Objective review SiteGround.com
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Price:
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Speed:
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Reliability:
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Support:
- 🎂 Founded: 2004
- 👨 Customers: 1700000
- 🌎 Servers Location: USA, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore, North America
- 🖥️ Control panel: cPanel, SiteTools
- 📅 Free/Moneyback period: 30 days
Participants in ratings (the place occupied in the rating is indicated in brackets):
Countries: USA (48), United Kingdom (28), Netherlands (23), Singapore (21), North America (24). Disk type: SSD (40). Payment methods: Visa or MasterCard (42), PayPal (40). Control panel: Custom (12), cPanel (51). Domains: Free domain (30), SSL Certificate (48). Other: DDoS protection (31), Website builder (53), Reseller hosting (42). OS: Linux (64). Free trial: Moneyback (61). CMS: Joomla (33), WordPress (55), Drupal (41), vBulletin (18), Magento (38). Type of hosting: Cloud hosting (49), Shared hosting (60), Dedicated server (50), CDN services (25). Hosting for: Portfolio website (46), Blog (53), Corporate website (54), E-Commerce (48), Web-portal (41), Forum (47), E-mail (42). Hosting price: Price-quality ratio (37), Expensive hosting (37)Overview
First impression
Founded in 2004, Bulgaria-based web hosting provider SiteGround now describes itself as a 'holding of companies' registered in Bulgaria, USA, UK, Cyprus and Spain, and with offices and data centers around the world.
Unlike many competitors, SiteGround hasn't been bought by some shadowy mega-corporation, and it's not just a brand owned by someone else. SiteGround's founder is still CEO, and SiteGround's website says 'a considerable number' of its 500+ employees and top executives have been with the company for more than 10 years.
While some hosts don't talk about where or how it hosts your websites, SiteGround is very open. Its platform is on 'premium Google Cloud infrastructure', the website explains, for 'top reliability, security and speed.'
All SiteGround's shared web hosting packages include a free version of the popular Weebly website builder.
It's fun as a quick way to see what website builders can do. There are around 70 pre built site designs (attractive images, but nothing special design-wise), and you can customize these right away by dragging and dropping various content types onto the page: slideshows, maps, buttons, YouTube videos, contact forms and more.
They'll have a choice of website designs, pick one you like, then add any text, images, or other content you like. Editing can be as easy as dragging an image from this part of the page to another, and you can have an attractive web home ready to go with minimum effort.
Trial period
Siteground doesn't offer a free trial in any of their services though they do have a 30-day money back guarantee for all of their shared hosting plans and 14 days money back guarantee for cloud hosting plans. Their money back guarantee gives you peace of mind that their services will meet the expectations set out in the TOS.
Billing cycle
Prices start low at $3.99 a month on the annual plan, but leap to an above-average $14.99 on renewal. And there's no free domain, so factor in the price of registration (a .com domain is $17.99 at SiteGround, around $10 with some domain registrars).
In our example of Startup Plan, you can choose to pay for their hosting service with a Monthly, 12 Months and/or 24 Months billing cycle contract.
Control panel
The control panel for managing your website(s) is called Site Tools. Every client has Site Tools, where they can manage all sites they own or have access to. To manage a specific website in Site Tools, go to Websites, choose the preferred website and click on Site Tools.
Alternatively, you access Site Tools by typing tools.siteground.com in your browser and log in with the username and password of your SiteGround Client Area. You can view or change your SiteGround Client Area and Site Tools logins from the Login & Profile menu.
Limits
The Startup plan 'only' has 10GB storage, but that's enough for many (even long-standing WordPress sites often use under 1GB), and it piles on the feature elsewhere: unlimited bandwidth, automated daily backups, 1-click WordPress installs, automated WordPress migration, a free website builder, free SSL, unlimited databases, unlimited email accounts, spam filtering, and 24/7 support via live chat, telephone and ticket.
Upgrading gets you more web space, support for unlimited websites, on-demand backups, and staging, a great WordPress extra which allows you to test new website features before you put them online.
The top of the range plan gets you a greater share of server resources, accelerating your website speed, and priority support ensures your tickets or chat sessions get fast responses from the most experienced support agents. (It still only has 40GB storage, though.)
Security
As one of the best and most preferred hosting providers on the market, they know how important security is for their customers. This is why server security is one of their top priorities.
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is an encryption protocol that provides security for online transactions and sensitive information. Every reputable online business needs to have a valid SSL certificate to safeguard their clients’ security and brand’s credibility. These days, you can even get a valid SSL certificate for free thanks to the open Certificate Authority (CA) Let’s Encrypt.
OS
SiteGround does not use Windows servers. All servers are using Linux based (Fedora 31) and they are configured to work with both Apache and Nginx. All hosting solutions use Fedora. This is applicable for our Shared and Cloud servers.
