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.
Syed Balkhi says
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Chris Paulson says
Absolutely freaking amazing. I had a handful of problems and the support was fast as lighting and helped me with everything. I am so blown away by the support and the lay out of the site and the ease that this has become. I am so happy.
Valerie T. says
Thank you for quick and effective support. You resolved my issue in less than 5 minutes and got me back to work. Greatly appreciated!
Sharee James says
Support staff was awesome! Please keep him around or give him a raise! Very patient, kind and knowledgeable.
Jennith Churchill says
Support was very kind and helpful.. My issue was quickly resolved thank to her.
Deborah scott says
I had a problem with my site but the person i spoke to at siteground rectified the problem for me immediately.
James D says
Always quick helpful very polite, seem happy to fix all issues and very short waiting times.
Kerone says
My issues were resolved. I initiated support for one thing but it turned into several issues popping up one after the other it seemed like but support rep resolved all of them and turned around my prior bad experience with another rep. Brilliant resolution! thanks
chris says
awesome support
Ian Bultman says
Very Helpful Thank you
Dorin Tudoran says
Tech rep provided me with excellent support!
Nikos Dimitriou says
Reading all the reviews about Siteground, I decided to get a 3year GoBig plan. At that time, I had 4 websites to build & host for clients so I was very excited that the service described would be the same high!
Everything started at the very first moment. They never managed to process correct my initial payment. That said, I wasted two weeks talking with their Customer Care & Sales Dpts as well as my bank in order to figure out what was going on.
At the same time, they had the brilliant idea to open up/create the GoBig account for me the first day, so I thought that the issue has been sorted, so I found the chance to build & host my first website/contract job.
After two weeks, numerous emails & pushing from my side, they finally sorted my payment (the same payment that was intially pending & they could not “see” the money & after all managed to finalize the transaction).
Forgot to mention that my payment of 214 USD was blocked all this time from my bank because of their inability to sort it out with their bank/ payment processor. They could not release the money at first place neither process the transaction. This only happened after two weeks.
Long story short, their famous Customer Care was only able to apologise. Never provided with a real solution or a great discount. Only arranged for a one-month payment with the same privileged rate in order for my account not to be suspended & wait for my bank/ their bank to sort out the issue.
I am not sure how great is their customer support either after buying. But when I asked for some help about some WP plugins that didnt work, they claimed that they dont offer that support. So, where is the WP support? Just, because they offer a 1click installation? Come ooon.
Such a mess.. Still waiting to receive my refund & move to A2 hosting.
If a company cannot process correctly the very first transaction of a potential customer who wants a long term commitment, then I dont buy! The competition is great & the packages offered great as well.
SiteGround says
Hi Nikos,
We understand that the prolonged processing of your payment was not a very good customer experience for you and we once again would like to apologize for the troubles this situation has caused you.
Please note our team has provided you with timely updates and helped you keep your account active and save your work, while the pending status of the payment was resolved.
We confirm the cancellation of your account and we have issued a full refund that will be available to you in the next 7 business days. For your convenience, the account will be active until November 26th so you can backup and transfer all files.
With regard to the reported issue with a WordPress plugin, our agent has helped you to deactivate the plugin so that your website runs normally. Unfortunately, as the error you experienced was specific to the functionality of the plugin for processing transactions on your website the issue is outside of the scope of our hosting service. We have recommended consulting a professional developer for a solution on this matter.
We remain available to assist you further if needed please don’t hesitate to reach us back at any time.
Regards,
SiteGround Team
Ryan Melo says
After comparing the support team of Hostinger which is my previous hosting to Siteground Support, I think they are both professional but in SiteGround they don’t have this Live Chat Support that is totally very helpful to all the Customers like me.
Song says
Thank you. Very kind person!!
He solved my problem immediately!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shyam Kiran says
Support staff is wonderful and has a lot of patience in responding to queries. He is very caring in answering my queries and solved my problem.
Whenever I want to chat with the Siteground team, I never think back about delays, queue. I just chat and solve my problems.
The Siteground team is awesome to work with.
Nicholas says
Flawless customer service.
Quick actionable, step-by-step answers to a complex (at least for me, lol) problem. This could not have been a better experience.
Blossom Chambers says
Really good support on live chat, very knowledgable and helpful support staff. Excellent.
Manuel Algaba Cortés says
Very satisfied with support. I have an issue with a couple of invoices and a wrong credit card and he was able to make all the necessary changes in a few minutes. Siteground has an excellent customer service. Thanks again!
Neil Mercer says
Any Issue I come across, always resolved. Excellent service from all the support people I have dealt with
Glenn Allison says
Fast and appropriate response to an access problem.
