Are you looking for the best review of SiteGround web hosting? Do you want to know whether SiteGround is a perfect hosting service for your website? Then, read this article till the end.
Having good hosting is crucial to keep your website secure and fast. And, among the best options available, SiteGround is a reliable hosting company providing top-notch service. In fact, SiteGround has been in the business for 17+ years. And it hosts over 2 million domains worldwide.
But, does this simply make it the best hosting for your online presence? Let’s find out! In this article, we’re going to give you a complete review of SiteGround based on its features, cost, benefits, limitations, etc.
Let’s begin!
IN THIS GUIDE
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A. SiteGround Hosting Review – Overview
SiteGround is a web hosting company that lets you create and manage your website to make it available on the internet. It’s best known for its website speed, uptime, security, support, and lots of other features.
Among the best web hosting platforms, SiteGround has established itself as a credible and authentic hosting service company. It was established in 2004 in Bulgaria and ever since it’s been growing every day.
SiteGround has robust storage and bandwidth that provide proper website speed that you can rely on. Plus, you’ll get maximum uptime making your site is live most of the time.
To talk about security, it offers a daily backup option to keep your website data safe. In addition, other security enforcements like free SSL certificates, 2-factor authentication, etc. are also implemented.
Plus, it supports various hosting packages with affordable pricing that can take care of any type of web hosting needs. You can host various types of websites like eCommerce, business, personal, news portals, personal websites, etc. of any size.
SiteGround has gained the users’ trust due to the abundance of features for speed, security, and support. Thus, in the next section, we’ll discuss the features of SiteGround.
B. SiteGround Features
As a professional hosting company, SiteGround has its main priority on providing benefits to the users. For that, it has brought out tons of different advanced features that other hosting services lag behind.
We’ve listed some of the best features of SiteGround which we’re going to explore now.
1. Easy to Use
Ease of ease is an essential feature that a good hosting service should provide. With that, even beginners can manage their site without any support from others.
And, SiteGround believes in that idea and takes care of most technical aspects of your hosting. Firstly, signing up to SiteGround is very simple. Just choose a plan, register/ choose your domain, enter your information, and you’re done. After that, you can just log in to SiteGround with your credentials.
The dashboard is very intuitive and easy to use. From there, you can do various things like site management, backups, adding users, managing cache, etc. Moreover, you can install many types of CMSs and apps with just a click of your mouse.
2. Excellent Performance
SiteGround is arguably the best web hosting platform in terms of performance. It claims to have 99.99% uptime, meaning your site hosted on SiteGround has a negligible chance of going down. Also, it doesn’t compromise the speed of your website.
If you have a faster website, then you’ll automatically have a good flow of visitors. Moreover, your site will have a higher SEO (Search Engine Optimization) score and rank higher in search engines like Google.
If you want more tips on website speeding, then read our full article on how to optimize your website speed.
Another important performance factor is the use of SSDs. They use SSD (Solid State Drive) for storing your data which is comparatively faster than hard drives.
Plus, the backup of your files is stored in datacenters in multiple locations. So, even if one server fails, it doesn’t create any problem.
Also, it has a cloud hosting service that guarantees faster websites. Besides, you’ll also get features like website caching, CDN services, etc.
3. One-Click Installations
Having one-click installation is a very desirable feature nowadays. With this feature, you can install website builders and CMSs on your site easily with a single click.
SiteGround offers the single-click installation of CMSs and apps like WordPress, Weebly, Zoomla, Drupal, WooCommerce, etc. That’s beneficial as it saves you some time. Moreover, you won’t have to copy your website files manually which can be hectic.
As we know WordPress is the most popular CMS with 40% of the total market share. So, SiteGround has special arrangements for installing WordPress. For instance, you can easily install WooCommerce and some of the best WordPress plugins directly from the SiteGround dashboard.
4. WordPress Hosting Features
If you want to build a site in WordPress, then hosting it on SiteGround has many benefits. And, that’s the reason it’s officially recommended by WordPress as well as big WordPress brands like Yoast, WooCommerce, etc.
All the WordPress hosting plans have special features to match the needs of a WordPress site. It offers free WordPress installation, auto-updates, backups, a speeding WordPress plugin (SG Optimizer), and so on.
Besides, SiteGround offers backups, unlimited traffic handling, support, and various performance-boosting features, exactly what you need for a WordPress site.
If you need fully managed WordPress hosting, then SiteGround also provides that.
5. WordPress Website Migration
Site migration means transferring your website from one web hosting to another. And, it’s something that most of the users and even some experts feel hectic about.
But, for the ease of WordPress users, SiteGround offers a site migration tool and WordPress plugin. With that, the process becomes easy. It takes just a few minutes. And it’s available for free i.e. no extra cost required.
The process involved in migrating your site is also really easy. From the SiteGround dashboard, you can use the WordPress Migrator tool and enter your domain name which will generate a code. Once done, you need to install the plugin ‘SiteGround Migrator’ on your WordPress site and paste the generated code there. Isn’t it easy?
