SiteGround Web Hosting Review
An honest review of their Hosting service in 2020
Web Hosting in 2020
So, you want to setup a new web site. You’ve been around the block with various hosts, all promising the moon and stars for a portion of your monthly wealth. But, mainly you find yourself let down by them. Unexplained downtime, slow site speeds, zero apologies, and on we go to find the next best Host for your website. Is there Loyalty in hosting and Can hosting companies really live up to our expectations in 2020 and beyond?
We’re impressed with SiteGround and we think they have something worth exploring. Let’s find out whether SiteGround is worth your investment.
We’ll show you what to expect from their service and a neat summary of the pros and cons of SiteGround Hosting service.
SiteGround Hosting — what’s the fuss about?
While founded in 2004, it’s only in recent times that its popularity has grown exponentially. It was founded by three students from Bulgaria while still attending university.
Lots of people on Youtube have been talking about SiteGround and told us all their switching. I too made the switch. At a glance it is all fabulous to be honest: fast websites, reliable service, 24-hour support and affordable-ish prices (prices increase upon renewal).
But let’s check inside and see what all the fuss is about and if it’s worth your investment.
SiteGround Signup
Interested in SiteGround? You can currently save up to 67% on SiteGround plans. Use our special discount link to get this deal. Remember: you’ll get a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Pricing:
The first thing you’ll notice is the cheap prices. Very enticing. But, be aware that these prices only hold for the first year/term. Once you renew you’ll be paying a pretty substantial sum of money. The Prices are all shown in our table view below.
SiteGround StartUp Plan:
This entry level package is suitable for smaller 1-site or once off projects that don’t need more than 10GB of storage but will have to pay for extras such as advanced backup options. No free backup option sucks in our opinion.
SiteGround GrowBig Plan:
You’ve got multiple sites, either all your own or you’re a designer who resells hosting to clients. This then is for you.
It’s the middle of the road Hosting package and the most popular on SiteGround. It also gives you access faster servers. On-demand backup and restores are included in the price. It also comes with staging areas for wordpress.
SiteGround GoGeek Plan:
This is the plan for you if you have multiple sites with lots of traffic and therefore need that higher performance to cope with the traffic. You’ll get the fastest support on this plan compared to the other two.
Backend — what to expect
Back in 2019 SiteGround moved away from the cPanal interface to a new user dashboard. If you love cPanel then look away now. But, to be fair, their interface is pretty intuitive as you would imagine and hope. Really, in no time at all you’ll have the hang of it.
From the ‘Websites’ tab you’ll be able to add, manage and delete your sites. What’s cool about their new system is that each website is managed independently, and you can even add different users for each one. This makes SiteGround a good option for big projects with several team members and even web development agencies with multiple clients.
A nice extra is that you can customize your own dashboard. Still in all, you can still do the expected tasks like create email address, ftp accounts and the best feature in my opinion is the on-demand backup option. Within a few clicks you can backup and restore previous backups of your site. This is only available on the GrowBig and GoGeek SiteGround plans.
Security
All in all it appears that SiteGround are on top of their game when it comes to site security.
Through your dashboard you have access to, and, you can install an SSL certificate which has become the standard now for sites and Google and other search engines penalize you for not having one.
SiteGround offer an simple and easy way to get setup with the SSL cert ‘Let’s Encrypt’ available for free.
PHP is always set by default to the latest PHP version. A must for any site to maintain its security.
You can similarly choose to auto-update your WordPress and any other plugins you may have. From my side, I’m always wary of having auto-update on for anything WordPress related having broken a site in the past. In my opinion, turn auto-update off, but, be aware of the update releases, backup and then update yourself manually.
Performance
Uptime:
I’ve been in situations with another hosting company in the past where my sites have all gone down. No apology has ever been given and no gesture of discount or anything every offered. In fact, I have over the years, had to notify them that their own servers are down. I know, I should have moved on sooner but when you have 20+ sites it’s the hassle that stops you.
SiteGround stats show that they never seem to go below 99.98% uptime. This is unreal going and I’m very impressed by this. This alone was good enough reason for me to transfer over to SiteGround.
Speed:
Also crucial for all website owners. SiteGround use NGINX web server technology to speed up the load of static content of every single website they host.
Other technologies like HTTP/2(which require the SSL certificate — Let’s Encrypt), PHP7 and their own caching system.
Lastly, you can access the Cloudflare CDN which is a must in order to make your site faster. I’ve done this on all my sites and certainly have seen the page load speed increase by using it. Get on it if you haven’t done this integration on your other non-SiteGround hosted sites.
Support:
Even with the uptime hiccups with my previous host, they were damn good with their support. So, the bar was set high when it first came to dealing with SiteGround.
SiteGround support have a few options, email, phone and 24 hour live chat with 3 language options. I’m a bit of a night hawk, regularly working on my sites ’til 2 am so the last thing I want to do is hop on the phone or have to wait for an email reply if I need to get something resolved stat! 😊
For me their live chat is a no-brainer in terms of getting in touch with them quickly. Their help is useful and support agents a polite and seem to know their stuff. Therefore, I get the majority of my issues resolved while chatting. How good is that?
When you log in to their chat support, you can quickly see your wait time, and to be fair, that’s a good feature. Like all support centers, they’ll have quiet times where you’ll get an agent right away and other times when the wait can stretch on. In fact, one time I fell asleep (late at night) while waiting and missed by turn! Oh well!
SiteGround Signup
Interested in SiteGround? You can currently save up to 67% on SiteGround plans. Use our special discount link to get this deal. Remember: you’ll get a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Siteground Signup
Step 1 — choose your plan
- The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now.
- The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves website speed.
- The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like more server resources and GIT integration.
Step 2 — Choose a Domain Name
You can choose to buy a new domain, or sign up with an existing domain. SiteGround offer a wide range of domain extensions at reasonable prices.
Step 3 -Review and Complete the Order
At checkout you will see your discounts for the hosting period shown. Some of the best prices and value on the market available here.
Conclusion
That’s our quick summary of the SiteGround features.
We hope you like it and can make a better-informed decision on SiteGround as your next hosting company.
Certainly I don’t regret making the switch. I was previously on a reseller plan for a max 25 sites and paying $380 per annum. Even at full fees, SiteGround still trumps the old hosting service.
Below we’ve outlined the various Pros and Cons. It’s worth seeing them and being aware, that while no service is perfect, you can certainly make an informed decision especially if you have prior experience with another host.
I hope you found this review useful.
I am an affiliate for SiteGround and will make a commission should you choose to purchase from my link. I’d appreciate it, but ultimately, if you found this review useful, let me know.