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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Armstrong Hidam says
Thanks a lot. My issue got resolved on the call.
Hola! SiteGround
Ken Barrentine says
Excellent, patient service. Odd issue resolved calmly and professionally. Thank you.
Karl says
Once more, for the umpteenth time, these guys were on hand to sort out an issue that got me up and running again. It’s a testiment to how good these guys are that it’s far easier to ask them for help than look into it yourself. Thank you guys….. Brilliant….
Frank says
I’ve had nothing but fantastic experiences with every support rep at Siteground. It’s one of the primary reason I move all of my clients’ sites to Siteground hosting. A bit more expensive than I’d like (and only one service-level option for reseller accounts) but in the end, totally worth it.
Dennis Foy says
I’m on a trial with siteground. So far it seems that they have excellent customer support reps.
phil says
I had an issue with the SSL certificate where the padlock wasn’t appearing next to the HTTPS, this resulted in sales stopping on my site, Contacted site ground and they had foxed it in 8 minutes. Amazing service, thankyou.
Anirudh Muley says
I just had a chat with Mariya T and these guys know their stuff. Even though the chat was longer, I actually got a resolution at the end of it. In this day of AHTs and TATs, this aspect of service seems to be lost. Kudos and more power to you Mariya!
Andrew says
SiteGround are Brilliant! Best customer service I’ve had yet. They are so helpful compared to other hosting companies i’ve used. They are super friendly and you feel like they are trying their best for you ever time you need support.
Keep up the good work guys.
Ashish Shah says
Your tech Support (I talked to Daniel) is awesome. Thank you
Farriq says
Awesome customer service!
Dude know the product with more technical explanation.
Thumbs up to Ivelin!
Merideth Bisiker says
Just wanted to make a quick comment that I had to step away from my laptop as I was chatting and the gentlemen still proceeded to quickly finding a solution to my problem and let me know. I’m super impressed!
Stephen Bentley says
If I could award ten stars for the superb support, I would. Simply outstanding!
Todor Demirov says
Amazing customer service, quick responses and very polite staff. Would recommend to anyone. I had to set up my iPhone email and I took about 10min the most, all guidance and help very clear and to the point. Will continue using SiteGround for as long as I am running my web site.
Steven B Jackson says
This is the 2nd time I’ve needed assistance.. and the amazingly professional team at siteground has made my experience pleasant as they continue to address all my concerns clearly and respond immediately and professionally making my overall experience GREAT!!!! Iam very happy to be a siteground client.. thanks alot again
Tilek says
What I should write? The siteground support team is Awesome. Is worth every cent I pay. Keep going like that.
Nikola Stajic says
Maybe the best customer service I ever experienced. My website was down and they helped me restore it in no time…
Garrett Bland says
The support is always quick and very helpful!!
Jae Blain says
I am always impressed with sitegrounds support. The issue is resolved first time and with ease. I would highly recommend siteground to anyone who requires hosting. 100% uptime, 100% support. Thank you!
Lucie says
Martin was incredibly patient with my request. I was on the phone to GoDaddy to clear up a query as I chatted with Martin and he was sensitive to this.
Great service. Thanks, Martin!
Marco De Veglia says
Siteground support and CPanel are just the best in the market.
David Dobson says
Toni was very helpful, polite and patient. She answered all my questions clearly. Based on the quality of support I’m confident to go ahead the SiteGround hosting.
Katja Schulte says
The service was fantastic. My problem was solved in a few minutes. Thank you very much. All the best Katja
Manish Khaware says
Received prompt response from support staff and got the issues resolved in matter of minutes
Dan Bousho says
I have been working with wordpress for many years. I’m a plug and play person who takes advantage of all the wordpress tools. I am not a server expert though. Creating installs for other companies i not something I really sell, but I have had occasion to help some fellow businessmen out.
Not being really savvy, it is always nice to know that the siteground support staff is there to patiently, and knowledgeably, answer questions and help me out when I’m confused. If you are on the fence about what provider to use for your wordpress hosting, I can’t recommend siteground enough.
High tech, but customer focused. Excellent.
Dan Bousho
Rich Crouse says
The chat rep who helped me was excellent. He held my hand through the entire procedure and answered every question I hit him with in a thorough and easy to understand manner. I was completely confident in choosing to sign up for Siteguard and began the migration request for all 31 of my sites presently hosted by Hostgator.
Starlight Labels says
The agent resolved my issues fast! Thanks.
Geza says
Instant service was good but finding the chat box is mission impossible.
There is definitely room for improvement.
Lesley Rubenstein-Pessok says
Excellent help from Diana K. today – many thanks.
Xavier says
Just have to relax with them.
Issues with the web can happen.
They just fix it
MARK says
He was getting to the point. He helped until my issue was resolved.
Jennifer Sanjines says
Above and beyond as usual this is why I recommend them to every one!
Jeferson G Oliveira says
Quick and precise!
Johann says
Awesome service!
Kelly Pangman says
Nikolay was great to work with- we worked together and I was able to get my issue resolved! Very professional.
Sherpal says
Stoyan G. was both patient and helpful with my email-related challenged. Thank you sincerely. Sherpal.
Joshua Carmichael says
Dimitar was very helpful and resolved my issue very quickly. As always, SiteGround always impresses me with the caliber of support available. Great job! I would recommend SiteGround to anyone.
Anna says
Support is immediate and efficient!
Amanda Steele says
great help.
thanks
Cristian Doolan says
Excellent customer service chat…. all my questions were answered fast and in clear language for non geek
Elena says
amazed with the quality of the support. Pre-sale question answered and the test passed Thank you
Cheryl Avrich says
Prompt and professional. Answered all my questions and took care of the upgrade I asked for. Very helpful.
dave barber says
Knew the issue straight away, solution in less than 2-3 mins.
Siteground and support are the best. I think I have finally found my only host to consider. 11/10
Mark Powell says
The support assistant was very patient and informative.
Paul says
Viktor was great. He’s helped me before and is always easy to understand and he almost knows what I’m going to ask before I ask.
Manu Álvarez says
Amazing, as always. Incredibly quick and efficient
Annalyn says
Amazing support from Pavel S. Thank you
Simon Herring says
I was assisted today by Julian J.
Julian was really friendly, professional and helpful. The issue was resolved very quickly and while I was informed that it would take up to 24hours to completely resolve (or for the fixed issue to show up as back to normal) I was given a url to access the site so I could go about doing what I had originally planned to do.
Brilliant stuff.
Guilherme says
Best support ever. Very kind and efficient, always helpful and supportive in all ways! Grateful for this service and dedication.
Gary says
Iliya was very knowledgeable and very patient in walking me through something that documentation was really non-existent for. Thanks.
Alberto says
I love SiteGround because of the amazing Customer Support team they have. Always supper efficient and solving 100% of my issues. You guys rock!