Siteground is one of the most recommended WordPress hosting companies. They are known for their top-notch customer support, reliable, and fast hosting plans. Their WordPress optimized hosting includes everything you’ll need to create and grow a successful website or blog. Read our complete SiteGround review to find out if SiteGround is the right host for you.
In this detailed SiteGround review, we’ll put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:
- Performance: Speed is crucial for the success of any website. How fast will your website load with SiteGround?
- Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without facing any downtime?
- Customer Support: Can you count on their customer support?
- Features: Do they offer all the features and tools you’ll need to build your website?
- Pricing: How much would it cost you? Are there any SiteGround deals that can save you money?
This is a comprehensive SiteGround review with a detailed analysis of SiteGround’s hosting service. If you don’t want to read the full hosting review, here is the quick scorecard with our verdict right below it.
| SiteGround Review Summary | |
|---|---|
| Performance grade | A+ |
| Average load time | 397 ms |
| Average response time | 123 ms |
| Free domain | Yes |
| Free SSL | Yes |
| 1-click WordPress | Yes |
| Support | Phone / Live Chat / Knowledge base |
| Start with SiteGround | |
Bottom line: We found SiteGround to be noticeably faster and extremely reliable. Their hosting plans are flexible, and their customer support is one of the best in the industry.
That’s why we’ve chosen to recommend SiteGround as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.
Now let’s dive into our detailed SiteGround review so that you can see how we reached that conclusion and decide for yourself.
About SiteGround
Siteground was founded in 2004, and since then, it has grown into one of the most well-known hosting companies.
SiteGround is a holding of companies registered in the USA, UK, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Spain, with data centers on three continents. Today, the company has over 500 employees and hosts over 2,000,000 domains.
Pros and Cons of SiteGround
Each hosting company has its pros and cons. Some advantages can overshadow the disadvantages, but some cons can be a total deal-breaker for your needs.
Before making a decision, you may want to review these SiteGround pros and cons.
Pros
Here are some advantages that make SiteGround one of the top-rated hosting companies in the world.
- Super fast servers: All SiteGround servers are highly optimized for speed. They use the Google Cloud platform for all new customers, which is one of the fastest platforms on the market.
- Top Notch Customer Support: Their customer support is amazing, to say the least. They offer 24/7 phone support, live chat, and ticket-based support.
- Free CDN and SSL They offer an instant setup of Cloudflare’s free CDN and free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
- Multiple Server Locations They have data centers on three continents. You can choose the location you prefer during signup.
Cons
As we mentioned earlier, there are some downsides to every hosting company. The following are some disadvantages of choosing SiteGround as your host.
- Limited Storage: Their plans come with fixed storage. However, this storage is quite large, and if you are just starting out, you will most likely never need extra storage.
- Higher fee for monthly billing: The hosting service gets expensive if you choose monthly billing. But if you sign up for a longer billing period, then you’ll get a bigger discount and a lower rate. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee anyway, so it’s a good idea to choose a longer billing period when you sign up.
SiteGround Performance
While price often plays a significant role when choosing a web host, you cannot compromise on performance.
This is why we decided to run our own tests to thoroughly review SiteGround’s performance.
SiteGround Speed Test Results
Speed is one of the most important performance metrics that you should look for. A faster website offers a good user experience and boosts your SEO at the same time.
In fact, a single-second delay can cause a 7% decrease in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
We created a WordPress-powered test site on SiteGround and filled it with dummy content for theme development with images.
After that, we used Pingdom’s website speed test tool to run our tests. These were the results we got:
As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (417 ms to be precise) with a performance score of 95.
This is incredible, but this website had almost no traffic, so the Pingdom test alone is insufficient.
To test how SiteGround servers would respond to increased traffic, we used a stress testing tool called K6 by Grafana Labs.
This tool gradually sends up to 50 users to see how the server would respond to increased traffic from multiple connections.
You can see the results in the chart below:
The purple line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the light blue line is the server response time. SiteGround performed consistently throughout the test without any hiccups.
This test shows that if you are looking for a really fast website, then SiteGround can be a perfect choice for you.
