Siteground Review 2020

SiteGround is a growing hidden gem in the web hosting market. In terms of features for small business needs: speed, uptime, and customer support, SiteGround offers so much more than its rivals. Its commitment to shared hosting innovation is making it one of the most important hosting providers that small businesses should consider. Read below our in-depth Siteground review 2020.

Background

Founded in 2004, headquartered in Bulgaria and with offices in Spain, SiteGround is privately owned. SiteGround promotes different types of hosting services. It offers dedicated, cloud, and VPS plans in addition to shared hosting and WordPress. SiteGround is known as the cheap/shared hosting provider that comes with unlimited bandwidth and includes SSL (Let’s Encrypt) and CDN (CloudFlare).

Customers benefit from the basic CloudFlare CDN plan, free SSL certificates, and free daily backups of their website data on the server. Compared to other hosts providers, SiteGround has ensured that its shared plans are packed with features that are relevant. One of its main and most revered features and their customer support. You read their reviews and it is in a class of its own. We also found their customer support knowledgeable in WordPress related questions.

Superb Customer Support

SiteGround’s customer support handles queries from customers in English, Spanish and Italian, which helps cover a wide range of territories, and its website is localized for nine territories. It is no small feat, when you consider that they’re processing over 1,500+ tickets, 800+ phone calls and 2,000+ chat requests every day.

After only 11 seconds, their friendly and knowledgeable live agent connected with us. Then, we started to bombard her with different questions on how to do X and how to do Y. We were met with prompt and correct responses to all.

If you have a more urgent problem, there’s also a live chat feature, and you can call SiteGround to speak to someone if you prefer. All support options are available 24/7, unlike some web hosts that make you wait until their office opens.

• SiteGround provides support for well beyond only hosting related issues – their reps help with CMS questions as well.
• The official client survey results released by SiteGround each year show that their client satisfaction rate is constantly scored over 98%. (2016, 2017, 2018).

High uptime (99.99%) – Ultra-reliable

SiteGround prefers in-house crafted solutions to ensure a high-quality hosting experience. Their platform is built on Linux containers, providing great stability even during unexpected traffic spikes. Further to that, SiteGround was the first hosting provider that introduced the account isolation technology for client security. Not only that, their impressive proactive server monitoring system monitors their servers every 0.5 seconds. It also proactively fixes any problems without human intervention, thus ensuring amazing uptime. We find this impressive.

Over the course of 10 months, our test site on SiteGround had an average uptime of 99.99%, which is .05% better than the 99.94% industry standard and meeting SiteGround’s promises.

They only had 20 outages in total last year (2018). That is definitely impressive as other web hosting providers have had up to 2000+ outages. The ‘uptime’ detailed overview is below:

Last 10-month’s average uptime:

• March 2018 average uptime: 100%
• April 2018 average uptime: 100%
• May 2018 average uptime: 97%
• June 2018 average uptime: 99%
• July 2018 average uptime: 100%
• August 2018 average uptime: 97%
• September 2018 average uptime: 100%
• October 2018 average uptime: 100%
• November 2018 average uptime: 99%
• December 2018 average uptime: 100%

Fast loading times (714ms, above the average)

Over the same 10-month period, our SiteGround test site saw an average page loading times of 714ms. That is very good and definitely, among the quickest, we have seen. In addition, it was also consistent throughout. No spikes or slow loading times whatsoever which is a welcome feature for any client. As a whole, we can estate that SiteGround is very fast and will keep your site loading faster than with most hosting providers.

Last 10-month’s average load times:

• March 2018 average speed: 680ms
• April 2018 average speed: 730ms
• May 2018 average speed: 730ms
• June 2018 average speed: 693ms
• July 2018 average speed: 735ms
• August 2018 average speed: 733ms
• September 2018 average speed: 699ms
• October 2018 average speed: 737ms
• November 2018 average speed: 688ms
• December 2018 average speed: 712ms

High-Performance E-commerce and WordPress hosting on all plans

One of the features that SiteGround plans include as standard and that most other web hosts don’t provide is Managed WordPress Hosting on all accounts. What this means is that there is someone who actually manages the service for you in terms of speed, security, support, updates and provides enhancement tools to will make your life easier.

