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 their 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 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 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, 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 review SiteGround’s performance thoroughly.
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 99.98% 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. 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 starting a new site, their shared hosting plans would be a perfect fit. 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 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 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 support to their customers.
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 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. If you cancel your account during this period, you are eligible for a refund. 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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Jon Eivind Lygren says
As per the usual, superb customer service that always goes properly in-depth in trying to resolve any issue we might have. SiteGround comes highly recommended, we have been operating with different hosts for some 20 years now and we have never been as pleased with any host as we are now with SiteGround for our services.
Jawad Khan says
Great Support, Quick Response. Thank you.
Roldan says
By the time I’ve used SiteGround for my online business, I’ve never looked back since. Couple with highly competent customer support. You’ll never look back!
Edward Barker says
Wow, finding that MailPoet fails to run compatibly with SiteGround would have taken me forever. Many thanks to SiteGround tecnical support for finding the issue, and administering the solution.
Kossi Fiadjigbe says
Ticket was thoroughly investigated with detailed answers.
waseem Aadil says
Siteground support is a team of awesome players. helping me always in resolving the issues
Judy Jacobs says
Ilyia expertly handled my request in such a short time — I’m very grateful!!
Brattøy says
Very professional and nice,
Sophie says
SiteGround have the best customer service I have ever interacted with of ANY company. Switching to use them as my webhost has been so easy, and any bumps were quickly and efficiently taken care of by the support team – someone is always readily available and problems are just fixed without any painful back-and-forth. Add to this the fact that my website is now clearly faster than before – I can’t recommend SiteGround enough!
Rick Bartelli says
Miroslav was very responsive and detailed in his recommendations. very helpful. Thank you!
Gyamfi Bediako says
SiteGround is a solid web service partner. I can’t imagine getting what they do for me from anywhere else. Thanks, #TeamSiteGround
Juan Vasquez says
Thank you for your excellent service trying to make the hosting a safe place to have my websites. The best host provider.
Jose Sa says
We had an issue with SSL certificates, not very clear on how to solve, and, as usual, Siteground support wad top notch! Thank you guys for being so approachable and supportive on less techie clients!
Robert Bussell says
wow…. i sent in a service ticket on a Saturday night and within an hour they solved it and replied…. krazy customer service 5 stars
Jason Jones says
Always prompt and the knowledge to assist is so extensive and professional they trouble shoot and go out of their way to fix your issues. I cannot fault their support and its all because they protect every website on the sever like its their own. Keep up the great work SG and thank you.
Jason Jones
Daniel Mwangomile says
Thanks for the great service!
Eric Dizon says
Georgi was prompt and responsive in helping with my concern and provide great details in helping me resolve my issue.
Gisele Grenier says
Of all the service providers I deal with across different industries, Siteground is by far has the best response time and rarely do I have to re-clarify any issues due to miscommunication.
Howard Walsdorf says
These guys have been very helpful as far as helping me migrate my old site onto their server. I give them a 5 stars!
Novi Yanti says
Thank you so much. very helpful
Alan Barker says
Excellent, prompt support as always. I have used numerous hosting companies over many years and your support is easily the best!. Great job.
Patrick G says
Great customer support, very professional
Shailesh Patel says
Siteground help saved me hours of trouble of a complication with my setup. They were super quick and knowledgeable and understood my question right away. Thank you so much team!
george says
Amazing service keep this operator
Rebeca Sipe says
Darin customer service was excellent! He thoroughly answered all of my questions. He was patient with my lack of tech understanding.
Neil Ellis says
Siteground support Chat is awesome. Probably why Siteground still ranked #1 in hosting. I was actually thinking of changing my hosting because I am about to setup 6 new websites. I researched the market and I found that I am already with the best. I am a business owner and I have a web developer. I actually thought that when I hit chat to talk about my Siteground account and how adding websites would affect the cost that I may need to know “Geek Web Guy” language and not regular English to understand the services that Siteground is giving me and how the online businesses I wanted to setup would affect my payments. I also had questions about the emails I want to use for each site and how that affects my costs. The responses I received were clear, concise and very understandable. At no time was I given comments back with terms that I could not understand. Any responses that there was even more information I could read had a link attached to the already written answer to my question. If all the Siteground Techs are as cordial as the one that helped me then I have to say that Siteground is the right spot for any business person that needs web hosting and and is not really in touch with how this all works. I am 100% impressed!!!! Thank You!