One of the reasons why SiteGround performed exceptionally well in these performance tests is because of the recent innovations they’ve added.
Almost all SiteGround servers are now hosted on the Google Cloud Platform. They’ve also added UltraFast PHP and created a custom WordPress plugin for optimization (SG Optimizer), which really puts them in a premium web hosting category.
Typically, websites hosted on shared hosting accounts slow down during top traffic hours. That’s because your site is sharing resources with other websites on that server.
Most shared hosting companies automatically kill the server process if your site is taking too many resources. This causes downtime on your website.
We tested our SiteGround site for the downtime and got 100% uptime result.
SiteGround Server Response Time
Your website’s content has a huge impact on page load time. For example, if you have high-resolution images on a page, then it will significantly increase the overall page load time.
This means that speed test results may not accurately reflect how fast your hosting server really is.
Instead of analyzing page load time alone, we decided to test the actual server response time as well.
To do this, we used a tool called Bitcatcha. It ignores page content and only tests the response time of the server.
Bitcatcha also gives you average loading speed from different global locations. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
Take a look at the results in the screenshot below.
As you can see, SiteGround is a great choice if your target audience is mostly located in the United States. The server responded in a fraction of a second in the United States.
It responded within less than a second for all locations.
SiteGround also allows you to change your server location and you can choose a data center closer to your target audience for even better response times in that particular region.
SiteGround Hosting Plans and Features
SiteGround offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting plans. If you are just starting out, then their shared hosting plans would be a perfect fit for your needs. However, your site will eventually grow, and you want to make sure that they have other plans that you can upgrade to.
Let’s check out SiteGround’s hosting plans and their features.
- Shared hosting: Shared hosting is recommended for new websites, bloggers, small business website,s or a startup online store. It is suitable for low-traffic websites as you will be sharing resources with other websites hosted on the server.
- WordPress hosting: This plan is WordPress optimized version of their shared hosting plan. It comes with SiteGround’s in-house WordPress optimizations to improve the performance of your website. See SiteGround WordPress hosting.
- WooCommerce hosting: This plan is a WooCommerce optimized version of their shared hosting plan. It includes SiteGround’s optimizations, which greatly improve the performance of your online store. See SiteGround WooCommerce hosting.
- Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting plans provide a flexible upgrade to a shared hosting solution. It allows you to use resources of cloud architecture, including multiple cores CPU and bandwidth. It is suitable for growing websites, popular blogs, or businesses. It can also be an upgrade over VPS and traditional dedicated servers. See SiteGround Cloud hosting.
WPBeginner website is hosted on SiteGround’s Enterprise hosting infrastructure which is an enhanced version of their Cloud platform for large sites.
Breakdown of SiteGround’s Shared Hosting Plans
SiteGround’s shared hosting options are the best way to build a new website. Their shared hosting packages are available in three levels to match different budgets.
- Startup: This plan is limited to hosting one website. It includes 10 GB disk space and is suitable for hosting a website with 10,000 monthly visitors. You’ll also get all essential features like a 1-click WordPress install, free setup, website transfer, daily backups, built-in caching (SuperCacher), free CDN, free SSL, and more.
- GrowBig: The GrowBig plan lets you host unlimited websites. It comes with 20 GB of disk space and is suitable for hosting websites with 25,000 monthly visits. You’ll get all the features of the Startup plan, plus you’ll get premium features like ultrafast PHP for even faster speed, on-demand backups, an easy staging tool, and the option to add collaborators to your sites.
- GoGeek: GoGeek plan is suitable for eCommerce websites. It can handle websites having 100,000 monthly visitors. In addition to all GrowBig’s features, you’ll get access to priority support, more server resources, advanced features like one-click git repo creation, and the option to manage white-label clients on your sites.
Each Siteground plan comes with faster disk storage, email accounts, support for the Cloudflare free content delivery network, and Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificate.
They also include several popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, OptinMonster, and All in One SEO to help you improve your website rankings.
SiteGround Support and Customer Service
You’ll see high praise for SiteGround’s customer support service everywhere. Their support team is remarkably good at offering quick, helpful, and knowledgeable support to their customers.