6. Robust Security
The Internet also has hackers looking for opportunities to hack your website and damage important data. Thus, it’s very important to protect your website with appropriate website security measures.
With SiteGround, you’ll get robust options to protect your website from external harm. It offers a free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate which encrypts your data transmission on the internet. It has 3 different types of SSL certificates which you can install according to the size of your website.
Next, SiteGround creates a firewall to Isolate your website domain. So, your site becomes safe even if other sites on your server get infected. Moreover, you can enable 2-factor authentication to keep your SiteGround account safe.
7. Daily and On-Demand Backups
Backups are the copies of your complete website data. By creating backups, your site data becomes more secure from unwanted vulnerabilities like hacks, loss, or errors.
SiteGround offers daily backup on all of their shared hosting plans. In fact, SiteGround automatically backs up your site and keeps about 30 copies. So, you can easily restore your site even if some errors occur.
In addition, GrowBig and GrowGeek plans offer an on-demand website backup feature. With that, you can backup your site with a single click at any time you want.
These are the features that make SiteGround one of the best hosting services out there. Now, let’s see the cost of using the services of SiteGround.
C. SiteGround Pricing and Plans
SiteGround offers many hosting options to fit the needs of any type of website. Mainly, it provides 2 types of hosting i.e. managed shared hosting and cloud hosting. Now, let’s see the details on hosting plans available on SiteGround.
When you visit the homepage of SiteGround, you’ll see 4 different plans upfront. They are
- Web Hosting
- WordPress Hosting
- WooCommerce Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
Basically, web hosting, WordPress hosting, and WooCommerce hosting are the shared hosting options with similar features in all plans. The only difference is that WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans come with auto-installation of WordPress and necessary plugins.
On the other hand, cloud hosting plans have specialized features to carry out the needs of larger websites. It offers more powerful and scalable resources for optimized websites.
Now, let’s see the plans and pricing available on SiteGround.
The plans and pricing available on the shared hosting option are
StartUp Plan
- Pricing: $6.99 per month
- 1 website
- 10 GB data
- About 10,000 monthly traffic
GrowBig Plan
- Pricing: $9.99 per month
- Unlimited websites
- 20 GB data
- About 25,000 monthly traffic
GoGeek Plan
- Pricing: $14.99 per month
- Unlimited websites
- 40 GB data
- About 100,000 monthly traffic
ii. Cloud Hosting
On cloud hosting, the available plans are
Jump Start Plan
- Pricing: $100 per month
- 4 CPU cores
- 8 GB memory
- 40 GB storage
- 5 TB data transfer
Business Plan
- Pricing: $200 per month
- 8 CPU cores
- 12 GB memory
- 80 GB storage
- 5 TB data transfer
Business Plus Plan
- Pricing: $300 per month
- 12 CPU cores
- 16 GB memory
- 120 GB storage
- 5 TB data transfer
Super Power Plan
- Pricing: $400 per month
- 16 CPU cores
- 20 GB memory
- 160 GB storage
- 5 TB data transfer
These are all the available plans on SiteGround. Also, there’s a 30-days money-back guarantee with all shared plans and a 14-days money-back guarantee with the cloud hosting plans. With all the plans, one very important service you get is customer support. Now, let’s see the support offered by SiteGround.
D. SiteGround Support
You usually need customer support from your hosting as some things might be technically complicated. Also, your site might get into some errors like slow website, unavailability of the site, data loss, etc. That’s when you’ll need good technical support from your web hosting company.
If you use SiteGround, then you’ll get advanced customer support. It also gives a lot of effort into making the support better so that you’ll get an amazing hosting experience.
You’ll get a fast response time and automatic recommendation of the support channel. The available channels are phone, live chat, and tickets.
Moreover, it has a detailed knowledge base with 100s of tutorial articles. With that, you can search and find solutions to every problem on your hosting. Also, you can find tons of video tutorials on YouTube created by SiteGround and other creators.
Support is generally associated with the technical aspects of web hosting. So, SiteGround also focuses on making their support team more fluent by regular training and performance review.
Some of the technical details of SiteGround are listed below.
E. Technical Details of SiteGround
Now, here are some of the technical details of SiteGround.
1. Website Caching
Website caching is the feature by which your hosting stores the temporary static copy of your website on the server. And whenever someone visits your website, it loads the static content making it load faster.
In SiteGround, it has a dynamic website caching feature available with the tool called SuperCacher. It can speed up your site up to 4 times.
2. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a service that distributes your website data in various locations around the world. With that, it reduces the distance between users and your website data’s physical location. As a result, your website loads faster on your user’s device.
With SiteGround, you can easily use the CDN service with one click from the dashboard. The best part is that you can use the free Cloudflare CDN which is one of the best CDN services available. It has 194 CDN network locations around the world.
3. PHP
PHP is a scripting language that is used to create dynamic sites and perform different functions of your website. It loads in the server that can take lots of server resources and increase your site load time.
However, SiteGround constantly updates the PHP version which takes lesser server resources. As a result, your website loads very fast. You can easily update your PHP version from your SiteGround dashboard as soon as the newer version is available.
