Expert SiteGround Review
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround’s shared hosting is incredibly good value, offering a rich array of features and fast hosting support.
We recommend their GrowBig plan which offers more resources, all the features of their SuperCacher (MemCached, OpCache), priority support, and 30-days premium backups as standard. "
- FREE site transfer or new site setup with 1-click install
- FREE Let’s Encrypt Certificates with instant deployment
- FREE 30-days Premium backups with GrowBig or GoGeek plans.
- 24 / 7 Technical Support with 10 minute response time
- HTTP/2 Enabled Servers for greater speed over HTTPS
- Site Staging on their GoGeek Plan
If you are looking for a host that won’t let you down, choose SiteGround’s web hosting. They focus on providing the best user experience possible. All thanks to the superior support of the SiteGround team.
NGINX + SSD + Memcached + PHP 7 + HTTP/2 + OPcache. All the ingredients for the fastest loading time.
Let’s take a look at all the different technologies SiteGround provide:
- NGINX. A high-performance web server configured as a reverse proxy to Apache. SiteGround’s setup offers both static and dynamic caching of content.
- SSD. Solid State Disk storage increases the response time of your website. SSD’s decrease latency, I/O Input and Throughput. Modern SSD’s are also more reliable than HDD’s.
- PHP 7.1. The latest version of PHP is a lot faster than the previous version 5.6. Benchmarks indicate it can handle nearly double the number of requests per second.
- Memcached. This memory-based caching system improves the performance of your website. It stores database and other objects by storing them in the server’s RAM.
- OPcache. This is a relatively new feature, which you can read more about here. You can also look at some benchmarks showing the significant speed increase PHP 7 has over earlier versions.
- HTTP/2. - This is a great new technology that significantly improves the performance of your HTTPS website. In fact, it is worth implementing HTTPS for the speed increase, as well as the SEO benefits. You can read more about its launch at SiteGround here.
Insanely fast and knowledgeable support. 10-minute ticket response times by people that can actually fix things.
If something goes wrong, you need to know that someone will be on hand to help you out. The technical support is helpful, not just for hosting issues, but with your WordPress, Joomla or other software installation too.
For example, have you ever messed up your WordPress install or tried to work out a .htaccess 301 redirect but cannot get it to work? Just activate live chat, or submit a support ticket and get help within minutes. There is no waiting 6 hours for a response here. You will get your issue dealt with within 10 minutes.
Site Staging, WP-CLI, Drush & GIT integration, plus other tools make it perfect for developers.
The WordPress & Joomla toolkits are available on all plans. Automate simple tasks with SiteGround’s WordPress & Joomla toolkits. Reset admin passwords, fix file permissions, change the domain name, or delete your website in minutes.
Fantastic developer features are available on their GoGeek plans, Cloud and Dedicated Hosting. Create a staging site to try out new website changes, and then deploy it to your live (production) website in one click.
Other tools include WP-CLI (command line interface for WordPress), Drush integration (Command Line Interface for Drupal) and automated Git integration.
You can read our detailed summary of all their developer features here.
Final Words: Their Support is Truly Amazing
Even without all their advanced features, and based just on how quick and helpful their support team responds to any queries you may have you will find it hard to find a better host. Then throw in the speed-related features, tools, reliability, and performance for the price. Well, hosting with SiteGround is an easy decision.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround’s cloud hosting is suitable for those needing more resources, but who love the comfort of a fully managed hosting solution similar to Shared Hosting.
Their Cloud Hosting comes with all their advanced features, is fully managed, and comes with the option of HHVM for additional performance. "
- FREE WHM + cPanel Control Panel. Easily create multiple accounts.
- HHVM technology makes dynamic websites (i.e. WordPress) faster that when using PHP 7.
- One-click Site Staging, Git and other developer features.
- HTTP/2, OpCache, Memcached and Railgun.
- Automatic Scaling of resources (RAM, CPU) on demand.
- Fully Managed Cloud Hosting with support, backups and uptime guarantee.
