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 useful information about SiteGround, including SiteGround shared hosting uptime record, latency test from different countries (U.K., Malaysia, and Singapore), users feedback from social media groups and forums, as well as chat records with SiteGround’s live chat support.

If you are considering SiteGround web hosting – this review 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.

Table of Content / Quick Link

SiteGround Hosting Plans & Pricing

• SiteGround Shared Hosting Plans
• SiteGround VPS hosting plan
• SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting (head to head comparison)
• SiteGround vs Hostgator (head to head comparison)

Verdict & Other Quick Facts

• Frequent asked questions about SiteGround
• Quick recap: Is SiteGround a go?
• Who should host at SiteGround

Pros of SiteGround Hosting

1. Extremely reliable – 100% host uptime at most times

I can’t stress enough how important it is for a hosting provider to be consistently reliable, since any downtime on your website can have serious repercussion on your overall ROI. Which is why SiteGround performance have impressed me as they are able to maintain 100% uptime during my testing period.

Their uptime performance have always been impressive with data dating back 2014 showing SiteGround consistently achieving at least 99.99% uptime. Basically, if you’re on SiteGround, you’re unlikely to suffer downtime any time soon.

SiteGround Hosting Uptime (July 2018): 100%

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.

2. Free site migration for new users

Think migration your sites is too troublesome or too difficult? SiteGround has the perfect solution for non-tech or lazy website owners.

With every new web hosting account in SiteGround, you get one free professional website transfer. The support team at SiteGround will help transfer your website to your SiteGround server.

How to request free site migration at SiteGround

The GIF image shows how to request a site transfer.

For detail instruction, visit this tutorial page*

* Affiliate link.

3. Choice of server locations on three continents

Three server locations with SiteGround:

1. America (Chicago US),
2. Europe (Milan IT, London UK, Amsterdam NL), and
3. Asia (Singapore SG).

 

When your website is hosted closer to your users, it will load faster for them (as the data and user requests travel shorter distance).

Faster site load time equals to better user experience. Better user experience often equals to higher online customer conversions.

It’s, therefore, important to host your website close to your users.

At SiteGround, users are given a choice of five server locations when they sign up:

1. Chicago, United States
2. Milan, Italy
3. London, United Kingdom
4. Amsterdam, Netherland
5. Singapore.

This allow users to host their website close to their audience.

We did some latency tests for United Kingdom and Malaysia / Singapore websites in 2017/2018. Based on our test results, SiteGround is best for websites targeting audience living in these regions.

Latency Tests from United Kingdom

Latency Tests from Malaysia / Singapore

4. Officially recommended by WordPress.org and Drupal.org

If your website is built on  either WordPress or Drupal, SiteGround will be a great fit for you since it is recommended by both WordPress.org and Drupal.org.

You can expect plenty of optimizations in terms of server resources and performance for those using WordPress or Drupal.

5. Free let’s Encrypt Standard & Wild Card SSL

Security is essential for a website as it not only protects you from hackers and malware, it also tells your users that their data are safe on your website.

SiteGround offers free Let’s Encrypt and Wild Card SSL when you sign up with their web hosting plans, and it’s surprisingly easy to install to any of your domain names.

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.

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++.

6. Advanced server speed technologies (SSD, HTTP/2, NGINX, and more)

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

See SuperCacher configuration tutorial*.

* Affiliate link.

7. Save 60% on your first bill

When you sign up with SiteGround, you can receive a 60% discount on your first bill for any of the hosting plans.

Given that the standard pricing for SiteGround runs at about $9.95/mo for their StartUp plan and $14.95/mo for their GrowBig plan, a 60% discount on either of them is absolutely a great deal.

After discount price for SiteGround Shared Hosting

SiteGround GrowBig plan at $5.95/mo for first year customers.

8. Very positive feedback from other SiteGround users

A search on the web shows that plenty users have had positive experiences with using SiteGround as their host. With customer satisfaction improving yearly, SiteGround has taken steps to ensure their users are treated well.

SiteGround voted as top in Facebook Closed Group “WordPress Hosting”

SiteGround tops poll in 2016.

SiteGround tops the poll again a year later in 2017.

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.

Cons of SiteGround Hosting

1. Mixed results in our server speed test

Results for SiteGround speed performance were sort of a mixed bag when I tested it. Using Bitcatcha, SiteGround network and servers performed well for regions such as the U.S., or the Europe but in areas such as Singapore or Japan was not as good.

Webpage Test results didn’t fare as well as TTFB (Time-To-First-Byte) was an abysmal 1.735ms on Singapore data center and 759ms for Chicago data center.

