SiteGround Review | Solid Service, Quality Support (2024)
Useful alternative for startups
Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more
Best for
Useful alternative for startups
Overall rating
4 out of 5 stars
When you think of bespoke, artisanal products you tend to think of pottery, clothing, and maybe even coffee, but web hosting? What kind of crazy talk is that? SiteGround offers what it calls web hosting “crafted with care.” It says speed is its passion, security solutions its specialty, and technical support its pride.
That sure sounds nice, but how does all that marketing talk shake out in reality? That’s what this article aims to find out as you wend your way through the endless choices of web hosting services. In our research, SiteGround sits towards the end of our list, sitting 9th in our web hosting rankings, with an overall score of 3.7 out of 5.
That doesn’t mean you should dismiss it outright, as it actually performs very well in different industries such as Managed WordPress hosting. Let’s go through SiteGround in detail and get to the bottom of this provider!
SiteGround: Brief Summary
Let’s have a look at SiteGround’s pros and cons:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Automated daily backups for free Automatic WordPress updates for all users Excellent knowledge base pages | Not the cheapest web hosting around Performance can vary wildly across industries |
Find out more:
Top Web Hosting Providers – our comparative review of HostGator, Bluehost, and GoDaddy Hosting
Reliability & Performance
Performance
Performance is the biggest issue affecting SiteGround as a hosting provider. Across all our research industries, it never gives us a square answer.
In our managed WordPress and our ecommerce hosting rankings, SiteGround came third and fourth respectively with a decent score of 3.5 out of 5 for performance.
But in our shared hosting and blog rankings, SiteGround got the worst performance of any hosting provider, with 0.7 out of 5 being the lowest score given.
Uptime
SiteGround has a page dedicated to the issue of uptime, which is a measure (expressed as a percentage) of how often the network is active and online.
SiteGround claims an uptime of 99.99 percent; however, our research has that number a little lower at 99.98 percent. Either way that’s a great percentage for downtime. Over the course of a year both percentages amount to less than two hours of downtime.
It’s simply impossible to keep a network running smoothly 100 percent of the time. Eventually, there will be problems that cause brief outages — even Google goes down occasionally.
Still, you want that number to be as close to 100 percent as possible, and SiteGround provides that.
Features
If you are starting out with a WordPress-based site then SiteGround may be the place for you. It comes third in our rankings with an overall score of 4.3 out of 5, with its features specifically getting scored 4.1 out of 5.
SiteGround offers managed WordPress hosting on all of its plans, which means the company handles essential services like automatic updates for WordPress. SiteGround also supports WordPress command line management (WP-CLI) on all plans, which is not that common.
That’s not to say SiteGround is for WordPress only; it supports all manner of other content management systems, as well as static sites on generic servers. Since WordPress is a popular option for millions of websites around the world, however, SiteGround dedicates some special advantages to customers who go with the open-source blog platform.
If you are coming from another web host and wish to bring your site with you, SiteGround offers free website transfers on all plans and a company agent will handle the transfer for you.
SiteGround’s basic StartUp shared hosting plan supports a single website, 10GB of disk space, unmetered data transfer, a free drag-and-drop site builder, free email accounts, free daily automatic backups, the cPanel hosting control panel, and a one-click installer for WordPress.
While SiteGround offers unmetered data transfer, the StartUp package only supports around 10,000 visits per month. That’s not a lot, but it’s more than enough for a site that is just starting out.
However, GoGeek, its top-level plan, also adds WordPress staging, which makes it easier to test changes to your site before releasing them live. The top-tier package also comes with the Git version control system pre-installed. Git is a tool for recording and controlling all coding changes and is the backbone of the popular developer site, GitHub. Git is an advanced user feature and is helpful if you have a team of developers working on your site.
SiteGround also offers a cloud hosting product for those who need to scale up their sites based on demand. This level of service is best suited to sites with high traffic such as businesses and popular online destinations or services.
There are four tiers for cloud hosting packages: Entry, Business, Plus, and Super Power. These plans are all about the hardware and bandwidth. Entry offers a Linux container (virtualized operating system) with 2 CPU cores, 4GB of memory, 40GB of SSD storage, and 5TB of data transfer. The top tier Super Power plan offers 8 CPU cores, 10GB of memory, 120GB of SSD storage, and the same 5TB of data transfer.
SiteGround also offers customized enterprise hosting solutions.
Find out more:
WordPress review – our full breakdown of WordPress.org and how to get the most out of it.
Is SiteGround Easy to Use?
Signing-up for SiteGround is relatively easy. After choosing your desired hosting package, SiteGround offers to either register a new .COM domain for $14 per year or allows you to use one of your own domains.
We’d recommend bringing your own domain even if you don’t have one yet. The fact is you can find a domain registrar with cheaper prices than SiteGround. However, if you don’t want the extra hassle of setting up a domain from an external provider then the extra cost may be worth it.
Once you’re through the domain section, SiteGround requires all your account details — name, email, password, payment information, and so on.
