About SiteGround
SiteGround is a web hosting company that provides hosting services to millions of customers across the globe. SiteGround was founded in 2004 by Ivo Tzenov in Bulgaria. Ever since, the company’s headquarters remain in Sofia, Bulgaria. Even so, SiteGround has many offices in different locations in the world such as Stara Zagora, Madrid, and Plovdiv.
As a privately-owned company, SiteGround has employed over five hundred staff members distributed across its different offices. Tenko Nikolov is the current CEO of SiteGround leading the company into greater heights. This is evident from the fact that it boasts to have hosted over two million domains for different clients across the world.
Further, SiteGround has many data centers around the world and distributed over three continents. These data centers include: Sofia (Bulgaria), Madrid (Spain), London (UK), Eemshaven (NL), Frankfurt (Denmark), Alexandria VA (USA), Council Bluffs, IOWA
(USA), Singapore (SG), and Sidney (Australia).
Table of Contents
SiteGround Features
SiteGround has distinct features that make it stand out among other web hosting providers. To best understand how SiteGround works, I will analyze some of its most interesting features.
Google Cloud Infrastructure
Google Cloud infrastructure helps play a vital role in how your hosted website performs when in a different geo-location. As Google has been accredited as one of the fastest networks, Google cloud infrastructure typically makes your website run faster while on SiteGround.
Further, google cloud technology applies a standard state of the art network which enables distributed storage in SSDs. This deals with high data redundancy of your website, thus running faster. Even more, the cloud infrastructure accommodates easier scaling and resource management of your website.
SiteGround’s Response Time
To understand how fast SiteGround compares to other web hosting services, checking the response time is one way to answer your query. I tested SiteGround and BlueHost’s response time and found SiteGround to have an impressively low response time. in some places in the US, the response time dropped to as low as 1ms.
Uptime Record
The response time alone is not sufficient to acquire the relevant metrics with regard to the site speeds. SiteGround boasts to have a 99.9% uptime. While it is impossible to have a 100% uptime record, SiteGround cuts in very close to this number as it has almost no recorded downtime in the past year and a half (16-10-2018).
SiteGround is able to maintain reliable uptime records because it applies a server isolation technology on its shared hosting service.
SG Optimizer Plugin: (Game Changer)
Moreover, SiteGround has further invested in increasing website loading speeds by developing and applying a Supercache plugin. This plugin is an in-house developed plugin that essentially adds various layers of caching for faster loading. It is prudent to say that at the moment; no other shared hosting platforms offer anything remotely close to the SG plugin. In fact, with only $7.95 per month, you will be able to acquire the plugin on SiteGround.
Free SSL Certificate
SiteGround is one of the few web hosting providers that do not charge their users for providing extra security to their websites. SiteGround offers a free SSL certificate to any user via its ‘Lets Encrypt’ feature which is automatically activated for new and novice users. Using Word
Press hosting will especially require this extra layer of security which makes it ideal for WordPress compatibility.
PHP 7.3 enabled
Even more interesting is SiteGround’s innovative capability and keeping up to date with new technologies. As of this moment, SiteGround offers the latest version of PHP, PHP 7.3. The closest other web hosting providers have been able to offer is PHP version 5.6.
Reliable Customer Support
SiteGround has an incredible 24/7 customer support system that is highly responsive. While other web hosting providers also credit a 24/7 support, I find SiteGround to be the only reliable customer support system that gets back at you as soon as possible and with a valiant solution to your specific problem.
Free Website Migration
Yet another attractive feature created by SiteGround is that you can be able to migrate from one host provider to SiteGround hosting completely charge-free. Typically, many other web hosting providers charge an approximate $49 to $149 for a complete hosting migration service.
SiteGround has even simplified the website migration hosting such that you will be prompted to migrate your site for free as soon as you login to your account. Thereafter, you will only need to change the domain name server.
There are countless more features that SiteGround offers the clients such as unlimited hosting, a one-click WordPress installation. Not only is the WordPress installation over-simplified, but also includes WordPress experts who are ready to help you resolve any WordPress hosting problems that you may encounter.