SiteGround’s cloud utilizes lightweight Linux containers with SSD storage
Whilst SiteGround offer 4 preset plans, you can actually fully customize how many CPU Cores, RAM and SSD Storage that you want. This can actually save you a few dollars, but also allow you to scale up for a little extra power at minimal cost.
The ability to get the resources that we not only need, but “want” without feeling that you are paying for stuff we don’t is quite a nice feeling.
Probably the best thing about the Cloud is that you can configure it to auto scale upon set criteria. This is particularly useful if you are expecting an increase in traffic or that you just want to make sure your website is always online.
HHVM - The Game Changer
HHVM is a technology that uses a “just-in-time” compilation approach to significantly improve the speed of handling PHP scripts, thus making dynamic websites such as WordPress or Joomla or any CMS significantly faster … not by just a little either, but by a mile.
HHVM is the technology developed and used by Facebook, and is taking the hosting industry by storm … Unfortunately, the implementation has been very limited up until now, with only the top tier Managed Hosting Companies and a select few others even offering it, and even then only on dedicated enterprise solutions costing $400+ per month.
You can view some benchmarks between PHP 5.6, PHP7 and HHVM here.
Highlighted Cloud Features
The Cloud has everything that you would find in their powerful developer centric GoGeek Shared Hosting plan. This includes:
WordPress & Joomla Toolkits - Automate simple tasks such as resetting admin. passwords, fixing file permission issues, changing your domain, or just deleting the installation. All these issues can literally be done in one click. You can read more about the Toolkits here.
SuperCacher - Includes NGINX and Memcached to cache not only static files, but PHP and database queries. Unlike W3 Total Cache that can be used to cache such things, SiteGround caches it to RAM making it much faster than even SSD hosting (which the Cloud also includes!). More information on the SuperCacher can be found here.
Developer Features - This is probably one of the things that make SiteGround such good value. These are very powerful features that include website Staging, WP-CLI, Drush integration (command line interface for Drupal) and Git integration. Again, we have covered these in depth here.
CloudFlare Railgun - This is one of our favorite things right now, and is particularly effective for caching the uncacheable. What we mean is that certain websites are not cached very well, such as HTTPS, or Ecommerce websites. What CloudFlare Railgun does is cache the page in its edge servers, and then only retrieve changes. This means that pages that would not normally be cached, now are. We use Railgun on this website with great results.
HVVM - As Discussed Above
WHM + cPanel Control Panel
With their Cloud Plan you get both WHM and cPanel. This allows you to have separate cPanel accounts for all your different websites, much like you would with a Reseller account.
There are a few downsides to a fully managed Cloud, and especially so with SiteGround. Some of the WHM functionality has been disabled so things like the backup file restore functionality is gone, as has many of the other admin. configuration settings. You can of course create accounts, define packages and such.
That being said, this means it is very hard to break anything, and as the Cloud is full optimized straight out the box you shouldn’t need to anyway.
In addition, you cannot change any configurations via Root either as no access is given.
That being said, if you need minor tweaks to things like PHP timeouts or anything like that they are more than happy to make the changes for you. For any larger changes you will have to pay a premium, but they are happy to help.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround’s reseller hosting is targeted towards developers or designers who wish to manage their clients websites.
Their reseller system works off a credit system where you can pre-pay for their basic StartUp plan at a discount. Great if your clients just need the basic features offered by SiteGround. "
- FREE cPanel Control Panel & SSH access
- Resell services at any price, plus discounted domains.
- Easy management via custom-built reseller tools.
- White Label Option for non-branded cPanel & Private DNS.
- Greater Discounts when you pre-pay for more credits.
- Credits never expire, and start with just 5 credits.
The Reseller Programs works off a credit system. The minimum initial order is just 5 credits, but you can then top up by just 1 credit after that as required. The credits never expire, so once you have a credit you don’t have to activate it until you need it.
Many reseller hosts will cram reseller customers on a separate server and severely limit the resources available to each account. SiteGround, do not do this. Their accounts are just normal shared hosting accounts on their “StartUp” plan, and treated normally.