SiteGround Speed Tests at Bitcatcha

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

2. Uptime guarantee does not cover outages in the event of DDoS

One thing to note about SiteGround is that you must pay attention to the details in their Service Level Agreement (SLA) when it comes to uptime guarantee. In many cases, uptime guarantees for web hosts do avoid covering some things such as natural disasters and so on.

SiteGround on the other hand takes it a little further by not allowing downtime due to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, hacker attacks, and other similar events. This isn’t entirely common and leads me to wonder how little faith the company has in their network.

True, DDoS attacks are very difficult for many companies (especially smaller ones) to deal with but that is why they often work with massive Content Deliver Networks such as Cloudflare to mitigate the issue.
The inclusions of this is their SLA is slightly troubling.

In fact, SiteGround also doesn’t cover emergency maintenance and either hardware or software failures which are remedied within an hour. The addition of this clause is just plain mean on their part to be honest.

3. Hosting price increases after first bill

While the pricing for signing up with SiteGround is quite attractive, after the first bill it reverts back to the regular pricing for its hosting plans.

Because of that, SiteGround might not be the best choice for those who are on a tight budget. However, it should be noted that increasing the price for renewals or after the first bill is not uncommon for most budget hosting provider.

SiteGround shared hosting plans, namely Startup, GrowBig, and GoGeek; cost $9.95/14.95/29.95/mo on renewal.

4. Live chat support no longer available for technical or billing issues

SiteGround live chat support was the best in 2017.

But that’s history for now. You can no longer use live chat to solve your technical or billing issues with SiteGround in 2018*.

Users are encouraged to search SiteGround’s 4,500 pages of knowledge Base and Tutorials (which, to be honest, quite helpful) for “instant help”; or, lodge a support ticket (Go to: Dashboard > Support > Request Assistance from Our Team > Contact Us) to get help from a real person.

* Credit: Tip from Josh Broughton from Sofa King Creative – I wasn’t aware that SiteGround has changed their live chat support system.

SiteGround Hosting Plans & Pricing

SiteGround Shared Hosting Plans

SiteGround VPS Hosting Plans

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

SiteGround Head-to-head Comparison with Others

Customers often compare SiteGround with Hostgator and InMotion Hosting as their hosting plans are very similar.

Data from Google Trends shows that Hostgator is the most popular brand among the three. Ranking at second, SiteGround has the most regional interests in Russia and Italy. InMotion Hosting, placed third, are popular in North America and India.

Features and pricing wise – SiteGround has the highest cost (especially during renewal) but they provide some advanced hosting features (custom built cacher, NGINX, HTTP/2, built-in WordPress cacher, etc) that the other two don’t. We will compare their features and prices further in the following tables.

SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is a popular hosting company with more than 15 years of business track record. I have been using them since 2009 (this site you are reading is hosted at InMotion Hosting).

You can learn more about the InMotion Hosting plans in my review here.

SiteGround vs Hostgator

Hostgator Inc. was founded by Brent Oxley in his college dorm back in 2002. The company grew from a one-man operation to one with hundreds of employees over the years; and was ranked 21st (year 2008) and 239th (year 2009) in Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company. In 2012, Brent sold the company was sold to Endurance International Group for, unofficial figure, $225 million.

Learn more about Hostgator service in my review.

Frequent Asked Questions about SiteGround

Does SiteGround have a money-back guarantee?

Yes. SiteGround has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can cancel your service within the first 30 days and you will receive a full refund. The money-back guarantee does not cover domain names, cloud or dedicated server hosting.

Does SiteGround offer CDN?

SiteGround support CloudFlare CDN in all hosting plans.

What is SG Site Scanner?

SG Site Scanner (previously called HackAlert) is powered by Sucuri and is a premium malware detection and early warning system to help protect your site and costs $19.80/year.

Siteground fair usage policy

You can use the control panel to check whether your website uses excessive server resources.

Should you exceed the bandwidth, they will limit your service and will charge a fee for additional usage.

* Click to enlarge image.

Should You Host at SiteGround Hosting?

Is SiteGround one of the best hosting providers today? It’s hard to say as it all depends on what you need for your website.

As for me, I believe that SiteGround is great for those who want a premium and reliable hosting service that’s priced reasonably and offers good support via email ticketing.

The downside are 1) Siteground’s renewal price falls on the pricier side and can be considered a bit of a ripoff; and 2) technical and billing support are no longer available via live chat. If pricing and lack of live chat support are okay for you, then SiteGround is definitely a go.

Quick Recap: SiteGround Review

To recap, here’s the pros and cons of SiteGround again.

Who should host at SiteGround?

We recommend SiteGround to new to advanced bloggers and business owners who are looking for a worry-free hosting solution.

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Order SiteGround Hosting

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

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