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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Marcela says
Just had fantastic technical support over your chat room. He was patient, professional, friendly and very knowledgeable. I feel so grateful to have changed all my domains to siteground. I was having so many headaches with my previous hosting as it was done through a developer and it was just a pain. MUCH easier to do it all myself as I am not alone because of the brilliant support that SiteGround offers. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
christophe bergot says
perfect online support … thank you
Josh Duncan says
Support staff went out of his way to help me out. Excellent customer service
Leah Nielsen says
Great response — he didn’t just try to resolve my issue he also explained the problem and helped me to understand how to deal with it in the future. Great service.
Sandra Paterson says
As a relatively new newbie to websites and all its jargon i was needing to move my three websites to a new host. I wanted everything in one place. My questions were answered in simple terms that i understood and summed up with a final costing. Brilliant what else can i say. I can only hope that when i start the transfer the excellent service continues. Having spoken to other companies in the same field i can honestly say Well done guys i’m really impressed how you dealt with my lack of knowledge.
Vince says
The support from siteground is simply unbeatable. The amount of quality help I have received from their knowledgable support staff is incredible. Go Siteground, I’m sticking around.
Tauni Stocks says
Support was very helpful and patient with me. Thank you!
Joshua Carmichael says
I’ve been using SiteGround for a number of years and I’ve always been extremely happy with the speed and performance of the sites I’ve hosted using their servers. Their customer service is second to no one and they always know exactly what to do to help. I would recommend SiteGround to anyone!
Charikleia Koutsopagou says
The service team is excellent. Always ready to help and solve your problem. I couldn’t be more satisfied!
Gordon Joyner says
I am finally finished now with the joining and transfer of domain. I am clueless with any coding and there were some errors that SG sorted straight away with no fuss. I was told by my previous ISP not to worry and left them despite they were marked Dangerous (php functions) First class SG and would recommend to one and all
Shashi says
The customer support of SiteGround is very friendly and effective.
These guys are the reasons why we choose SiteGround.
Thanks SiteGround.
Sarah Compos Martyn says
Amazing service! SO so helpful. Completely recommend to everyone.
Leanne Madden says
Amazing service. As a novice trying to develop my first website, these guys have been amazing. So helpful and able to answer every question I had.
Thank you from one very appreciative customer
Ryan says
Good Stuff – much appreciated
Carolina says
Very helpful and patient helped with with all of my doubts. Great help!
Juan Perez says
Siteground have the best support
L Daniells says
Very patient and helped with all my questions.
Thank you very much!
Nils Hart says
These guys always give the best support! The chat feature is great! Thank you again for great service!
Rick Mason says
Amazing fast online support!!
Yuri Vyatkin says
I decided to terminate SiteGround account after a couple of weeks of evaluation because I realized that I perhaps need a different technology stack, but I mus say that their service is great, the features set they offer is pleasingly rich, and the overall performance is quite acceptable (except a little to long server response time, but this is understandable for a shared hosting). With this decision I explored the site, and in the service termination section I finally found the button which allowed to me to access a live chat with a customer representative. After a short conversation they canceled the service to my request and left me a great impression about the quality of their service.
These guys are awesome!
Dave Voelker says
I started moving web properties to SG from 3 other primary hosts (we maintain about 20 sites) primarily for performance reasons.
The performance has been uniformly better than all of the other providers but the improvement in technical support is astounding.
The SiteGround technical support staff have rocked it every single time I have chatted with them. They know their stuff and they get it right the first time, every time.
Thank you and keep it up, you have a strong advocate in me.
Mandi says
“Real” customer support doesn’t come with most businesses these days. Some literally act like you are bothering them and they don’t have the time, but SiteGround has been excellent and I’m happy to pay for that!
John T says
The service rep at Siteground was very patient with me, and answered each of my questions regarding hosting services. He was very knowledgeable, and also offered good suggestions. I would certainly recommend Siteground to anyone asking me for my choice of hosting.
Mark says
I was close to or the limit of my CPU usage (No idea what that means)
I was thinking I’d have to upgrade and THAT was the trick to make me upgrade upgrade from the basic site. but nope. No upselling involved
Live chat found out it was a Heartbeat (again no idea) but I’ve followed the instructions while the rep did something at his end and the site seem OK again.
