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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. 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 3 data centers in USA, Europe, and Asia. On top of all this, they have а special 70% 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.

3,316 SiteGround User Reviews

  2. Graham Hobbs says:
    Sep 17, 2019 at 5:50 am

    Had two problems tonight and two different support reps helped me out in no time at all.
    Siteground has to be the best Hosting company I have ever dealt with.
    Great staff. Extremely polite and knowledgable.
    I recommend Siteground to all and sundry.

    Reply
  9. Rama says:
    Sep 16, 2019 at 10:04 am

    I am really impressed with Siteground support. The guys are well informed about the issue, always available in few mins.

    Reply
  12. Mohamed Ali says:
    Sep 15, 2019 at 7:57 pm

    I had a chat with your agent Miladen (I might have spelt wrong, sorry) on a billing issue and he was highly professional and efficient, at the same time very helpful.

    Thank you,
    Mohamed Ali

    Reply
  13. Vicki McCay says:
    Sep 15, 2019 at 3:19 pm

    Aleksander was awesome. Took my problem and got me going in less than 20 minutes. Thanks so much.

    Reply
  14. OLUGU MOSES says:
    Sep 15, 2019 at 7:31 am

    I am overwhelmed for the great and wonderful assistance and guides given to me by one of the customer care assistant, the way he guided me throughout the process of correcting my account that was having problem, and immediately all were fantastic, i appreciate Sitegroung for providing their clients with a wonderful customer care assistant, they are so fantastic.

    Reply
  15. Noor M says:
    Sep 15, 2019 at 3:46 am

    The hosting and response time is excellent. The support is responsive with various channels to contact. Worth every cent of the paid amount. Go-Geek is the plan to look for if you are looking for all bells and whistles.

    Reply
  17. Erika says:
    Sep 14, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    Martin was amazing. He quickly assisted me with changing my MX records and made the process painless and easy.

    Reply
  18. Md Kamrul Hasan says:
    Sep 14, 2019 at 3:54 pm

    My site was infected by malware. But I did not know what to do. Siteground warned me to suspend my account if I did not remove malware from my hosting site. But when I checked I saw many files were infected by malware. I am not technically sound. Instead of go for a paid service I request them to solve it on behalf of me for free.

    They response my request. And after some time they removed all malware from my site. So if I give them thanks, it will not be enough for their work.

    Best of Luck Siteground, I am loving your service.

    Reply
  22. Jarek says:
    Sep 14, 2019 at 8:23 am

    Those guys are amazing. We have had our website hacked twice in the past. After the second time we have moved to SiteGround and never looked back. They are really serious about security and react to the slightest issues immediately. We feel much safer working with such professionals and can focus more of our attention on our core business instead of fighting hackers. Highly recommended!

    Reply
  25. Stephen says:
    Sep 13, 2019 at 1:20 pm

    Helpful as ever. As a non-techie it’s great have have the support of people who know what they’re doing.

    Reply
  26. Sam says:
    Sep 13, 2019 at 1:14 pm

    BEST CUSTOMER SUPPORT EVER!!! They are literally always there to help, super helpful and if they can’t fix it immediately via chat they’ll forward it to the correct team. They have helped us out so many times and always go above and beyond. Night and day from other shared hosting services I’ve used. Siteground for life!!

    Reply
  29. mark hendry says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 4:30 pm

    The chat facility on SiteGround is fantastic. The operators are always friendly and knowledgeable and have helped me solved issue way above my ability. Thank so much

    Reply
  30. Una Aine Ni says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 3:44 pm

    George is the best support agent ever. Straigth to the point, professional, quick… awsome.

    Reply
  31. Prince Mukhia says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 10:22 am

    I am thankful for choosing Siteground, I am fully satisfied with their technical support and prompt action.
    Thank you once again..

    Reply
  32. Jason says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 9:17 am

    The SiteGround Team is fast, knowledgeable, and always happy to help! We appreciate their professionalism and patience on even the most basic of questions. Thanks SiteGround!

    Reply
  33. Ing says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 4:50 am

    Siteground support is hands down the best!! They are available 24/7 and have solved every single problem I have ever encountered, are really clear and articulate with what they’re saying…all with friendly smiles and an awesome attitude! much <3!

    Reply
  34. Keren says:
    Sep 12, 2019 at 3:53 am

    Konstantine helped me with 404-error. It was a simple SSL installation, which he installed and fixed the problem in 1 minute, Thank you!

    Reply
  35. Paul Papagianins says:
    Sep 11, 2019 at 7:26 pm

    Bozhidar fixed my problems in a matter of minutes. In fact, whenever I need help I get my problem fixed in a matter of minutes. Siteground has the best support I have ever had from a hosting site.

    Reply
  36. A P Kanel says:
    Sep 11, 2019 at 4:40 pm

    Hi,

    The technical representative (Vicktor) was super helpful. He stretched extra minutes past his shift timings just to help me with my process. I would rate him 5 out of 5.

    Reply
  37. Fon Walters says:
    Sep 11, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    Thank you, Mattia C., for providing fast and accurate customer service. You saved the day!

    Reply
  40. Rachelle Greene says:
    Sep 11, 2019 at 6:46 am

    Prompt, knowledgeable customer service and support every time. Glad I chose Site Ground.

    Reply
  43. Emer says:
    Sep 10, 2019 at 2:28 pm

    straight to the point and very helpful analysis of my problem.
    couldn’t have been handled more professionally.
    two thumbs up!

    Reply
  46. Anne-Marie Wynne says:
    Sep 10, 2019 at 6:29 am

    Dessy is amazing. All of the support team are great and friendly but she takes the cake when it comes to excellent support. She understands my needs quickly and resolves any issues I am having with my sites, in super fast time. I recommend Siteground and Dessy 110%.

    Reply
  48. Barry J. says:
    Sep 9, 2019 at 10:35 pm

    IVAN is the Best ever Support guy on the Planet…. :) Site Ground should be Honored to have such an Awesome guy as Ivan working for them… :) Ivan made my Day… :)

    Reply

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