SiteGround is one of the most recommended WordPress hosting companies. They are known for their top-notch customer support, reliable and fast hosting plans, and WordPress-optimized hosting, which includes everything you’ll need to create and grow a successful website or blog. Read our complete SiteGround review to find out if it is the right host for you.
In this detailed SiteGround review, we’ll put their promises to the 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 SiteGround’s customer support?
- Features: Do they offer all the features and tools you’ll need to build your website?
- Pricing: How much will 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 fast 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 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 3,000,000+ 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, 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. During signup, you can choose the location you prefer.
Cons
As we mentioned earlier, every hosting company has some downsides. The following are some disadvantages of choosing SiteGround as your host:
- Limited Storage: Their plans come with fixed storage. However, this storage is quite ample, and if you are starting, 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 more significant 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 Tests
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 tests to thoroughly review SiteGround’s performance.
SiteGround Speed Test Results
Speed is one of the most important performance metrics to look for. A faster website offers a good user experience and boosts your SEO.
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 (397 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.
SiteGround Stress Test Results
We used K6, a stress testing tool by Grafana Labs, to test how SiteGround servers would respond to increased traffic.
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 gray line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the green line is the server response time. SiteGround performed consistently throughout the test without any hiccups.
This test shows that SiteGround is a perfect choice if you are looking for a really fast website.
One of the reasons why SiteGround performed exceptionally well in these performance tests is because of the recent innovations they’ve added.
SiteGround servers are 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.
SiteGround Uptime Test Results
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 downtime and got a 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 server’s response time.
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. For even better response times in that region, choose a data center closer to your target audience.
SiteGround Hosting Plans and Features
SiteGround offers shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting plans.
If you are starting a new site, their shared hosting plans will be perfect. 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 websites, 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 the WordPress-optimized version of their shared hosting plan. It comes with SiteGround’s in-house WordPress optimizations to improve your website performance. 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. They allow you to use resources of cloud architecture, including multi-core CPUs and bandwidth. Cloud hosting is suitable for growing websites, popular blogs, or businesses. It is also a suitable alternative to VPS and traditional dedicated servers. See SiteGround Cloud hosting.
WPBeginner’s website is hosted on SiteGround’s Enterprise hosting infrastructure, which is an enhanced version of their Cloud platform for large sites. We have written a separate detailed case study on this. For more details, take a look at why we switched to SiteGround.
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 as 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 websites with 100,000 monthly visits. You’ll get all the features of the Startup plan, plus 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 includes 40 GB of storage and can handle websites with 400,000 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 includes faster disk storage, email accounts, support for the Cloudflare free content delivery network, and a free Let’s Encrypt 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 customer support.
Their customer support includes 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket-based email support. Response times for phone and live chat are almost instant, and for email-based tickets, the first response is within less than 10 minutes.
SiteGround offers an instant AI assistant for users who prefer to fix things themselves. 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 confidently say 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, SiteGround is perfect for you. They have hosting plans for every budget, and each plan offers 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 83% discount and free SSL with our SiteGround coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to make a 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 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 when signing 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.
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.
SiteGround is better than Bluehost in terms of overall performance, technology infrastructure, and support quality. 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 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 its shared plans. During this period, you can try out its services. 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.
Antonello
Excellent and fast support!
Paul Bertanzetti
Great help from Ivan G.- 5 stars
Leslie
My website completely malfunctioned due to some conflict with a recent WordPress update. I contacted Siteground tech support via their chat feature, and the representative guided me to solve the problem in minutes. The help did not cost anything. I am very impressed and pleased with the support I received!
Olga Prokopenko
Love SiteGround’s support! They make me feel safe! Very fast and always helpful!
Emile
The chat support is awesome with almost zero waiting line. Always willing to help no matter your level of expertise. Patience and know-how from this people. Love em
Jason Steltenpohl
Prior to moving to SiteGround, I read several mentions of great customer support. I have reached out a couple times to Nikol S. and she has been wonderful and very helpful!
Bendimered Lotfi
I came with worries because my website was being shutdown due to a faulty plugin. I thought I would have to fight hard but the support was very helpful. They did put my website back on in a second. I’m really glad to get that kind of 24H and 7/7 service. Highly recommended.
Luis
Dobromir did an excellent job in resolving the problem. Siteground is fortunate to have her on their staff.
Spyros Papavlasopoulos
I couldnt be happier for the services and above all the support of Siteground hosting. The guys are always there to solve, suggest solutions for anything that has come up.
Cormac
Excellent customer support far exceeding expectations. Swift, helpful to resolution and extremely pleasant to deal with.
What a great service – thank you.
Cathy
Thanks for the help. Very efficient and great communication.
Stewart
Great customer support, I wouldn’t go anywhere else!
Balliram Chadee
Martin was extremely helpful and courteous. He assisted me with my situation and advised of follow to be expected.
Jo Hong
As a non web savvy person, Siteground has continually to impress me with their “almost instantaneous” service. Great service, patience and clear instructions, easy to follow and execute. I get my problems solved all the time.
Well done, keep it up.
Craig Rowe
It’s always a pleasure with working with the team from SiteGround. They know there product and services very well, and not to mention very helpful and pleasant to talk too.
Great work Site Ground.
Ivy
Was very helpful.
Pablo von Lochow
Siteground personel is incredible! There are so kind, they understand all the matter and they give quick and good answers. For those who dont know to choose a hosting, make yourself a favor and choose Siteground.
Almost 1 year with you and I will extend my subscription !
Mike Davidson
I’ve found Siteground’s support to consistently exceed my expectations. For context, I’m primarily a frontend dev/webmaster with some limited knowledge of backend development.