SiteGround takes care of your WordPress and plugin updates, make daily backups for free in case anything might happen that could bring your site down. This event is actually relatively common when updating plugins and one decides to go haywire and you are faced with an error page.

Security is quite high up in their priorities and they provide a service that constantly monitors WordPress related vulnerabilities and proactively protects users with custom WAF rules. The platform is built on fast SSD and with SuperCacher, its in-house crafted caching tool that helps to load your site quicker than the average.

For the more advanced users, Siteground’s GrowBig and GoGeek plans include WordPress staging environments, pre-installed Git, WP-CLI for easy command line management options, PCI compliance for e-shops, 1-year Wildcard SSL for free, priority customer support, free backup and restore. These are some of the features that will be most welcomed.

In terms of e-commerce support, SiteGround makes it really easy by giving you the option to choose from 18 eCommerce applications and install your favourite ones in 1 click. To help in speed and reliability, they provide multiple server locations, free CDN, PCI compliance, and advanced caching solution. As for security, if you host multiple websites, your client accounts are isolated from each other by a custom server solution, which means that if one account gets hacked others are not affected.

Security Add-Ons for Free

In addition to the security options available within their WordPress managed hosting, SiteGround also provides additional security for sites of sizes. Available tools include SpamAssassin and SpamExperts, IP address blocklists, Leech Protect, and hotlink protection. You can also add HackAlert Monitoring for an amazingly low $1 per month. HackAlert is a service that checks your website on a daily basis and warns you if it has been hacked or compromised. This is such a great feature that immediately gives peace of mind.

FREE website transfers

With SiteGround, you won’t have to lift a finger or wait a month to transfer your website into their servers. SiteGround’s support agents handle it all and totally free of charge unline some other hosts that can take up to 30 days. And yet, they have more ways for you to do this than solely rely on their expertise.

The easiest way to request a site transfer is to do it when you first sign up for SiteGround. Just click “Transfer a website” in the Account Setup Wizard.

Worth mentioning that you also get an option to request a website transfer through the support section of your SiteGround Account. This feature is an awesome tool if you decide that you want to transfer a site later on, for whatever reason. Just go to User Area > Support > Request Assistance from Our Team > Proceed to contact us here link, then, click Transfer Website. It really is that simple.

Naturally, you also get the option to transfer your website manually into SiteGround but we recommend taking advantage of the free transfer they offer and that comes for free with your plan. Basically, they do the work for you so you can focus your attention on other more concerning matters

Do they provide affordable pricing?

Being honest here, for all of the great options, support and features that they offer, their current price structure is a steal compared with other web hosts of lesser quality.

You’ll get quality hosting packed with features that normally you have to pay a premium for. To top it all, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for all of our shared hosting plans and 15 days money-back guarantee for cloud hosting plans, which makes the deal even sweeter and gives you that reassurance and peace of mind that you are after from a web hosting company.

The following conditions apply to their money-back guarantee:

• Service termination requests must be posted through your User Area;
• Initial orders for hosting services are covered within thirty days from the day we activate the service(s);
• Renewal orders are not covered;
• The domain name and Domain Privacy (ID Protect) fees are not refundable and may be due upon cancellation even if waived initially as part of a special promotion;
• Dedicated Hosting Services, Paid Support or Third Party Services are not covered by the money-back guarantee;
• Reseller packages are only covered if the complete Reseller package is cancelled. The guarantee does not apply to the termination of individual accounts in a Reseller package.

Free CDN and SSL Certificate

Every plan SiteGround offers comes equipped with a free SSL certificate and CDN (content delivery network) integration for safe and fast performance. These features are a genuinely a great bonus. With SiteGround, you will get a free SSL certificate installation from ‘Let’s Encrypt SSL’ that will instantly bolster your website’s security and search engine optimization.