4. Database Access
Databases are the structures that store your website data and content. The data is loaded from the database whenever someone visits your site. With SiteGround, you can create multiple databases in all the hosting plans. For creating databases, you can use MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Moreover, you can access and manage your database from the SiteGround dashboard. From there, you can do many things like creating a new database, write queries, search, export/ import, and so on.
5. Email Service
SiteGround offers unlimited free email accounts so you can create professional email accounts. Also, creating emails is easy with the SiteGround site tools. And, you can access emails with webmail interfaces. Moreover, you can create automated email forwarders, auto-responders, etc.
In addition, it also offers SpamExpert to protect your email accounts from unwanted spam.
6. Datacenter Locations
Data centers are the physical dedicated servers in remote locations where your website data are stored. Having that, the access requests are reduced compared to having only one server. Also, your website loads faster as the data centers can be close to the users accessing your website.
SiteGround has 6 data centers in 4 different continents where your website is stored safely. The data is highly redundant and available in all data centers.
F. SiteGround Pros and Cons
SiteGround is a very good website hosting platform with loads of robust features and trusted by many big companies. However, it still has some downsides which we’re going to state below.
So, here’re some pros and cons of SiteGround.
Pros of SiteGround Hosting:
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- Lots of features to speed up your website
- One-click installation
- Robust backup and security features
- Integration with Cloudflare CDN service
- Fast support
- Automatic updates of CMSs
Cons of SiteGround Hosting:
- Higher renewal cost
- Limited storage
- No domain registration service
Even though SiteGround has some limitations, it’s still a very good platform to host your website. If you find that SiteGround is not for you, you can switch to other good hosting services.
G. SiteGround Alternatives
Now, here are some of the alternatives to SiteGround.
1. DreamHost
Dreamhost is a popular web hosting service that provides fast load time and high website uptime. It has a user-friendly dashboard interface from where you can carry out site management features. Also, it offers a one-click installation of CMSs like WordPress with auto-updates and migration facilities.
With DreamHost, you get very affordable hosting plans as low as $2.59 per month. Moreover, it includes a free domain for up to a year. Besides, you get 24/7 live support through live chat, phone, and ticket.
2. Bluehost
Bluehost is another good web hosting platform available for you. It’s especially good for beginners due to its user-friendly interface and intuitive dashboard. Also, it offers a one-click installation of WordPress with automatic updates and support.
The cost of Bluehost starts at 2.75 per month for the basic shared hosting of small to medium websites. Moreover, it offers different plans for dedicated and VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting.
3. WP Engine
WP Engine is the best platform if you’re looking for a trustable managed WordPress hosting solution. Unlike other alternatives, it’s a WordPress-only hosting service dedicated to providing the special needs of a WordPress site.
The cost of WP Engine is quite more in comparison to SiteGround. The basic plan starts at $25 per month. However, you get dedicated WordPress support, 30+ premium themes, backup, SSL certificates, and many more features.
If you want to explore more options, then you can see the detailed list of the best web hosting platforms in your blog.
H. Our Verdict
From this review of SiteGround hosting, you might’ve understood that SiteGround is a very good hosting service for all types of websites. It has been providing excellent service for a long time and has been able to gain the trust of many users.
So, do we recommend SiteGround? Absolutely Yes! We, as SiteNerdy, recommend SiteGround to our users for their website hosting.
The best part of SiteGround is its website speed, uptime, security, and support. That’s all you’ll need in good web hosting. Due to this, SiteGround fits well in the category of the best web hosting platforms available.
Besides, the affordable pricing, variety of plans, and hosting types make it usable for eCommerce sites, blogs, learning, and other various types of websites.
That’s why we suggest you consider SiteGround if you’re looking for a good web hosting platform for your website.
I. Frequently Asked Questions about SiteGround Hosting
1. Which SiteGround Plan is the best?
That depends. If you’re just going to start your website, then you can simply go for the StartUp plan. Later as your site grows, you can move your site to GrowBig, then to GoGeek plan.
2. Does SiteGround back up my website?
Absolutely! SiteGround offers a daily automatic backup feature on all their plans. Even more, you’ll get the on-demand backup option in GrowBig and GoGeek packages.
3. Why is there no cPanel in SiteGround?
Many users complain that cPanel is old and outdated. So, a few years ago, SiteGround moved from cPanel to an intuitive and user-friendly dashboard.
4. How can I purchase SiteGround hosting?
To purchase SiteGround hosting, you can go to their official website and see the available hosting packages and plans. Then, choose the plan that fits your needs and proceed to payment. The payment methods it allows are VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
Conclusion
That’s all for this article on SiteGround hosting review. If you find this article informative, then share it with your friends, family, and colleagues to inform them about SiteGround.
If you have any questions or confusion, then please leave a comment below. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Also, you can look at our article on domain name vs web hosting to be clearer on these terms.
Or, if you’re looking for a good domain for your website, then you can find ideas from the best domain name generators. Then, you can register it from one of the best domain name registrars from our collection.
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