SiteGround is
considered to be one of the best hosting companies. But come on, can they
really be THAT good? Seriously! Well, that’s exactly what SiteGround Review
wants to find out.
Go to SiteGround.com
I admit I was a bit skeptical at first, but that changed quickly. In fact, so much so that I ported this page to them in their GrowBig, GoGeek plan.
SiteGround has set a new industry standard when it comes to high-performance WordPress hosting and hosting services. While they are beating in price and perks from competitors like Bluehost.
SiteGround does much better when it comes to performance and basic hosting features. If site speed and security are of more importance to you, you should pay a bit more and go for SiteGround.
Due to the dedication of uptime, speed, security, and support – it’s actually the best web hosting right now!
SiteGround is # 1 Favorite Hosting In Many Facebook Polls:
Their speed technology is the most important things people like the most. They also receive positive feedback and ratings on Twitter:
In this SiteGround review, I’ll take a look at SiteGround’s most important features, what their pricing plans are, and outline the pros and cons (as they’re not 100% perfect) to help you make a decision before signing up for SiteGround for your website, blog, or online store.
This site is hosted by SiteGround, I have monitored and analyzed uptime, speed and overall performance over the past few months to see how well my site is doing. I even set up a test site using the default WordPress theme. You can jump straight into.
Just give me ten minutes of your time and I’ll give you all the “facts you need to know” and I’ll answer such questions.
How much does hosting cost?
What is the difference between StartUp, GrowBig & GoGeek?
Can I choose a server location?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using them?
Which is the best plan for WordPress sites?
Will they perform automatic backups of my site?
What are they doing to speed up my website?
Does it come with SSD? What about CDN & SSL?
Will they help me donate my website?
What does their SuperCacher plugin for WordPress look like?
After reading this, you will know if this is the right (or bad) hosting service you can use.
SiteGround offers great hosting that comes with extra features and isn’t usually the cheapest web hosting.
Nonetheless, their prices are currently in line with some of the cheapest in the industry (at $ 6.99 a month, up from $ 14.99 a month).
This SiteGround review will cover:
1. Main Features
Here I will go over and what SG hosting services come from.
2. List of advantages & Cons
Here, I’ll go into more detail and cover what (or I’ll jump straight to or).
3. Hosting Plans & Prices
Here I will go over and what are the features of each plan.
4. Do I Recommend SiteGround?
Here is my spot for telling you whether I recommend them or if you’d better sign up with a competitor.
When creating a website, especially one that will generate income, you need to know that you can rely on your host to provide excellent service and support.
If your website is down or there are technical glitches that are affecting the user experience, you will lose money. Which is not Bueno!
So let’s talk about SiteGround. What makes them unique? Why are so many people so excited?
WordPress Hosting is a closed Facebook group with nearly 7,000 members solely hosting WordPress.
Every year, members are asked to vote for their favorite host. Can you guess which WordPress host has the most votes?
It is correct. SiteGround has been voted # 1 WordPress host for two years in a row (# 1 in 2017 and # 1 in 2016)
WPhosting Facebook Group
This SiteGround review (2020 update) goes over the core features of SG and why you should consider using it for your hosting needs.
Before I get into the review here, I’ll give you a brief summary of what SiteGround is and what they offer.
About SiteGround
SiteGround was founded in 2004 and is based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
They offer a variety of hosting services from shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, reseller hosting, to dedicated servers and corporate hosting.
All plans come with managed WordPress hosting.
It is an official partner of WordPress.org
Free SSD Drives are included in all shared hosting plans.
The servers are powered by Google Cloud, PHP7, HTTP / 2 and NGINX + caching
All customers receive an SSL Certificate (Let’s Encrypt) and CloudFlare CDN for free.
There is a 30 day money back guarantee.
Official site: www.siteground.com
Now let’s move on to the review.
Main Features
They have tons of great features, but there are four main features that really set them apart from other web hosts.
This helps explain why SiteGround is recommended by WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, and why it is getting such enthusiastic user support and great customer reviews.
WordPress, Joomla and Drupal hosting recommended
Server Speed
When it comes to making your website user-friendly, one of the most important considerations is speed.
After moving this site to them, I immediately had a much faster page load.
To test this, I used Byte Check, a tool that measures time to the first byte (TTFB). In other words, it measures the response time of the web server.
The results were amazing. In fact it took from 2.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds for my home page to first byte when I changed.
Using GTmetrix, my homepage load time was from 6.9 seconds to 1.6 seconds after my site was moved. That’s 5.3 seconds faster loading time!
Pingdom’s homepage loading speed went from 4.96 seconds to 581 milliseconds after I moved. This is amazing!
Sites that load slowly are unlikely to hit the top in any niche.
Why? Because web users are notoriously impatient. In fact, research shows that if a page doesn’t load in three seconds, users will likely navigate faster in search of something – the longer you wait, the more people you’ll lose.
As a result, SiteGround takes site speed seriously. And their seasoned developers are always working on new technology to improve website load times – and it shows.
Here are some of the specific technologies they use to guarantee their customers fast loading times:
SiteGround’s infrastructure is powered by Google Cloud with persistent SSD storage and ultra-fast networking.