Sorted in a speedy manner, no selling me an upgrade I can’t afford.
Just great customer service as usual.
Andy says
I moved to Siteground from another popular provider and have been very impressed with the set-up and the great support from staff.
Helen says
The support was 1st grade!!! A++++ Things got done so smoothly. Amazing!!!
Todd Canipe says
I can’t say enough good things about staff’s service, seriously. Five stars aren’t enough. He’s super patient, can’t wait to chat with him again.
Rafal Yono says
Amazing customer service!
Marco Abascal says
Excelent support and very polite, recommended 100%
Jatin says
Everything was great, except that the responses and thus the conversation got slow. Even in the instances where he just needed to reply, and not look or research anything. But again, he solved my issues very well.
Magda says
I have been hosting with SiteGround for several years and highly recommend them. The customer service is top notch, and the price can’t be beat for what you get. They are just very good at what they do.
Leroy says
Very knowledgeable and helped me out. Site Ground support is legendary. Keep up the good work.
Tracee Loftus says
Very helpful – pleasant interactions.
George McGrane says
I just completed a primary domain rename, and I had a few issues arise that broke a couple different things on my sites (primary and subdomain). Siteground support stayed with me in chat for nearly an hour, checking over all the problems I was seeing, and correcting them one by one. He even took the time to explain to me what he was doing, so that I could hopefully avoid those same errors in the future. This is twice now in the last week that I’ve needed support, and both times I got immediate response in chat, and both support reps were skilled and able to solve my problems. Well done!
Nicolas says
support solved a problem related to the configuration of the a subdomain affecting WPML. our website now have different languages according to subdomains. really awesome work. thanks again
Blake Hourigan says
Solved the problem instantly and was great to chat with. Really appreciated him taking the time to help me.
thanks again
Annie BossChic says
honestly, Siteground is the best host ever. Always ready to solve whatever the issue is. The staff are super stars because they all know their piece of cakes too well. I’m happy that I have finally found a true and super reliable hosting company.
Willem de Jong says
The service at siteground is very fast. There is everything you need and they do everything for you! I Like Siteground!
Herve-Claude NIVAGGIOLI says
Once again I bothered SiteGround and as usual, I found very professional, patient and polite people who did the job very quickly and the result is perfect.
Job was about migrating a WordPress Mulitisites from one GrowBig account to another GrowBig account.
Adrian | AdriansCrazyLife says
Siteground’s support is my favorite feature. I don’t have a tech support person – it’s just ME, so when I can reach a helpful technician within 60 seconds every time, that’s really helpful!
Bisera says
I have just signed up for hosting with Siteground and had a lot of questions.
Their prompt service and clear answers for novices like myself was impeccable.
I’m super excited for the future of my blog now that I’ve signed up with Siteground.
Muhammad Faridul Islam says
Just awesome the guys in Support. He clear everything about hosting information.
Roberto says
Thankful for Siteground’s great support provided. Something that I’m really happy for.
Guy Cizner says
Great support.
I pay your higher rates for your amazing support
Amee Abel says
Amazing technical support!
Dan Kellogg says
Tech support at SiteGround is great! Everytime I’ve needed help the tech assisting me has been polite, professional, quick and proficient. SiteGround tech support is the best I’ve dealt with in 25+ years.
John G. says
SiteGround has seriously amazing service at a really good price. I’ve used other hosting providers, and SiteGround is BY FAR the best one. Switching to SiteGround was one of the best decisions I have made for my sites!
Jarrod Roussel says
I had a fantastic customer experience with tech support. I signed up for an account today, and they were kind enough to walk me through the initial set-up for migrating my website to their service. I really appreciated that their personality shone through in the chat. I felt like I was talking to another person and not just some robotic chatbot. Thanks again!
Nicole Desiree says
Really impressed so far with how speedy and helpful customer service is with SiteGround.
Katie Danger says
Support was great! I love SiteGround’s support. I will always stick with them as my hosting service, because great support is hard to find. They are TOP NOTCH!