William Patterson says
Really a great help in understanding the process in moving and changing a website into a new account.
Vasilis Petropoulos says
I have never met such a support! Every time to the point, extremely fast and extremely helpful! Keep up the amazing work!
George T Gilmer says
Great help. Thanks!
Shani levi says
First of all I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for the support and care and response you have given me I am really pleased and thank you and highly recommend to anyone who wants a storage company to purchase from you thank you thank you
Veronica Harding says
Diana K was fabulous with lots of patience who walked me through the entire process. If all your staff is like Diana K, I know I’ll be in good hands
James Kwan says
Amazing customer service from Ditimar. Reconfirmed that Siteground has amazing customer service.
DeeDee Lake says
Wow!
My chat today was amazing. The rep was quick and efficient. I was so pleased and will definitely recommend Siteground and their great customer service!
Kim Nguyen says
The agent was really helpful and quick to resolve my issue. Thank you!
Rex L Curry says
Helped flush the cache so fast, I didn’t even catch your name, so whoever you are don’t watch “The Flash” You are way faster than that, and thanks!
Gordon Rickard says
Your Siteground representative, Gabriel P., promptly reviewed my request for help, answered my questions and advised me on how to resolve the problem.
Kevin Bonilla says
Julian and Nikol were awesome! I love siteground, seriously I’m not kidding!
Richard Cantin says
I have used Siteground previously after extensive reviews of competitors and offerings. I have always been impressed with their knowledgabale staff and reliable, high-preforming products.
This interaction reinforced my opinion.
The call was quickly answered, the question was immediately recognized and I was walked through how to do exactly what I wnated.
I have been in high-tech for over 30 years, so do not normally need much from tech support but when I do, I want real answers, not scripted responses from unifirmed call-centre personnel, and Siteground has consistently met and exceeded my expectations.
Thank you Siteground.
Justin Clark says
Petar was really a great help to me. Must be 100 stars! Thanks!
Kelvin Tan says
The customer service was helpful and guide along step by step to solve my issue. Thanks Nikolay.
Andrew says
Varteres helped solve my issue in minutes so my site was back up and running free from “Fatal” errors. Helpful, friendly and patient, Varteres is simply the best.
Khurram says
Friendly and valuable customer support.
Feuza Reis says
Thank you so much Nayden and Siteground team for going above and beyond to assist and troubleshoot as we change hosts.
Brad Ross-MacLeod says
I’ve worked with many hosts over the years, and the support has been spotty at best. Siteground, on the other hand, always has the most helpful and responsive support people I’ve encountered. They always seem to ask good questions and help me through my problems, even when I’m not the best at explaining. So I appreciate that human touch that I get when I need help.
Laverne says
Hello. I’m new. I’m trying to figure it all out. I was pleased with the quick response on Siteground’s chat. Very happy with this. My representative, Ervin H., was outstanding — friendly and professional — not to mention, knowledgeable. We addrssed my issue expediently and easily. I’m only a day in, but I’m delighted with the support here so far.
Greg Black says
Petar was quick to help…almost no waiting. He was a great listener and helped remediated my issues immediately. Petar shows he has a great personality and his service is above and beyond. I almost forgot I had any issues at all.
Dave Dowling says
Rep was awesome!!!
Janel Westerfield says
Quick, reliable service. I thought I was screwed after deleting something on my account, but the customer service rep was amazing and helped me get what I needed in less than 5 minutes. Wow!
Amanda says
I just switched from another popular hosting company because they deleted four of my sites irretrievably. In my interactions in helping me transfer, the service here is incredible! Personal and helpful. I am highly impressed with tech support at Site Ground. So glad I made the switch!
Dani Ramiro says
Beatriz solved our question pretty much straight away. Thank you very much!