Sarah Kettel says
wow I was really impressed with the service, I’m a complete beginner and literally don’t speak techy but I still managed to install everything I needed with guidance from support.
Beckie Hawk says
Very helpful tech support.
Noelson Barbosa says
Very helpful, fantastic
Amee Abel says
Love these people! When I am in over my head (frequently) as I have ported a site over from WordPress.org and then build a new WordPress site on a development domain and then needed to move it to my main domain, the Siteground support has been wonderful!
Arthur Rochester says
My email duplicate problem was solved quickly and efficiently. Thank you.
Enjoy yoour week.
Cheers!
Salvador says
all good. thanks.
habbib says
I recommend this guys as whenever you need their help, they have the knowledge and they make your life easier compared to my previous hosting and to those of some friends which struggle to get any option activated and they are asked big moneys for any basic option activation.
Bruce says
Amazing support, highly knowledgeable, extremely thorough explanations, incredible patience, simply fantastic experience all-around. Thanks a bunch!
Michael M says
I LOVE SITEGROUND! I cannot tell you HOW PERFECT they are for me. I wanted a simple website. I was able to do that myself, without having to outsource the work. The Chat support is SO GOOD that it always amazes me…. And noobs like me DO NEED SUPPORT for setting things up, like SSL etc
I have a number of domains. Will move ALL HOSTING to SiteGround.
In short, LOOK NO FURTHER…
M
Corne Erasmus says
SiteGround consistently provides great customer service and support. Professional, polite and patient support staff make light work of any crisis or challenge.
Thank you very much SiteGround!!
Ted Begnoche says
Perfect and fast help from support staff – thank you siteground
Willy Goodman says
Hi there…
I have had an issue with the Ali Dropship Woo plugin purchased recently and have had a Siteground tech look over it for me.
Seems that the plugin is having issues running with the website which are both php7.1 which can be seen here –
Any advice would be most valuable right now as I am stuck and cont move forward until this is resolved.
Thanks
Willy
WPBeginner Support says
Hey Willy,
You need to reach out to plugin developer and request them to make it compatible with newer versions of PHP.
Admin
CL says
I love SiteGround because they are soo helpful. I’m an IT professional, and these people really help sort out any issues, its fantastic. Couldn’t recommend them highly enough.
Caroline Newkirk says
I was amazed at the customer service I received. I transferred my hosting from Bluehost and I had no idea what i was doing. I had let my hosting expire and thought I had lost everything I did on my website. The customer service rep was able to walk me through how to recover everything and they are currently setting it all up for me. Couldn’t be happier with the service I received!
Dean Richter says
Support rep was excellent. Very prompt and fixed my SSL issue immediately.
Darrell says
Quick and efficient chat support. I like it.
Michele Santoro says
Fast, easy and working! Thanks a lot!
Paula Foreman says
The team has been very good in managing our stresses over the chats. No matter how exhausting they may be. Keep up
Subhajit says
got a great assistance. saved my money .
Dean Sauls says
Super patient and really helpful!
Paul Chatwin says
Used GoDaddy for 5 years until decided to move to SiteGround this week.
Needed support from both Companies……
GoDaddy Live Chat – 166th in the queue with an estimated wait of 68 minutes.
SiteGround Live Chat – immediate answer and detailed assistance.
This wasn’t a one-off either – I have needed SiteGround Live Chat 3 times and each one has been super fast and incredibly helpful.
Elaine Leung says
Very quick response and good answer.
OLUGU MOSES says
I was assisted so fast within a few seconds and all my issues were sold, i appreciate customer care of siteground, they deserve 10+ stars not only 5. Thanks many time
Lee Carter says
Support rep was fantastic. Renewed for 2 years and he was able to work with all my needs in a friendly, knowledgeable and professional manner.
Thank you.
ji won chung says
very professional.
Thank you.
Bill Slawski says
Very helpful. I appreciate all of the help provided.
Whitney says
Excellent support
Bryan Greenall says
I had a brute force attack on one of my clients’ email accounts. Siteground recognised this and closed it off until I had the chance to rectify this and change the passwords for it. Great to know they have your back in the background when these things occur.
Michelle says
I can’t say enough good things about SiteGround’s support. I recently transferred my hosting to them and they have been so helpful. I have never experienced a wait for a rep and they have been knowledgeable and patient with every conversation. I am thrilled!
Ela franko says
Support staff was amazing person and did solve at all my problem and she was same as one my family
and I never left your services
and for workI will send all my client here
and just when I make any website tell to them must use your services I think staff is the best in your company
and I think your manager must give more chance to her
Momen says
My support agent was great and helpful.