In 2004, the company SIteGround was founded by a bunch of university students in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Now, the company hosts more than 1.7 million domains around the world with over five hundred employees managing their operations.
SiteGround provides its hosting services to all startups, small businesses, large corporations, bloggers, and people who value the performance and reliability more than the cost of the packages.
Siteground hosting performs well in every field, and in this article, we will give you a full in-depth Siteground review.
In this review, we will be discussing its price, features that it provides to the users, pros, cons, and most importantly what we think of this web hosting platform. But before starting, let us take a gander at what SiteGround is.
What is SiteGround?
SiteGround is an award-winning hosting provider that was founded by some university students, one of the main founders was Tenko Nikolov. In the start, the company had only one office in Bulgaria but now they have two more offices located in two different cities: Spain and Madrid.
Moreover, SiteGround also offers their services in English, Spanish and Italian. In the past year alone, the company helped more than 1 million people on the online chat and over 98 percent of the people rated the customer services as Extremely helpful.
That is why SiteGround won the 14th annual Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service in 2021. This award is one of the biggest awards in the business field with over 12 thousand nominations every year from different markets and industries.
The best thing about SiteGround is that it cares for its users. For instance, every new guy hired in the customer service team undergoes training for two weeks and learns the basics of the company’s services, and how to respond to the user’s queries.
By the end of the year, the support services team takes 10 different training sessions, seminars, and different workshops. In the year 2019, SiteGround completed more than 6 hundred skillful training sessions in the customer service divisions.
State of the Art Technology
SiteGround has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot which helps the clients in every way possible. For example, if the users need to ask a question, they chat with AI bots who suggest a solution based on the conversation from the past.
And if it fails to do so, it automatically passes the chat to the helpdesk. That is why the company has a 2 min wait time. The company also does well on the NPS (Net Promoter Score); it is the rating that the customer gives if they were asked to recommend a company.
On a scale of 0 to 100; Zero being the lowest and 100 being the highest, the SiteGround scores 62 on the NPS scale. This is considered an excellent score on the NPS scale.
Without wasting your time, let us begin with our SiteGround web hosting review. Let’s go!
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Packages of SiteGround
SiteGround usually offers three packages to its users which are given below:
Startup Plan
The first plan is called the StartUp plan which usually comes at a price of $6.99 per month. It provides users with some great features. The StartUp plan includes 1 website, 10 GB storage, ten thousand visits monthly, free email, managed WordPress, and unmetered traffic.
Along with these features, it also provides its users free CDN services and a free SSL certificate for a more secure platform. Furthermore, the company offers daily automatic data backups and restore to prevent any data loss.
Grow Big Plan
Like its name, the Grow Big plan allows the users to grow their sites by offering them with more features than the StartUp plan. Its features include unlimited websites, 20 GB storage, 25 thousand visits monthly, free email, free SSL certificate, free CDN services, Daily backups and restore.
It comes at the price of $9.99 per month. The company also offers some add-ons to these features. If users want they can add an On-demand backup copy, speed-boosting caching, and a staging area.
GoGeek Plan
This plan is for the users that want high-tier features on their website. The cost of this plan is 14.99 per month. It includes features like unlimited website, 40GB storage, 1 hundred thousand visits monthly, unmetered Traffic, a Free SSL certificate, daily backups and restores, free CDN services, free email, and more.
This plan also offers some add-ons like the second package; along with Grow Big plan features.It includes white label clients, ultrafast PHP, Priority support, and more. The best seller in all of these plans is the Grow Big plan.
The main reason for this is that it is affordable for both small businesses and large corporations, and it also provides features that are breathtaking.
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Features of SiteGround
Easy to use Control Panel
Like most of the web hosting companies, SiteGround also provides its customers with a cPanel control panel in its hosting plans. Many of you may already have experienced this control panel in the past.
On the dashboard, cPanel offers a lot of features through which you can control the account settings, billings, check resources, deals, and much more. Everything the users want to know and handle on the website, cPanel helps them to find these things with ease.
So, it is safe to say that it provides the best user-friendly experience to the consumers.
One-Click Feature
One-Click installation feature comes in handy when you do not have any idea about the complex coding and other stuff. SiteGround offers its clients Softaculous along with the control panel; it is a one-click installation feature.