SiteGround Pricing Plan
SiteGround offers a diversified Pricing Plan that takes into consideration the different needs of clients depending on the chosen site functionality. The pricing plan is categorized into five major sections:
- Shared hosting services
- Cloud hosting services
- Dedicated servers
- Reseller hosting services
- WordPress hosting service
- Enterprise hosting service
Shared Hosting Service
Among these options, the most popular service is the shared hosting service and has three subscription plans:
- StartUp Plan
- GrowBig Plan
- GoGeek Plan
All of SiteGround’s shared hosting services have access to these same features:
- Unlimited data transfer
- Free Website migrations and transfers
- Free website backups
- Access to cPanel
- WordPress-CLI service that is suitable for web developers and expert users
While any of the shared hosting services incorporates all of the above features, the shared hosting plans differ in various details as I will indicate in the table below.
| StartUpPlan | GrowBig Plan | GoGeek Plan |
| starts with a regular pricing of $11.95/monthcan only host a single websiteprovides a 10GB disk spaceallows up to 10,000 monthly visits from your clientsincludes essential WordPress featurescrafted for novice WordPress users | Starts at a regular pricing of $19.95 per monthoffers an unlimited number of websitesincludes a 20GB disk space availabilityallows up to 25,000 visits in a monthoffers both the essential WordPress features as well as the premium WordPress featuresdesigned for growing WordPress sites | starts at a regular price of $34.95 per monthcan host an unlimited number of websitesallows up to 30GB disk space availabilitycan accommodate up to a maximum of 100,000 visits every monthincludes all of the WordPress features such as essential WordPress, premium WordPress, and Geeky WordPress featuresit is specifically crafted for expert WordPress users |
It is also worth mentioning that from time to time, SiteGround offers promotional coupons aimed at marketing their products to a wider market. For instance, the StartUp Plan could be offered at $3.95 per month, the GrowBig Plan at $5.95/month and the GoGeek Plan at just $11.95. Nonetheless, this pricing applies only to your first subscription term after which you will have to pay the normal ratings.
Irrespective of the subscription plan chosen, you always have the option to upgrade to a much-advanced subscription service or vice versa. Further, SiteGround has a 30-day money-back guarantee in the event that you are unsatisfied with the services offered and you choose to terminate the service instead.
Cloud Hosting Services
SiteGround’s cloud hosting services offer a dynamic duo of ability and affordability. Cloud hosting services are very powerful in that Google Cloud Hosting does not focus on one server only. Instead, google cloud hosting pulls resources from lots of different sources and then combines this data to create a ‘virtual server’ of sorts.
SiteGround offers the cloud hosting plans starting from $80 per month to $240 per month depending on the specific hosting plan you have selected. More so, SiteGround’s cloud hosting enables you to create a custom plan that is geared to specifically suit your hosting needs. A custom cloud hosting service could cost you up to $2100 per month and is typically used by well-established businesses.
Dedicated Hosting Services
SiteGround dedicated hosting service is quite expensive as compared to most of the other top web hosting providers. This is because dedicated hosting is mostly used by very large businesses that have a very high visitor expectation on their websites. There are three basic dedicated hosting plans offered by SiteGround:
- Entry Plan – starts at $269 per month
- Power Plan – starting at $349 per month
- Super Power Plan – starting at $729 per month
The expensive rates are not without their blissful experience. SiteGround’s powerful dedicated server features are fully managed by SiteGround experts, giving you a VIP treatment. Further, you will also be able to choose the data servers from which you want to be housed.
The servers could either be in the US, in Asia, or Europe, depending on the location of the majority of your site visitors. Finally, dedicated server hosting on SiteGround is ideal for integration with other content management systems such as Joomla, WordPress, and Magento.
Dedicated Hosting Features
The major reason for subscribing to dedicated hosting is to be able to acquire the necessary power needed to seamlessly support websites with heavy user traffic. As such, the three hosting plans are categorized according to the availability of RAM, memory (SSD) space, bandwidth, and the number of cores used in the server processors.