Towards the bottom of this screen in the Purchase Information section, SiteGround offers two add-ons for StartUp package customers. The first is website transfer, which is free, and SiteGround’s own Site Scanner powered by U.S.-based website security company Sucuri. The latter add-on costs $20 per year automatically, which raises the price considerably if you’re not paying attention at checkout. It’s always refreshing to see a web host that doesn’t do that.
Actually, SiteGround has remarkably consistent customer scores across all its industries, so it’s nice to see it actually follows its “crafted with care” creed. Even in shared hosting, its worst-ranked category, SiteGround still scores a 4.5 out of 5 for market analysis in our research, proving that those that do choose SiteGround end up having an agreeable time with it.
Customer Support
SiteGround’s support options begin with its multiple knowledge pages. The primary one is the generic Knowledge Base site with answers to general questions organized by topics such as hosting, cPanel, applications, billing, and so on.
Each section has articles written by the company that help with many of the most common issues. If you don’t see your issue on the Knowledge Base landing page, you can use the search box at the top to drill deeper.
SiteGround’s help and support cover all its industries, so it’s nice to see that one plan or industry isn’t favored over another, as it scored 3.8 out of 5 for help and support across all our rankings.
Beyond the main Knowledge base, there are also dedicated tutorials for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and Drupal.
If the DIY route isn’t working for you, SiteGround also offers 24/7 phone and live chat support, as well as trouble tickets.
Pricing & Value for Money
Web Hosting
Pricing used to be SiteGrounds’s big detractor, because compared to other hosting providers it was on the more expensive side. However, SiteGround has recently updated its prices to be cheaper and thus improved its value-for-money score. Yay! It used to sit at an overall score of 2.4 out of 5 for value for money, but in industries such as Ecommerce it has now bumped its value score up to 3.9 out of 5!
For new customers, SiteGround requires a one-year commitment to getting its best price. Pricing for the StartUp package starts at $1.99 per month when you pay for the first year in advance. After the first year, SiteGround’s StartUp plan renews at $14.99/month.
SiteGround’s other pricing tiers have similar options. The GrowBig package is the next tier and offers multiple website hosting, 20GB of disk space, and around 25,000 monthly visits, all for $3.99 per month. The regular price is $24.99 per month.
The top-tier plan, as we mentioned earlier, is called GoGeek and has an initial price of $5.99 per month. That plan features multiple website hosting, 30GB of disk space, and around 100,000 monthly visits. You also get several extra “geeky” advanced features. The regular price for GoGeek is $39.99 per month.
SiteGround offers all these plans for the same price in both managed WordPress and ecommerce, so you can mix and match based on what you need.
Cloud Hosting
For cloud hosting, the entry Jump Start package pricing is $100 per month, Business is $200 per month, Business Plus is $300 per month, and Super Power is $400 per month.
SiteGround also offers WordPress and ecommerce hosting, both of which start at $6.99 per month, and reseller hosting from $14.99 per month – so there’s an ideal plan for every type of site.
SiteGround’s Place in the Hosting Universe
SiteGround is a nice service with some big pluses to recommend it. It has great features across all industries and seems to actually care for its users with its help and support. While other hosts do that, it’s rare to see one base its brand on it. It’s also great to see another web hosting company that is upfront with its pricing and one that doesn’t automatically opt you into high-priced add-ons.
However, SiteGround doesn’t have the same advantages for lower-tier customers that bigger web hosts like HostGator and Bluehost do, especially in regard to performance. Many of them, for example, don’t put limits on the number of visitors you get every month, at least to a point. Companies will constrain access to your site if you are using too much bandwidth so as not to harm other customers using the same server as you.
Conclusion: Is SiteGround Right for You?
SiteGround is a good service that offers great features. If your major concern is price, you can definitely find cheaper alternatives, but it’s quite common for most initial price offerings to require a 3-year commitment. SiteGround, in contrast, will give you its special price for a single year or even a month — though you’ll be paying full freight after that initial month. That allows you to get the benefits of a cheaper price without an incredibly long commitment.
Beyond price, some of the basic managed services it provides such as automated WordPress updates are an advantage, and the free automated daily backups are a big plus as well. The limitation on bandwidth is a definite drawback, but SiteGround is largely competitive. If you want WP or ecom hosting, SiteGround is a great choice, but if you want shared hosting, SiteGround’s poor performance lets it down.
The biggest question with SiteGround is whether you want to give up its added features in favor of a cheaper price elsewhere. By all accounts, SiteGround does actually commit to its caring, friendly aesthetic and won’t leave you out in the cold. If that sounds like a hosting provider you’d like to know about, why not give it a try?
Website Builder Expert aims to provide you with honest data. That’s why we conduct our own research and obtain direct, personal insight. Analyses and graphics in this article are based on authentic sources cross-validated by our in-house experts.
We take great care to ensure the information we publish is reliable and accurate. However, WBE takes no responsibility for any inaccuracy in information supplied to us by users, research participants, or other entities.
Please note the insight contained within this article is for general information purposes only. We’re glad to answer any questions you may have about this article and its supporting research. For further information, please contact Website Builder Expert directly via email at info@websitebuilderexpert.com.
Written by:
3 comments