SiteGround is a Bulgarian company launched in 2004 specialized in high performance web hosting services. Since then, it has grown steadily and now has more than 500 employees and almost 2 million domains.
The support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. It has different hosting plans, both basic and advanced, in this post we will show some of its benefits and disadvantages.
SiteGround Pricing
The following SiteGround prices are for their shared hosting plans, which is the most popular service. SiteGround offers additional hosting options (for example dedicated servers or cloud hosting), you can see their costs here
Their prices start at $6.99 / mo. up to $14.99 / mo. This is in the part of services of Web Hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce, in the part of CLoud Hosting their prices go from $80.00 / mo. up to $240.00 / mo. this will depend on what you need for your websites.
What Can You Expect From Each Siteground Plan?
SiteGround offers 3 shared hosting plans that, in most cases, suit the needs of most users, unless you have a really large website. Please note that all plans share the following characteristics:
- They do not limit the traffic your website can receive. But of course, if you have a lot of monthly visitors (for example, 100,000+), shared hosting may fall short.
- Unlimited databases and email accounts
- 30 days money back guarantee
- SSD drives and your own caching system
- 24-hour phone, chat and email support
But of course, not all SiteGround plans are the same. Next, we will see their main differences.
Home – Ideal for users who have a single small to medium-sized website and require less than 10GB of space. On this plan, you will have the caching service for static content only (this will make your website faster). Advanced features (eg staging) are not part of this package.
GrowBig – This plan was created to store more than one website, with 20GB of space. You will have access to the staging tool and its (smart) on-demand backup system. In addition to the caching system for static content, this plan makes it possible to cache dynamic content.
GoGeek – In addition to giving you more space (40GB) and better performing servers, this plan gives you access to pre-installed Git repositories. It also comes with support for white label hosting, something agencies will appreciate.
Pros and Cons of SiteGround
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Excellent Uptime: SiteGround has some of the best availability figures (almost 100%). We will cover this more below. | Price: Personally, I think SiteGround offers good value for money, but it’s certainly not the cheapest on the market. |
| High-speed hosting: Due to the hardware they use (eg SSDs) and the software solution (eg SG Optimizer and HTTP / 2), they offer above-average speeds. | Professional Migrations: If you want a SiteGround support agent to handle your website migration, you will be asked to pay $30. There is a free WordPress migration plugin that you can use. |
| Easy and intuitive to use: its system is easy to use and the functions are perfectly integrated with each other. | Database size: Each SiteGround plan comes with a maximum size for each database. This will only be a problem for larger sites. |
| Excellent Support and Assistance: SiteGround offers a very comprehensive level of customer care. Their tutorials and guides are also of high quality. | |
| Server Location: When you open your account with SiteGround, you can choose from servers in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe. | |
| Advanced Features: SiteGround incorporates features that many other hosting providers don’t have. For example staging, self caching, or Git repositories. Or free integrations with CloudFlare or Let’sEnrcypt (SSL). | |
| Unlimited Traffic: They don’t measure your website traffic. | |
| Collaborators: with SiteGround you can create additional users with access to the different websites you manage. |
What is SiteGround for Used?
SiteGround offers unbeatable services and I recommend it in a heartbeat. It is suitable for serious projects, and if you need more performance in the future, you can upgrade to one of their premium hosting plans (for example, cloud or dedicated). I especially recommend it for:
- Online stores
- Professional bloggers
- Websites that run on WordPress (more information)
- Large corporate websites
- Developers and designers looking for quality and good support
- Those looking for features like staging, Git repositories, or SSH access
- In general, anything that requires high-performance solutions.
Siteground’s Approach To Backups
I believe that backups (along with performance and support) are one of the most important features of a hosting provider.
It is true that you can connect a third party service that creates backups for you (eg UpdraftPlus for WordPress), but I am of the opinion that having it integrated with your host is more efficient and easier to manage.
- The backup function is perfectly integrated with the SiteGround system. Therefore, it is not necessary to use any foreign system that can create conflicts.
- The backups for each site are managed individually, which means you can create a backup for just one of your sites instead of having to create backups for all of your sites hosted on SiteGround.
- Having the option to create on-demand backups is a dream for those pushing code or system and plugin updates. Before doing so, you can create a backup for your peace of mind.
- Backups are useless unless you have an easy and efficient way to restore them. SiteGround only requires a couple of clicks.
- And finally, on-demand backup and restore options are included in the GrowBig and GoGeek plans at no additional cost; other providers charge for similar (worse) features.
Please note that advanced backup capabilities (build-on-demand and restore) are only available with the GrowBig and GoGeek plans. With the entry-level plan, you’ll have 30-day backups, but you’ll need to contact support to restore them, no on-demand backups.
SiteGround Review: Final Thoughts
I was drawn to how SiteGround talks about its own support services, their promises, availability, and speed.
After years of trying them, I think they offer a very good service. They have one of the best upload speeds I’ve ever tested on shared hosting. SiteGround’s support team is fast, effective, and friendly; many competitors fail here. Also, if you are looking for the best technology, SiteGround offers much more than average (eg Git or Staging environment).
Of course, this web host is in the mid to high price range, and it wouldn’t be ideal for small budget projects. Its advanced backup features are great, but they are not available on the lowest plan for free.
Hope you found this SiteGround review helpful. But please leave a comment below if you have any questions or comments.
Let’s Talk About Other Points Of View When Making The Decision To Acquire A Hosting
To get started Remember that you can take a 30-day free trial of SiteGround. However, I do not recommend them.
Why I say this, taking into account that what you are going to acquire is a professional hosting service either for a wordpress or a store or whatever you want so that you can use the service for 30 days and then throw away everything is job.
In other words, if you are going to take your business or website seriously then it is recommended that you use the service for a year and then if you see that there are better options, you will migrate if that is the case.
Now this is taking into account that you are a beginner and you are starting your first professional website.
If you are a more experienced user, I assume that you will come with not very pleasant experiences of other services and you are looking at SiteGround to solve these problems, whether technical or cost.
