SiteGround is an excellent, professional level web host that is ideal for high traffic websites, blogs and ecommerce stores. They offer different types of hosting, everything from shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting to cloud hosting.
They also provide an excellent introduction rate on all their plans for new content creators, an easy to navigate dashboard and a WordPress starter plugin to help get beginners up and running properly.
Last, all plans come with a CDN, the SG Optimizer plugin for WordPress, SSL certificates and the option to setup a professional email.
SiteGround Review Summary
Editors Rating:
Overall SiteGround is an excellent web host for anyone with a high traffic website, blog or online store. They offer a generous introduction rate to help keep your startup costs low the first year and provide reliable hosting for the long term as your site grows.
They are not a good web hosting choice if all you’re wanting to build is a small website with a few pages. Perhaps you just need a website to direct people to from social media. If that’s you, SiteGround is a bit expensive and you would be better served with a cheap shared webhost.
For actual hosting they offer:
- Web hosting
- WordPress hosting
- Cloud hosting
- Reseller hosting
For web hosting, they provide fast shared hosting with a 99.9% server uptime. For WordPress hosting, it directs you to the same packages as they offer on their web hosting page.
I think this is just done for SEO purposes so they can compete for the keyword phrase “WordPress hosting.” In short, WordPress hosting is a managed hosting offer where they provide automatic updates, staging environments, performance optimization, backups and more.
Cloud hosting is designed to cater business clients with high traffic websites and reseller hosting is for anyone looking to offer hosting packages to their clients as an upsell.
PROS
- Comprehensive hosting features: SG a free SSL, daily backups, staging environment, CDN, quality support and fast hosting.
- Exceellent uptime: SiteGround has a 99.99% uptime, so your site is always available and online.
- Support you can rely on: They provide customer support through live chat, helpdesk tickets, a knowledge base and phone support.
- User-friendly interface: SiteGround is a beautifully designed website, with a lot of thought and care put into the user experience to help make managing your account and websites easy for all skill levels.
CONS
- High renewal rates: SiteGrounds offer affordable introduction rates, but after the first year your hosting bill will be charged the standard rate which is a significant increase.
- Expensive cloud hosting: Cloud hosting at SiteGround is cost prohibitive for most users. It’s designed primarily for business with a high traffic website.
SiteGround
Fast reliable hosting with excellent uptime. Outstanding introduction rates to keep costs low when starting out. Free site migration from your current host to SiteGround.
SiteGround Plans and Pricing for WordPress
SiteGround is primarily a WordPress web host, though with their hosting plans you can use other popular scripts like Joomla or Drupal. All SiteGround servers are built on NGINX, a high performance, load balanced server.
Let’s break down their most popular plans and their respective prices:
SiteGround currently has three web hosting packages for their shared hosting. They all come with a 30 day money-back guarantee, a content delivery network to help make your website load fast, free SSL and daily backups.
Please note that these introduction rates are only for the first year. After that you’ll have to pay the standard rate.
Startup – The basic option
The startup plan introduction rate costs $2.99 a a month for the first year and then renews at $17.99. It’s ideal for 10,000 visitors a month which is quite a small amount of traffic and you can only have one website on this plan.
Last, you don’t get dynamic caching unlike the other two plans. At such a low traffic level, there is no need for any advanced features however but this plan is not particularly useful because general it is too limited.
Grow Big – The most popular option
Grow Big plan introduction rate costs $4.99 a month for the first year then renews at $29.99 a month. You also get unlimited website installations as well.
Your hosting account can support around 100,000 visitors a month and can easily upgrade your hosting to the Go Geek plan if your website demands it.
Overall the Grow Big is their best plan for complete beginners because it gives you full access to SiteGround hosting and is not limited in any way.
This plan provides 30% faster hosting than the Startup plan as well as site staging. Staging sounds complicated but it’s very easy and allows you to edit a copy of your website instead of the live site. When making any changes to your host, you’ll love having the ability to use staging.
Go Geek – The Pro Plan
Go Geek is designed for high traffic websites, blogs and ecommerce. It can accommodate up to 400,000 monthly visitors. It starts at $7.99 a month for the first year and renews at $44.99 a month.
There is not much separating the Go Geek plan from the Grow Big other than the amount of resources allocated to your website. The Go Geek plan is perfect for anyone with an established website that’s getting traffic and want’s a premium web host that’s fast and provides great support.
Special features of this plan include priority support, the highest tier allocation of resources available and if you’re able to white label SiteGround hosting as your own.