Their customer support includes 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket-based email support. Their phone and live chat response times are almost instant. Email-based tickets get the first response within less than 10 minutes.
For users who prefer to fix things on their own, SiteGround offers an instant AI assistant. Built on top of ChatGPT, this AI is trained to answer SiteGround customer questions.
The helo resource center also includes a massive collection of knowledge base articles.
This includes step-by-step tutorials and troubleshooting guides with screenshots and videos.
Since we use SiteGround to host several of our websites, we can say with confidence that their support staff is very knowledgeable.
Conclusion: Is SiteGround the Right Choice for You?
After reading our detailed SiteGround review, you might be wondering if SiteGround is the best web hosting company for your website.
If you want a fast and reliable web hosting provider with excellent customer support, then SiteGround is perfect for you. They have hosting plans for every budget, and each plan comes with a great set of features.
All their shared hosting plans include SSD storage, site tools, easy setup of Let’s Encrypt free SSL and Cloudflare CDN service, 1-click WordPress installer, and free migration. Built-in security features protect your website against malware, and you can add additional protection by turning on Cloudflare CDN functionality.
If you are just starting a website for the first time, then you will certainly appreciate SiteGround’s customer support.
Ready to get started with SiteGround? Click here to choose your hosting plan today.
SiteGround Coupon
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 70% discount and free SSL with our SiteGround coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to purchase. The discount will be applied automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions about SiteGround Hosting
In this detailed SiteGround review, we looked at all aspects of their hosting services. The following are some of the most frequently asked questions about SiteGround that we are asked by our users.
1. Where are SiteGround servers located?
SiteGround servers are located in the United States, Europe, and Singapore. You can choose the server location during sign up.
2. Why choose SiteGround for WordPress hosting?
SiteGround offers a highly optimized WordPress hosting platform. Each plan includes its own in-house security features and WordPress tweaks that boost your WordPress site speed and performance.
You can easily set up a WordPress website with their 1-click WordPress installation. You can also move existing WordPress websites using the SiteGround Migrator plugin.
This is why SiteGround is an officially recommended hosting provider for WordPress users.
3. Does SiteGround support WooCommerce?
SiteGround specializes in WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. If you are building a WooCommerce store, then you can rely on SiteGround’s optimizations for consistent performance and reliability.
They are one of the top WooCommerce hosting providers and make it super easy to start an online store without any special technical skills.
4. Does SiteGround offer a website builder?
No, SiteGround does not offer its own site builder. That’s because they want users to have the option to pick the best website builder for their needs.
This is why they allow you to easily install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Weebly, and many other site builder platforms.
On the SiteGround platform, you can also create unlimited web pages without any restrictions.
5. Does SiteGround offer cPanel hosting?
No, SiteGround no longer offers cPanel hosting. Once cPanel raised its licensing fees, SiteGround decided to remove cPanel hosting and instead built a far superior web hosting control panel for both beginners and advanced users. This allows them to offer managed WordPress hosting-like features without the high costs.
6. Is SiteGround better than Bluehost?
SiteGround and Bluehost used to offer the same features, but with recent innovations, SiteGround has significantly improved its hosting technology.
Regarding overall performance, technology infrastructure, and support quality, SiteGround is better than Bluehost. However, with all this innovation, SiteGround pricing is significantly higher.
So, when it comes to pricing, Bluehost is better than SiteGround because not only is it 50% cheaper, but it also offers a free domain name with each account.
For more details, see our honest comparison of SiteGround vs. Bluehost vs. WP Engine.
7. How does SiteGround compare with other hosting providers?
Readers often ask us how SiteGround compares with GoDaddy, Hostinger, HostGator, GreenGeeks, DreamHost, A2 Hosting, and other web hosting services.
They all used to provide similar features and technology, but over the last year, SiteGround has really stepped up its innovation.
With all the managed WordPress hosting features, Google Cloud infrastructure, and custom performance optimization, SiteGround is now in a class of its own with its premium hosting.
8. Does SiteGround offer a free domain name?
No, SiteGround does not offer a free domain name. You can buy a domain name from another registrar and point it to your SiteGround account or buy one from SiteGround during signup at an additional cost.
9. Can I cancel my SiteGround account and get a refund?
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all their shared plans. You can try out their services during this period. You are eligible for a refund if you cancel your account during this period. However, domain name registrations are non-refundable.
10. Which SiteGround plan is best for me?
Each SiteGround plan has different server resources. However, if you are just starting out, then their Startup plan would be perfect for that. You can upgrade at any time if you need more resources. Choose your SiteGround plan to get started.
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Telmo Pires says
I have two accounts with SiteGround and I am a very happy customer.
The best costumer support I ever experienced.
The staff is very knowledgeable, patient and fast.
The best web hosting company for sure.
THANKS guys!
Sam says
All I can say: Another tech support chat – another unbelievably excellent experience. Pleasant, efficient, competent, persistent, patient – even with an amateur, explained things in detailed way, offered links to helpful Siteground guides on issues. I never had support like this – anywhere. No one can ask for better.
Nazreen Daud says
SiteGround customer support is simply outstanding. Quick to be summoned, they solve your problem in no time, and they even offer a little personality. I’m overall satisfied.
They should be the top leading hosting company for speed and customer service!
neeraj says
Amazing helpful support. great service. most recommended hosting option.
nicole f says
Absolutelt wonderful experience! so glad i switched to siteground! XD
Eva Wimmer says
Excellent, superfast and extremely friendly support. I couldn’t be much more satisfied.
I <3 siteground :))
Dave Meir says
The technical support at Site Ground is beyond compare. They respond almost immediately and always go above and beyond my questions. I can design websites from WordPress templates but I’m no kind of coder. Site Ground tech support always understands and always answers my questions. I couldn’t do what I do without their help.
Stephanie says
I was in a chat with support and it was absolutely brilliant. I only just signed up to SiteGround tonight and it was all a blur trying to link my websites to new hosting and everything was confusing me. Long story short, I had no idea what I was doing. They cleared up any confusion I had by not judging my “stupid questions” (which they told me were not stupid and in fact very logical questions) and answered them in simple terms for me to understand! They were patient and dealt with my queries, fixed my problems, and I came out of that chat very satisfied. 5 stars.
Jon Loveless says
I recently switched 3 sites from GoDaddy to SiteGround. SG offers amazing support for the whole process through their ticketing system. I knew what was going on and what I needed to do at all times. I am am usually a bit impatient when waiting for things like site transfer, but SG got it done quickly and correctly. I am very impressed so far. Thanks, folks!
mike irwin says
awesome support for several years now – previous hosting companies paled in comparison. for a small developer these guys rock .super skilled, super fast ,super helpful
what can i say !
Ram Tamargo says
Suppot answered all my questions promptly and clearly. The reviews don’t lie. I am using Siteground because of their excellent support and will continue to do so.
Karan Kapoor says
SiteGround gives the best service I ever had… Highly recommend SiteGround
Patricia Mitchell says
I am using Joomla for several of my websites, all of which are hosted with SiteGround. I have been with them for several years and the most impressive thing about this host, in my view, is their technical support.
They always solve my problems, usually respond within an hour, and nothing is too much trouble for them.
With their help, I have been able to rescue one site completely that simply refused to work for me. Cannot recommend them highly enough.
Lynne says
Shout out to support who was wonderful solving my issues through chat! Love this feature and that Site Ground has the best reps who know their stuff and how to treat a customer!
Thanks
jerry Parker says
This support staff saved me. Thanks site Ground. I had chosen you guys because of the high customer service reviews…now I just experienced it!
Kelly says
Amazing live chat support- I have asked for help three times and all three times I have gotten exactly what I needed and then more! The FAQ is helpful as well—
Chris Justin says
Incredibly helpful customer service.
They’ve saved my site from my own incompetence twice just today. Thrilling to work with a company who takes care of you so well, even if you’ve messed up elsewhere (e.g. via my registrar and WP theme).
Will only be using them for my hosting needs going forward.
J says
All SG interactions to date on chat have been helpful and responsive. Only today after ~10 chats have I run into a shortcoming in Webmail, but not because of SG service, just some functionality that I hoped would be available. Thanks to SG.
