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SiteGround

SiteGround Reviews

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated hosting provider in the WordPress community. They provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and secure as possible. They are known for the best 24/7 support in the industry which is why they’re an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. This is also why we use SiteGround for hosting the WPBeginner website. SiteGround features include automatic upgrades, built-in WP caching, CDN, one-click staging and GIT version control. They are also one of the few companies offering location specific hosting with 6 data centers in USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. On top of all this, they have а special 63% discount for WPBeginner readers.

Last seen 8 hours ago
Reviewed by: Syed Balkhi
Rating:

SiteGround Review from Our Experts

Siteground is one of the most recommended WordPress hosting companies. They are known for their top notch customer support and fast reliable hosting plans. Their WordPress optimized hosting includes everything you’ll need to create and grow a successful blog. Read our complete SiteGround review to find out if SiteGround is the right host for you.

In this detailed SiteGround review, we will put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:

  • Performance: Speed is crucial for the success of your 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 will need to build your website?
  • Pricing: How much it would cost you? Are there any SiteGround deals that can save you money?

Bottom line: Don’t want to read all the details? Let us summarize it for you. 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.

It is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria with offices in 6 locations and data centers in three continents. Today, the company has more than 400 employees and hosts more than 500,000 domains.

Siteground

Pros and Cons of SiteGround

Each hosting company has its own pros and cons. Some advantages can overshadow the disadvantages, but some cons can be a total deal breaker for your individual needs.

Before making a decision, you may want to review these SiteGround pros and cons.

Pros

Here are some of the 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 are equipped with latest hardware like SSD drives and custom software to make sure that your site is super fast.
  • Top Notch Customer Support Their customer support is amazing to say the least. They offer 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket based support.
  • Free CDN and SSL They offer instant setup of Cloudflare’s free CDN and free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
  • Multiple Server Locations They have data centers in three continents. You can choose the location you prefer during signup.

Cons

As we mentioned earlier, there are some downsides with every hosting company. These 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, then you will most likely never need extra storage.
  • Setup fee for monthly billing: There is a $14.95 setup fee if you choose monthly billing. But if you sign up for a longer billing period, then you’ll get bigger discount and no setup fee. 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 metric that you should look for. A faster website offers good user experience and boosts your SEO at the same time.

In fact, a single second delay can cause 7% decrease in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Website speed study by Strangeloop

We created a WordPress powered test site on SiteGround and filled it with dummy content for theme development with images.

After that, we used Pingdom’s website speed test tool to run our tests. These were the results we got:

SiteGround speed test

As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (649 ms to be precise) for a server in Dallas, Texas. That means our site is faster than 95% of tested sites.

This is incredible, but this website had almost no traffic so the Pingdom test alone is not sufficient.

To test how SiteGround servers would respond to increased traffic, we used a tool called LoadImpact.

This tool gradually sends up to 100 users to see how the server would respond to increased traffic from multiple connections.

You can see the results in the chart below:

SiteGround loadimpact test results

The blue line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server load time. SiteGround performed almost consistently except for a spike when there were 50 users on the site. It quickly recovered and page load time remained steadily low even with more users.

This test shows that if you are looking for a really fast website, then SiteGround can be a perfect choice for you.

Typically, websites hosted on shared hosting account slow down a bit during top traffic hours. That’s because your site is sharing resources with other websites on that server.

Most shared hosting companies automatically kill server process if your site is taking too many resources. This causes downtime on your website.

We tested our SiteGround site for the downtime and got 100% uptime result.

SiteGround uptime test results

SiteGround Server Response Time

Your website’s content has a huge impact on page load time. For example, if you have high resolution images on a page, then it will significantly increase the overall page load time.

This means that speed test results may not accurately reflect how fast your hosting server really is.

Instead of analyzing page load time alone, we decided to test the actual server response time as well.

To do this we used a tool called Bitcatcha. It ignores page content, and only tests response time of the server.

Bitcatcha also gives you average loading speed from different global locations. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.

Take a look at the results in the screenshot below.

SiteGround server response time from multiple locations

As you can see, SiteGround is a great choice if your target audience is mostly located in the United States. The server responded in fraction of a second in the United States.

It responded within less than a second for all locations, except Japan. If your target audience is mostly located in Japan, then you can ask SiteGround to move your site to their Asia-Pacific data center.

