically the same in terms of visits, storage space, and features. The biggest difference is that WordPress installs for free.
Another difference is the bot protection system operated by SiteGround’s own artificial intelligence algorithm. This system prevents the vast majority of brute force attacks on the WordPress login screen and also detects login attempts malicious session. It will put a captcha challenge to any suspicious user. Captcha passes will constantly adapts to new threats.
This type of technology is becoming increasingly important in the fight against the millions of unauthorized login attempts that webmasters have to deal with.
WooCommerce Hosting
Another variant of shared hosting is WooCommerce hosting with SiteGround. WooCommerce website built on WordPress should consider these plans. We suggest that you go for the GoGeek plan, as it is the only one that is PCI compliant.
All of these plans provide 5TB of monthly data transfer. Even the entry plane is extremely powerful, as you can see in the following table:
Processor Core RAM Disk Space Price (Monthly)
Entry 3 6 GB 40 GB $ 80
Business 4 8 GB 60 GB $ 120
Business Plus 5 10 GB 80 GB $ 160
Super power 9 12 GB 120 GB $ 240
Reseller Host
Reseller hosting allows businesses to create additional revenue streams by adding web hosting to their services. You can also start your own web hosting business using these reseller plans and all the white labels, so your users never see the SiteGround branding.
Basic package includes 20GB of disk space and the ability to host a number unlimited customers. But the price is a bit unconventional.
Here’s how your credit system works:
You must purchase at least five credits to set up as a reseller.
A reseller credit equals one year of hosting for your customers; if you start with 10 customers, you need 10 credits to activate each site for a year.
Additional services such as domains must be paid for by credit card.
Resellers get discounts on domain and space registrations; The more credits you purchase in a single transaction, the greater your discount. As a reseller you do not have access to WHM. Everything is done through your SiteGround dashboard.
Of course, if you don’t like this credit system and want more control over accounts receivable, you can just buy a cloud plan and use WHM with it.
But the downside to this method is that you would lose some of the better features of SiteGround’s reseller package, such as the ability to choose each customer’s data center location individually.
High End Hosting – Dedicated and Custom Servers
SiteGround offers three dedicated server plans for website owners who need the most power and stability. They come with 10 TB of bandwidth.
SiteGround can also create and manage custom servers for business users, although you will need to contact them for more information on this option.