The comparisons between the hosting plans can be clearly contrasted as from the table below:
| Features | SSD Storage | RAM | Bandwidth | CPU cores |
| Entry Plan | 480GB | 16GB | 10TB | 4 |
| Power Plan | 960GB | 32GB | 10TB | 4 |
| Super Power Plan | 1.9TB | 64GB | 10TB | 12 |
WordPress Hosting Services
SiteGround WordPress hosting service is designed specifically for websites built on WordPress. WordPress itself recommends using SiteGround to host WordPress built sites. Further, when running an e-commerce store with WordPress, SiteGround can also offer to host for WooCommerce as well.
WordPress hosting plans are similar to SiteGround’s shared hosting plans with respect to the pricing. This pricing is exact, right down to the smallest detailed price. This is so as the shared hosting service includes WordPress provisions.
As such, SiteGround has two additional features for individuals specifically choosing the WordPress hosting option: One-click installs and Automated updates. The one-click installs feature SiteGround’s in-built functions which combine your WordPress website with the respective cPanel in just a tap of a button.
SiteGround will also provide automatic updates for WordPress built site starting with minor changes that might be updated every two weeks. Major updates are also bound to happen every couple of months, keeping you always up to date with the current system.
Reseller Hosting Services
SiteGround also offers reseller hosting services which are ideal for web design companies or web developers who are looking to make money for the valiant services they provide. In essence, subscribing to the reseller hosting plan means that you act as the middle man between SiteGround and the actual customer who wants to use the website for a specified purpose.
Under the reseller hosting plan, you will be able to buy a year’s worth of hosting, then sell it to other users at a monthly fee. In order to use the reseller hosting plan, you have to be conversant with the necessary hosting skills required to run a web hosting service of your own.
Reseller hosting does not work like typical web hosting services and as such have a different method of subscription. You will use a credit system where each credit represents an entire year’s worth of hosting. You will also need at least five credits to get started on this plan.
There are three typical pricing tiers that are associated with reseller hosting:
- 1 – 4 credits cost $49
- 5 – 10 credits cost $45
- 11+ credits cost $42
Enterprise Hosting Services
SiteGround also offers an enterprise hosting plan, which is different from any other type of hosting services offered by web providers. There are no specific criteria or pricing tier for the enterprise hosting plan.
This is because the enterprise hosting plan involves a plan created entirely by yourself. It is you who will decide what resources you need to be used as well as how the site will be hosted. The only service that SiteGround provides, in this case, is managing the hosting plan.
It is worth noting that whatever they will host depends entirely upon you and your chosen dimensions. Furthermore, there is no specific pricing tier attached to the enterprise hosting plan as SiteGround charges this service on a quote to quote basis.
SiteGround Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee to all of their usersSiteGround has an automatic daily backup service that backs up and restores your data to your most recent settingsFurthermore, SiteGround includes an automatic WordPress InstallationSiteGround also offers increased security through their ‘Lets Encrypt’ option which offers free SSL certificates for youIn addition, SiteGround includes innovative technologies such as SSD, HTTP/2, PHP 7, NGINX, among others. This increases site speeds significantlyMoreover, SiteGround offers Cloudflare CDN which enables users to access information at exceptional speedsFinally, SiteGround offers managed WordPress hosting to all their hosted plans, which is an advantage for text additions and editing | SiteGround is expensive with regards to some of their hosted plans like the dedicated server hostingSiteGround is a great web hosting provider with regards to the functionality and site loading speeds, but faults in the extreme limitation of their data storageThe web hosting provider has a very strict data over-usage policyHow to add SiteGround txt recordhow to backup SiteGround with WordPressHow to install WordPress with SiteGround |
SiteGround support
SiteGround has a well-advanced customer support system that solves your queries within the appropriate time. The web hosting provider offers 24/7 customer support via email, live chats, or via phone. The support team will then get in contact with you as soon as possible.