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 and beginners. 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 performance of your website.
  • Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting is a flexible upgrade to shared hosting. It allows you to use resources of multiple servers on a cloud architecture. It is suitable for growing websites, popular blogs, or businesses.
  • Dedicated servers: Dedicated servers give you a complete server for your website. It is more expensive but gives you a lot more power. The downside is that you will have to manage the server yourself.
  • Enterprise hosting: This plan is for large businesses and high traffic sites with challenging server requirements. Get in touch with SiteGround team and they will create a tailor-made plan to suit your needs.

Breakdown of SiteGround’s Shared Hosting Plans

SiteGround’s shared hosting is the best way to start a new website. Their shared plans 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 having 10,000 monthly visitors. You’ll also get all essential features like 1-click WordPress install, free setup, website transfer, daily backups, and more.
  • GrowBig: The GrowBig plan lets you host unlimited websites. It comes with 20 GB disk space and is suitable for hosting websites having 25,000 monthly visitors. You’ll get all the features of the Startup plan, plus you’ll get premium features like Super Cacher, 1-year free wildcard SSL, and more.
  • GoGeek: GoGeek plan is suiteable for small eCommerce websites. It can handle websites having 100,000 monthly visitors. In addition to all GrowBig’s features, you’ll get access to more advanced features like one-click git repo creation, WordPress and Joomla staging, and more.

SiteGround shared plans

SiteGround Support and Customer Service

You will see high praise for SiteGround’s customer support service everywhere. They are 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’s get first response within less than 10 minutes.

For users who prefer to fix things on their own, SiteGround offers a large collection of knowledge base articles with screenshots, videos, tutorials, and guides.

Conclusion: Is SiteGround the Right Choice for You?

After reading our detailed SiteGround review, you might be wondering if SiteGround is the right choice for your website?

If you want fast and reliable web hosting service with great customer support, then SiteGround is perfect for you. They have hosting plans for every budget and each plan comes with great set of features.

All their shared hosting plans include SSD storage, easy setup of Let’s Encrypt free SSL and Cloudflare CDN service, 1-click WordPress installer, and free migration.

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% off 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.

4,459 SiteGround User Reviews

  1. heather s says:
    Jan 20, 2021 at 6:03 pm

    You could not be more helpful if you tried. Thank you for consistently going above and beyond. I know customer service/technical service can seem like a thankless job, but I want to assure you, you make a difference. Thank you for showing you care, and I am not just another number!

    Reply
  2. Panayotis says:
    Jan 19, 2021 at 4:07 am

    Thank you so much for your awesome support!
    Really satisfied with siteground and all of its tech team, kudos

    Reply
  5. Carla Meeske says:
    Jan 18, 2021 at 8:03 pm

    Emil got me through something called DNS configuration with TXT and I have no idea what. He just took me step by step and I got it done. THANKS!

    Reply
  9. Robert Twite says:
    Jan 17, 2021 at 12:19 pm

    Whenever I contact support they are always very helpful. Was a little surprised when you put the long statement about contacting support in the Help Center but so far, it is still working well.

    Reply
  11. Christopher Creed says:
    Jan 17, 2021 at 6:40 am

    Very efficient, polite and helpful. I have been trying to send a message via the contact form for 2 days and it just didn’t work.
    Doncho helped me resolve my issue via the chat in 5 minutes flat. Very impressed with his efficiency and professionalism. Excellent sevcie – well done Doncho ******

    Reply
  12. Dan C. says:
    Jan 17, 2021 at 4:21 am

    I already knew that SiteGround had excellent technical support. How about a cherry on top? Got disconnected while on a Support chat, twice in 10-15 minutes, due to some connectivity issues on my side. Was not looking forward to re-typing my 4-5 questions … But – the first time I was reconnected to the same agent, the second time to another (who promptly found the previous agent and transferred me). This made it possible to restart the conversation exactly where we had left it! They had also sent me an email with the answers I had already gotten – to make sure that I had them handy in case I was unable to reconnect soon. TOP-NOTCH customer service: very fast response and extremely pleasant people.

    Reply
  14. Brian says:
    Jan 15, 2021 at 11:04 pm

    Everyone at the online support is fantastic and very nice to newbies like me. I am staying with siteground for as long as this keep us.

    Reply
  15. Megan Sherman says:
    Jan 15, 2021 at 10:53 pm

    Seriously some of the best customer service I have ever dealt with. I work in Customer Service myself an I hope I am just as good as these guys. Keep it up!!