Tracie Sanim says
Thank you for resolving an issue with a few quirks – the tutorial information was slightly different from the solution. Completed and resolved with ease!!
Maria Flynn says
Always available and always helpful – worth it’s weight in gold!
Steve Borsch says
Just had *another* great session with SG tech support. Just need to say that SG’s support is absolutely superb, these folks know their stuff, and I couldn’t be in better hands.
Thanks!
Carol Ann Quibell says
Without a doubt this is the best hosting company with excellent customer service and consistent. I have a reseller account and when transferring a clients website to my site ground reseller account the previous host was a huge problem. Plus due to my inexperience this was a very difficult transfer. SiteGround was awesome! They helped me every step of the way and at no time did anyone lose patience with me or try and pass it onto anyone else. I absolutely recommend SiteGround – no questions asked.
Janet Jackson says
This is the third time I’ve “chatted” with Support from Siteground. Never disappointed – always thrilled! This site rocks! I have a lot of experience with many host sites and I highly recommend Siteground. All the products so far are good, but the support is exceptional! Thank you.
Alan Anderson says
SiteGround support is FANTASTIC!!
Every time I chat my problem gets resolved.
Their technical people are very knowledgeable and always prepared to go the extra mile.
I’ve had bad experiences with other hosting sites but these guys are amazing
William Gillett says
Siteground is the best. They cater to developers and it shows. Their full support of letsencrypt is a good indication of their philosophy. I am so pleased since I left hostgator. Siteground always focuses the customer and solving problems from a customer perspective, unlike hostgator who always seems to want to upsell me.
Bud Durden says
SiteGround is the best WordPress hosting I’ve used to date. Solid performance and support.
Deirdre says
I just got signed up online for a new blog/web site I want to start. After years with other hosting companies for other projects, this was the EASIEST and FASTEST set up and the online assistance was stellar, walking me through the whole process quickly and easily. Reasonably priced, I’m looking forward to working on the site I’ve started with Siteground. So far the customer service seems to be excellent!
Andrei says
Good offering of a commodity service. Nothing to complain about on the performance/interface side, or at least for that little that I use it for. Decent tech support too. My only grief is the borderline shady practice when they sold a CloudFlare add-on which comes across as a CloudFlare Pro at a discount but it isn’t. You are forced to switch your DNS to SiteGround if you want to use more than one subdomain. No indication of that before you pay a year in full. And it evidently it’s non-refundable. To their credit they offered to refund once I have filed a credit card dispute and now it’s been months going back and forth with the customer support trying to get this money back. Feels like they are screwing with me, will see how it goes… A strange way to treat customers in this competitive market.
Another thing that raised a red flag was the fact that they ask for your password to verify your account over the phone.
Definitely pulling my accounts out.
SiteGround says
Hi Andrei,
We checked your case and we would like to add some clarifications. Our review revealed that we have agreed to refund you the money for the Cloudflare service that was not a good fit for your needs. However, parallel to discussing that with our team you have also submitted a chargeback via your credit card company. As a result, the refund process couldn’t be completed. Since you are disputing the payment the money is blocked and we are not able to operate with it. Even though you have contacted us with an update that you requested a reversal of the chargeback from your bank, we have not received any confirmation from you documenting the reversal.
Please note our payment provider doesn’t have proof of such activity from your bank either and still shows the status of the chargeback as active. For this reason, the case will be fully resolved by the financial entities and it is outside of our control.
Regards,
SiteGround Team
Mish Surname says
Every day I get more and more happy that I chose SiteGround. I picked it on a bunch of technical requirements. I recommend it because of the amazing customer service. My capabilities scratch the surface of using the internet and I have no wish to go deeper. The SiteGround team are as happy to support me as they a professional web developer.
Adrien GEORGE says
Man,
I cannot say how the support of siteground is awesome. You see when you are stressed, something not working properly on your website. Just go to the support, I love these guys. They will solve the problem no matter what. And they are human. Love them ! Transfer everything to them as I did
Henry Hu says
SiteGround is your BEST choice if you take STABILITY and QUALITY as first priority when you purchase services.
