It’s been fifteen years since SiteGround debuted, launched by three University students in Bulgaria. The company has since grown up to employ more than 500 staff, with offices in the US, UK, Bulgaria, and Spain. According to their website, more than 2 million domains have been hosted by SiteGround as at 2018.
SiteGround’s CEO Tekno Nikolov is one of the founders. A lawyer by education, he started working as a technical support guy. He has helped build a solid reputation for the company since then.
Quick Review
Here’s our quick review of SiteGround.
- Very good uptimes (99.99%)
- Consistently fast page load speeds
- Quick server response times
- Excellent customer service available 24/7 via Live Chat, phone support and tickets.
- 30-day priority support and helpful knowledge-based articles.
- No cPanel.
- Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, and Enterprise Servers
- Unlimited bandwidth and 10GB storage.
- Free email on every hosting plan. Free SSL and CDN.
- Higher renewal prices after first subscription.
Overview
While not as big a name as BlueHost, in the decade and a half SiteGround has been around, it has fashioned a reputation for itself. It aims to be suitable for all kinds and sizes of websites, offering feature-rich hosting and advanced security. It can be used for personal websites, large corporate websites, and eCommerce websites.
SiteGround offers shared, WordPress, cloud, reseller, and enterprise web hosting. In 2020, it discontinued dedicated hosting.
For shared hosting, it offers three premium plans – StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. These plans are tailored to the needs of the webmaster and the size of the website. They are especially optimal for personal websites and small businesses. The StartUp plan limits you to a single website, but the other plans allow an unlimited number of websites.
StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek share certain features in common. They all allow unmetered bandwidth for all websites. You also get unlimited emails, free SSL Certificate, and CDN.
For blogs and eCommerce websites, SiteGround has WordPress hosting plans. It offers free account transfer, automated daily backups, page caching, and a handy one-click installation. Technical expertise is not required to set things up. Like with shared hosting, SiteGround has StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek plans for WordPress.
For Cloud Hosting, SiteGround turns on the gears. The Cloud plans offer many more features such as higher storage and RAM. These resources are not shared with other websites so you get to control them. SiteGround’s Cloud Hosting plans range from $80 to $240/mo.
SiteGround Pros
SiteGround offers impressive Uptimes, page load speeds, and excellent customer service. It also comes with a lot of convenient features.
1. Great Uptime
Good uptimes are critical for any business and are one of the first considerations for picking a web host service. Websites that experience downtimes regularly will lose traffic and business, no two ways about it. Even worse, their SEO rankings may suffer for it.
SiteGround guarantees its customers 99% monthly uptime. This guarantee comes with a compensation offer. That means that if SiteGround fails to provide at least 99% uptime, users are eligible for compensation. Real-time tracking is employed instead of intermittent tracking, and so server issues are quickly detected.
Using UptimeRobot, I was able to monitor a test website for a month. The results brought back a 99.99% uptime score.
2. Fast Page Load Times
Like uptime, page load times are critical to the growth and sustainability of any website. Websites that take ages to load are frustrating, and visitors will learn to stay away.
SiteGround ranks near the top among the fastest web hosting services I have tested. All of SiteGround’s servers use SSDs which count as a major factor in the speed on offer. SSD storage is significantly faster than HDD. SiteGround has also partnered with Cloudflare to bring its customers enhanced speed and performance.
Monitoring my test website for a month brought back an average response time of 676 ms, which is superb.
3. Excellent Customer Support
Great customer care is important, and SiteGround seems to understand this. It offers a bevy of customer support options, including Live Chat, phone support, and ticketing. All of these options are available 24/7 around the clock, so you don’t need to wait to reach them.
SiteGround’s customer service staff are well trained and friendly. They are trained to be efficient and seek to resolve issues immediately, so you don’t have to call back. To access the team, log in to the client area, and locate the Help icon on the top right corner.
In addition to the options listed above, SiteGround has a knowledge base of articles and video resources to help resolve inquiries and complaints.
4. Free Website Migration
SiteGround’s professional migration service is not free. But if you want to do it yourself, you can do so without paying a fee. With SiteGround Migrator, a WordPress plugin, you will be able to move your website from its current web host to SiteGround.
It is not a tedious process either. The plugin requires you generate a token that will be used to initiate the migration.
Note that to make use of this free plugin, the contents of your website must be 1GB or lower. For bigger websites, you will need to use the professional migration option, which costs a $50 fee.
5. Great Security Features
There are a variety of security tools and features that are available on SiteGround. All these combine to help protect your website from attack by spammers, hackers, and malware.
IDS/IPS systems block malicious bots and other attackers. ModSecurity is installed on all shared servers. SiteGround ensures that all versions of their software providing database services such as FTP, SMTP, IMAP/POP3, etc. stay up to date. Apart from speed, CloudFlare also works to provide adequate security.
6. Free Daily Backup for Shared & Cloud Servers
SiteGround creates automatic backups on all of its Shared and Cloud hosting solutions. These backups are updated daily for up to 30 days on shared hosting platforms and up to 7 days on Cloud.
This is a very useful feature that can come in handy if you want to revert to a point in the past without having to worry about potentially losing your data.
7. Money-Back Guarantee
New users are eligible for full refunds on their SiteGround commitments if they are unimpressed by the service. On shared plans, this refund policy lasts for up to 30 days. On other plans, you are allowed to enjoy SiteGround risk-free for up to 15 days.
SiteGround’s money-back guarantee comes with certain terms and conditions.
8. Free SSL and CDN
SSL certificates are basically essential these days. SSL enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a server. It decreases the risk of sensitive information such as credit card numbers, pins, and passwords, email information, etc. being intercepted and stolen.
On all of its plans, SiteGround offers free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. These are automatically issues and installed on shared servers. Cloud users can make use of a one-click installation feature.
Additionally, CloudFlare CDN comes free on all plans.
SiteGround Cons
SiteGround has plenty of upsides and advantages, but it is not always bright and sunny. On the flip side, there are reasons that may make you pause and consider before making a decision.
1. Limited Features on Shared Hosting
While the pricing may make it seem like a great choice, SiteGround’s shared hosting plans do not stand up favorably alongside the best in the industry when it comes to features.
For example, you only get 10GB, 20GB, and 30GB of disk storage space on the three tiers. While this may be sufficient for small personal sites and businesses, if you expect larger traffic and content, you will need to upgrade a level up.
2. High Renewal Rates
New webmasters may be blown away by the budget-friendly prices SiteGround has on offer. And that is what it wants. Like most other web hosting services, the prices advertised serve to lure in customers.
As soon as the first subscription period is up, prices are inflated. For instance, SiteGround’s $6.99 monthly fee for the StartUp plan more than doubles to $14.99 on renewal. This is replicated on all other plans.
3. No Dedicated, VPS and Windows Servers
Until 2020, SiteGround operated Dedicated servers. That has now been discontinued. It has never had VPS web hosting in its line up and so it may not be ideal for webmasters who prefer that option.
All of SiteGround’s servers are Linux-based. Potential customers who want Windows servers will have to look elsewhere.
Summary
Does WebHostBros recommend SiteGround? Well, if fast speeds, excellent uptimes, and great customer service is your thing, then yes, we do. SiteGround excels at some of the most essential areas required for a great web hosting platform.
It is also feature-heavy and comes with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Beginners will not face an uphill climb getting used to this service.