Furthermore, all reseller accounts can be easily accessed via the reseller account’s control panel, making it very easy to manage.
Highlighted Reseller Features
The Reseller Plan has the same features as their StartUp Plan and as such is more limited in resources (suitable for roughly 10,000 visitors monthly) and does not have any of the developer or advanced SuperCacher Dynamic Cache that makes their hosting so great. A summary of the highlighted features is as follows:
WordPress & Joomla Toolkits - Automate simple tasks such as resetting admin. passwords, fixing file permission issues, changing the domain address, or just deleting the installation. These tools arose as a result of SiteGround support repeatedly being asked to solve the same issues faced by their customers. By having access to these tools you too can help your customers easily and quickly. You can read more about the Toolkits here.
SuperCacher - The reseller plan comes with Static NGINX Caching as standard, with PHP 7 and Opcache.
CloudFlare Railgun - This is one of our favorite things right now, and is particularly effective for caching the uncacheable. What we mean is that certain websites are not cached very well, such as HTTPS, or Ecommerce websites. What CloudFlare Railgun does is cache the page in its edge servers, and then only retrieve changes. This means that pages that would not normally be cached, now are. We use Railgun on this website with great results.
Account Management
The one major criticism in our SiteGround Reseller Review is that the account management aspects of their plans are quite limited. For example:
- There is no integration with automated billing systems like WHMCS.
- You can’t assign different resources to different plans.
- You can only redeem credits for their StartUp plan, not their GrowBig or GoGeek Plans.
- Management of the accounts is by manually searching for the account in a list of all accounts you have purchased and limited to Purchase, Renew, Suspend, Unsuspend.
- There is the ability to set up a custom email with all the account details to be sent to the end user, but that is it.
- There is no way to automatically restore cPanel backups, and thus, if this was needed you would have to pay SiteGround an additional fee to do this for you.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround’s Dedicated Servers are available for those who require a high performing, stable hosting environment with no noisy neighbours.
SiteGround are one of the few dedicated hosting specialists who take care of everything for you. Even a novice can use them. Furthermore, if you need a completely custom solution you can utilize their Enterprise hosting to get something designed specifically for your needs. "
- FREE WHM + cPanel Control Panel. Easily create multiple accounts.
- HHVM, HTTP/2, OpCache, Memcached and Railgun. Site Staging, Git.
- Full Management, Monitoring with Proactive response.
- 24/7 VIP Support via phone, chat and ticket.
- Private DNS, with 5 free Dedicated IP’s. IP Tables Firewall.
- Enterprise Intel Xeon Servers - E3-1230, E3-1270 or E5-2630 with SSD Storage.
SiteGround’s Dedicated Servers are available in the US, Europe and Asia, and are designed for websites serving serious traffic.
Highlighted Dedicated features
- Fully managed, including Operating System, Control Panel and even WordPress, Joomla and Magento (autoupdates \ security patches). If you need diagnostics or just a reboot, SiteGround will take care of everything for you.
- Dedicated Server Hosting Operations team that ensure that your hardware configurations are regularly updated and optimized, which along with their Performance Booster add on will ensure that you can take advantage of NGINX Caching, Memcached and HHVM. However, note that root access is only offered on Dedicated Servers that do not have Geeky Features, or the Performance Booster. Overall, SiteGround dedicated servers are an excellent choice for someone requiring a lot of dedicated resources and want to be completely hands-off with server management. There are very few companies around that make it this easy.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround is not a typical Managed WordPress Hosting provider, in the sense that they don’t have highly restricted plans (i.e. WordPress Plugin restrictions, no cPanel etc) costing the earth.
Instead, their Shared Hosting Plans come with special WordPress security and other performance related features as standard, for a fraction of the cost.”
- Officially endorsed by WordPress.org.
- FREE WordPress transfer or installation with one-click.
- SuperCacher Plugin for highly tuned performance configuration.
- Automatic Updates and website firewall as standard.