SSD drives are up to a thousand times faster than regular drives. All SiteGround hosted databases and websites use SSDs for storage.
The results were
amazing. In fact it took from 2.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds for my home page to
first byte when I changed.
Using GTmetrix, my
homepage load time was from 6.9 seconds to 1.6 seconds after my site was moved.
That’s 5.3 seconds faster loading time!
Pingdom’s homepage
loading speed went from 4.96 seconds to 581 milliseconds after I moved. This is
amazing!
Sites that load
slowly are unlikely to hit the top in any niche.
Why? Because web users
are notoriously impatient. In fact, research shows that if a page doesn’t load
in three seconds, users will likely navigate faster in search of something –
the longer you wait, the more people you’ll lose.
As a result,
SiteGround takes site speed seriously. And their seasoned developers are always
working on new technology to improve website load times – and it shows.
Here are some of the
specific technologies they use to guarantee their customers fast loading times:
SiteGround’s infrastructure is powered by
Google Cloud with persistent SSD storage and ultra-fast networking.
SSD drives are up to a thousand times
faster than regular drives. All SiteGround hosted databases and websites use
SSDs for storage.
NGINX web server technology helps speed up the loading of static content on your website. All SG client websites use NGINX web server technology.
Web caching plays a key role in loading dynamic content from your website. They built their own caching engine, SuperCacher, which relies on an NGINX reverse proxy. The result is faster loading of dynamic content and better website speed optimization.
Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) and HTTP / 2 and PHP7 enabled servers help to speed up loading worldwide by increasing content availability.
Was the first hosting for the PHP 7.3 release (October 24, 2018)
In addition to all of the above, they regularly update their technology to make sure hosted sites are not lagging behind as they are lagging behind technological changes. The result is the fastest charging time available.
Security
It seems almost never a day goes by without the news of a new internet security breach. Individuals, corporations and even government entities have been victims.
The truth is that security is a major concern for anyone who owns a website.
SiteGround offers some of the most reliable security features available. You will still have to contribute to the security of your website, but here are some of the security features that make it unique.
Site isolation ensures that your site will not be adversely affected if one of the other sites on your server is compromised. Think of it as a hosting firewall that protects your website from hackers.
All their servers support HTTP/2 technology which is the most secure option available. Many web hosts are lagging behind in this area but not SG.
All their customers benefit from this a firewall (WAF) that protects against security breaches and is regularly updated.
Proactive patches are sent to all clients when new threats emerge.
They also run regular virus and malware scans on their site and send out reports with a notification of the results so you always know what’s going on with your site. This is one of the things users love about their hosting services.
In 2018, SiteGround has had tremendous success in keeping customer sites safe. They responded to 3 times more threats compared to last year. Statistically:
250 new custom firewall rules written
125 live view kernel modules added
Mitigated 186 DDOS attacks
Seven million brute force attacks were stopped
160 million bad bot requests to client sites have been stopped
every day thanks to the anti-bot AI solution
Customer Service
A hosting service may have cutting-edge technology and good security, but for most people, what happens when something goes wrong is what matters most.
SG is a company that prides itself on customer service. They make customer service a priority as seen in their reviews and through customer loyalty.
The fact is, response times leave competitors behind.
Their closest competitor has an average support ticket response time of 44 minutes – but SiteGround’s response time is just eight minutes.
They offer three ways to get support:
The live chat system will receive an immediate response and is available 24 hours a day
Likewise, telephone support is available around the clock and you will get an immediate answer
Submitting your ticket will get you a reply in less than 10 minutes – and that response time is even faster if you’ve paid for one of their priority services
Instead of waiting hours (or even days) for site assistance, you can count on getting a timely response. Of course, this means you can deliver the same great services to your website visitors.
SiteGround WordPress hosting
As mentioned before, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. In addition to powering just under 30% of 33% of all websites, it is also responsible for delivering as much as 60% of internet content worldwide.
That’s why with SiteGround you get managed WordPress hosting with all hosting plans and loads of great features:
Here are some of its best WordPress features:
All plans include fully managed WordPress hosting.
Regular, automatic WordPress updates ensure that you always have the latest WordPress version. This option is included in all plans.
Automatic updates of installed WordPress plugins are also available on all plans.
The team keeps an eye on WordPress vulnerabilities and writes firewall WAF updates to protect them.
Their speed technologies, detailed above, are designed to help WordPress pages load as quickly as possible.
You can also take advantage of their unique SuperCacher plugin, which is a built-in caching plugin that increases the number of visits your website can handle. This means that your website will load faster even if you encounter unexpected website traffic.
Note that the StartUp plan comes with static caching only, and it comes with both static, dynamic, and Memcache caching.
Here is an explanation of the differences.
You can also take advantage of their unique SuperCacher plugin, which is a built-in caching plugin that increases the number of visits your website can handle. This means that your website will load faster even if you encounter unexpected website traffic.
Note that the StartUp plan comes with static caching only, and it comes with both static, dynamic, and Memcache caching.
