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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. This is also why we use SiteGround for hosting the WPBeginner website. SiteGround features include automatic upgrades, daily backups built-in WP caching, free CDN, free SSL, 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.

Pros:

  • Fast servers powered by Google Cloud
  • Great customer support
  • Officially Recommended by WordPress
  • 1-click WordPress install
  • Free Domain, SSL, CDN, and Website Backups
  • Easy Staging Tools
  • Free Website Migration

Cons:

  • Slightly more expensive

WPBeginner users get an exclusive 70% off discount and free SSL!

Visit SiteGround

(this discount will be applied automatically)

SiteGround Review from Our Experts

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on WPBeginner. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations. Learn more about Editorial Process.

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 gradeA+
Average load time397 ms
Average response time123 ms
Free domainYes
Free SSLYes
1-click WordPressYes
SupportPhone / 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.

SiteGround website

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.

Strangeloop performance case study

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 results

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:

SiteGround stress testing results

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 uptime 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 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.

SiteGround response time

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 pricing plans

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.

SiteGround AI support assistant

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.

SiteGround support

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.

WPBeginner users get an exclusive 70% off discount and free SSL!

Reader Interactions

5,020 SiteGround User ReviewsLeave a Review

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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    Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes.
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  2. Kevin Greene says

    Brilliant and informative, as always – my question was answered really well and really promptly. Thanks SiteGround. There is no doubt that the staff are on-the-ball and up-to-date. Thank God, this is a breath of fresh air and a comfort to know that the folks at SiteGround have the expertise and manner to resolve issues and answer questions thoroughly. Nice one :) :) K.

  3. Patti Rishforth says

    Support was beyond helpful. they simply fixed the problem for me while I waited for instructions on how I should proceed. Thank you so much!

  4. yago says

    Great service. They know their stuff! Support just helped me in under 2 minutes by thinking a bit out of the box. Great quality

  5. Tyler says

    Excellent service and reliable connection. Customer support team is very quick to respond, patient and supportive during issues.

  6. Badal Kumar says

    Siteground Support system is awesome. I have user HostGator before, but the customer support is 10/10 for Siteground.

  7. Alf Birnecker says

    Just got 2 of my websites converted to https in less than 15 minutes by the support team – a task I was really not looking forward to do. Such a wonderful support. Thanks

  8. Richard Havelock says

    I have used Siteground for WordPress hosting for some of my personal projects (I was recommended them by a friend) and I would just like to say that their service has been fantastic! They helped move sites over from my old server to theirs, and their response to support tickets were very quick. Great service all round.

  9. Joe Stanton says

    Had a problem with my SSL certificate. The Siteground support has again been fantastic and have resolved the issue quickly and efficiently. Thank you. Great service.

  10. Anna Karapetyan says

    I have no idea how to thank Petar for his help. Thanks to him I have a chance to save my website. No words…so excited…;)

  11. Paul Seiler says

    Every time I have required technical help, the response from SiteGround has been extremely quick, fully competent and educational. Basically, everything has been fixed while I wait. The best value IT support that I have every experienced.

  12. Brian Lim says

    Just had a pleasant experience with Siteground… Was cancelling services but may renew later… Highly recommend it

    Thanks!

  13. Jose Pena says

    Support staff was very helpful, thank you so much for the support. I was totally lost and now I’m on my way to getting things done. Thank you again for your support.

  14. Rick Hubbard says

    Panic! An SSL Cert expired…quick Chat with SiteGround support…and ultra-prompt and informative fix. WOW! support staff is awesome…so’s SiteGround.

  15. Mark says

    Got to the bottom of the issue pretty quickly and gave me some links for instructions.

    Very efficient.

  16. Max Brainspace says

    Always a pleasure dealing with siteground. Had a small hiccup installing Egroupware. Support was able to sort it out in under a minute. Whole process took less than 5 minutes. The way it should be. Been a happy customer of siteground for over 10 years now. Not changing anytime soon.
    Many thanks for making some of the complicated bits very easy.

  17. Russell Turner says

    The service is excellent and support is amazing. The interface is easy to navigate to. I have used Siteground for a number of years & clients and always highly recommend them.

  18. Chris jackson says

    Siteground support is fantastic and the support staff that helped us tonight is a credit to the company 5⭐️

  19. Cole Smith says

    I like to try to figure out my own tech issues, but I have confidence knowing Siteground’s great support will be available to walk me through any issues I may find (or cause). The representatives are always quick, polite, and patient with me as I’m learning.

  20. Nic Cheung says

    Amazing support and performance!
    I am a very beginner of website maker, I met lots of problems: redirect to www , crack by WordPress plugins etc. Sitground gave hand to me each times.
    One more thing, speed has been grow up so much than old one!
    Thank you! Sitground!