    Reply
  16. Mel says:
    Jan 15, 2021 at 7:18 pm

    Ivan was so great! Personable, understanding, and really happy to help problem solve! I know I am in great hands withservice like this, thanks to Ivan and SiteGround.

    Reply
  17. Oliver D. says:
    Jan 15, 2021 at 5:48 am

    We have used siteground for quite some time now, really impressed with all the features it has built in.

    Good features combined with the best support we’ve ever experienced is the reason why we got no complaints at all!

    Got an issue? No worries, their kind hearted support will sort it out for you or give you the right information for you to move forward.

    Above all expectations!

    Reply
  18. Sally-Anne says:
    Jan 14, 2021 at 8:06 am

    My contact with SG to fact find was very helpful. The senior sales exec was very well informed and quick to answer my tons of questions.

    Thank you for being so helpful. I am looking to switch within a month.

    Reply
  19. Mark Moodley says:
    Jan 13, 2021 at 4:22 pm

    Great service, hardly no wait, 20/30 seconds, then Elisaveta B was super polite and super efficient. One of the rare times, I ahve enjoyed using the chat function, Well done.

    Reply
  21. levent AKIS says:
    Jan 13, 2021 at 5:15 am

    My chat with IVAN was perfect today.

    Thank you for maintaining such a good team.

    Best regards

    Reply
  23. Nima says:
    Jan 12, 2021 at 10:34 pm

    Nikola was the most helpful hosting support rep I have ever encountered in my 10 years of managing websites.

    Reply
  24. Phil Feinberg says:
    Jan 12, 2021 at 12:06 am

    Petar was very pleasant, patient and knowledgeable. I was in a little bit of a panic with being locked out of my WordPress website and he got me up and running immediately.

    Reply
  25. Katelyn says:
    Jan 11, 2021 at 8:58 am

    amazing support team! everyone has been so helpful providing quick resolutions. thanks for all of the help!

    Reply
  30. Priscilla Warren says:
    Jan 8, 2021 at 10:30 pm

    Great online support from Desislava! I am so not a technical person and she really helped me with my problem going step by step.

    Reply
  31. Matt says:
    Jan 8, 2021 at 8:53 pm

    Nikol S. was absolutely amazing. She walked me through my initial questions. I was very nervous about switching hosting companies with several established domains and websites. Nikol walked me through and even after the process. Very nice and responsive. Thank you Nikol for all the help! I will also make sure to try Musaka soon =)

    Matt

    Reply
  33. David Bosley says:
    Jan 7, 2021 at 10:25 pm

    Alanas, went above and beyond to figure out my database connection error and make it work for me! I really, appreciate the expert support and care you give to help !!!

    Reply
  35. Keely Fisher says:
    Jan 6, 2021 at 11:05 pm

    Siteground is AWESOME!!! If there was an issue I just reached out and they were there for me. I will most definitely be recommending them to everyone!!

    Reply
  38. Shannon says:
    Jan 5, 2021 at 4:26 pm

    I worked with Mladen today. He was able to get my problem resolved quickly and efficiently. I have to say, all the technicians I work with at Siteground are all helpful and very easy to work with. They get things done quick! Thanks everyone!

    Reply
  40. Masoud Noor says:
    Jan 5, 2021 at 12:13 am

    I Appreciate their Support if i msg at midnight also they solve the issue
    in professional way
    Amazing Job By siteground Team

    Reply
  44. Tal Attoun says:
    Jan 2, 2021 at 6:36 am

    Nikola was amazing assistance and super helpful and creativity, he need to get a promotion,

    Reply
  45. Angel says:
    Jan 1, 2021 at 11:48 pm

    Awesome customer service!
    I really like the way the help me to fix an issue that I was thinking it was going to impossible. Thank you so much Bozhidar I, … you’re the best!

    Reply
  47. Eric Grimm says:
    Jan 1, 2021 at 7:20 pm

    Vasil did a great job of helping me to figure out how to access my staging copy after installing cloudflare.

    Reply
  49. Dominic Ottaviano says:
    Dec 30, 2020 at 2:02 pm

    The representative was excellent, answered the question promptly, unfortunately, I have to wait for the domain to fully expire before transferring but that’s not his fault, it’s mine, but he got me an answer quickly.

    Reply
  50. Abdu Fatah Soomro says:
    Dec 30, 2020 at 3:04 am

    Best service best support, sales service person senior person a very cooperative person thank you so much. 100 stars

    Reply

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