Siteground VPS Hosting Reviews Updated For 2017
Siteground is a leading web hosting provider founded by a few university friends who started working from their dorm rooms. Over time, it turned into one of the top web hosting companies on the internet today. Siteground has over 220 employees and they host over 320,000 websites. Siteground offers fully managed cloud based VPS hosting plans. This means that their customer support team can help you in both hardware and software issues.
Types of VPS Plans
Siteground offers 4 types of VPS plans including Entry, Business, Business Plus and Enterprise. The cost of the VPS plans range from $60 per month to $140 per month. As you can see, this is not cheap!
The Entry VPS plan features 1 CPU core, 2 GB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. The highest configuration plan, the Enterprise plan offers 4 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM and 80 GB hard disk space. The Business plan features 2GB RAM, and 40 GB hard disk. The Business Plus plan offers 3 GB RAM bandwidth and 60 GB hard disk.
| Entry | Business | Business Plus | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1x 3.0GHz | 2x 3.0GHz | 2x 3.0GHz | 4x 3.0GHz |
| RAM | 2GB | 2GB | 3GB | 4GB |
| BANDWIDTH | 5TB/mo | 5TB/mo | 5TB/mo | 5TB/mo |
| STORAGE | 20GB | 40GB | 60GB | 80GB |
| PRICE | $60.00 | $80.00 | $100.00 | $140.00 |
| View this plan | View this plan | View this plan | View this plan |
All the VPS plans feature 5TB bandwidth. Each webmaster is entitled to 2 dedicated IP addresses. Since it is a fully managed hosting, their technical team will be responsible in maintaining the server every day. Besides, they also offer one free domain name and one private SSL for webmasters who sign up with them.
Pros And Cons Of Siteground VPS Hosting
PROS:
- Customize VPS Plan
- Easy to Use Control Panel
- Managed VPS
- World Class Data Centres
- Automatic File Backup
- HHVM Technology
- Cloud Performance Booster
- Reliable Customer Support
CONS:
- Limited Features in the WHM
- No Root Access
- No Free Trial
- Pricing on the high side
Advantages of Siteground VPS Hosting
Ability to Create a Customize VPS Plan: You have the option of customizing the VPS plan with the features you need including CPU, RAM and storage. The maximum resources you can customize are 16 cores, 16 GB RAM and 200 GB hard disk space. Giving webmasters the ability to create their own customzed VPS plan is great, It prevents them from purchasing a plan that offer more resources than they need. You can make changes to your VPS plan every month by adding or reducing the resources. You only need to pay for the additional settings which you have made on the VPS hosting.
Easy to Use Control Panel: Just like most web hosting providers, Siteground offers a cPanel with WHM. You will be able to set up individual cPanel account for your website. The toolkits allows you to automate simple tasks with just one click. The SuperCacher can be used to cache static files, PHP and MySQL database queries. The SuperCacher can cache at a faster speed compared to the W3 Total Cache. The control panel includes the Softaculous autoinstaller, which you can use to install various scripts within a few minutes.
Siteground supports the four main CMS systems including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. All the CMS feature Git integration. Drush integration is available for Drupal. The Cloudflare Rallgun can cache pages that cannot be normally cached such as e-commerce, and HTTPS. The SSH and WP-CLI lets you have complete control over your WordPress. They offer automatic updates for WordPress and Joomla.
You can conveniently add more resources from your control panel without having to restart the server. The auto scale feature will automatically adjust the resources when there is a surge in the traffic volume your website receive. The auto scale feature prevents you from having to make modifications on the resources yourself. You won’t have to worry about making the wrong modifications on the resources, which can cause your website to experience down times,
KVM Based Platform: Siteground offers KVM based VPS. KVM is a full hardware virtualisation platform. The loadable kernel modules in KVM gives you the ability to carry out a variety of Linux distros. With KVM VPS, webmasters are guaranteed with resources because the virtual private server is equipped with a private virtualized hard hardware such as hard disk and graphic card.