- WordPress CLI, GIT and WordPress Site Staging (GoGeek Plan \ Cloud).
- Special Woocommerce plan for ecommerce websites.
SiteGround advertise their plans as including “Managed Services on all Plans”. While this is correct, you should not mistake it for a fully managed WordPress Hosting Solution like WP Engine, even though it has the majority of features that they offer.
We class “fully managed” WordPress Hosting as something that takes care of absolutely everything for you (security, highly specialized server environment, WordPress Upgrades and more), but on the other hand, will have a large number of restrictions such as no access to the control panel \ server environment, restrictions on what plugins you can use and will often charge by the page view.
SiteGround, as you will read elsewhere in this review has all the things that a Fully Managed WordPress hosting provider has, but none of the negatives. You still get to use the control panel, setup email, install multiple websites and generally have a high degree of control over your hosting environment.
Plus, if you really want to go mad and utilize some of the latest technologies such as HHVM (the same technology as Facebook uses), then you can do so by a cheap upgrade to their Cloud Hosting, rather than having to pay $1000’s per month for an enterprise solution. Of course, PHP 7 + OpCache is great too, and that comes even on SiteGround’s StartUp plan.
Highlighted WordPress features
1-Click Installer - You can install WordPress with just one click.
SuperCacher - SiteGround’s proprietory caching system utilizes three levels of caching, incluing Memcached, OPCache and NGINX page caching for superior speeds.
SSD, PHP 7, HTTP2 and more - Use the latest technologies at the click of a button with absolutely no knowledge required to implement. CloudFlare CDN is provided free to speed up the delivery of your website files, such as images, css and js. Furthermore, HHVM is available on Cloud and Dedicated Servers.
Site Staging, WP-CLI, WordPress Tools & GIT integration - Stage, develop and manage your WordPress install easily with various developer tools to make all those cumbersome tasks fast and painless.
Security - Your WordPress installation and plugins are automatically updated, and tough WAF (Web Application Firewall) rules are implemented to ensure any vulnerabilities are patched without delay to protect against hacking. Just remember to set a secure password or implement two factor authentication to be extra safe.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“SiteGround have partnered with Weebly to offer a free website builder to it’s line-up, although premium plans are available for more features.
Weebly is one of the most popular website builders that offers clean modern responsive designs that can be built with absolutely no coding knowledge. "
- Can be used with any of their hosting plans.
- Responsive Mobile Ready Themes that adapt seamlessly to any device.
- Powerful E-commerce Store features including cart, search, Shipping, Tax and inventory management.
- Create a blog including categories, sidebar customization, commenting, and SEO.
- Quickly add slideshows, galleries, fully customizable forms and more.
- Fully customize forms by dragging and dropping new fields, customize questions and response types.
Weebly is an incredibly feature rich website builder. It currently powers over 30 million websites and allows you to build your website with elements such as Text, photos, maps and videos using a simple drag and drop builder.
While there are several premium plans offered by Weebly, you can get better performance by hosting with SiteGround
Click here for an in-depth look at the Weebly website builder at SiteGround.
Users Reviews
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 48 Cloud Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
I have been in hosting purgatory since EIG aquired my first love, Site5 and laid off their entire US support team rendering the company and its services to garbage. I have used VPS services rendered by a friend of mine until now.
I switched to Siteground (actually had hosting services from them maybe a decade ago) and they’re really great. I got Cloud VPS for its Wordpress monitoring and tools. Unlimited Cpanel accounts and $150 a month for really decent hosting and great technical support.
I have a team to lean on again! These guys are really helpful and I don’t have to fix everything. I just had a problem with an archaic Joomla 1.8 legacy site after migration and they helped me work through the problem. It wasn’t a tough fix, but the fact that I didn’t have to figure it out is priceless. I know I can count on them (like I counted on Site5 before the went to the dark side).
EIG is evil. Google it. Siteground is good.
What I really like about the siteground team is that I get the kind of help I would expect from an employee of mine.