It allows people to install more than 400 applications on the website with one-click, and expand the functions of the site. SiteGround Hosting gives the users an opportunity to install WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and any other online store on their website with just one-click.
This feature is best for those who are beginners in the web hosting market but they want high-class features and functions on their site.
Excellent Uptime
SiteGround web hosting company promises its customers to provide them with an uptime of 99.99 percent. Most of the companies do promise this uptime but fail to deliver. However, SiteGround is not like those companies, since 2014 the performance of the site has not dropped.
They are giving the industries one of the finest uptimes and on top of it, they do not cost too much. Furthermore, the company says that if it fails to deliver the promised uptime, they will offer users free hosting services for a few months.
However, there are some conditions to which they offer free service and It does not apply to scheduled maintenance, other external factors causing downtime. Moreover, if you cause the downtime then the company also does not take any responsibilities whatsoever.
Exceptional Response Time
SiteGround provides its users with an exceptional response time along with amazing uptime. Just to clarify, response time refers to the period a server takes to respond whereas uptime refers to the time period when the server is available.
SiteGround has one of the industry’s fastest response time speeds; it just takes between 400ms to 500ms. The reason for this is that the company uses modern tech in the servers instead of old hardware.
Speed is one of the main reasons why many people choose this platform for web hosting.
Website Load Time
As we know website load time speed plays an important role when choosing the web hosting platform for your site. And SiteGround does provide that high speed. The company has a website load time of around 20 ms to a whole second.
They pulled this off by using high-speed technologies such as CloudFlare CDN services, Supercacher, SSDs, NGINX, PHP7, and HTTP/2. Due to this modern tech, now the company has one of the highest and fastest page load speeds in the market.
This makes SiteGround an ideal choice for those users who mainly focus on the speed of the website.
Security Measures
SiteGround not only provides its users with an amazing speed but also high-security measures for a more secure platform. They offer security options like the SG site scanner, which gives the users an indication when the site is gone under attack.
Moreover, AntiSpam, SpamAssassin, and SpamExperts tools are also given to the users so they do not face a spam problem. Furthermore, SiteGround also provides its consumers with the Leech Protect feature which allows the administration of the company to prevent their users from giving passwords on the site.
So in short, SiteGround is a good platform for those who want their site to be secured.
AI Technology
In this modern world, most companies now have developed Artificial Technology that fights malware and other attacks. In the year 2017, SIteGround also launched its AI technology to block malware attacks, and they have had a major success in this field.
For instance, if the site is under attack, this AI tech utilizes the server resources and fights against those attacks with brute force. After the development of this technology, almost five hundred thousand to two million attempts are blocked by these AI Bots every hour. So, this means it is not easy to get into the servers of the company.
Free SSL Certificate
If a website does not have an SSL certificate, Google is consistently warning the people to not visit that particular site because they want to protect the user’s information. As we know, SSL helps protect the information that took place between the site and the device the visitor is using, for instance, the IP address.
So, the warning from Google is pretty legit. Fortunately for the consumers, SiteGround offers a free SSL certificate on all of the plans. And with CDN storage, clients can save large data on the servers in different locations worldwide. This helps the site owners to save the information of the visitors and protect it in all ways possible.
Free Website Migration Feature
Most of the companies provide a free site migration feature but they start costing you after a few migrations. As we know, SiteGround does not disappoint; it allows the users to migrate their site through WordPress Migration Plugin which can be uploaded to any website.
The plugin will do all the heavy work required but still, you will have to apply some elbow grease as well. SiteGround offers this feature in high-tier plans and the good thing for the consumers is that they can migrate as many sites as they want with this.
However, there is a certain limit and if you still are able to cross that limit, then it costs an additional 30$ for extra site migrations.
Daily Back-ups
To protect the business from any data loss incident, SiteGround provides its users with free automatic daily data backups. In fact, all the plans of the company include free backups and restoration features. It automatically saves the data at the end of the day.
If the users want instant backups then the company also offers on-demand instant backups, which allows them to save their data whenever they like. For this feature, you will have to subscribe to the GrowBig or any high tier plan. This feature is very important to have when you are making some big changes to the site.
Now we will discuss the pros and cons of the company in our SiteGround review to decide whether this web hosting provider is an ideal option for you or not.
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The Pros of SiteGround
Customer Support Service
SiteGround has a customer support service team that is available around the clock to answer the users’ queries. They are available through Live online chat, phone, or mobile, and tickets. If online chat is not available you can call them, and you will not have to wait for your turn. The longest wait is just 5 minutes.
