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About SiteGround
SiteGroundwas founded in 2004 by a few university students in Sofia Bulgaria. Its founder isIvo Tzenov.
Today it’s one of the most popular web hosting companies. With more than 500 employees the company hosts more than 2,800,000 websites as of today.
Apart from shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and even dedicated servers are offered by the company.
SiteGround provides a lot of positive sides like uptime, speed, customer service etc. let’s take a look at these.
The pros of SiteGround:
Excellent uptime-
SiteGround has an average uptime of 99.99% over the last six months which is almost perfect. This makes them one of the most reliable web hosts.
Your users will be happy if your site provides strong uptime. Most importantly it means that your site is always up and hardly faces major outrages. That way you won’t lose your customers to some other web host.
Good customer support–
SiteGround provides customer support through phone, live chat and ticketing system. The latter two is available for 24/7. The waiting period in live chat is less than a minute and the customer service agents are knowledgeable and will answer you straight away
They also provide self-help by providing an extensive knowledge base with helpful articles about frequently asked questions, how-to guides, and troubleshooting instructions. That’s the fastest way to get help to all your answers.
Free site migration on WordPress-
only for the WordPress sites, you will be offered free migration. With this option, many websites can be migrated.
On their higher-priced plan i.e. GrowBig and GrowGeek, SiteGround offers free site migration if you need professional help. But there is a limit. For each additional site fee, an additional fee of $30 will be charged in case you exceed the limits on each plan.
Money-back guarantee–
On All of their shared hosting plans, SiteGround provides a money-back guarantee of 30 days.
The point to note is that they will deduct the domain name fees when you ask for a refund. Refund is only applicable to new customers. Renewal plans don’t include refunds.
Server location-
Their data centers are located in six countries i.e. USA, Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia which covers four continents inAmerica, Asia, Australia and Europe. When you sign up for SiteGround account you can choose your preferred location.
No hosting company is perfect. There will always be some downfalls. Let’s take a look at them.
Free Automatic backups-
SiteGround provides free Automatic backups and restorations on daily basis on all their plans. You can even schedule backup known as their ‘on-demand backup’ with GrowBig and higher tier plan which also comes for free.
Free SSL certificate-
SiteGround also provides a Free SSL certificate. We know how an SSL certificate is important to keep personal details like IP addresses or credit card numbers protected. Without it, hackers could easily misuse your information.
Free CDN (Content Delivery Network)-
SiteGround also offers free Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network). Large files are stored by CDN on many servers in different cities around the world. As a result, visitors can access your site faster from their nearest data center and make your site gets load faster.
No web host is perfect.SiteGround too has its own share of downfall. But does the downfall outweigh the positives? Let’s have a look.
The cons of SiteGround:
Increasingly high Renewal rate –
The introductory price of SiteGround’s cheapest plan, StartUp cost $2.99/month if signed up for 1 year as mentioned in their website. It is pretty affordable even though not the cheapest like Hostinger.
However, the initial price applies to new customers only. Once the initial term is over regular renewal prices will be applicable. This trick is used not just by SiteGround but by every web host provider. They offer discount prices to grab the attention of customers and when it’s time to renew the prices double or even triple up.
After this introductory price is over the renewal rate is:
StartUp introductory price is $2.99/month (renews at $14.99/month)
GrowBig introductory price is $4.99/month (renews at $24.99/month)
GoGeek introductory price is $7.99/month (renews at $39.99/month)
Here their renewal rate is 5 times more than their introductory price which is exorbitantly high than other web hosts.
Restrictions in their cheapest plan-
When you first look at their cheapest plan price you may think it is similar to what other competitors are providing which is quite good.
However, there is a limitation in their plan. With this price $2.99/month you will get just a single website, 10,000 monthly visits with only 10 GB of web space, no free site migration and free domain name, etc.
This type of plan is only good if you are starting new basically for blogs and smaller sites. But if your site starts becoming bigger you have to choose a higher tier plan to upgrade which cost more for advanced features.
Additional fee for the domain name-
Unfortunately, SiteGround does not offer a free domain name like other web hosts that offers it for free at least for the 1st year. In order to register a new domain name when you sign up, they will charge you $17.99/year for .com.
Overall review
They do offer good service. Their speed in loading site is one of the best among its competitors.
Advanced Automated backup is excellent but only available for the higher-tier plans.
Their customer service is good and their support agents are quick, friendly and experts in their job. They also offer quite good technology if not the best. You cannot host as many sites as you want to as there is a limit in each plan. SiteGround is ideal for users who are professionals with medium to big businesses as the plans are mainly medium-to-high price range.
You can try SiteGround for 30 days and see if you like it or not.
Do we recommend SiteGround?,
Yes, we do.
Their uptime is excellent with no major downtime issues.
They have one of the fastest server speeds as their data centers are located on four continents and due to their free Cloudflare CDN account. On all of their hosting plans, they also offer free SSL certificates.
Only if you choose their longest-term hosting plan then you will get good price-quality value else you will just get closer to paying their renewal fees. Also if you have your existing domain it’s good else be prepared to pay another fee.
Why should you use SiteGround for WordPress?
A highly advanced WordPress hosting platform is offered by SiteGround. With their 1-click WordPress installation, the WordPress websites can be set up easily. Using the SiteGround Migrator plugin you can also migrate existing WordPress websites for free.
This is why you should choose SiteGround for WordPress hosting.
Is a website builder offered by SiteGround?
No, a website builder is not offered by SiteGround so that users can have the choice to pick their best website builder according to their needs and are not bound to use SiteGround’s.
WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and Weebly are some of the best site builder platforms that users can install easily.
What are some other alternatives to SiteGround?
BlueHost, HostGator, InMotion Hosting, and GreenGeeks are other alternatives to SiteGround