I am constantly surprised of the level of help and assistance they provide. If every other service/hosting provider was as good as they are competition would be very fierce.
I wanted a place where I could quickly and easily put up a site in which I embedded an application built on another cloud hosted service. I also wanted a responsive site using a site builder tool (just being lazy/efficient) AND allowed me to have a cert and force HTTPS on the whole sure. After a long search I found siteground that finally meet AOL my nerds.
Pros: Very friendly and incredibly responsive and b knowledgeable.
Great service both pre-sale, tech support for some questions and billing. All around great group.
Cons: None
I do recommend Siteground as a hosting provider! The main reason is their 24 hour support by chat, phone or tickets. There is a toll free phonenumber to call for any support required over here in Amsterdam, The Netherlands! In addition, for people without any experience and knowledge about building a website or starting a blog, there is lots of understandable turtorials to assist you. And if not, they are always able to help you 24h/day. Don’t even think about having trouble with Worldpress or Magento installation as they provide an installing app which automatically creates your store/blog! The so called “control panel” provides a nice and understandable overview of the hosting options. Encryption of data over the internet via SSL protocol is a must for every store owner, and easily installed via Siteground. Depending on your account, the most advanced caching techniques are available for superior fast page loading (Varnish/Apache, Nginx/HHVM, memcached, static cache, GooglePagespeed and CDN) which is one of the main factors for page ranking in Google.
In conclusion, Siteground offers premium support for everyone plus a wide range of hosting services no matter what background you have, language you speak or purpose you have!
I tried many hosting companies (Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy and lots of Dutch ones) and finally ended hosting everything with SiteGround.
I actually love going over to the support chat or ticket service since the support team is not only friendly (I’ve been tearing my hear out while talking to support at some other big hosting companies), but also help you find the best solution to your problem.
I now host all my client websites at SiteGround, have used the lower plans as well, but it was very easy to scale up to higher cloud plans with more features. They just make it very easy to work with them, that is why I would definitely recommend hosting with these guys and girls.
Pros: Best support ever: friendly, quick, personal and effective. Great tools for WordPress nerds like me to help optimize my websites and make them superfast. Never had any downtime problems. Comprehensive tutorials about every subject. Did I say amazing support already? They even helped me fix some local issues.
Cons: Not sure if I can name any, if I have any problems (as will happen with any hosting company) they will solve it immediately.
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 13 Reseller Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
Customer Service is very important to me, and when it comes to Support, SiteGround is amazing compared to the other hosting providers’ support. I have only had to contact support a few times, but have never had to wait more than a minute or two, either via chat or phone. Just yesterday, when I had to call my OTHER hosting provider, not only did I wait 55 minutes on hold, but got disconnected after the tech picked up the call! SITEGROUND IS AWESOME! Not only is their support great, their people are, too! And, you can’t beat the price, and easy to use cpanel!
- PROS: I cam to SiteGround because of great service, great features on hosting, like free SSL and CDN.
- CONS: None that I can come up with
This is an excellent support host. The sites load fast, they actually help me on support calls and often just make it happen. I do WordPress sites and can’t rave enough about their support. I have been moving my customers all to Siteground and the experience is wonderful.
- PROS: Easy to work with, always helpful.
- CONS: None.
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 27 Dedicated Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
Seriously the best hosting there is. You may pay a couple of bucks more compared to other hosts, but trust me on this: THE EXTRA COST IS WORTH IT.
I LOVE the 24/7 support, you can drop literally ANY question and you’ll always get an answer which helps you for sure.
The Couldflare possibility is awesome as well!
My support rep was fast, friendly, and to the point.
Amazing stuff!
I has some problems with email delivery. During the support chat everything was resolved within couple of minutes, and I didn’t need to do much myself. I’m not really a techie, so I was very happy with that.
I used the chat possibility once before for another issue, and I had the same excellent experience. A technical problem in the evening, solved in a couple of minutes, it really is delight. Instead of tickets and long days of waiting.
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 43 Managed WordPress Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
Every time I go to the Support Chat they Over Help Me, It’s beyond Amazing!
