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SiteGround

SiteGround Reviews

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated hosting provider in the WordPress community. They provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and secure as possible. They are known for the best 24/7 support in the industry which is why they’re an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. This is also why we use SiteGround for hosting the WPBeginner website. SiteGround features include automatic upgrades, built-in WP caching, CDN, one-click staging and GIT version control. They are also one of the few companies offering location specific hosting with 6 data centers in USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. On top of all this, they have а special 63% discount for WPBeginner readers.

Last seen 8 hours ago
Reviewed by: Syed Balkhi
Rating:

SiteGround Review from Our Experts

Siteground is one of the most recommended WordPress hosting companies. They are known for their top notch customer support and fast reliable hosting plans. Their WordPress optimized hosting includes everything you’ll need to create and grow a successful blog. Read our complete SiteGround review to find out if SiteGround is the right host for you.

In this detailed SiteGround review, we will put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:

  • Performance: Speed is crucial for the success of your 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 will need to build your website?
  • Pricing: How much it would cost you? Are there any SiteGround deals that can save you money?

Bottom line: Don’t want to read all the details? Let us summarize it for you. 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.

It is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria with offices in 6 locations and data centers in three continents. Today, the company has more than 400 employees and hosts more than 500,000 domains.

Siteground

Pros and Cons of SiteGround

Each hosting company has its own pros and cons. Some advantages can overshadow the disadvantages, but some cons can be a total deal breaker for your individual needs.

Before making a decision, you may want to review these SiteGround pros and cons.

Pros

Here are some of the 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 are equipped with latest hardware like SSD drives and custom software to make sure that your site is super fast.
  • Top Notch Customer Support Their customer support is amazing to say the least. They offer 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket based support.
  • Free CDN and SSL They offer instant setup of Cloudflare’s free CDN and free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
  • Multiple Server Locations They have data centers in three continents. You can choose the location you prefer during signup.

Cons

As we mentioned earlier, there are some downsides with every hosting company. These 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, then you will most likely never need extra storage.
  • Setup fee for monthly billing: There is a $14.95 setup fee if you choose monthly billing. But if you sign up for a longer billing period, then you’ll get bigger discount and no setup fee. 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 metric that you should look for. A faster website offers good user experience and boosts your SEO at the same time.

In fact, a single second delay can cause 7% decrease in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Website speed study by Strangeloop

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:

SiteGround speed test

As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (649 ms to be precise) for a server in Dallas, Texas. That means our site is faster than 95% of tested sites.

This is incredible, but this website had almost no traffic so the Pingdom test alone is not sufficient.

To test how SiteGround servers would respond to increased traffic, we used a tool called LoadImpact.

This tool gradually sends up to 100 users to see how the server would respond to increased traffic from multiple connections.

You can see the results in the chart below:

SiteGround loadimpact test results

The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server load time. SiteGround performed almost consistently except for a spike when there were 50 users on the site. It quickly recovered and page load time remained steadily low even with more users.

This test shows that if you are looking for a really fast website, then SiteGround can be a perfect choice for you.

Typically, websites hosted on shared hosting account slow down a bit during top traffic hours. That’s because your site is sharing resources with other websites on that server.

Most shared hosting companies automatically kill 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 uptime test results

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 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.

SiteGround server response time from multiple locations

As you can see, SiteGround is a great choice if your target audience is mostly located in the United States. The server responded in fraction of a second in the United States.

It responded within less than a second for all locations, except Japan. If your target audience is mostly located in Japan, then you can ask SiteGround to move your site to their Asia-Pacific data center.

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 and beginners. 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 performance of your website.
  • Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting is a flexible upgrade to shared hosting. It allows you to use resources of multiple servers on a cloud architecture. It is suitable for growing websites, popular blogs, or businesses.
  • Dedicated servers: Dedicated servers give you a complete server for your website. It is more expensive but gives you a lot more power. The downside is that you will have to manage the server yourself.
  • Enterprise hosting: This plan is for large businesses and high traffic sites with challenging server requirements. Get in touch with SiteGround team and they will create a tailor-made plan to suit your needs.

