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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Jim Howard says
Got a quick response and resolution to my problem. Excellent. Thanks!
Ahmed says
Magadelna from site ground is very professional, efficient, calm, cool, and helped me through my billing issue, I really was lucky to chat with her today
thanks siteground and thanks Magadelna
Takyu Leung says
I appreciate very much your calm approach to help restore the last best copy of my website. I went from panic to relieved. Thanks again.
Chad Sugar says
Amazing support! cant say enough about them and their support … within 10-15 min you have a response and 90% fixed if you explained correctly the 1st time your issue
Susan Kotch says
Aleksander was fantastic! Much appreciated all he did for me!
Roy Hanner says
Antonio went directly to the issue and resolved my problem, great customer service.
David Miron says
Dimitar was very helpful and answered all of my questions satisfactorily. His help allowed me to purchase a service from Siteground (even though) I am already a satisfied customer.
Faviola says
The agent was very helpful and understanding of my major concerns and was able to assist me with my problems and committed to fixing them and resolving my issues and concerns!
Webscaper says
Always helpful when you need assistance, great hosting service and speed tools. Quality and dedication your web presence requires. I always try to move client hosting to Siteground – it makes my job so much easier.
Jennifer Yarden says
Martin was very helpful with the issue I had.
I would like to suggest that in the future when a site is transferred to SiteGround from another server, you routinely ask the customer to ensure the domain name is pointing to SIteGround.
Matthew Turley says
Petar P, one of your tech’s that actually know their stuff, after 5 phone calls on/off to support this was the only tech that managed to solve my problem.
Marc Williams says
Antonio was excellent help! the professionalism and quick response time was phenomenal! This website has the best customer support! 5 stars for overall support!
Shirleyann Soltys says
I am not an IT person by trade (I’m the Financial Controller), but have taken over part of the IT function of our small business due to a downsizing. I had a simple, but incredibly important question about our SSL. Nikola answered it quickly and completely. My concerns were completely wiped away in a few short keystrokes! I feel that I am in good hands and will not hesitate to reach out with further questions when they come up!
Rob Lawrence says
After many months of banging my head against the impenetrable wall of “technical service tickets” I finally threw in the towel and moved from my current host to SiteGround. The transition was seamless and the support was immediate and spot on. A simple question in chat was answered to perfection AND I was offered a link to a clarifying article related to the FTP program I used. Service beyond expectations. Just the best.
Patricia Maffissoni says
Maksim saved my day
He was very kind and showed me everything I need help with.
Thank you again!
Simon Hough says
I spoke to Liliya S who was very helpful when it came to my billing questions. She understood all my issues and the communication was excellent
Kathie says
Nikola immediately zeroed in on my problem and offered not only to fix it for me, but to explain how I could do it correctly the next time.
Very helpful and kind.
Casey says
As always excellent and patient help from the siteground team. I have spoken with 4 different people over the last 2 days and they have all been very helpful. This is why I continue to use siteground, the support.
Rajsmith Basu says
they r good ….i needed help and explanations they did …..i am thankful to them
C. Perry says
Very helpful, concise and supportive – just what was needed; all within six minutes.
Anja Verhaar says
Very kind and patient. I have learned a lot from it.
Cam Hutchins says
Fast and efficient as usual. Love Siteground!!!
Jerome says
Always a good reception from IVAN great service
Rui Martins says
Siteground’s support and services are the best.
Ashley McIsaac says
I’ve had incredible customer service every time I’ve required assistance with my hosting/domain over the past two years. You may have to be a little patient sometimes during an online chat, but I’d say no more than a few minutes in between responses, maybe 5 on a busy day. I just keep in mind that they are also likely helping other people as well, but the quality of their training shows. Great job on the customer service end everyone.
Lior Talmor says
Nikola H. is just – GREAT!!!
I’ve never had such great support, ever! WOW!
Taylor Moore says
As always excellent tech support, this is why i use SiteGround!
Yong says
Prompt speedy responses. Also very knowledgeable. So far every support request has been great. Kudos to the Siteground team.
Ray Smith says
Swift answer to my pre-sales question. Very happy.
Kay Edstene says
As always, great service.
Brandon says
Really helpful and quick support. Very impressed!!! Had a problem with WP ALL Import and timeouts… Thanks a lot!
Diane Hutt says
Customer Service is fantastic from Siteground.
Adriaan says
Great experience and super friendly and quickly finished issues from my email
Yasmin says
These Guys ROCK!! @ sitegorund
Grant Sinclair says
Great service as usual. SiteGround always does a great job at supporting their customers.
Jeremy Dale says
Velizar quickly and efficiently sorted out my problem. Thank you!
Gabbie @ DGX says
We have recommended Site Ground to new web clients for a couple of years. I’ve recently needed support for a couple of site issues and a new site and the online support has been great as usual. Thank you.
Rob Lawrence says
Absolutely needed and got technical hand holding in making a decision to move from current hosting firm to a new one. Clarity of answers and immediate understanding of a complex (to me) situation was a help in moving forward.
Ian Gordon says
Excellent assistance – very much appreciated. Concise and very fast response.
Vincenzo Romano says
Servizio veloce e professionale, gentili e cortesi. Grazie.
william cockayne says
she was very polite and professional
Mark Garland says
Siteground support is excellent. I highly recommend Siteground based on the speed and support provided. Thank you.
Anup Kumar says
great support
Jesse Lopez says
Siteground proves itself again as an amazing host. After messing up a new domain install, customer service came to the rescue within minutes. Thanks
Benedict M says
Excellent customer service fro siteground. They might be expensive but if you need great customer service, 99.99 percent uptime and easy to use features such as one click installs etc, then this is the hosting service for you.
Paul Bishop says
Excellent support as always – quick from start to finish and make’s SiteGround the only host I could consider using.
hattan says
great support
O.Greene says
Dimitri P fix my website very quickly after reporting the issue of not loading he was very helpful in seeing that the task is complete in full and make sure that all was well.
Jernej Doles says
Excellent support and excellent hosting. Highly recommended.
Wendy says
Excellent customer service every time – always very helpful!