I used to Love the support at Godaddy, but I feel like they have lowered in Quality.
Site Ground is the Way to Go !
Best Regards, Mikal
A German guy that I know who is really thorough with everything told me to go with SiteGround, so I did, and boy did I make the right decision! The best customer service and support team I’ve ever experienced - I wish all helpdesks were like these guys! I love the online support chat - they really try their best to help you with issues. The workers must be being treated really well as usually bad service is from disgruntled workers who are being treated unfairly. If I were technically minded, I’d apply or a job at this company! Another support desk company were giving me the run around and taking weeks to solve a plugin issue I was having, I turned to SiteGround and their level 2 team sorted it out professionally within 40 mins! If a German tells you that a company or product is good you had better believe them! SiteGround has so many good reviews, and they deserve it! Thank you for this service SiteGround!
Sherry
I contacted live chat at SiteGround and was connected with Yoana D.
She was awesome. The issue I had was a complete misunderstanding on my part of a payment plan and she gave me a couple of options in order for me to keep my site open. My situation was resolved and I was up and running all in a matter of 10 minutes. Very satisfied customer!!
Their support person Antonio was able to help me really fast and able to resolve my issue at 1 at night after I had heavy headaches over the page for a couple of days.
I would totally recommend your awesome web services and top notch support to anyone!
Siteground customer service is outstanding! Their online chat operators are very friendly, efficient and helpful.
The only reason I am leaving them is because of financial reasons, however should circumstances change in the future I will definitely be back!
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 4 Website Builder Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 12 Domain Registrar Reviews left by our readers.
Hey, your 24/7 service is outstanding! Thanks for your support while others sleep, you guys make people happy again.
Regards!
Features
Server Technology
- SuperCacher technology provides OpCache and Memcached for powerful in-memory caching of dynamic and static content for ultimate response times and increased concurrent visitors. Cloud and Dedicated servers have the option of HHVM, which is faster than even PHP 7.
- NGINX along with SSD storage provide increase performance, and CloudFlare.
- HTTP/2 provides significantly faster website load times when using HTTPS.
Software & Ecommerce
- cPanel
- Softaculous installer allows you to install many different website applications, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. For website builders, you can install Weebly.
- For Ecommerce, choose between Magento, PrestraShop and Opencart among others. There is even a special WooCommerce Plan for WordPress users that comes with the Storefront Theme Preinstalled.
Backups & Security
- SiteGround offer 30 days automatic daily backups, with free restores on their GrowBig plan and above. Their GoGeek plan even offers Backups on Demand for extra peace of mind.
- SiteGround monitors and detects threats, and where necessary releases patches or Web Application Firewall rules (WAF) to keep web applications such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal safe.
- SiteGround utilizes a unique isolation system preventing single accounts taking down whole servers. They monitor their servers in realtime and utilize Guardian by 1H to automatically fix errors within a second. They keep spare parts at their datacenters for quick repairs, keeps spare servers available read to go in minutes. They can even restore individual accounts to different servers in the rare event a whole server fails for faster restoration.
Support & Reliability
- Insanely fast and knowledgeable support. 10-minute ticket response times by people that can actually fix things.
- Support is available via phone, ticket or live chat. Their chat system is great, and was developed in-house. You can select previous team members you have dealt with and rate them on their performance. Provide a low rating, and management will automatically review the conversation and reach out to resolve any outstanding issues as necessary.
- 99.9% Uptime that delivers closer to 99.999%. They have built their own server monitoring software that monitors their servers in realtime and can automatically resolve 90 percent of issues without human interaction.
Server Locations
A data center near your users you can decrease server response times. SiteGround has data centers in the following locations:
North America
- Chicago, US
Europe
- London, UK
- Amsterdam, NL
Asia
- Singapore, SG
Australasia
- None
Africa
- None
South America
- None
Support
Support Methods
- Ticket support is available via their in-house-built ticketing system. It will assign tasks to the most appropriately person based on skill level and expertise with your issue.
- Custom-built chat system that allows customers to chat with support admins they have previously dealt with and who might be familiar with the problem.
- You can also get help via telephone and Twitter (you can register your Twitter handle within your admin account for verification) should you prefer. There is also a comprehensive knowlege base.
Response Satisfaction
- The main reason people love their support is the response times. They will respond and action your issue within 10 minutes.
- Whether you need to change some settings in your Cloud Server or require a custom solution involving multiple servers and failover they can help (at a cost).
- If you are not happy with the response you get, then you can ask for the issue to be referred to a supervisor. Alternatively, just give the support request a low rating, and a supervisor will automatically review it and be in touch.
Speed
Cutting Edge Technology
- HTTP/2 - This is a great new technology that significantly improves the performance of your HTTPS website. In fact, it is worth implementing HTTPS for the speed increase, as well as the SEO benefits. You can read more about its launch at SiteGround here.
- SSD - Solid State Disk storage increases the performance of your website, but decreasing latency, I/O Input and Throughput, as well as increasing reliability.
- PHP 7 & HHVM - The latest version of PHP is almost twice as fast as the previous version. If you need more performance, though, try out HHVM on their Cloud.
- CloudFlare - Utilize the CloudFlare CDN and Railgun to speed up the delivery of files and web pages around the world.
Performance Caching
- Memcached - This is a memory based caching system that significantly improves the performance of your website by improving the performance of your database calls, API calls and page rendering by storing the data and objects in the server’s RAM.
- OPcache - This is a relatively new feature, which you can read more about here. You can also look at some benchmarks showing the significant speed increase PHP 7 has over earlier versions.
- NGINX - This is a high performance web server that can be placed in a reverse proxy to Apache, providing increased performance caching static and dynamic content.
Uptime
SiteGround promise 99.9% Uptime that delivers closer to 99.999%, based on their own figures.
They have built their own server monitoring software that monitors their servers in real-time and can automatically resolve 90 percent of issues without human interactions.
Value
SiteGround prices are very competitive. The StartUP, GrowBig and GoGeek Plans are discounted by 60% for the first invoice. It is therefore worth paying for 3 years for the maximum savings.
Monthly billing is available, but it is much more expensive, and there is a setup fee.
Typical SiteGround Prices
| Hosting Type | Price Range | |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Hosting | $3.95 - $11.95 | 3 plans |
| Cloud Hosting | $80.00 - $240.00 | 4 plans |
| Reseller Hosting | $42.00 - $49.00 | 3 plans |
| Dedicated Hosting | $269.00 - $729.00 | 3 plans |
| Domain Hosting | $15.95 - $17.95 | See all |
| Managed WordPress Hosting | $3.95 - $11.95 | 3 plans |
Payment methods accepted: All major credit cards including VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. PayPal is available via their Sales Department.
SiteGround Hosting Plans
Cloud Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry [1] | 40 GB | 2 x 3.00GHz | 4 | 5 TB | $80.00 | More Details |
| Business | 60 GB | 3 x 3.00GHz | 6 | 5 TB | $120.00 | More Details |
| Business Plus | 80 GB | 4 x 3.00GHz | 8 | 5 TB | $160.00 | More Details |
| Super Power | 120 GB | 8 x 3.00GHz | 10 | 5 TB | $240.00 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] All Cloud Plans are fully customizable with CPU, Memory, and SSD space. All come fully managed, with no root access.
Reseller Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | Bandwidth | Panel | No. of Sites | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-4 Credits [1] | 10 GB | Unlimited | cPanel \ WHM | 1 | $49.00 | More Details |
| 5-10 Credits | 10 GB | Unlimited | cPanel \ WHM | 1 | $45.00 | More Details |
| 11+ Credits | 10 GB | Unlimited | cPanel \ WHM | 1 | $42.00 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] Pricing is per credit. Minimum purchase is 5 credits, and they never expire. 1 Credit = 1 year of hosting.
