SiteGround Hosting Review

SiteGround is a well-known web hosting company, which was founded back in 2004. Since they began they have been focused on providing high quality web hosting at an affordable price. Over the years they have done a great job at keeping up with the latest technologies for both the hardware that runs the sites and the software that drives them.

The company boasts that they are constantly growing, and currently host over 320,000 different domains on their servers. Of course, this number is going up by the day, and as one of the more popular web hosting providers this is likely to continue long into the future. Whenever you see rapid growth with any hosting provider it can be a cause for concern that they will not be able to support all the customers, but SiteGround seems to be doing a good job at adding new hardware and other resources to accommodate all their new customers.

Types of Hosting Available

SiteGround offers four categories of web hosting to choose from. Within each category there are going to be a number of different options, which allows you to get the exact level of hosting that you need, without having to pay for excess options or hardware that your site won’t utilize. The four categories of hosting are shared hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers and reseller hosting.

Shared Hosting Options

For the vast majority of blogs and other web pages, shared hosting is going to be the perfect option. SiteGround has a strong reputation for not ‘over selling’ their shared servers, which means your site won’t lag or even crash due to what other sites on the same server are doing. Within this category there are three options to choose from. Shared hosting prices start at $3.95 per month and go up to $14.95.

The entry level is called the ‘StartUp’ package which allows one website and is good for sites that get up to about 10,000 monthly visitors. The midlevel package is called, ‘GrowBig’ and allows for additional websites and approximately 25,000 monthly visitors. The highest level shared hosting package is the, ‘GoGeek’ package, which can handle about 100,000 visits per month. You can see the specifics of each option here:

Cloud Hosting Options

Their cloud hosting options are extremely customizable based on exactly what you need. Using the cloud for web hosting is a newer option, and allows for a lot of customization that isn’t available with shared hosting plans.

SiteGround allows you to customize the CPU (number of cores), the RAM (amount of memory) and storage (hard disk space) that you need. They do have several ‘pre-configured’ options that are designed for entry level up to ‘enterprise plus’ level users, which is nice for anyone who doesn’t have the technical experience to really know exactly which resources they need for their site. Cloud hosting starts at $50 per month and can go as high as $440, depending on the specs you choose.

Which SiteGround Plan Is Best?

It can often be confusing which SiteGround plan is best to choose. However, unless you have an established website or have a special requirement then I would always recommend going for their shared hosting plan.

If you are running a small business website or blog. Start small. Siteground’s StartUp plan provides enough features for most smaller websites.

SiteGround Data Centers

When you sign up for an account at SiteGround you will be able to choose which of their three data centers you want your site hosted in. In almost all cases, you will want to select the one that is going to be the nearest to your target audience. The three options are:

• Chicago, IL (USA)
• Amsterdam, NL
• Singapore, SG

All three of the locations offer state of the art facilities with the latest in technologies. Some key points about their data centers include:

• 24/7 human security at each location
• Biometric access doors
• Bullet proof lobby
• Advanced video surveillance (both on premises and in data center)
• Enterprise-Class electrical systems with full redundancy
• Advanced temperature and humidity control

In addition to these features, they also have technical staff available on site to perform any hands on troubleshooting or hardware replacement that is needed. This is essential for preventing or minimizing downtime related to failed drives or other devices.

Siteground Control Panel

When it comes to how you will actually manage your sites, SiteGround provides cPanel, which is the most popular control panel on the market today. They do customize the styling with their own branding, but if you have ever used cPanel before, the functionality will be largely the same.

From the control panel you will be able to quickly install common platforms such as Joomla, WordPress, Magento and others. This is all done through the Softaluccous auto-installer system.

Siteground Customer Service

The overall non-technical customer service is excellent. They offer live chat and phone options to get your questions answered quickly. They can also help you to choose exactly which of their hosting packages would be right for you. This is a great feature for those who may be new to web hosting, and want to make sure they get a package that will be able to meet their needs.

Siteground Features Review

When comparing the features offered by different hosting companies today it is hard to really have one stand out from another. Other than the ‘low end’ hosting companies, just about all providers have everything you will need to host any type of site you can imagine, and SiteGround is no exception.

Things like Joomla and WordPress toolkits are included with all their plans, which will give you additional abilities to manage your site properly. One thing that does help to set them apart is their free templates for Joomla and WordPress as well as their easy to follow tutorials for running either Joomla or WordPress sites. Each of these features helps to make the job of the webmaster much easier, which is quite nice.

Siteground Uptime Review

When it comes to web hosting, uptime and reliability is exceedingly important. No other features or services matter if your site is constantly dropping. You won’t have this problem with SiteGround as they offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. What’s nice is that even though they guarantee 99.9% uptime, their actual numbers are typically significantly higher than that.

In fact, they track their exact uptime for their servers and display it clearly on their site. As of the time of this writing they had a 99.996% uptime for the past year and 99.999% for the past 30 days.

To help minimize downtime, they have advanced problem detection software running on their servers. This software alerts their technical support teams as soon as problems are found, which allows the support teams to fix the problem, often before it ever results in an outage.

The bottom line here is that when it comes to site uptime, you won’t find a better hosting company than SiteGround.

Siteground Loading Speed Review

Second in importance only to uptime is the speed at which your website loads. SiteGround does an excellent job at servicing requests extremely fast. Of course, there are many factors that can impact the load times of websites, but for the areas that the hosting company is responsible for, they do an excellent job.

The most important thing you need to keep in mind here is that you want to have your site physically hosted as close to your target customers as possible. This means you need to make sure you choose the proper data center when you sign up or it could cause some delays. If you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask the SiteGround sales team.

Siteground Technical Support Review

Once you’ve signed up for their service you will have access to their technical support services as well. While most people experience very few problems associated with the SiteGround hosting, it is essential to know that you can get help if you need it.

The SiteGround technical support is not only very friendly, but also very competent. They can resolve most technical issues quickly and easily, and are happy to help you even if the issue was caused by human error on your part. They boast that they process more than 600 tickets, 300 phone calls and 800 chat requests for technical support per day, and typically with virtually no wait time.

Overall Pros & Cons of SiteGround

There is really no doubt that SiteGround is an excellent hosting company. Take a moment to review some of the top pros and cons that we have found with this company to see if it is the right option for you.

Pros:

• Well-Established – The Company has been in business for over ten years now, and has done a great job at keeping up with the latest trends and technologies.
• Free Templates – Most hosting companies don’t offer templates for your site, but SiteGround does. What’s even better is the quality of the templates is actually extremely high.
• Free Domain – When you sign up for any of their hosting packages, they will provide you with a free domain name for one year.
• Many Hosting Options – This company offers every type of hosting you can imagine, from entry level shared packages to top of the line dedicated servers. No matter what type of site you run, SiteGround can handle it.

Cons:

• Limited Data Center Locations – While the three data centers they have are in excellent locations, many people may want hosting in additional areas. Of course, this is only an issue for those who are looking for hosting in a specific part of the world that is not covered.
• Missing Ruby on Rails – Ruby on Rails is a very popular programming option, and many web developers like being able to use it. Unfortunately, it is not available on their shared hosting packages.
• High End Packages are Costly – While nobody could argue that you’re not getting what you pay for, it is also going to be hard for many webmasters to swallow the steep price for the higher end options.

James

I provide insightful hosting reviews to some paid hosts should you decide to have outgrown a free hosting and want to move up the inter-web ladder. Because of the nature of my job, I deal with a lot of hosting sites on a daily basis and this gives me insight into how the companies are run. I am able to share these with my loyal visitors. I sometimes receive affiliate compensation for some of the host sites reviewed.