While WordPress is their primary focus – which makes sense considering WordPress dominates the market – they are also the recommended partner for Joomla and Drupal content management systems.
The above-mentioned features make them a favorite for both individuals and companies who want to be sure of 99.99% uptime, fast page loading, the latest security and the highest quality customer service.
Charging Time & Uptime Test
Over the past few months, I have monitored and analyzed the uptime, speed and overall performance of my test site hosted on SG.
My test site had an average uptime of 99.99%, which is 0.2% higher than the industry standard 99.79% that they promise their customers, with an average page load time well under 1 second.
SiteGround Pros and Cons
The features they offer their hosting clients are impressive, but considering the technical aspects of their services doesn’t really give you an idea of what choosing SiteGround can do for you on a practical level.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the real advantages and disadvantages of using this hosting company. As you will see, there are many more advantages than disadvantages – which is not surprising given their commitment to excellence.
Advantages of SiteGround
The advantages of using SiteGround to host your website are undeniable. It’s a company that prides itself on great service – and it shows.
SiteGround uptime guaranteed
If you’ve spent any time purchasing a web host, you know how important accessibility is. Your hosting company’s downtime percentage tells you how often you can expect your site to be “outdated” or unavailable.
No hosting service can claim 100% uptime because there are too many variables in the game to make sure there is never downtime. However, it is so, it guarantees 99.99% availability.
It’s impressive by any standard, and they can handle it. They use monitoring software that notifies them of a failure immediately and fixes any problems quickly.
In other words, 99.99% uptime means your site may be down for just over four hours in any six-month period.
Their uptime percentage is really impressive. Their average is 99.99% uptime, and a look at their website in April 2017 revealed:
Monthly average uptime for the last 30 days 99.999%
Annual average uptime for the last 365 days 99.996%
In practice, their customers hardly ever need to worry about their website becoming unavailable.
SiteGround load times
I’ve already talked about the speed technology they use to minimize the load times of their WordPress pages, but what does that mean in practice?
Earlier, I mentioned that most internet users load a website three seconds before it loads. It’s not much time, so if you want to keep visitors to your site, load times must be very fast.
Sites hosted on SiteGround have an average load time of 1.3 seconds per page. It’s very fast and speaks of the efficiency of the speed technology the company is using.
SiteGround server response times
Another clear pro is that it has very fast server response times. Server response time is a measure of how long it takes for the server to deliver all website elements to the user’s browser.
SiteGround has an incredibly fast server response time, averaging around 190 milliseconds over a six-month period. This means that no matter where your data is stored, information on your website – both static and dynamic data – can be delivered to the user’s browser almost immediately.
Why does it matter? Again, this has to do with the user experience. You want your site visitors to have as little time as possible to consider leaving your site. When your server responds very quickly and so does its servers, users are likely to stay on your site.
Multiple data centers
One of the reasons server response times are so fast is because they offer their clients access to multiple data centers located in strategic locations around the world.
During registration you can choose your preferred server location.
While data delivery speeds as a whole have increased significantly over the years, the physical distance between the user and the server can affect load times.
To fix this, they have data centers in:
Amsterdam
Chicago
London
Milan
Singapore
When registering for hosting services, you have the option to choose where you want to store your data.
Free daily backups
You know how important it is to back up your data on your site. If you don’t, you risk losing both static and dynamic data, some of which may be irreplaceable.
If you set up your site with SG, you’ll need to make sure you have a regular backup system in case something happens to your site. However, should the backup fail, they have you covered.
They do daily backups of all their customers’ sites, so in case the backup fails or you need to recover your data for some reason, you can contact customer service and get what you need.
You get free daily backups (only one backup per day) of your website as well as the website backup and restore service (if you sign up for).
Hosting backups are like insuring your website. User errors, hacks, deleted files or website updates gone wrong can be solved immediately with a backup restore.
Easily view and manage your backups with an easy-to-use one-click backup tool
Create and restore site backups quickly and easily with one click
Avoid data loss due to page errors
Experiment with site updates that you can quickly undo
You can create and restore your own backups with the one-click backup restore tool in easy-to-use cPanel.
Transparency
It is natural for the companies you buy from to be transparent about what they do and how they do it. This is especially true when you want to trust the company with all your website content.
They usually have a great record with transparency. When you visit their site, you will see that they display both their monthly uptime percentage and their annual uptime percentage so you can see how their sites are performing.
They also provide – free of charge – IP addresses for all their data centers. Why does it matter? As it allows you to test your website loading speed from each of your datacenters so you can choose the one that will provide the best service to your website visitors.
They are also very honest about what is included in each of their plans. Some of the more expensive user plans require small amounts of servers to ensure faster load times. With SiteGround, you’ll always know what you get in return for your money.
Free site migration
Website migration is a serious problem when it comes to changing hosts. One of SiteGround’s many good benefits is its free website transfer service.
This service applies not only to WordPress pages, but also to other CMS platforms such as Joomla and Drupal, and of course, single sites and static HTML pages.
Their transfer service includes free one website transfer (regardless of size) as well as email transfer, FTP accounts, addon domains for (for accounts managed with cPanel).