World Class Data Centres: Siteground operates three data centers including United States, Europe and Singapore. You have the option of choosing the data center. You can choose the data center that is located nearest to you to get the fastest performance. It uses Tier1 bandwidth providers that offers 20Mbit connection. The state of the art data center is equipped with a large number of 3.0 GHZ CPU servers.
Their data centers are located in strategic areas that receive extremely good internet connection from the major ISP provider. Only a small number of hops are required to reach the optimal network connection. All their data centers are equipped with the best in class power system, dedicated generator, UPS and battery backup. The data centers are protected with surveillance camera, biometrics and security badge access.
There is a security team that continually watch the data centers for 24/7. Hackers often like to attack software such as Apache, PHP and EXIM. The security team will try to create their own patches when they detect the problems so that the clients won’t be at risk. The server is protected with IP tables firewall. They always ensure that the server is equipped with the most up to date version of the software.
Automatic File Backup: Siteground will backup your data on a cloud network. It uses data center that is compliant with content delivery network (CDN). You can add the CDN to your hosting for free of charge. The control panel is protected with a secure encryption system that prevent any hacker from accessing it. Siteground will automatically backup the files on your server on 7 different sites. The files will ba backup for one week. In case you lose your files, they can quickly help you to restore them.
HHVM Technology: Siteground has implemented the HHVM technology on their cloud VPS hosting. The technology is not available to existing plans but new plans will be able to take advantage on the technology. The advantage of HHVM is that it can increase the loading speed of your website. It is designed to be compatible with websites that run on PHP scripts. By increasing the loading speed, you will be able to increase your visitors’ experience in navigating around your website.
99.999% Uptime: Siteground guarantees an uptime of 99.999%. It is equipped with Linux servers that is powered with SSD hard disk. They minimize downtime with a unique software their team have developed. The software helps them to monitor the status of the server in real time. The software will automatically fix issues that are causing the downtime in the server without any help from human beings.
Cloud Performance Booster: Siteground offers a new feature called Cloud Performance Booster that is designed to work with CMS systems such as WordPress, and Drupal. The Cloud Performance Booster uses features two technologies including Alternative PHP Cache and FastCGI. With Cloud Performance Booster, you can improve the performance of your PHP-based applications without having to make any configuration to the server.
Reliable Customer Support: Siteground offers 24/7 customer support through email, live chat, tickets and telephone. It is estimated that Siteground customer support department handles more than 1000 tickets every day. They answer more than 500 phone calls. Their customer support team engage in more than 800 live chat sessions every day.
Siteground customer representatives answer tickets and live chats almost instantly. There is an average response time of 10 minutes for queries submitted through the ticket systems. There is always an agent available to answer the phone or chat with you because they overstaff the customer support representatives in all shifts. They regularly carry out evaluation on the speed of each of the employees. Siteground put a lot of efforts into making sure their customer support is efficient.
Siteground offers two types of customer support including application support and general customer support. Siteground support team is knowledgeable in all scopes of VPS hosting. It is free to call their customer support department as they offer toll free telephone support. Siteground offers many free tutorials and webinars on different VPS hosting topics.
Drawbacks of Siteground VPS Hosting
- Limited Features in the WHM: One disadvantage of Siteground VPS is that you will not have access to many functions in the WHM control panel. For example, you will not be able to backup and restore files on your own. There are also a lot of admin configuration settings which you will not be able to access.
- No Root Access: You will not be given any root access so you cannot make any configuration on the server. If you need to make a minor configuration, you can contact the customer support and they will do it for free of charge. If you need to make a major tweak, you will have to pay an additional fee.
- No Free Trial: Another downside is the Siteground does not offer any free trial for customers. Many people would like to get a free trial to test the hosting before paying for it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Siteground is a reputable web hosting provider with more than 10 years of experience in the industry. Siteground put their customers’ satisfaction a priority and they are always able to offer fast and helpful customer support.Their servers are equipped with a high-level security system that can effectively prevent hackers’ attacks. I still find the cloud hosting to be very expensive and I will not recommend Siteground VPS for both small business owners who are looking for an entry level VPS provider.
