SiteGround Review

SiteGround first came under WHSR’s radar in late 2013.

We were given a time slot to interview SiteGround CEO, Tenko Nikolov and a free hosting account to test with.

Today I host my personal blog, TheRealJerryLow.com, and a few side projects at SiteGround hosting.

Throughout the years I have gathered tons of SiteGround server uptime / speed test data and conducted undercover experiments on SiteGround’s live chat support (more about this in customer support).

If you are considering SiteGround – these information should be useful.

About SiteGround, the company

• Founded in 2004 by a group of university friends.
• Company claims to host more than 1,000,000 domains at time of writing.
• Services: Shared, VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting
• Offices in five different countries: Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States.
• Data centers in three different continents: America (U.S.), Europe, Asia (Singapore).

(Quick Jump) Review SiteGround Hosting in:

SiteGround Hosting Performance

Our experience & thoughts:

SiteGround server is extremely reliable based on our years of test result. Test sites were 100% up at most times.

Unfortunately my SiteGround speed test results were not as good.

I used different tool and ran multiple speed tests on sites hosted in different SiteGround data centers. The results were mixed – Most tests at Bitcatcha return good outcomes (A or B+); tests at Webpage Test, on the other hand, were not as good (TTFB constantly below 700ms).

SiteGround Hosting Uptime (Mar 2018): 100%

SiteGround Hosting Uptime (Jan 2018): 100%

SiteGround Uptime record (Mar 2017): 100%

Older SiteGround Uptime Records (2014 – 2016)

* Click to enlarge image.

SiteGround Speed Tests at Bitcatcha

SiteGround Speed Tests at Webpage Test

I was surprised by the bad results and ran these tests multiple times using different test sites. The results were quite consistent – test site’s time-to-first-byte (TTFB) was constantly above 700ms, rated as grade D – F.

Test site #1 – SiteGround GoGeek Plan, hosted on SiteGround’s Singapore Data Center

Test site #2 – SiteGround GoGeek Plan, hosted on SiteGround’s Chicago Data Center

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SiteGround Customer Support

Our Experience & Thoughts:

SiteGround live chat experience

SiteGround has *the best* live chat support in the market. I went undercover to investigate the quality of  hosting companies’ live chat support in 2017.

SiteGround stood out as the clear winner in this study.

Note that you can learn more about the person you are chatting with by viewing the staff’s profile.

In this example, I was chatting with a cool dude named Nikola N.

* Click images to enlarge.

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SiteGround Hosting Features

Our Experience & Thoughts:

SiteGround offers a number of awesome speed features that you don’t usually get with other hosting provider.

SSD drives and NGINX setup are included in all shared and cloud hosting plan. All SiteGround servers are HTTP/2* enabled and come with four different built-in caching mechanism: Static, Dynamic, Memcached, and HHVM (only for Cloud).

These features are a big plus as most hosting plans by other companies at this price range do not offer similar technology.

Free site migration

With every new hosting account in SiteGround, you get one free professional website transfer.

The GIF image shows how to request a site transfer.

For detail instruction, visit this tutorial page.

* Click image to enlarge.

Recommended by WordPress.org and Drupal.org

SiteGround is recommended by both WordPress.org and Drupal.org.

 

SiteGround SuperCacher

SiteGround built its own caching mechanism. Geeky SuperCacher, to speed up WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal powered sites.

See SuperCacher configuration tutorial.

Choice of server locations

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SiteGround Pricing: Value for Money?

Our Experience & Thoughts:

How to Install Let’s Encrypt SSL (FOC) at SiteGround

Standard Let’s Encrypt SSL is free with all hosting accounts and auto-installed to all domains with SiteGround.

Starting from March 29, 2018, all SiteGround customers can get a free Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL – which makes the subdomain setup process much easier.

* Click image to enlarge and see installation guide.

With the standard FOC Let’s Encrypt SSL, users need to install a separate domain certificate for each subdomain.

With Wildcard you can secure them with a single certificate.

Premium EV and WildCard SSL at SiteGround

Note that SiteGround also offers Premium EV and Wildcard SSL certificate through GlobalSign for users who need them.

Premium Wildcard SSL certificate costs $90++ for 12 months; EV SSL certificate costs $499++.

SiteGround Shared Hosting Plans 

Hosting company prices change over time. For best accuracy, visit: https://www.siteground.com/

SiteGround Renewal Price

SiteGround’s price is roughly 45% cheaper on first bill – $3.95/7.95/14.95/mo. While the big price cuts look good at first, it also means that your renewal fees (the standard rate) is higher than your signup rate.

Startup, GrowBig, and GoGeek cost $9.95/14.95/29.95/mo during renewal.

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Verdict – Should You Host at SiteGround Hosting?

97% Customer Satisfaction Rate in 2017

SiteGround’s annual client satisfaction survey was released in January 2018.

97.3% of the respondents were satisfied with SiteGround service; 95% would recommend the web host to a friend.

Read official survey report here.

SiteGround = Reasonable Priced Premium Hosting

In a nutshell, SiteGround offers reasonably priced premium hosting service that is reliable, flexible, secure; and comes with stellar customer support.

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Order SiteGround Hosting

Click: https://www.siteground.com/

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