SiteGround Hosting Review: Is SiteGround the Right Choice for Your Business?

Finding a hosting provider for your business website might sound like a boring task, but it’s not a decision you should take lightly. That’s because when it comes to web hosting, you’re deciding on so much more than just another vendor: you’re choosing the foundation on which your business website is built.

With that in mind, it’s also important to understand that not all web hosting providers are created equally. Each comes with its own unique combination of pros and cons.

When it comes to cost and performance, SiteGround shines. Its customer service is less dazzling. But if your highest priority is getting the most bang for your buck—especially if you have a straightforward website—SiteGround could be the right choice for your business site.

What is SiteGround?

Founded in 2004, SiteGround has become one of the world’s largest website hosting companies. Currently trusted by the owners of more than two million domains worldwide, SiteGround provides multiple types of website hosting as well as domain name registration and email hosting.

SiteGround offers the best value for the cost

Whether your business is just getting started or already has an established online presence, SiteGround offers budget-friendly solutions that will help you grow.

With its entry-level (StartUp) hosting plans starting at $3.95 per month, SiteGround offers one of the most affordable web hosting packages available today. For example, when compared to InMotion hosting, which starts at $6.39 per month, SiteGround’s entry-level shared hosting package saves you over 30%.

At first glance, these entry-level shared hosting packages do appear to be quite similar. But if your business website is fairly straightforward and you don’t expect more than 10,000 visitors per month, SiteGround’s shared hosting package will save you in hosting costs. The security and performance benefits of a CloudFlare CDN (content delivery network) just sweetens the deal.

Even on managed WordPress hosting plans, SiteGround can save you money. In fact, an entry-level managed WordPress hosting plan is almost half the cost of InMotion’s cheapest managed WordPress hosting plan.

Those savings add up—especially if you anticipate less traffic and only need 10 gigs of disk space (a.k.a. file storage). That might not be enough space for companies that host their own video or large image files (think videography and photography businesses or large online stores). But if you just need a simple website announcing your restaurant’s location, hours, menu, and catering options, SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting will fit the bill (and save you cash).

When it comes to selecting a hosting package for your business, the most important thing you need to know is that none of these packages is designed to be one-size-fits-all.

Selecting the appropriate hosting package boils down to traffic and speed: How many visitors will your website receive each month? How quickly would you like your site to load?
As your site grows, both in total traffic and in complexity, your site will need more resources. Fortunately, SiteGround already thought of that—the company offers both shared and dedicated hosting packages, which you can scale as quickly as your business needs.

Shared hosting, managed WordPress, and managed WooCommerce hosting packages from SiteGround

For newer businesses, or for existing businesses that receive less than 100,000 visits per month, the shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting plans are the most affordable way to host your website on SiteGround.

Let’s take a closer look at the differences between SiteGround’s managed WordPress and shared hosting packages to help you determine which plan is right for you.

The biggest difference is that SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting accounts are—you guessed it—optimized for hosting WordPress websites. But shared hosting accounts will support any type of website you’ve created.

So what makes SiteGround’s WordPress plans a great option? For starters, SiteGround uses its own proprietary WordPress caching system called the SuperCacher. It’s also developed a custom WordPress plugin that’s automatically installed on all of its managed WordPress hosting plans. Together, these SuperCacher tools help speed up your website by caching results from your database as well as caching dynamic data.

Another perk to SiteGround’s WordPress plans is the one-click WordPress staging tool. This feature allows you to create a copy of your production environment (live website) in a single click. This means you can test new code, implement new features, or modify the design of your website in a separate environment that’s not available for anyone else to see.

Then, once you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, you can commit (push) those changes back to your live website with just one click. We should note that SiteGround automatically makes a backup of your live site before moving any of your changes over from the staging environment. So if there’s ever a case where you need to undo your changes, you can do so with just one click as well.

StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek plans

SiteGround’s shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting plans include three tiers: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. Let’s break down the three most important differences between these hosting plans:

Free website transfers

For their GrowBig and GoGeek hosting plans, SiteGround provides one free professional website migration (or transfer) for your existing website from your current hosting provider. Professional website migrations are still available on the StartUp plans, but it’ll cost you extra.

Advanced priority support

If you need tech support, you can reach out to SiteGround via live chat or the service’s web-based ticket system. But folks with the GoGeek hosting plans will get the highest priority with the most experienced support agents available. Think of it like FASTPASS at Disneyland but for when you urgently need tech support.

PCI-compliant servers

If you’re processing online payments, you have to meet the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standards. SiteGround maintains basic PCI compliance standards for all of its GoGeek servers. So you’re covered if your website doesn’t process or store credit card transactions itself but uses a third-party professional service (such as Stripe or PayPal) instead.

Fully managed cloud hosting packages from SiteGround

For larger businesses, or for websites that need to maintain peak performance at all times, take a look at SiteGround’s cloud hosting or dedicated hosting.

The biggest benefit of SiteGround’s cloud hosting packages is that the resources you purchase are dedicated exclusively toward your website. This means you won’t be sharing any of your server’s processing power, memory, storage, or monthly data transfer with any other SiteGround customers. That ensures optimal performance for your website at all times.

On top of these dedicated resources, SiteGround has also developed an auto-scaling feature for its cloud hosting plans. That means you can automatically add any additional server resources without rebooting. Think of this as on-demand resources that can be automatically adjusted by your server, on the fly, to ensure your website is available 24/7. This is a great way to future-proof your website against traffic spikes. Even better, you’ll only be required to pay for these additional resources on an as-needed basis.

Standout Features

The standout features on the cloud hosting plans are a bit more technical than their shared hosting counterparts. Here are the features that really make cloud hosting plans shine:

Fully managed infrastructure and server software

SiteGround configures and manages all of the infrastructure and server software for cloud hosting customers. That means SiteGround’s system administrators are there 24/7 to keep your server up and running. And that allows you to stay focused on what you do best: running your business.

7x daily offsite data backups

SiteGround automatically keeps seven offsite backups of your entire cloud hosting account from seven consecutive days. Keeping your multiple backups offsite means that SiteGround can guarantee none of your company’s data will ever be lost.

Free CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a group of globally distributed servers that work together to deliver internet content (such as HTML, style sheets, JavaScript files, images, and videos) to each user as quickly as possible. Sound like another term for web hosting? Not quite. SiteGround works with its CDN to boost your site’s performance (load time) and security. Think of it as another awesome gadget in SiteGround’s hosting tool kit.

99.99% uptime guarantee

Uptime guarantees are one of the most critical metrics to pay attention to when selecting a hosting provider for your website. Luckily, SiteGround provides an industry-leading 99.99% uptime guarantee. You’ll notice many other hosting providers advertise a 99.9% uptime guarantee annually, so we translated these guarantees into real daily, weekly, monthly, and annual downtime stats for you.

Can your online business afford an extra 8.76 hours of downtime every year? If the answer is no, SiteGround’s 99.99% uptime guarantee may seal the deal for you.

SitSiteGround can offer that impressive uptime guarantee because of its security solutions. SiteGround’s web hosting security team has been building its own security solutions for more than 10 years. Standout features include secure account isolation, proactive server monitoring, custom Linux containers (LXC), and a proprietary anti-AI bot.

Fully managed, premium dedicated hosting

SiteGound’s dedicated servers are fine-tuned, world-class machines. With dedicated hosting packages, you get the best performance and security SiteGround can offer.

Dedicated hosting allows you to enjoy hosting on a server dedicated entirely to your website (or websites). This gives you more room to expand your online business, and you get more control over the traffic and security implemented on your server.

Think of it like renting a home instead of an apartment. You get your own dedicated space, plus more control over who comes and goes. You also don’t have to worry about security threats that go with having shady, unsavory neighbors.

SiteGround’s dedicated hosting starts at $269 per month, so it may not be right for small businesses on a budget. But if you’re looking to host multiple sites, and you want top-of-the-line security and control over your hosting, SiteGround’s options are fairly reasonable.

Standout Features

Let’s dig into what features you’ll find on SiteGround’s dedicated hosting plans.

The highest-performing servers

SiteGround has reserved its best-performing, most reliable servers for its dedicated hosting customers. With these servers, you’ll get both world-class accountability and scalability.

Secure data center facilities

Servers are the backbone of hosting providers, so SiteGround works with the best of the best for its dedicated hosting plans. Its six main servers are located in the Chicago, Iowa, London, Amsterdam, Eemshaven, and Singapore. Each of these facilities are connected to multiple major carriers, which means they offer the highest possible availability and speed. They also have top-notch security (think 24/7 human security, biometrics, and video surveillance) and reliability (multiple power feeds and on-site power generators protect the servers from any electricity outages).

Fully managed infrastructure and server software

When you choose a dedicated hosting plan, SiteGround gives you access to an in-house team of server administrators. This team not only sets up and configures your server but also keeps your server’s software up to date and operating optimally. They’re available to react to any issue immediately, 24/7.

24/7 VIP customer support

SiteGround created a fast lane for supporting dedicated hosting clients’ needs. No matter what your issue may be, SiteGround has you covered with a dedicated VIP support team—so you’ll never have to wait on hold again.

How does SiteGround stack up against other hosting providers?

It’s true that SiteGround provides hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes. But when it comes to the most important pain points online businesses face, how does it fare against the competition?

We’ve rated SiteGround’s web hosting packages for four of the most important metrics to business owners: overall security, uptime guarantee, loading time, and customer service.

SiteGround security and uptime guarantee: 5/5

SiteGround has one of the most impressive security measures we’ve seen in website hosting. The company’s talented DevOps team has been pioneering advanced web hosting security solutions for more than a decade. Back in 2008, the team developed what is still one of today’s best security isolations for shared hosting accounts. In plain English, this means that no account on any shared server can affect the data of another account on the same server.

SiteGround also implemented its own Linux Containers (LXC) technology, which is extremely efficient and stable, ensuring your site stays up and running during unexpected traffic spikes. SiteGround’s DevOps team even wrote multiple patches for the core Linux Kernal, which are now in the official code of the Linux Kernal itself. Talk about impressive.

On top of this, SiteGround employs its own proactive server monitoring. Server monitoring checks your server status and makes repairs in real time—or before the problem even impacts your server performance. SiteGround’s server monitoring is extremely lightweight, meaning it can check the servers’ statuses more frequently than standard monitoring systems allow.

SiteGround’s anti-bot AI protects your site from malicious attacks by botnets. In fact, across all of its servers, SiteGround’s AI solutions actively intercept between 500,000 and 2 million of these malicious attacks every hour.¹ With protection like that, you can rest easy your website will stay up and running so your customers don’t miss out.

Working together, these systems allow SiteGround to securely provide a 99.99% uptime guarantee annually. That means your website won’t go offline for more than one hour across an entire calendar year. That’s more uptime than most hosting providers guarantee.

SiteGround load time: 3/5

With SiteGround’s impressive technology stack, some of the fastest hardware meets the latest software. Combined with the service’s innovative network architecture, SiteGround is uniquely capable of ensuring your website loads as quickly as possible.

In our performance benchmarking tests, many of SiteGround’s servers performed very well. However, the initial metrics from SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting package weren’t as fast as other hosting providers, such as WP Engine and Kinsta. Because of these less-than-desirable performance results, we gave SiteGround a three out of five rating.

Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t purchase a SiteGround managed WordPress hosting account. But if loading speed is the most important hosting factor to you, then you may want to hire an expert to help optimize the performance of your WordPress website.

SiteGround customer service: 4/5

It’s true: SiteGround provides customer support by both phone and live chat 24/7. However, to receive priority treatment from the support team with no hold times, you’ll need to purchase one of SiteGround’s more expensive hosting packages.

In our experience, the average time spent waiting for SiteGround customer support agents was less than five minutes. However, we found that entry-level accounts received significantly slower customer support than accounts on more expensive plans. That’s why we’ve given SiteGround’s customer service a four out of five rating.

Other factors to consider

Whether it’s your first time searching for a hosting provider or not, there are many factors beyond price and projected traffic that you’ll want to consider before making your decision.

We mentioned earlier that hosting plans are not designed to be one-size-fits-all, and the same holds true for hosting providers as well.

In the table below, we’ve compared the most important additional features for your consideration from three of the most popular web hosting providers.

If you’re looking to get the most bang for your buck when selecting a hosting provider for your business, SiteGround is the clear winner. It not only has the most inexpensive entry-level shared hosting plan but also includes two free add-ons (CDN + unlimited email). You’d have to pay extra for those with other hosting providers.

While it’s true that InMotion guarantees about 45 minutes more uptime each year, as well as a free domain name, this is really just a one-time $15.99 value. If you need a CloudFlare CDN, you’ll save $20 per month just by going with SiteGround (since SiteGround provides this to you for free—InMotion requires an extra fee for the same feature).

So whether you’re launching your first business website or running something significantly larger, SiteGround provides the most value for your budget.

SiteGround customer reviews

SiteGround currently reports a 99.7% happiness rate from its clients. But don’t just take its word for it. Here’s how some recent clients have described their hosting experience with SiteGround.

FAQs about SiteGround hosting

Can I change my nameservers on my SiteGround domains?

Yes, you can change the nameservers on your SiteGround domains in just a few clicks. If you’d like to learn more about this process, SiteGround has provided an excellent how-to guide, which will walk you through every step of changing nameservers.

Can I create a new email address on SiteGround?

Yes. No matter which SiteGround hosting plan you’ve purchased, you’ll be able to create unlimited custom email addresses for your business.

Where are SiteGround’s servers located?

SiteGround currently has six data centers located around the world:

• Chicago
• Iowa
• London
• Amsterdam
• Eemshaven
• Singapore

What is SiteGround’s phone number for customer service?

Rather than using a traditional phone number, existing SiteGround customers must log into their User Area. Once you’ve logged in, you start your customer support request by filling out a short online form detailing your problem and your preferred support method (for example, by phone or by email). If you prefer support by phone, you’ll receive a local support phone number as well as a support pin to reference when calling in.

Can I transfer my existing website over to SiteGround?

Yes, starting a new website hosting relationship with SiteGround won’t require you to create a brand-new website. However, the exact process of transferring, or migrating, an existing website over to SiteGround varies, depending on how your website was originally developed.

If your website was developed on a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, then SiteGround’s knowledge base offers step-by-step directions to successfully transfer your website from your old hosting provider into your new SiteGround account.

The takeaway

Whether you’re a brand-new business building your first website, an existing e-commerce business with tons of traffic, or an up-and-coming technology company who wants to host multiple websites, SiteGround has the website hosting solutions you’ve been searching for.

All of its hosting packages are highly customizable and scale effortlessly, which gives you more time to manage your business.

If you’ve been searching for an easy-to-use, budget-friendly hosting provider that values speed and security as much as you do, then you can’t go wrong with SiteGround.

Does SiteGround’s less-than-stellar customer service make you nervous? Then take a look at our list of the best web hosting providers to see your options.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources

1. SiteGround, “Our Craftsmanship: Innovative and Empowering Technologies”