Breakdown of SiteGround’s Shared Hosting Plans

SiteGround’s shared hosting is the best way to start a new website. Their shared plans 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 having 10,000 monthly visitors. You’ll also get all essential features like 1-click WordPress install, free setup, website transfer, daily backups, and more.
  • GrowBig: The GrowBig plan lets you host unlimited websites. It comes with 20 GB disk space and is suitable for hosting websites having 25,000 monthly visitors. You’ll get all the features of the Startup plan, plus you’ll get premium features like Super Cacher, 1-year free wildcard SSL, and more.
  • GoGeek: GoGeek plan is suiteable for small eCommerce websites. It can handle websites having 100,000 monthly visitors. In addition to all GrowBig’s features, you’ll get access to more advanced features like one-click git repo creation, WordPress and Joomla staging, and more.

SiteGround shared plans

SiteGround Support and Customer Service

You will see high praise for SiteGround’s customer support service everywhere. They are 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’s get first response within less than 10 minutes.

For users who prefer to fix things on their own, SiteGround offers a large collection of knowledge base articles with screenshots, videos, tutorials, and guides.

Conclusion: Is SiteGround the Right Choice for You?

After reading our detailed SiteGround review, you might be wondering if SiteGround is the right choice for your website?

If you want fast and reliable web hosting service with great customer support, then SiteGround is perfect for you. They have hosting plans for every budget and each plan comes with great set of features.

All their shared hosting plans include SSD storage, easy setup of Let’s Encrypt free SSL and Cloudflare CDN service, 1-click WordPress installer, and free migration.

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% off 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.

4,293 SiteGround User Reviews

  1. Dafinka Paskova says:
    Oct 21, 2020 at 6:00 pm

    Super fast response and support! They solved the problem immediately! Thank you so much!

    Reply
  2. Roger Garlin says:
    Oct 21, 2020 at 1:17 am

    SiteGround continues to provide excellent customer service. I dealt with two reps over a week or so – Vladimir I and Elian – and both were friendly, knowledgeable and very helpful.

    5 stars all ’round – for Vladimir, Elian and SiteGround as a c ompany.
    Roger

    Reply
  6. Kathy Littlemore says:
    Oct 18, 2020 at 3:30 am

    Totyu was a great help today. Siteground help is second to none and the reason I am with them for my hosting.

    Reply
  8. Russel says:
    Oct 16, 2020 at 10:19 am

    Vasil went above and beyond to help me out. Incredible service. Thank you and keep up the good work

    Reply
  9. Mercy Nasiru says:
    Oct 15, 2020 at 5:09 pm

    Thanks Peter. That was really helpful. thanks for going the extra mile to speak to your superiors on my behalf. I was satisfied with support

    Reply
  12. Fehmida Basit says:
    Oct 13, 2020 at 4:56 am

    It was a nice chatting and very helpful and the agent was knowledgeful and eager to help

    Reply
  14. Hayley Winchcombe says:
    Oct 9, 2020 at 11:03 pm

    Atanas helped me swiftly and effectively! Saving us a lot of hassle and heartache fixing an issue on our site. Thank you SiteGround – excellent service.

    Reply
  16. John \\ says:
    Oct 5, 2020 at 2:50 pm

    Martin M was super helpful, insightful and quick to respond. Thank you Martin for taking the time to help me.

    Reply
  17. john ruark says:
    Oct 5, 2020 at 8:06 am

    Amazing help! quick response, very knowledgeble!

    you guys really give an amazing service!

    Reply
  20. Melynda says:
    Sep 29, 2020 at 4:52 pm

    Dobromir just helped me at SiteGround. He’s wonderful. He doesn’t just solve the problems for me but goes out of his way to educate me. I love that!

    Reply
  24. Mario Flores says:
    Sep 23, 2020 at 4:53 am

    Siteground was amazing, the assistance is incredible, always available. Currently they are migrating from cpanel to a custom made administration interface that is very poor and the migration process causes problems. I have 100 + sites there but do not recommend it any more.

    Reply
  25. Erik says:
    Sep 19, 2020 at 1:02 pm

    Ok. I have to tell you that SiteGround is THE BEST! You all are so helpful. I can’t say enough good about what you do. Each and every time I need help you’re there with an answer. THE BEST!

    Reply
  28. Pam Blackman says:
    Sep 14, 2020 at 11:03 am

    I had some security concerns and the representative who helped me got right to the issue and went above and beyond checking things out to assure me all was well. I really appreciate the peace of mind he provided.