Given the increase of cyber-attacks and website hacks in recent times, Google has changed certain aspects of their algorithm to favour secure and encrypted websites with SSL encryption. The SSL certification can cost upwards of $60 and you get it for free. Kudos to that.

Furthermore, they’ve included a free integration of Cloudflare’s CDN. And this is a game-changer. This means that Cloudflare will cache the data and content from your site on their global servers and then deliver the content to your audience from a nearby location to them. This speeds up the delivery of your content enormously and improves the user experience for your visitors. A win-win situation all around.

SiteGround is committed to providing its customers with a transparent and straightforward experience. Hosting with them, you get a thriving community of experts who can help walk you through different challenges and troubleshooting issues.

Upgrading your hosting plan

Compared with other web hosts, SiteGround’s storage space is a bit on the tight end. It is down to you to forecast how many monthly visitors will have so the plan you choose or upgrade to can safely handle the numbers without experiencing any issues. If you’re just starting out, the “StartUp” plan will usually be more than enough. If your site grows, you can easily upgrade to a more robust server/plan which is likely to have more muscle.

With the StartUp plan, you’ll get 10 GB of webspace. SiteGround recommends this plan for about 10,000 monthly website visitors.

If you need more, just move up to the GrowBig plan. You’ll get 20 GB of web space with that plan. If you receive around 25,000 monthly visitors, SiteGround recommends this package and in all fairness, for the price difference with the starter and what you get in comparison, we would recommend it too.

If you want to upgrade to the GoGeek plan, you’ll receive 30 GB of space. SiteGround recommends this plan for a website that receives about 100,000 visitors every month.

SiteGround Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick rundown of the hosting plans offered by SiteGround:

Shared Hosting: Their shared hosting comes with three main plans:

• The StartUp plan: Can host one website and is suitable for newbies who are just starting with their website. Can handle up to 10,000 unique visits per month and has the first level of the SuperCacher plugin enabled which is static cache, 24/7 client support, free CDN, Let’s Encrypt SSL, Unlimited Emails & DBs, free site migration, free daily backup, etc.
• The GrowBig plan: Can host multiple websites and this plan can handle up to 25,000 visits per month, a free SSL Wildcard for 1 year, 30 backup copies and free restore, all 3-levels of the SuperCacher, which aids loading time tremendously, customer support with priority, although SiteGround has insanely fast response times, GrowBig and GoGeek clients are handled with priority.
• Their GoGeek plan: Can host multiple websites and offers even more space, can handle up to 100,000 visits per month, has all features of the other two plans plus 1-click WP staging, pre-installed git, PCI compliance and fewer accounts on the server.

All shared hosting plans come with a free email account, free CDN and unlimited bandwidth.

• Ease of Signup: Very easy, one-page sign-up process.
• Payment Methods: Credit Card.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: They charge a $14.95 setup fee if you pay for their shared hosting plans monthly instead of annually. You’d be better off paying 1 year upfront to avoid that.
• Upsells: Nothing too
• Account Activation: Quick account activation.
• Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel
• Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Quick and easy install of popular apps and CMSs using Softaculous.

Is SiteGround Right For You?

SiteGround is consistently being recommended as a solid and reliable web hosting provider for small businesses. Our experience is really good on the things that are important from a hosting provider, uptime, support, speed, and technical capability.

We really like that SiteGround has invested in making its WordPress offerings well above the average. Plus, we are made to feel appreciated as their technical support team is quick and knowledgeable.

The plan you choose will affect performance and speed to some degree and you need to bear that in mind. Choose well and you will be so pleased with your decision. Talking and hearing other SiteGround users, they claim that all plans perform well in terms of uptime and features. The customer service you get is great across the board. Customers on the cheaper hosting plans appear to experience the same quality of support as those paying more. SiteGround is perfect for those who care deeply about having access to fast and reliable customer support, while not sacrificing quick page speeds or impressive uptime either.

To see more web hosting options, visit our best web hosting companies of 2020