Developing smart solutions in-house and adopting the latest speed and security technologies is their passion. They put their hearts into crafting tools and interfaces that make their client experience exceptional and they never stop innovating to bring you the best service possible.
Support
SiteGround offers 24/7 support via phone, live chat, ticket and its web knowledgebase.
A comprehensive set of tutorials provides lots of useful information on getting started with the service. There's general guidance on setting up your website, managing domains, creating email accounts and more.
You can also contact the support team via phone, live chat and (apparently) ticket, although the website makes this more difficult than usual. There's a Contact Us button, but this walks you through a support wizard which works hard to direct you to a support site article or website tool. It won't even display a chat button, phone number or anything else unless it thinks you're 'deserving.'
Conclusion
Pros | Cons |
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While many hosts try to win you over with low headline prices, SiteGround is far more interested in power. Its shared and cloud hosting plans may look expensive, but they give you plenty of features and functionality for your money, and could be a high performance choice for demanding users with high traffic or business-critical sites.
FAQ:
✅What payment types does SiteGround support?
SiteGround supports payments via card only.
❔Does SiteGround offer refunds?
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for its shared hosting plans and servers, dropping to 14 days for cloud hosting.
The policy has the same terms for monthly-billed plans, a welcome plus (GoDaddy only has a 48-hour refund period for subscriptions of less than a year). Renewal fees are mostly covered, too, good news when some providers exclude them entirely (GreenGeeks).
Some providers have longer refund periods - InMotion Hosting offers 90 days, HostGator 45 - but SiteGround's refund policy is more generous than many, and in the area we'd expect for a quality web host.
✴️Does SiteGround have an uptime guarantee?
SiteGround has a network uptime guarantee of 99.9%, which means it shouldn't be down for any more than 43.83 minutes a month.
The company offers very generous compensation if the network is down for longer. If you only have 99.9% to 99% uptime, for instance - so maybe just 44 minutes over a month - then SiteGround promises an additional 10% of monthly hosting credits. And you get another month of free hosting for every 1% of uptime lost. 97% uptime, for example, or a total 21.92 of down time over a month, gets you three months free hosting.
There are lots of exceptions. Scheduled and emergency maintenance (when resolved in an hour) isn't covered, for instance. Fallout from hacker attacks isn't covered, either, and the company doesn't count downtime from 'events outside our control', either.
Still, this is a far better guarantee than we usually see. GoDaddy's uptime guarantee is capped at a maximum 5% of your hosting fees, for instance, so even if your site is down for 15 days in a month, you'll only be credited with 1.5 days hosting.
Plans
StartUp | GrowBig | GoGeek | |
Price |
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DDoS Protection | - | - | - |
Websites | 1 pcs | ∞ | ∞ |
Database | ∞ | ∞ | ∞ |
Disk Space | 10 Gb | 20 Gb | 40 Gb |
Platform | - | - | - |
Control panel | - | - | - |
Details | Details | Details |
Jump Start | Business | Business Plus | Super Power | |
Price |
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Memory (RAM) | 8 Gb | 12 Gb | 16 Gb | 20 Gb |
DDoS Protection | - | - | - | - |
Disk Space | 40 Gb | 80 Gb | 120 Gb | 160 Gb |
Platform | - | - | - | - |
Control panel | - | - | - | - |
CPU | - | - | - | - |
CPU Cores | 4 pcs | 8 pcs | 12 pcs | 16 pcs |
Details | Details | Details | Details |
Contacts
- Address: SiteGround.com Inc. 901 N Pitt St Ste 325 Alexandria VA 22314
- E-mail: reviews@siteground.com
- All
- General impression
- Support
- Reliability
- Price
- Website performance
- Website interface
- Control panel
- Livechat
- Payment process
- Security
Reviews (28)
- Sorting
Nothing unusual - average pricing and services. According to my client - support was pretty fast. I have checked the offerst they have and found a lot of free services included, plus they seem to have a paid security scanner, so I suggested my client using it.
Also noticed interesting thing - this company has special offers for students and education centers, which is cool I think.
- High–performance and secure hosting technology that includes; SSDs Memory, Content Delivery Network – CloudFlare and the latest version of PHP7 and Nginx server.
- Great tech/cust service.
- Features are great for it's prices.
Cons:
- Storage for shared hosting packages isn't that much. They only offer 10, 20 and 30GB respectively.
- Their hosting packages are only suitable for small and medium businesses but not for someone that has multiple websites as there's a limit on the traffic and also the storage.
We would be happy to check the performance of your account on server level and suggest steps you can take to improve the results you’re seeing. Reach our techs via the Support Centre in your client area or send us more details about your account (domain, email address) to reviews at siteground dot com so we can investigate.