Dedicated Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Server [1] | 480 GB | 4 x 3.2 Ghz | 16 | 10 TB | $269.00 | More Details |
| Power Server | 960 GB | 4 x 3.5 Ghz | 32 | 10 TB | $349.00 | More Details |
| Super Power Server | 960 GB | 12 x 2 Ghz | 64 | 10 TB | $729.00 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] All Dedicated Server plans include Full Management. Performance Booster available at small extra cost, but no Root Access available if selected.
Managed WordPress Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | Bandwidth | Panel | No. of Sites | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StartUp [1] | 10 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | 1 | $3.95 | More Details |
| GrowBig [2] | 20 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $5.95 | More Details |
| GoGeek [3] | 30 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $11.95 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] Does not include Free Site Transfer, Dynamic NGINX Cache or Memcached.
- [2] Includes Premium Support, 30 Day Backups, all Caching Features.
- [3] Includes everything in GrowBig plus more resources and developer features.
Domain Hosting
| Suffix | Free Domain with Hosting | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| .com | No | $15.95 | More Details |
| .net | No | $17.95 | More Details |
| .us | No | $17.95 | More Details |
Notes:
Other Hosts Vs SiteGround
SiteGround v A2 Hosting (2022)
If you ask us to pick between these two equally great hosts we would have a difficult time giving you an answer. We love SiteGround for its absolutely insanely fast support respons... Read Full Comparison
Frequently asked questions
Is SiteGround a good web host?
Yes. We have been following them for the last 5 years, and over that time their user ratings have been consistently high.
Where are SiteGround servers?
They have servers in Chicago, London, Amsterdam and Singapore.
Where is SiteGround company located?
The company is based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Is SiteGround owned by EIG?
No. They are not owned by EIG or any other larger brand.
Do they have a money-back guarantee?
Yes. You can try them out for 30 days risk free for a free refund on hosting costs.
The money-back guarantee does not apply to cloud or dedicated hosting. Nor does it apply to add-ons, such as Domain Registration or third-party services such as CloudFlare.
Does SiteGround offer free website transfers?
Yes, they will migrate one site for you free of charge, with subsequent sites for a small fee. As of June 2018 their StartUp Plan no longer qualifies for free migration. That being said, we recommend their GrowBig plan anyway to obtain the best features.
Does they offer one-click installers?
Yes. They utilize Softaculous, enabling you to install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more (over 230 different platforms) in minutes.
In addition, you can use their SuperCacher plugin to automatically optimize your installation for SSL, Caching and performance.
Why use SiteGround?
Good question. Hopefully if you read all the user reviews, and take a look at the technologies that they provide (which we talked about in this review) you will get your answer on why you should choose SiteGround. In short, they are good.
Do they offer Windows Hosting?
No. They only offer Linux hossting at this time.
What control panel do they use?
They use cPanel for Shared, Reseller, Dedicated and Cloud Hosting Plans.
What version of PHP does SiteGround support?
While the latest version is 7.2, this is currently incompatible with many WordPress Plugins. Until more plugin providers update their plugins, the current latest version is PHP 7.1.
does SiteGround support node.js
They do not offer Node.js support on their shared or cloud hosting plans. If you have a Dedicated Server with Root Access then you can install it yourself.
Does SiteGround offer a free domain?
Does SiteGround have staging?
Yes. Site Staging is available on their GoGeek Shared Hosting plan, as well as their Cloud servers.
Do they offer a website builder?
Yes, they offer Zyro Site Builder for free. See our review for more details.
Does SiteGround support ASP.net
No. SiteGround only support Linux Servers, not Windows.
Jonathan Griffin Editor, SEO Consultant, & Developer.
Jonathan Griffin is The Webmaster's Editor & CEO, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all our publications. Jonathan writes about Development, Hosting, and SEO topics for The Webmaster and The Search Review with more than nine years of experience. Jonathan also manages his own SEO consultancy, offering SEO developer services. He is an expert on site-structure, strategy, Schema, AMP, and technical SEO. You can find Jonathan on Twitter as @thewebmastercom.