The company has an exceptional team which is a result of the training they undergo when they are hired. The team solves 90 percent of the cases in the first contact, and they promise their customers a satisfaction rate of 100 percent.
30 Days Money Back Guarantee
In case the customers are not satisfied with the features and they want to end the services of the hosting provider then in that case, SiteGround offers a 30-days money-back guarantee to its users on the shared hosting packages.
Whereas other packages like Cloud, VPS, and dedicated hosting, they have only a 15 days refund policy. The refund policy also comes with a few strings; like every hosting provider, the cost of the domain names is not refunded.
Plus, you will only get your money back when you are a new user otherwise you will not get any refund if you are an old user.
Hack Alert Service
There are a ton of security features that are provided by the hosting company but still, if you want more protection on your website then you can choose Hack Alert Service. This service sends you weekly updates on the threats you have been facing.
Moreover, it tells you what will be the proper solution to fight those alerts. This feature can help you form over a security layer on the website by making sure the plugins and themes that you have installed on the server are secure.
Suppose if you do face a threat then it protects the important and essential information and prevents that attack from happening. To avail of this Hack Alert Service, you will have to pay an additional fee.
Datacenters in Different Locations
Having Datacenters in different strategic locations is so important because it helps the users to access their information faster and easier. SiteGround has 6 Datacenters on 4 different continents. The company has Data Centers in Iowa (United States), London (United Kingdom), Singapore, Sydney (Australia), and Frankfurt (Germany).
So, these are the countries that enjoy the highest speed of the SiteGround. Unfortunately, in big regions like Asia and Canada, the company does not have any DataCenter. The countries and areas in this region will likely have sub-par experience than the regions that have Data Centers.
But do not worry, SiteGround is exceptional in the Asian region even without the Data Centers.
Advanced Priority Support
Everyone wants to get treated first, and this is possible at SiteGround. The hosting company provides its customers with Advanced Priority Support that allows the users to get prioritized over other customer’s requests.
And to top the cherry on the top, it assigns the task to the most senior members of the customer support service team. This all sounds amazing right! You must be wondering how to avail of this opportunity?
Well, you can get this feature by subscribing to the premium level plans. This support feature was first added to the GoGeek plans in the year 2019.
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The Cons of SiteGround
Limited Resources Offered
SiteGround offers some sensational features and services, but they have a few downsides as well. The company provides only limited sources in the shared hosting plan. For instance, if we talk about the storage given in the plans, it provides 10GB in the StartUp, 20GB GrowBig, and 30GB in the GoGeek package.
In case you want to add an additional amount to the storage, you will have to pay extra for the add ons. This is a major downside because you subscribed to the higher-priced packages, and you must be accepting unlimited storage and other stuff.
Renewal Rates Are High
The most basic plan of the company comes at a cost of $6.99 per month. This deal looks so good due to the amazing features it is providing, but its price goes double after the renewal, which is kind of a setback.
Every company out there uses this technique; initially, they will ask for a reasonable price but after renewal, the prices go up. The same is done by SiteGround, after the renewal of the basic plan its price goes up from $6.99 to $14.99 per month.
The most ideal way to avoid this is, you should subscribe to a three-year plan to get the advantage of low prices.
No Free Domain Offered
This came as a shock to us because almost every hosting provider in the market provides this feature to attract customers. A free domain name is usually offere by the hosting companies as a gift to the people when they join the company servers. Unfortunately for the people, SiteGround does not provide this feature.
Suppose you want to get a domain name, you will have to pay an additional $15.95 per year. To make things worse, the company does not refund the fee that it charges in case of any refund asked by the consumers. So, this is consider a deal-breaker for some clients.
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Our Verdict
Now from this SiteGround review, we know that the company performs well in all the departments; those are Speed, Performance, Security, Customer support service, and price. This is why SiteGround becomes an ideal option for users who are looking for a compact web hosting provider.
We recommend this platform for web hosting but at the end of the day, everything depends on you and what type of features you want in the hosting platform. If you are a newbie in this business then this guide will surely help you choose what is best for you.
We are hopeful that this SiteGround review was beneficial for you in making the right choice and you chose this hosting platform for your company or business site. In case you have not started yet, then please go and visit the website of SiteGround for more information.