    Nic

  21. Dan says

    Just finished a chat session with support. As always the Siteground team was prompt, patient and helpful. I’ve been with them for years and have noticed that they have made customer service a priority. I recommend them.

  22. Chad Perdue says

    I recently moved to siteground and have used the chat several times. every time has been amazing. I love it here.

  23. Alexander says

    The self service sections are a pain to journey through but once you get through to a web chat support member or submit a ticket then you will get friendly and fast responses to your issue. Great support staff and always manages to resolve my issue without any further problems.

  24. Javier Torres says

    Best chat ever with one of your chat members, he spoke english and spanih, and did helped me straight away , great service, Juan Carlos was wonderful
    thanks

  25. Melissa Deskovic says

    After spending what seemed forever trying to pick the “right” hosting site for my business I settled on Siteground for it’s overall customer service ratings and reviews. Now I am at my year renewal and I can honestly say I made the right decision. Not only is it simple to use but the moments when I had tech or billing related questions their customer service chats handled the issues without hesitation and everything was resolved in a matter of minutes. I cannot recommend them enough!

  26. Tamara says

    Have recently moved over to Siteground. I missed a step in my domain transfer so needed to contact Customer Service for the first time and oh my goodness, sensational customer service. Even when I first ended up in the wrong department, no one minded, transferred me over in a jiffy then my problem was solved in a blink and with good cheer, easy peasy! Thank you for making my life easier Siteground, blown away!

  27. Wayne says

    Siteground chat support is really fast, and they really seem to know what they are doing.

    Somehow the last time I logged into my website I had WordPress working with all my plugins, woo commerce, etc… then my site was having issues, constant 404 errors.
    My Let’s Encrypt was not working, and a few other issues.

    In 2 chat sessions and less than 15 minutes in total Siteground chat support helped me restore my whole WP site, disable a problematic plugin, and re-install my Let’s Encrypt SSL…. I tested a transaction while still on chat with them and all was working.

    VERY IMPRESSED… My site is totally non-critical and only in testing, yet their work they performed was like I was a big client of theirs.

    THEY ROCK!

  28. James says

    Thought they were pretty cool until they 4x’d my price at the time of renewal. No longer fans of these guys. thumbs down

    • SiteGround says

      Hi James,

      Please note the hosting renewal is on our regular prices and we show them on our sales pages along with the promotional rate. Upon initial sign up you have taken advantage of a discount of up to 60% from the regular price and our goal was to give you a chance to test the service with your site setup without a big financial burden to you. The regular rate reflects all the value-adding features we include in our packages like free site transfer, free SSL certificate, server setup optimized for fast speed, expert support, in-house crafted tools for using the most popular applications WordPress and Joomla, and more.

      Charging the regular prices allows us to continue to deliver high-quality hosting and develop new features to improve the experience for our customers. If you choose to renew your account for a longer period we can offer you a discount of up to 30% as well.

      Regards,

      SiteGround Team

  29. Chris Sutton says

    As usual, the customer service was fabulous. Not only was the issue identified and resolved quickly, but the support team member went above and beyond to check that there were no flow on problems. Outstanding.

  30. Michelle says

    I just presented the chat rep with a problem he had not encountered before. It turned out my email profile had expired…

  31. Yvonne says

    really appreciate the prompt and excellent technical support for a problem that i created myself. my technical skills are limited and yet i was left feeling confident to keep working on my website, and that they are there to back me up next time i get into strife. thanks a lot.

  32. Ryan K says

    I’m a long time reseller package user from siteground to cater my client. Love the service until this restoration task that need to do because of my client fault.

    My client make mistake by deleting some file and can’t recall the file. (They are not a techie guy). And ask me to restore their file. This is when I realise that the 30days backup for Siteground Reseller Plan is only for the backup service. To restore the backup, you need to pay $39.95 per restore.

    I didn’t notice this changes in term of service. Previously they have 1 day backup as default and can upgrade to 30 days backup. With previous service, you can easily restore any file & date within 30 days. Now, even for the previous day, you need to pay the service fee.

    If you want to use their reseller plan, just a kindly reminder to this service. The service & price is awesome for $42/account. You might want to find another backup provider or you use their growbig account and skip the reseller plan.

  33. James says

    Siteground’s customer service is genuinely a pleasure, probably the best of any website that i have used. I am a grumpy arse so this is a big compliment.

  34. jack yuen says

    Just switched over from Blue Host for my Australian website. Got twice the speed instantly.
    Had problem with the ‘staging’ function. Got onto chat with support in the middle of the night and got it resolved quickly with very knowledgeable support person….
    Pretty good initial experiences.

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