We also want to remind you that on our GrowBig or higher plans you can take advantage of all levels of our caching system. In case your website is on WordPress we recommend using our SG Optimizer plugin that offers different options for improving speed. Talk to us directly so we can assist you further.
Regards,
SiteGround Team
Especially if someone is on WordPress then must try SiteGround as mostly WP sites loads slowly which is a big headache for developers.
Website speed is excellent in terms of GTMetrix result, and uptime is good as per testing. They offer free website transfer, SLL, and Cloudflare CDN that can help your website speed. Overall, I recommend their hosting services. And if you'll be using their service for your WordPress site, they are recommended by WordPress.org.
Pros:
- Great pricing
- Availability of features
Cons:
- Admin portal looks clunky / unprofessional
They recently updated their backend interface which looks good, but I find it's not quite as easy to use as the old one; perhaps just because I'm used to it.
Would highly recommend
Not only the price is reasonable but they have very cool extra features such as
sitebuilder
cloudfare cdn
sg site scanner
dedicated ip
Also my website speed is superfast. My website used to be on Squarespace website at first i was afraid moving it but now if i match its speed with Squarespace it is way much better and faster.
In wordpress hosting you can host more than one website, there is no additional charges if you want to set up a wordpress, it also allows you to make a copy of other website you were working on if you need help support is at hand only problem is you have to email them there is no livechat
The support was helpful and responsive.
I am not a fan of the clunky, outdated backend. But it did work, and I was able to accomplish every task. Overall, its good bang for your buck.
People see commercials for big name domain and hosting services and sign up because they've seen ads, but those services don't help people who need it the most.
SiteGround is not only affordable, but their service is top-notch. I just spent a half-hour chatting online with someone on support because I have a client who needs their site live while changes are made and they helped make it happened despite my limited knowledge of DNS records and A records and Staging, etc.
The uptime runtime is 99% and my website never gets down. Whenever they have to do maintenance they move your site into other data centers so it should stay live all the time.
The support staff is just incredible providing super technical and fast support 24/7 I am a very happy SiteGround customer and will always recommend this site to everyone. If you’re on another company get transferred to SiteGround now. Thank You
I find the customer support one of the best out there. They have a live chat on their site which I always appreciate and the response time is fantastic.
I have found issues with speed in the past but they seem to be correcting this issue recently with updates to their servers.
At first I was amazed by their speed. You can achieve an A score on GTMetrix easily with just a few tweeks on your website. Moreover, they even offer a Wordpress / Woocommerce managed hosting as well.
Finally, their support - whenever I needed them- were very fast and eager to help me out without too much back and forth on emails.
Their prices are more than OK for what they are offering.
Honestly, I can't think of a reason as to why someone wouldn't recommend their services.
We highly recommend not to purchase the cheapest hosting package. Usually, they come with a row of issues: the server is often down, the hardware is outdated, lousy and slow support, registration and payment errors, etc.
For your convenience, we have created a tool that can help you to choose the right hosting package for you just by answering a few simple questions.
CMS is a content management system. A lot of hosting providers offer so-called CMS optimized packages. However, this is a marketing trick because most CMSs do not have special software or hosting requirements.
Trial period is a period of time, usually from 7 to 30 days, during which you can use the hosting services for free to test them.
Moneyback policy allows the customer to receive a refund for his order within a certain period after the purchase.
OS means the operating system is installed on the server. We recommend to choose Linux hosting unless your website requires another OS.
Bulletproof hosting - it’s a type of service that allows to host almost any type of content, even the restricted one (adult content, warez, spam etc). Bulletproof hosting providers do not remove your content in case someone reports an abuse.
Unlimited hosting - refers to companies that provide packages with unlimited disk space, bandwidth, number of domains, databases or email accounts, etc. This is usually a marketing trick but sometimes you can find something worth a try.
Secure hosting - it’s a type of service when the hosting provider is mostly responsible for the security of the user’s account: updates the software installed on their servers, provides an antivirus and malware scanner, firewalls and basic anti-DDoS protection, etc.
DDoS-protected hosting - companies that provide packages that include anti-DDoS protection. These packages are considerably more expensive than regular ones. Nevertheless, they’re totally worth their price because the company will ensure that your website is secured from cyber attacks.
Most websites require MySQL and PHP installed on the server to work correctly. Almost all hosting providers support these technologies.
ASP.NET is a Microsoft web application development platform.
The more comfortable the control panel is, the easier will it be for you to change the website and hosting account settings.
Most hosting providers that are in TOP20 in our rating offer user-friendly control panels, such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin. That’s why we recommend to pay attention to other, more important parameters, while choosing a hosting provider.