Summary
With regards to the three hosting plans, where SiteGround falls short is that they don’t have a plan for medium sized websites. What if you have a website where you’re getting 1,500 visitors a day? You’re too big to be on the Grow Big plan but not really big enough for Go Geek to justify paying $39.99 a month.
We hope they increase the resources for the Grow Big plan to allow for up to 40,000 visitors a day without increasing price.
SiteGround Speed and Performance
SiteGround’s speed an performance is some of the best in the industry and is what you’re paying a premium for. The fact that unlike other high end web hosts, you can right now lock in a low introduction rate for your first year with SiteGround makes it quite a deal.
When it comes to performance and speed, there are a few things you get with SiteGround to improve your website.
SG Optimizer Cache Plugin
With your WordPress installation, you get the SG Optimizer plugin which is an excellent cache plugin designed to work with SiteGrounds servers:
The SiteGround SuperCacher system provides several layers of caching for your site –NGINX Direct Delivery, Dynamic Cache, and Memcached. NGINX Direct Delivery is switched on by default for all our users and is not WordPress specific. *Source
One thing to note is that you don’t get dynamic cache on their basic, Start Up plan. Regardless, SiteGround is focused on speed and delivery. They are also optimized for multiple applications, not just WordPress.
Data Centers around the World
A data center is simply a building with a bunch of servers that are maintained and protected. Having multiple data centers ensures you’re able to have fast response times for when your audience is trying to load your website.
Have a website that caters to more of an Australian or Asian audience? Their data center in Singapore is perfect for you. They also have data centers in Europe and North America.
SiteGround Dashboard
SiteGround offers a sleek, easy to use dashboard for creating websites. From your dashboard you can easily create a new website or migrate an existing website over to SiteGround.
You can buy domain names from SiteGround, an email marketing plan, manage your services, customize the appearance of your dashboard manage your billing, join their affiliate program and explore services in their marketplace.
Adding sites
Adding websites is very with SiteGround. If you have your domain registered already somewhere like Namecheap, then all you have to do is select “existing domain” and follow the step by step on screen instructions.
If you want to buy a domain from SiteGround and setup a website then select “new domain” conversely. SiteGround also has high quality support, so if you get stuck simply open up a support chat.
I also like how they provide temporary domains as well. This is perfect if you want to experiment with an idea and need a temporary site you’ll later delete.
Does SiteGround have a website builder?
Yes, SiteGround provides an easy to use website builder on all their hosting plans.
The website builder is a good alternative to WordPress if you’re looking to build more of a static website with 20-30 pages. Ideal for a small business that wants an easy to customize, professional website.
You get access to millions of images to use, a drag and drop builder, pre-built sections you can add and customize at the click of a button, along with designed built pallets and font combinations to select from.
SiteGround Security – Anti-bot protection and an application firewall
Security is outstanding with SiteGround. They have a dedicated team of security experts managing software vulnerabilities. They also use a constantly updated application firewall with specific rules in order to keep their hosting environment secure.
In addition, you also get anti-bot protection for your website. For example, when trying to sign into your account you’ll sometimes be asked to prove you’re human through completing a captcha. While inconvenient, this small practice reduces the server load on your website and prevents brute force attacks.
Free SSL – Part DIY
All web hosts today offer a free SSL certificate with your hosting account. This is because Google has stated that having a secure website is a ranking factor. Web hosts through a service called “Let’s Encrypt” are able to provide a free SSL certificate.
With SiteGround it’s a two step process to enabling your SSL. First you need go to your “site tools” once you install WordPress on your domain:
Simply select “Let’s Encrypt” and click the orange “get” button. If you have any issue you’ll have to reach out to support. Next, log into WordPress and under the SG Optimizer plugin enable the SSL:
One issue we ran into was if you delete your website and then reinstall WordPress and attempt to get a new SSL, we ran into an error. Also, we wish SiteGround just did this for their users automatically. While not too technical, it is just another step for someone to do.
Backups with SiteGround
SiteGround provides you with daily backups which they store for 30 days. This is quite helpful as backups are an easy way to fix a website where you made some sort of design mistake.
Perhaps you’re editing the HTML and you end up making a syntax error. Maybe you just want to reload and earlier version? Maybe the worst case scenario happens and their is an issue with the server where your hosting account is on.
With daily backups, SiteGround will restore your website for you upon request so you can relax and not worry.
Website Migration
A disappointing change for SiteGround is the end of free website migrations. New customers can get 1 free site moved over and have to pay a $30 fee for any additional websites. They also have a migration plugin, but again at SiteGround’s price point this is something they should just do for you.
Like WPX Hosting, SiteGround used to offer new customers completely free site migrations to their hosting. Migrations are a simple thing with a small website and become more complicated with a larger website. It’s also quite a confusing process for customers who are not tech savvy.
At least their price point for migrations is reasonable at $30. For comparison, WPX provides free migrations for new customers but then charges $99 per migration after the onboarding process is over.
Technical Support
Part of SiteGround’s higher average price goes to having excellent, technical support staff that will actually fix your problem for you. Where other hosts like Bluehost give you a run-a-round with help articles and redundant questions, SiteGround’s support staff are tech savvy and helpful.
Compared to the past, SiteGround’s support is a bit slower and more difficult to get a hold of. The chat wait times are a bit longer and their is more of an emphasis on solving your issue yourself. This is simply because SiteGround has grown in popularity.
However, if you’re looking for a web host with tech savvy, knowledgeable support who will fix any issue for you quickly, you’ll want to use SiteGround.
Email Marketing with SiteGround
SiteGround offers email marketing to go along with their hosting.
In short, SiteGround Email Marketing is well designed for small to medium-sized businesses or individuals already using SiteGround hosting and are looking for an integrated solution to manage their direct response email marketing.
Direct response only
SiteGround email marketing offer does not include any sort of automations, if/and functions or complex funnels. It’s ideal for direct response or if you want to create your own weekly newsletter.
You can setup very basic processes like a “thank you” page for subscribing where you can setup a one time offer and a welcome email. But apart from that, you’ll need to manually email your list.
Built-in Analytics
The analytics provided by SiteGround are acceptable. You can track metrics like your open rates and click rates which is helpful for you to improve your emails as well as provide data to potential advertisers who want exposure to your list.
Campaign Setup
Create and schedule campaigns on the backend. You can set up campaigns to send to all subscribers or specific segmentation based on criteria like purchase history or campaign interaction.
Scheduling
You can also schedule emails to go out on a specific time and day. Ideal because over time you’ll discover what is the optimal time and day for your audience to receive your emails.
No Code Email Builder
Create visually appealing emails with an easy to use design editor. You can start with pre-built layouts or customize your emails from scratch.
SiteGround Marketplace
SiteGround also offers a service marketplace for hosting, domains, email marketing, the site builder, professional assistance, CDN and other services offered through SiteGround at a discount like Google WorkSpace, WP Tech Support and various themes and plugins.
SiteGround Affiliate Program
SiteGround like all web hosts offer a competitive affiliate program where based on how many sales you drive per month, influence your commission rate.
SiteGroud operates on a tiered structure where your commission is based on how many sales you generate per month. I really like that it’s not progressive.
Meaning if you drive 6 sales you get paid $75 for each of those 6 sales, not $50 for the first 1-5 sales then $75 for sales 6-10 and so forth.
The only downside of this program is the first tier. $50 for a web host that charges a premium price like SiteGround is just small. Most hosts have a larger base commission and for your average affiliate who is only able to drive a handful of monthly sales, you won’t make that much.
However, if you have the right audience, SiteGround can be lucrative, long term partner. $100 per sale is fair and I like that they offer custom commissions for affiliates who can drive traffic.
SiteGround Referral Program
Finally, SiteGround does offer a referral program. For every person you refer you get free hosting. The breakdown is found here on their terms of service:
- Start Up plan – The award will be 3 months free StartUp hosting.
- Grow Big plan – The award will be 2 months free GrowBig hosting.
- GoGeek plan – The award will be 1 month free GoGeek hosting.
- Cloud plan – The award will be 1 day free Cloud hosting.
So if you’re on the Grow Big plan (the most popular plan) and you refer someone to SiteGround you get 2 months of hosting for free.
SiteGround Review Conclusion
To wrap this up, SiteGround is a premium web host that offers a great introduction rate to help keep startup costs low, as well as the uptime, speed and reliability for high traffic websites.
They provide all the tools and resources you need to manage a high traffic website, blog or ecommerce website. You also can use a website builder to create a beautiful, static business website that’s easy to customize if WordPress is not your thing.
SiteGround
One of only three recommended web host by WordPress one one of the fastest web hosts I’ve tested. Perfect for an ecommerce store powered by WooCommerce.
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