My latest interaction with Doncho D was no exception. He was fast, friendly, and knowledgeable.
Siteground’s support is one of the reasons I’m comfortable recommending them as a host.
Maureen Blair
Great service. Knew exactly what to do.
Julie
After changing my site to Cloudflare my site was down and displayed error 1000, so I got on to support and was really lucky to speak to tech support Vidilin. He was very quick checking everything and assuring me that it was all set up correctly. Changing to Cloudflare might take up to 24 hours, so even after clearing cache a few pages might not display correctly for a while. He explained that Cloudflare CDN is using many servers around the world that are caching the website’s content. It looks like the nearest server to my location was just not ready yet.
It’s very assuring to know that I didn’t make any mistakes setting it up and that SSL support and the CNAME records look good on their side.
It was a pleasure chatting with Vidilin and thanks again for your excellent, professional and very quick help.
Darren Main
Amazing, fast response and very helpful!
Andrew Knicley
Siteground is wonderful. I don’t know what other hosting providers are like, and I don’t think I’m ever going to find out. Siteground has been perfect for my multiple website needs. The customer support is top notch and on point responses are provided to help me when I get stuck. They are also constantly updating their services and improving their platform for customers.
Maggie
Siteground Support is always on top !!!
Brett
I’ve recently started building my first website on SiteGround. I’m new at this and am learning something new every minute. The staff at SiteGround are brilliant and the best. Anyone just starting shouldn’t consider any other hosting site except SiteGround. I give them a 20 out of 10.
Alfred
Great and fast customer support service.
Even thought I wasn’t a paying customer at first, their support was very helpful and patient with me, and helped me figure out my problem in no time.
10/10 would use again – highly recommended
Rodriguez
My chat with Angelina I. is so amazing support !
Karen Blanchet
I had a very pleasant chat with a very helpful young man who gave me some more clues as to the direction i should be taking with my website. I discovered I already have most of what I need in place, it just needs rearranging. SiteGround came very highly recommended and I may try it out in the future if I do not get the service I require from my present host. Thank you very much.
TK
Extremely helpful when i needed help with my website and very kind as well
Sandi
I received wonderful support tonight. Solved my problem, and just wonderful to work with!
Elizabeth Schneider
The SiteGround team is absolutely incredible. They have helped me countless times, and I am so grateful to them. I would highly recommend this hosting platform to anyone and everyone! I can’t say enough great things!
Bojan
Great help as always
Kimberly Cummins
I looked at help articles for half an hour, and couldn’t quite find my exact problem. I contacted Siteground’s help desk and Stanmir was able to help me within minutes. They were friendly and quickly solved the problem without hesitation.
I love the customer care and support offered through Siteground. Never disappointed.
Ben
Kristian T was very helpful and friendly. chatted with him at 8pm about not being able to log into site. Took about 5 minuets and he found the problem and walked me through the steps to fix it. I’m back up now. I really apricate your help!!!!!
Alfred Stanley
I’m always very impressed with SiteGround’s customer support. I seem to be able to chat with someone immediately, and whoever I talk to takes me through the needed steps. I much prefer the site management tools to the old c panel.
Richard McTighe
I spoke with Vladislav R. and he was extremely knowledgeable and answered all my queries very quickly. Very helpful indeed.
Moni
Super nice and helpful! Thanks a lot for understanding, taking the time and assisting me with my questions.
Very happy with the siteground customer service!
Shawn
A great help with a wealth of information on what it would take for me to bring my Shopify site over to WordPress.
Aaron T
Excellent Customer Service! Fast, Friendly and very efficient!
John Kenealy
I was assisted by Preslav P. today. I had a couple of complex issues with my new website. He was able to troubleshoot them, and then guide me through the fixes, which is amazing considering my lack of technical expertise!
Danton
Assistance was great! Pleasant attitude and eager to help! Very Knowledgeable! 5 Star- Rating! Thank you!
Marcel Baca
Above and beyond. Some of the best customer service I’ve had in a while. Very refreshing.
You guys rock. Thank you.
Very best,
Marcel Baca
Laurie Ebert
Very pleased with my initial contact with Toni. She seemed quite willing to help which is not what I had found with my previous hosting company. Therefore the desire to move. I look forward to moving to siteground.
Caglayan
Stefan helped me really nice! Appreciated his effort!
Gina Mendoza
Lilko was the reason why I had such an amazing customer experience when I contacted SiteGround support this evening. Lilko was incredibly helpful, sorted things out for me, sent me resources to show me how to do things. Lilko basically just make the whole process easy for me. Lilko showed me tonight why SiteGround is the best place for me to have my website hosting – because the support is amazing. Not only is it high quality support, all the consultants are so respectful and genuinely helpful. Lilko is an absolute star and I feel the weight lifted from my shoulders after our tech support chat tonight. Thank you Lilko!!
Chris L
SiteGround (SG) has been a terrific platform for hosting our websites. Approximately 2 years ago we made the switch. Previously we used GoDaddy and BlueHost (BH). Our uptime on SG is better and SG customer service chat has way less wait time with very knowledgeable agents. I am very happy with our choice to make the switch to SG.
G LaRocque
It’s always easy to get someone on the support chat, get questions answered, and get help needed. The support is really top notch.
Eva
Wonderful explanations! A pleasure to work with! Thank you so much!
Nadene
Great service. Answered my questions quickly!
Cassey
Stephan did amazing! Quick and great explanation.
Laura Blizzard
Always the best support – and in a great time-frame for responding – when I use the chat feature!!