    Reply
  29. Langston Amadi says:
    Sep 7, 2020 at 12:03 am

    I would offer 100 stars if possible. Tayfun helped me out right away with my CDN issue. As it is Sunday, I thought I would have to wait 24 hours to receive assistance. Tayfun was kind and helped resolved my issue. Thank you once again for your support

    Best regards,

    Langston Amadi

    Reply
  30. Kosta Kondratenko says:
    Aug 24, 2020 at 11:22 pm

    Use SiteGround for all my sites (I’m a web dev). Their customer support is absolutely suberb. Not only are the contacts very knowledgable but they have a great attitude. Support is such an important thing with hosting companies for me – and SiteGround always delivers.

    Reply
  31. Kelley Wilson says:
    Aug 18, 2020 at 7:31 pm

    I have been battling trying to get emails set up on my client’s account all day. Eliyan jumped right in and after just 10 minutes, we solved it! I am thrilled! what an amazing customer service technician! You guys better hold on to him with both hands, he’s amazing!

    Reply
  32. Susan says:
    Aug 12, 2020 at 5:49 am

    I had to migrate stuff from one website to another. I tried to do it with a friend. Mistakes were made. Siteground (Ervin) helped me out and sorted this for me. I don’t have a clue about any of this so I can’t thank them enough. Professional, courteous and technically proficient. Awesome stuff

    Reply
  33. Christina says:
    Aug 7, 2020 at 9:33 pm

    I had to transfer my site from the subdomain to the domain and just wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly and she was Super helpful. Took care of it instantly and it was seamless!! Must appreciated on a late Friday Night after a long week.

    Reply
  34. Ved says:
    Aug 6, 2020 at 12:14 am

    Absolutely the best customer support! No other hosting service can match their dedication and response time. It’s pretty insane to me as someone who’s a SaaS entrepreneur how they keep up such a HQ service.

    Reply
  35. Leon Chu says:
    Jul 18, 2020 at 7:11 am

    Wonderful support and vert polite and knowledgeable !! Put me at peace … we get nervous we put so much time and effort building the site and when something goes wrong we get frustrated! Thanks for your quick response!! I couldn’t ask for more !!!!

    Reply
  36. Christine says:
    Jul 17, 2020 at 10:51 am

    Clear, simple and efficient customer service provided on my first interaction with the SiteGround team. The online comments are correct about the CS excellence. I’m very happy with my decision to host with them so far.

    Reply
  37. Stacey says:
    Jul 15, 2020 at 8:26 pm

    Siteground has been always been the best company to work with. Every person I’ve spoken with has been knowledgeable and helpful. I highly recommend them.

    Reply
  38. Gilles Gauthier says:
    Jul 14, 2020 at 3:08 pm

    I have nothing but praise for the support at Siteground. As soon as I can, I wll be back with another website with Siteground.
    Thank you all.

    Reply
  42. amy levine says:
    Jul 1, 2020 at 11:26 pm

    Viktor is just AWESOME. I’m not advanced, but he doesn’t make me feel awkward. I just really appreciate his support and humor. Thanks SiteGround for having the best support. I’m a new customer, and I’m planning to host several more websites with you!

    Reply
  43. Margie says:
    Jul 1, 2020 at 6:46 pm

    Super Support! Thanks so much. You have the patience of a saint with a non-techie like myself! Much Appreciated!

    Reply
  47. Helen Betts says:
    Jul 1, 2020 at 5:21 am

    Fantastic support, with very helpful and friendly staff together with easy to use processes, SiteGround has been a great help to me setting up my first website.

    Reply
  48. TAN CHONG YI says:
    Jun 30, 2020 at 6:58 am

    DOBRIN IS EXTREMELY PATIENCE, FRIENDLY AND HELPFUL!!! Really a smooth experience!! THUMBS UP!!!

    Reply
  49. Gary Lindasy says:
    Jun 29, 2020 at 5:19 pm

    Ivaylo in tech support was quick, courteous, and professional.

    He walked me through initial setup. Good job!.

    Reply
  50. Tom says:
    Jun 29, 2020 at 4:02 pm

    Stefan provided excellent, fast, and friendly support. Saved me from a lot of pain and grief. Thanks!

    Reply

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