I am not a technical guy but in love with playing a bit with websites. I develop projects with websites sometimes for personal purposes. Every support I’ve asked are all well taking care of with nice attitudes.
SiteGround gives me the space to focus on what I attempt to, instead of wasting time on things I’m not good at.
Parashuram Singade says
Siteground helps us in providing the best services to our clients.
Sylvain says
Very good communication
Mario Collavo says
Great customer service, I chatted with support staff who were gentle, prompt and well prepared.
I had to transfer a domain and they answered all my questions patiently, I rated a well deserved 5 stars!
Alison Cummings says
I’ve needed to contact pre-sales a few times to get info for a client. I’m recommending a move to a new host.
Every time I’ve contacted SiteGround, I’ve received timely responses from very helpful, patient people.
This is *one* of the litmus tests (to me) for finding a reliable, professional host. Sure, pre-sales may tend to be less problematic than dealing with a serious site issue. But I’ve found other vendors to become a bit surly when asked more than three questions.
Online research has led to additional resources, such as this site, with useful reviews (pros and cons) on SiteGround that have cemented my positive impression.
Bruce Macfarlane says
Helpdesk is fantastic, and the cPanel toolset legendary!
Easy for a novice, or expert to use.
Omar Mohsen says
I have hosting on Blue-host, IPage, Hostgator, In-motion .
Siteground is the best Service! The absolute best in the industry.
Sam says
I just transferred my site to siteground. Their initial setup was super fast and flawless. I had initial support questions about setup. I chose live chat service – everything you could ask for. Fast, clear directions, expert advice, easy communications. EXCELLENT!
Joerg says
Absolutely best customer service we ever received from a hosting company. We recently changed one of our hosting plans to SiteGround and, after a few chats and tickets with their support, re-gained the trust that there are still companies out there providing amazing support to their customers. Thanks a lot. We will soon move all of our hosting accounts over.
Ahmet Kemal Babacan says
Best costumer service i have ever seen in the industry. Thanks.
Fahad Rana says
Excellency is the only thing that I’ve seen so far. The best in the industry.
Yosuke Sato says
The siteground is consistently awesome! I love the speed of the site and support team. I really hope this company keeps doing the same thing for years to come.
Volker says
Regardless what issue I am running into with my website, or what question I have, their support is absolutely brilliant. Not only the online chat always connects you within seconds with highly professional and experienced personnel, also the ticket system is a real charm with responds times of just some minutes in average. I am with SG for more than 2 years now, coming from another host, and I am super happy with what I got! Running 2 WP installations (1 with Woocommerce) and another Joomla installation.
ARAMIDE AKINNIYI says
I have just transferred my website and hosting to Sitegroup, in fact, the customer service is awesome, they are there anytime you need them.
Collin Helmers says
In a world of web hosts that seem great and then fall apart in terms of uptime, speed, and support, SiteGround sets the friggin’ standard. Never again will I recommend any other company as my client’s web hosts when speed and specialised support are part of the equation. SiteGround is the best. Period.
RW says
From the beginning, I have found Siteground to be the easiest and most reliable experience I’ve ever encountered in web hosting. Support is incredibly helpful, fast, and accurate. The server speeds are very good too. I HIGHLY recommend them.
Rob says
I’m always amazed at the quality of Support with Siteground. Support is within minutes, ensures the problem is resolved and works. A very happy customer
Holly says
Hello, I just can’t say enough good about your chat service! I spoke with support today and they walked me through everything! I am a beginner and they just eased my mind and made everything so simple to set up. I was on the chat with her for an hour. Support staff was patient and informative and so helpful! I have a really good feeling about this host
Paul says
I just spent 2 hours with support. They were incredibly patient and accommodating and got me through a very long, complex technical task. These guys have always provided incredible support. They are a world ahead of iPage and Greengeeks who I have used a lot lately.
I am moving everyone I know to Siteground. Faster, better, world class support.
Shawn Rosvold says
I am not very technically oriented, so I was having some trouble with a new domain name, redirects, etc. Support walked me through everything and was extremely helpful. I love these guys!