It is also worth mentioning that while the customer support is available to every SiteGround user, members who have subscribed to the dedicated server hosting, reseller hosting and enterprise hosting, receive a VIP customer support where they are in direct contact with the support team.
This is also because these packages are highly delicate, handling heavy traffic, and also because you would have paid for the special attention that you seek for your hosted services.
SiteGround domains and domain transfer
Until last year, SiteGround had been offering free domains to its users. Nonetheless, as of this year, SiteGround began charging for the registration of domains and at relative pricing of $15.95. That having been said, SiteGround has a simple domain registration process.
Even so you can still register unlimited domains under your SiteGround account. First off, visit the ‘User Area,’ then proceed to ‘Add Services,’ and finally, click on ‘Register A Domain.’ you will be prompted to fill out the necessary details to complete the process.
Registering a domain with SiteGround does not require any additional setups as SiteGround automatically configures it for you. Even so, you can control various aspects ‘of your SiteGround domain by simply going to the ‘User Area,’ ‘My Accounts,’ then ‘Manage Domain.’ Here, you will find access to changing the DNS settings and contact information.
However, if you already have an existing domain under another web hosting provider, all you need to do is transfer the site to SiteGround. This will involve you pointing your already existing domain to the SiteGround hosting server. You will also be required to change your domain’s nameservers (NS) to the appropriate values as from the control panel of your domain registrar.
In other cases, you might find that you only need to change the hosting of the website while leaving everything else hosted on the prior platform. In such cases, it may be that you want your emails to be hosted remotely while all other parameters regarding the website to be redirected.
It is easier to first change your DNS, you will need to direct your MX records to your current email host. Otherwise, you can also choose to direct your A record while keeping other details related to the DNS and MX intact.
To locate the right SiteGround nameserver records, go to your ‘User Area,’ then proceed to ‘My Accounts,’ where you will find ‘Information & Settings.’ You will then find the details of your nameserver under ‘Account DNS’
Siteground cPanel
Siteground’s cPanel is one of the best web hosting software in the industry that uses cPanel to manage your hosting account via a web interface other than through the console. SiteGround’s cPanel can be accessed from the ‘User Area’ then to ‘My Accounts’ on to ‘Information and Settings’ then finally to ‘Access cPanel.’
You can also use a URL direct link to accesscPanel: http://yourdomainn.com/cpanel. This is taking into consideration that your domain name has been pointed to the domain nameservers. You can run this connection securely through http://yourdomain.com:2082.
cPanel works perfectly well in SiteGround as it also allows you to be able to complete tasks much faster. SiteGround’s cPanel Crystal theme is able to offer the same visual changes while incorporating much more functionalities than other cPanel’s for other web hosting softwares. More so, even non-professionals can find it easy to use cPanel.
SiteGround Cloudflare CDN
SiteGround hosts more than 500,000 domains in five data centers across the globe. As site loading speeds, customer support and security are key factors to the web hosting provider, Content Network Delivery (CDN) would be a good option to improve speeds.
SiteGround uses cloudflare CDN to expand the speed capability of the sites. Cloudflare CDN caches the site’s static data and re-distributes this data to over 100+ servers. Therefore, this means that the content requested by the customer is delivered from the closest network. This makes teh website loading speeds to almost twice as fast, improving the performance.
Cloudflare CDN also has prudent contingencies regarding the security of a website. The CDN analyzes the traffic that is directed towards your SiteGround hosted site to determine which requests are legitimate and which ones of them are malicious. These could include such people as spammers, DDos attacks, SQL Injections and much bot crawling.
SiteGround Alternatives
SiteGround vs Bluehost
SiteGround and BlueHost both have valiant features that make them ideal for web-hosting. If you are like me, you are probably thinking of the storage limits, hosting features, server locations as well as the relative prices associated with either of them. In all honesty, it was hard to make the best decision for me as I found that they are both with amazing perks for hosting.
Naturally, if you are considering web hosting platforms for business purposes, you will automatically consider the costs associated with either one of the hosting platforms. SiteGround is definitely more expensive than BlueHost; starting at a pricing of $14.99. BlueHost hosting software begins its pricing at $8.99.
When looking at the cost only, you might prefer BlueHost. Nonetheless, I find SiteGround to be a much better hosting solution with a highly responsive support system and a better performance in the speed and uptime records. More so, SiteGround has much more advanced features than BlueHost.
Even when considering the cPanel version used by either platform, I would still go with SiteGround. While BlueHost offers common features with respect to the FTP accounts, file manager, email accounts and PHPMyAdmin, SiteGround’s custom cPanel is more intuitive and much powerful.
Even further, BlueHost’s cPanel is crowded with unnecessary pitches and paid promotions that do not add value to your working portfolio. Instead, it is just a slippery road of distractions that interfere with your working area.
Both SiteGround and BlueHost have the perfect bandwidth specifications, that is; unmetered bandwidth provision. Many web hosting providers try to limit the amount of data that can be passed between the website and the servers. However, for BlueHost and SiteGround, there are no limitations as to the data content that you want to share across the websites.
When hosting a website, you probably want to backup all your data such that important client data cannot be lost. Both SiteGround and BlueHost have regular backup services that upload your website data onto the backup servers. Nonetheless, I would prefer SiteGround as it provides daily backup services for up to 30 days. Further, you can be able to restore your data in just a matter of seconds.
SiteGround vs GoDaddy
SiteGround and GoDaddy offer almost exactly the same features with respect to web hosting. While GoDaddy is much pricier that SiteGround, GoDaddy does not have exceptional features that would make them really stand out.
I cannot also say that SiteGround is cheap as its prices are relatively close to those offered by GoDaddy web hosting software. SiteGround has a starting price of $3.95 for the first month and a consequent $11.95 for the other months while GoDaddy has a starting price of
$5.95 and a subsequent $19.95 monthly.
Even so, the higher prices offered by SiteGround are definitely worth the excellent uptime record that they have set. SiteGround even has additional features such as the ‘Lets Encrypt,’ Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, staging, and newer application of technologies (such as the newest PHP version 7) and four data centers.
Further, SiteGround has a highly responsive customer support system. It might be because GoDaddy has a lot of customers under their wing such that they are imminently slow. With GoDaddy, you cannot tell the number of websites using the same resources or even the bandwidth in which you are using, resulting in slower site loading speeds.
As if this is not enough, GoDaddy has a couple of blacklisted plugins that restrict you from having increased functionality in your website. While this restriction is within their rights as web hosting providers, they mainly do so just to mitigate the amount of resources that your website would use. However, with SiteGround, you can use plugins like WP Rocket, Swift and WordPress fastest cache.
SiteGround offers a free migration service to any clients who are looking to change their hosting to SiteGround. Most of the customers have recorded an improved site loading time by up to 10seconds. GoDaddy on the other hand charges to have your websites migrated into their servers, and does not improve any website hosting functions.
SiteGround vs Hostgator
Both SiteGround and Hostgator have gained popularity as the best web hosting providers in the world. Hostgator boasts of hosting over nine million domains and serving over 400,000 customers. SiteGround was started much later than Hostgator yet serves approximately 250,000 active customers around the world.
With respect to the uptime records, Hostgator boasts of having a 99.99% uptime record, which means that you can be sure that Hostgator will be reliable almost all the time. This uptime record is also not dependent on the subscription plan that you have chosen. For SiteGround, a 99.99% uptime record is excellent and especially with the help of their custom programming which enables you to troubleshoot any problems that may cause changes in this uptime.
When considering a reliable hosting provider, the web hosting speed is probably one of the most important factors that you will be looking at in order to increase the efficiency of your site. Hostgator and SiteGround both take different approaches to hosting speeds.
SiteGround uses a software based approach to increase their speeds while Hostgator uses hardware based solutions to increase the site loading speeds. SiteGround focuses on the cache, using a supercacher to keep increasing speeds. Hostgator on the other hand has invested in various VPS servers, increasing more equipment and service layers to gain a competitive advantage in the provision of faster site services.
