SiteGround Review: Our #1 Choice For WordPress Hosting

siteground review

In this article we discuss everything to do with SiteGround hosting.

If you want to know the ins and outs, pros and cons and all the features on offer, then look no further because this SiteGround review has all the answers for you.

We begin by comparing their packages, then take a closer look at their customer service, before discussing the pros and cons and finally tying it all together with our final say.

SiteGround Review FAQ

Should you use SiteGround?

Deciding on a host is no easy task, especially when faced with hundreds of hosting companies. 

If you are looking to host a WordPress website, or even a Drupal or Joomla website, then we think SiteGround is a great choice. In fact, it is our #1 choice for WordPress Hosting.

SiteGround ​​hosting is fast and reliable, and their packages are scalable so as one's site grows it is quick and easy to upgrade for better performance.

They also offer great value-add and unique features that many other hosts don't. For example, daily backups, a Free CDN and Cloudflare account and a staging area to work on one's site in an offline environment.

What are the Pros & Cons of SiteGround?

Pros

  • Reliable uptime – Having a reliable uptime percentage is important. SiteGround like many of its competitors provide reliable uptime to every website, which is usually in the 99.99% range.
  • Page load times – As you probably already know, page load times are important. Page load time is one of the ranking factors in Google searches and thus is important when choosing a host. When we tested one of our sites on SiteGround, we got a page load time of just under 1 second. This is a lot faster than most of the competition.
  • SuperCacher – SuperCacher is a unique service provided by SiteGround, where an in-house plugin allows WordPress users to enable caching on their sites without needing to use third-party plugin tools for this feature.
  • Staging area – Another unique feature with SiteGround is their staging area, which gives one the offline functionality to design and make changes to a website without it affecting the live site. This is an exciting function as the front-end operates normally while making design changes and one click later, the changes are live.
  • Free CDN Service – Every SiteGround account comes with a free CloudFlare account. CloudFlare provides a CDN service which essentially allows users to connect to the closest server when accessing your website. The closer the server, the faster the load time.
  • Daily backups – SiteGround offers daily backups to each site so that your files are safer. Backing up your files secures your site so that important files are not lost. 
  • 30 day money back – An important pro is a free trial and money back guarantee. With SiteGround you have 30 days to test their service, after which you have the option to continue if you’re happy, or to request your money back if you are not. This is great because if you are unsure about things such as uptime, speed and performance, it gives you an opportunity to test these out before signing up.

Cons

  • Limited storage – Storage is limited to 30GB on their premium shared hosting plan. This means that for content heavy sites that let’s say have many videos, it may not be very suitable as 30GB isn’t very much at all. To access more space, you would have to pick another plan through their cloud or dedicated options.
  • Slow load speeds outside of the UK / US – Loading speeds in some countries tend to be slower. Within the US/UK, they are fine, but outside of these areas, site users may battle with load speeds.

What hosting plans and features does SiteGround offer?

SiteGound offers a variety of hosting options depending on what your needs are. Their array of products include WordPress, Cloud, enterprise and dedicated server hosting, but for the purposes of this review we will just focus on WordPress hosting.

With three WordPress / Shared hosting packages on offer, SiteGround definitely simplifies the decision for their customers.

Their three packages are the Startup, Growbig and Gogeek. These three offerings are easily comparable and depending on the amount of traffic expected, it is quick to make a decision which will suit you best.

Let’s look under the hood of each of these and discover which features are included.

Features

Startup

Growbig

GoGeek

Traffic per month

~10,000

~25,000

~100,000

Web space

10GB

20GB

30GB

No. of hosted sites

One

Unlimited

Unlimited

Data transfer

Unmetered

Unmetered

Unmetered

Money back guarantee

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free site transfer

No

Yes

Yes

What is SiteGround's Customer Service like?

Customer service is where SiteGround excels. They offer three modes of customer service depending on the complexity of your query.

Simple queries are handled via text on their live support. Phone support is on offer for queries out of the live chat scope and finally ticket service is available for the most complex solutions.

All customer support functions operate 24/7.

It is important to note that although this service is offered 24/7, most queries are aimed at new WordPress users and sometimes finding solutions to the more complex issues may be slightly difficult.

One great feature on the SiteGround site is the endless list of self-help articles. These articles serve to help people to figure out how their website works and learn to fix problems themselves. Sometimes you just want to do it yourself!

A great way to get started if you want to learn especially about WordPress is to begin with their WordPress tutorials. These tutorials show you how to start your site, some good plugins and even how to setup a site which is more secure.

Final Verdict

If you are looking for a host that provides reliability and good loading times and your website is one that is not very content heavy, then SiteGround is the host for you. 

Their reputation is great especially with regards to WordPress specific hosting where they offer a wide variety of extras as well as having dedicated support staff to aid you if you have any difficulties.

It would be a good idea to give their services a trial to test their speed and uptime for yourself before committing to them long term.

We hope you found this review useful and are one step closer to choosing your next web host.

About the Author Devon Ramages

Devon is our resident online business and social media guru. With a background in digital marketing, Devon has worked in a consulting capacity helping small business scale their reach and engagement online. When not consulting or writing about online business, Devon can be found surfing in his hometown, Cape Town, South Africa.

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