SiteGround is one of the best hosting platforms that offer a ton of hosting plans to users.
They offer users WordPress hosting, dedicated servers, as well as cloud hosting. You only choose what suits your business.
We have monitored SiteGround cheapest package – Startup, and we have something to share with you. Let’s dive in.
SiteGround Hosting Review
SiteGround Pros
1. Performance
Before anything, we want to let you know that all reviews we do are determined by twenty-four months of actual stats. That said, SiteGround has had an excellent uptime throughout that period. Its 99.99 percent makes it one of the best hosting platforms.
This kind of uptime is good, and users love it because they keep your website visitors. Even more, you can rest assured that your site will be up and running most of the time. So you don’t end up missing out on significant opportunities just because your site was down.
2. Load Time
Load time is the second most critical feature you should look for when looking for a hosting provider.
If you didn’t know, fifty-three percent of visitors would leave your site if it takes too long to load – more than three seconds.
And the worst part is that you don’t have much to do to improve on that. You may try compressing your images, you may go with the alternative to use a CDN to at least try and relieve some pressure on your server, but the truth is that once you settle with a slow host, the only thing you can do is to change your host.
Good news because you never have to fret about SiteGround. It has an average loading time of 681 ms. This might not be the fastest we have seen, but it finds a spot within the top ten hosting providers in terms of speed.
3. Customer Support
We have been running some tests with SiteGround customer support, and we have never had any issues with them.
They have a knowledge base center, where its users can always find quick fixes. If that doesn’t satisfy you, you can still hop into a call with them, or go through the live chat option.
The last time we did our test to connect with SiteGround, we were easily connected with Vladislav in less than one minute. That just shows how responsive they are.
Unlike other hosting platforms, we were not kept waiting for long. Everything seemed to move quite fast, even with the responses it customer support gave us.
4. Site Migration
You might have noticed that some hosting provider gives you the option of DIY migration, and you might think that that’s a big offer to you. Considering that you are a beginner, that should be a nightmare, and some of these hosting platforms know precisely why they are doing that – they are putting the pressure on you; to migrate yourself.
SiteGround is a little different. It has a free WordPress migration plugin that will always make it easy for you (even if you are a beginner). Additionally, SiteGround doesn’t provide you with long and tedious walkthroughs. You will be required to generate a token from your SiteGround account, and the plugin will help you with the migration as fast as possible.
5. SSL Certificate
Today, Google will warn you if you are trying to access a site that has no SSL certificate set up.
Now, an SSL is essential because it helps with the protection of information that will be sent back and forth between the device the user is using and the website. These could include credit card numbers, IP addresses, and so much more. If a site isn’t secured, hackers can easily access this information and do more harm than good to you.
In other words, you must have an SSL certificate, so you don’t fall into these traps of exposing your information to hackers who might use it in the wrong way.
6. Features
You will be covered with SiteGround no matter who you are – whether a beginner or an established business.
Beginners will welcome the idea that you can install some of the popular website builders such as Weebly in just one click. Weebly has got a drag-and-drop functionality so you can do nearly everything on your own – no coding knowledge required.
Apart from Weebly, you can also expect to integrate with Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. You don’t need to take much time to install these. It can be done in seconds. And best of all is that you don’t need the help of a developer. If you are a developer, you are good to go.
Using SiteGround, you can expect Git pre-installed for you when you opt for better plans. You will also get WP-CLI, SSH, as well as phpMyAdmin. You can also rest assured of a wide variety of PHP versions.
7. Uptime
SiteGround’s uptime is 99.9 percent on average, and do you know the reason? If the site goes down, it will lose a ton of customers.
Usually, when you do some research about some of the hosting platforms out there, you’ll realize that there is some hidden information.
But SiteGround impressed us. Under its Service Level Agreement, SiteGround assures its users 99.9 percent of uptime. So if you experience something lesser than that, you will get compensated for that.
8. Money-Back Refund
You can be assured of a 30-day money refund with SiteGround on all their shared hosting plans. For the rest of other packages such as VPS, dedicated, as well as the cloud hosting, you will only have a 15-day money refund.
Like other hosting platforms, you will not get refunded for the domain name and other extras. Again, you will only get a refund if you are a brand new SiteGround user.
Cons of SiteGround
1. High Renewal Rates
You can get as low as $3.95 per month hosting with SiteGround’s Startup plan.
This deal looks too good even to be true, and you are right. Almost all the hosting platforms that we have tested uses this same trick. So this is one of the tricks most hosting platforms use on their customers. They will lure you with low deals only to double or even triple during your renewal.
For the $3.95, you’ll have to dig deep and pay up to $11.95 when renewing your subscription. Other plans may rise to $19.95 and $34.95 every month, which is way too expensive.
2. Restricted Cheap Plan
SiteGround’s package plans are comparable to its competition, and so you might think it’s a good deal.
For example, you will be promised that you will get a 10 GB website that should cover around 10k monthly visits to your site. You will also be given unmetered bandwidth. But the truth is that if you get closer to that amount of traffic, then you are going to suffer.
That means that these offers may only suit smaller sites that don’t reach anywhere near the 10k monthly traffic. When your site starts growing, you should begin to look for better options.
3. No Free Domain
Most hosting platforms like Bluehost will offer a free domain name to their first-time users.
They will also throw some more perks on you like email and migration services, among others. Unfortunately, SiteGround doesn’t have that. If you don’t have a domain name, you will have to purchase one from $15.95 every year.
Conclusion
Even though SiteGround has some limitations, it is an excellent hosting platform we would recommend any day.
They have lots of lucrative offers that you can’t ignore, like customer support, site migration, among others.
It is also beginner-friendly because the customer support will always walk you through whenever you find obstacles.