The server response time is also important to you as a customer as it determines the overall site loading speeds. Just as Hostgator and SiteGround use different approaches to increasing the site loading speeds, both hosting providers also have different approaches to improving the server response time.
Hostgator utilizes a large array of servers which work hand in hand to maintain the harmony and balance in the stability of the server response times. SiteGround uses a special skill in maintaining the server response time by allowing surges in server loads, maintaining lower server loads on purpose. This is a strategic approach especially considering the increase in server loads during peak times.
SiteGround vs Hostinger
Again, SiteGround and Hostinger are at loggerheads with respect to the best web hosting softwares in the industry. Both web hosting providers offer three low cost options on shared hosting services. SiteGround’s plans are StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek and Hostinger’s plans are the Single, Premium and Business plans.
It is prudent to mention that when considering all plans, Hostinger has much more attractive values for their options than SiteGround. For instance, Hostinger’s business plan is a bit higher than SiteGround’s middle-level plan but also offers a lot more features. This is evident in that, when Hostinger provides unlimited disk space, SiteGround provides a limited disk space of up to 30GB.
In addition,while Hostinger has a diversified payment plan, SiteGround has less payment options on the same. With Hostinger, you can pay monthly, or in one, two pr four year plans. SiteGround on the other hand has a pricing option of monthly payments, one, two and three year plans. Suffice to say that it is much cheaper to subscribe for much longer subscription plans.
Even further, after the initial payment of the subscription plan, you will pay up to double the price for the standard pricing in Hostinger subscription plans. SiteGround on te other hand charges up to triple the charge of the introductory rate, which makes it a tard more expensive for the standard rating.
I would also mention that while both Hostinger and SiteGround offer managed WordPress hosting and cloud hosting. Through their shared hosting platforms, Hostinger is more focused on minecraft hosting while SiteGround focuses on WooCommerce. Further, Hostinger has additional windows VPS Hosting whereas SiteGround runs under a linux operating system.
Finally, I would analyze the backup services associated with either SiteGround or Hostinger. With Hostinger, you will be able to get weekly backups but only on the premium plan. Nonetheless, SiteGround cuts across all subscription plans with their daily backup service.
Overall, I would go with Hostinger over SiteGround when considering the cost effectiveness and provision of valiant features suitable for web hosting. SiteGround is also great for small and medium business because of the exemplary speeds and reliable customer support. You will be able to get more value for your money’s worth than with Hostinger.
SiteGround vs WP Engine
SiteGroung and WordPress Engine are both ideal platforms for your web hosting solutions. Even so, I would argue that while SiteGround is a great web hosting service for your website needs, WP Engine focuses more on WordPress hosted websites.
SiteGround is a much better choice for those individuals searching for more disk space as well as the number of sites hosted on the platform. Further, with regards to the performance, SiteGround guarantees the provision of more technologies than the WP Engine, which only utilizes the necessary tools needed for hosting WordPress hosted sites.
SiteGround’s PHP 7 increases the speed, security and efficiency of the SiteGround hosted sites. To make sure that this is the case, you will find that PHP 7 is three times faster than PHP 5.6. I am focusing on the PHP version used because only approximately four percent of WP Engine use PHP 7. The rest of the WP Engine customers still use PHP version 5.6.
WP Engine includes some innovative & high quality features that improve the site performance. It has various data centers distributed across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Even so, SiteGround also has valiant features that improve the site loading speeds. SiteGround also has the SG Optimizer Plugin, a WP SuperCacher and several data centers distributed across various platforms across the globe.
With regards to the uptime record, WPEngine beats SiteGround by a greater extent. This is because the WP Engine has a strict ‘No Overselling Policy’ which ensures that they have enough space to accommodate and properly service their customer base.
SiteGround also competes closely with WP Engine as they also have a 99.9% uptime record applicable to all their subscription plans. Further, SiteGround has a real – time detection technology that alerts the support system of any downtime within the system. Not only does SiteGround detect downtime, but also has custom softwares that fix the errors that cause this downtime.
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]
