Our Verdict: 4.5/5
GreenGeeks green credentials coupled with their great pricing, customer support service and wide variety of hosting packages makes them, in our opinion, one of the best hosting companies in the World.
But as readers of our site will know, the devil is in the detail.
In this review you will be able to assess whether GreenGeeks is the right choice for you.
If you’re already a GreenGeeks customer, we would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.
GreenGeeks started life in 2007 when Trey Gardner, a hosting veteran, founded the company with the mission of building a hosting service that was environmentally friendly.
If you didn’t already know, the hosting industry has an enormous impact on the environment. Data servers require massive amounts of electricity to maintain 100% uptime and importantly, to keep cool.
The CO2 emissions from powering one data server is on average 1390 pounds!
A recent study by the US Department of Energy estimated that emissions from powering data servers will exceed those of the airline industry by 2020.
That’s a MASSIVE impact and one worth worrying about, especially if you are concerned about climate change!
The good news is as a GreenGeeks customer you can actually do something about it.
How?
GreenGeeks is a United States EPA Green Power Partner, which means that they purchase wind energy credits for the energy they consume. In doing so GreenGeeks and their 300,000 customers are supporting the development of the renewable energy sector and thereby creating a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
But it gets even better!
Unlike most ‘green web hosting companies’ that purchase just enough credits to offset their consumption, GreenGeeks goes the extra mile and puts back onto grid three times the amount of energy they consume. This is a huge differentiator and the main reason why we have consistently rated GreenGeeks as the #1 Green Web Hosting Company!
But enough about their green credentials, how does GreenGeeks hosting service fair against the competition?
Ready to get started with GreenGeeks?
Get a free new domain and 60% off their web hosting with our GreenGeeks special offer code. The discount is auto-applied.
GreenGeeks Hosting Plans
GreenGeeks hosting plans are wide and varied.
But like most web host these days their bread and butter plans are shared web hosting for personal websites and for small to medium sized businesses.
EcoSite Starter Plan
We use their EcoSite Starter Plan to host Sustainable Business Toolkit, and have only ever had a great experience.
The features of their Starter plan offer everything you need to build a fast and secure website, for a very affordable price.
The key things that we love are as follows.
- Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage: We have never received storage related issues, and our site is pretty sizeable with decent traffic.
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee: This is another huge factor for us as we literally can’t afford downtime on our site.
- Hosting for Unlimited Websites: Do you need to host more than one site? On the Eco Starter plan you can host as many as you like! We host three sites with GreenGeeks so effectively we are getting three bangs for each buck!
- Speed baby: No one likes a slow website! The EcoStarter plan comes with Solid State Drives (SSD) so they are properly fast. Google seems to love our sites!
- Backups: My worst nightmare is losing our site. With GreenGeeks they provide Free nightly backups
- Easy and Fast Set-up: If you are just starting out this plan also comes with a Free domain, 1-click installation of WordPress and Free website migration
As you can see loads of features, and all for as little as $50 a year (get 60% off with this link)!
But what about WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress Hosting
In addition to the EcoSite Starter plan, GreenGeeks also offer managed WordPress hosting, which comes with all the same features as the EcoSite plan but has servers that are specially optimised for running WordPress sites
Moreover, their WordPress Hosting plan includes:
- Automatic updates for security. No more need to manually update WordPress
- Security scanning plus brute force and DDoS protection. If you didn’t already know, WordPress sites are very susceptible to Brute Force and DDoS attacks. GreenGeeks WordPress Hosting comes with additional security features to protect your website
- Built-in PHP caching and CloudFlare CDN for faster loading. If there is one thing that irritates me with WordPress sites, it’s speed limitations. GreenGeeks caching and CDN features really help give your WordPress site an additional boost.
Dedicated Hosting and Other Packages
For larger businesses or big personal brand sites GreenGeeks offer reseller, VPS and dedicated hosting packages. We haven’t used any of these packages so unfortunately we can’t comment.
Ready to get started with GreenGeeks?
Get a free new domain and 60% off their web hosting with our GreenGeeks special offer code. The discount is auto-applied.
Customer Service Support
Our experience of GreenGeeks customer support has only ever been positive.
However, in preparation for this GreenGeeks review we went and read 100s of independent customer reviews and the one thing that really stood out was the great feedback they get about their support.
That’s not to say that they sometimes get it wrong, they do have 300,000 customers, so by and large their support seems to be better than industry standards.
In our eyes this is a huge plus as most web-masters are not technical experts, and to have a reliable support team that you can call on when issues arise is awesome!
Personally, we frequently use their live chat function, a service that is available 24/7 365 days a year! Operatives are very polite and knowledgeable and usually get our issues sorted within a matter of minutes.
GreenGeeks also offer phone support, which we have used on occasion. Phone support is however not available 24/7. Currently their phone support is open Monday to Friday from 09:00am to 24:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST), and on the weekend from 09:00am to 20:00pm EST.
If you decide to get GreenGeeks WordPress hosting then they have expert support specialists who are able to help set your site up and are super knowledgeable on answering specific WordPress questions.
GreenGeeks Money Back Guarantee
We have never had to claim a refund from GreenGeeks, but we do know that they offer a 30-day money back guarantee, with apparently no questions asked.
If their support service is anything to go by I think this promise is as good as gold.
You definitely get the sense that GreenGeeks are willing to go above and beyond for customers, so I’m certain that they live up to this money back promise.
The way the money back guarantee works is that if you sign up to one of their hosting packages and decided within the first 30 days that GreenGeeks isn’t for you, you can easily cancel your account and get a full refund for your hosting fees.
Of course, the refund doesn’t include your domain registration fee, but you do get to keep your domain.
Free Website Migration
This is one of my favourite features of GreenGeeks. They offer a FREE service to migrate your website from your old host to their servers.
We have used this service for two other WordPress sites we own and both times it has gone super smoothly.
Without GreenGeeks we would have had to use a freelance developer from a portal like Upwork to migrate our sites as no one in our team have any idea how to move website files and databases.
Should you get GreenGeeks Hosting?
If you are looking for super affordable shared hosting that is fast, secure and reliable then we think GreenGeeks ticks the box.
Over and above that they are undoubtedly the best green web host in the market, so if sustainability is something important to you personally or for your business then we think it is a no brainer.
We obviously can’t comment on their dedicated hosting as we don’t use it, but from what we have read we believe their dedicated server options are equally good.
Ready to get started with GreenGeeks?
Get a free new domain and 60% off their web hosting with our GreenGeeks special offer code. The discount is auto-applied.
Pros
Cons
Frequently Asked Questions
If our GreenGeeks review hasn’t already answered all your questions, here are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions.