So, you just created a stunning website, Great! Now it’s time to make it visible to the online world. You want to make sure that your website stays up and running 24/7 so that your targeted audience can reach out to you whenever they want to.
This is where Web Hosting Services come into play.
Think of it this way, let’s say you want to start a new business in your locality. You are going to need a space where you can build and run your business, right? A place where your customers can reach out to you and buy your products and services.
Similarly, when you create a website, you’d need to put your business in some sort of online location (A Web Server in this case) where it stays live all the time. All your website data including the UI code, files, images, etc. would be stored on a Web Server and your users can go on and access it whenever they want to.
There are many Web Hosting services out there that you can go for, each offering some common as well as unique Web Hosting features under different plans and Pricings.
Here, we are going to do a SiteGround Hosting Review, one of the oldest and the most sophisticated Web Hosting services out there.
SiteGround Hosting Review/Overview:
Talking about the History of SiteGround, it was founded way back in 2004 by a bunch of university students in Sofia, Bulgaria. The current CEO of SiteGround is Tenko Nikolov who first started off as tech support for the company.
The company now has over 400 employees and is hosting over staggering 2 million Websites. SiteGround has seen steady yet consistent growth over the years because of its impressive quality of services and lightning-fast Tech Support.
When measuring the performance of a Web Hosting service, its uptime and the loading speed are the two most important factors that matter. SiteGround Hosting has recorded 99.9% uptime and an average speed of 673ms, which makes this hosting service stand at the top of the list of most current web hosting services. We’ll talk more about these performance parameters in detail in a bit.
SiteGround claims, it doesn’t matter if you are a Small Business or an enterprise, if you are looking for Quality Hosting Service that offers Custom Hosting solutions, powerful security features in affordable pricing then SiteGround is the place for you.
What makes a Web Hosting Service Great?
When looking at a Web Hosting service, there are certain parameters that you can look into, to measure the performance of that particular service. Why are we getting into this right now? These are the factors that we are going to base the rest of the review on. So, it would be better if you familiarize yourself with these performance determining matrices
- Speed of Website: How much time does it take for your website to load up from the Web server?
- 24/7 Availability: Will your website stay online 24/7? What is the downtime management policy of the Web Hosting service?
- Features: What are the features, tool and additional benefits that the Web Hosting service is offering?
- Customer care: How is their customer support? How great are they at communicating with their customers?
- Pricing: What is their pricing? Can you get a deal that works the best for you?
Now, lets’ dive in and do the complete SiteGround Hosting Review in terms of the above-mentioned factors.
SiteGround Hosting: Pros
99.9% Uptime
SiteGround has been delivering excellent results as far as the uptime is concerned. For the last 2 years, it has had an average of 99.9% uptime which is quite reliable. In fact, it is better than most Web Hosting services out there.
This average uptime is proof of SiteGround’s dedication towards making the lives of their customers easier and worry-free. This Outstanding uptime would make sure that your customers can reach out to you around the clock. They’d never miss out on any of your products, services and promotions which would increase your chances of making more sales and having a meaningful impact on your audience.
Excellent Website Loading Time
Website loading speed is one of the most crucial website performance measuring matrices that could make or break your business. You can have a visually splendid website all you want, you can make your content as engaging as you can, if your website doesn’t load fast enough, your audience simply would just move on to the next option.
SiteGround is absolutely amazing as far as the Website loading speed is concerned. The Web Servers at SiteGround offer a loading time of 673ms which is way better than most Web Hosting services out there. When you rank Web Hosting services in terms of their loading speeds, SiteGround easily comes in the Top 10 of these services.
Great Tech Support Experience
SiteGround Customer support is probably the best one that you can get out there. They have tried their best to enhance and optimize the way they communicate with their customers. From emails to 24/7 Live chat as well as Telephone communication, you can get the help that you need for your Website Hosting, in just a matter of seconds.
These are not just mere words, we have tested and verified the effectiveness of their customer support ourselves. The Tech support is nice and friendly, they know what they are doing and how they can make sure that your tech support needs are met in the best way possible.
Free CDN and SSL
Free CDN and SSL are two of the benefits that you’d get with SiteGround Hosting.
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer which is a security protocol that protects your user information from being exposed to hostile hacking attempts. Google has strict instructions about new websites that they must have SSL installed on them.
CDN refers to Cloudflare Content Delivery Network. This kind of network stores large files on serves in different areas to make sure that the people of that place can access those files as quickly as possible. What CDN does is, they scatter the Servers in different locations and place your Website on those serves. This contributes to lower overhead on a single server.
With SiteGround hosting plans, you’d get free SSL certification. And as for the CDN, they have servers installed across 3 continents that work to provide you with the best website loading speed.
Free Website Migration
Website Migration is a word that sounds like a lot of work and it in fact is. If you do it manually that is. You have to take care of a lot of factors to make sure that you don’t end up messing your entire website. There is a lot of heavy work associated with website migration that could keep you occupied for days. It would also affect your business and your growth in the market.
To make things easier, SiteGround has created an amazing WordPress Migration plugin. You just need to install that plugin and it would take care of the rest for you. SiteGround allows you to Migrate 1 Website for free. After that, you’d have to pay a certain fee for doing more migrations.
30 Days Money Back Guarantee
SiteGround gives you a 30-Days money-back guarantee for all their Shared Hosting Plans. You can get a complete refund if you are not satisfied with the quality of their services. Their other services like Cloud, Dedicated Hosting, and VPS come with a 15-Days refund policy.
Although there is a limitation to the refund policy. The refund is only applicable to new customers and not for renewals. This Money Back Guarantee Policy is one of the things that are clear proof of their dedication towards giving their users an excellent user experience.
Additional Features:
SiteGround is equally great for beginners as well as for advanced-level users. It is integrated with services like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, and Drupal. With SiteGround Hosting plans, you’d get SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI pre-installed and you can use them on the go. SietGround also offers excellent security features. One of these features is the automatic bot detection feature that prevents AI bots from raiding your website.
The bottom line is, SiteGround takes the load off of your shoulders and gives you an easy and simple way of managing your website. You can go on and focus on the On-Page factors of your website without worrying about anything from the Web Server’s end.
SiteGround Hosting: Cons
Just like any other hosting service, SiteGround also has some drawbacks that you need to be aware of. Although, these limitations are nothing as compared with the benefits that it has to offer, still, you are the only one who can decide that.
So, let’s go on and look at some of the limitations of SiteGround Web Hosting Service.
High Renewal Rates
SiteGround has one of the highest Plan Renewal rates that you’d find out there. Their basic plan for startups is just $3.95 per month. But that goes up to about $12 when you try to renew the plan.
From that, you can clearly see how much their other plans would cost for renewal. This does sound like a big turn-off, but this is just a marketing trick and you’d find it to be the same for almost every Web Hosting Plan out there.
“Cheap” Plan has limitations
The Cheap plan is only good for small websites. It is not recommended for growing businesses. Although the pricing is quite great when you look at the limitations, you’d find it to be high restricted if you have a long-term project and you are expecting a huge audience for your website.
A brief overview of these limitations is, you get 10Gb of Web Space that can handle about 10,000 monthly visits. If you are trying and go above these matrices, it would affect the performance of your website. What you can do instead is, go for the cheap plan when you are starting off and when your website starts seeing a huge turnover, shift towards a bigger hosting plan to accommodate that turnover.
Need to Pay for the Domain Name
Most Web Hosting services out there are using certain marketing tactics to attract more customers. One of these tactics is providing their clients with a Free Domain name. Unfortunately, SiteGround doesn’t do that. You’d need to pay for the Domain name. You can also get it as a part of your Web Hosting Plan. If you already have a domain name, then you won’t be charged anything for it.
Setup Fee for Monthly Billing Plans
Most Shared Web Hosting Services would let you sign up for a few months at least. It has been this way for years. But with SiteGround, you can sign up for a single month if you want to.
But there is a limitation to that, you’d have to pay a separate Setup fee for these plans. And once you buy such a plan, you’d have to renew it after the first month and the renewal rates would be considerably higher than the actual plan. This deal sounds great at first, but if you look at it in the long-term, it probably isn’t that great.
Hosting Services offered by SiteGround:
SiteGround Web Hosting service offers a wide array of hosting services that span from Web Hosting to WooCommerce Hosting services. Their services are great for small startups as well as Full-fledged organizations. Here is a brief overview of hosting services offered by SiteGround:
Web Hosting: Fast and efficient hosting services for small as well as large scale websites
WordPress Hosting: Plugins and tools for creating and managing WordPress based Websites
WooCommerce Hosting: WooCommerce stores Hosting, management, and Maintenance
Cloud Hosting: Cloud hosting for faster performance and better uptime as well as loading speed
SiteGround Hosting Plans:
For Web hosting services, SiteGround offers 3 basic hosting plans. These plans are names StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
Here are the pricing details for all these Web Hosting Plans
StartUP: $3.95/month
GrowBig: $5.95/month
GoGeek: $11.95/month
Here is a brief overview of these plans
The GrowBig and GoGeek plans offer much more features as compared with the basic StartUp plan. (Visit the SiteGround Website for more details)
So, is SiteGround worth the money?
This concludes our SiteGround Hosting Review. We have looked at its history, its benefits and drawback and pricing for the Hosting Plans. Now, all that’s left is the question of that, is it really worth it?
Do you have so many web hosting options available out there? So, would SiteGround be really worth the money?
Well, the answer is a loud and clear YES!
This Web Hosting service offers excellent beginner as well as advanced level features under incredibly simple rates. You get a great uptime and the loading speed is just phenomenal. Also, the pricing for the 3 plans is also quite attractive. So, if you are looking to do some experiments with Web Hosting then you should definitely try out Site Ground Web Hosting Services.
SiteGround Web Hosting is great for new startups as well as full-fledged organizations. So, it would be a fine choice if you are looking to set foot in an online business or you plan on expanding your business establishment.