Siteground - Best For WordPress
Today, SiteGround has data centers in 6 countries, services more than 2,000,000 domains worldwide and has over 500 (and growing) people under their employment.
They have amassed many accolades and various sites have sung praises about them, but I would say that their biggest recognition of achievement to date is to be affiliated and endorsed by WordPress. In their WordPress’s own words, SiteGround is “one of the biggest and brightest of the hosting world”.
But web hosting isn’t the only thing the founders of SiteGround are passionate about.
The people on top believe that happy employees lead to happy customers (I can attest to that – they’ve got excellent people handling their live chat), so they’re continuously striving to keep the workplace happy, and it shows – people love working for them, as evidenced by their rave reviews on Glassdoor.
It’s a company that’s equally passionate about their staff, products, and customers!
What about the data? What’s the uptime like? How do they compare against the competition?!
Yes, we know what you’re here for – it’s time to get the proverbial ball rolling and talk about why SiteGround is an excellent web host!
9 Reasons Why SiteGround Is An Excellent Web Host!
1. SiteGround Can Load Your Site 4x Faster!
If you’re new to web hosting, you need to understand this: speed is king.
According to thinkwithgoogle, you’ll want your site to load under 1 second because the probability of users bouncing when site load speed takes 1 – 3 seconds is a whopping 32%.
Google has also mentioned that Core Web Vitals will soon be part of their ranking criteria. Basically, your pages will be ranked based on 3 aspects – Visual Stability, Loading, and Interactivity. Out of the 3, the latter 2 are highly dependent on speed!
SiteGround understands this very well and they’ve done their homework, using a slick combination of software and hardware to keep sites light and speedy!
Cutting edge hardware – SSD & hosted with Google Cloud
First up, SiteGround keeps its user’s web pages speed by using SSDs in all their servers. If you’re unfamiliar with SSDs, they’re basically hard drives that can deliver data really fast – up to 30% faster than regular HDDs.
They also had the foresight to move their PART of their infrastructure to the Google Cloud Platform.
Updated in August 2020: We have received confirmation that ALL their data centers are already on the Google Cloud Platform! This means that ALL of their users old or new will get to reap its benefits, such as:
Enhanced software for speed – Cloudflare, PHP, SuperCacher
SiteGround uses strategic software deployments to ensure that site load speeds stay snappy and quick, all the time at all the places.
Cloudflare is utilized to improve content delivery to users all over the world. They’ve got the largest number of connections (over 100) to internet exchange points worldwide. When a user visits your website, the data is drawn from the closest exchange point to them, resulting in buttery smooth content delivery, and very quick loading speeds!
Your visitors are happier, and you’ll rank better on Google. A win-win situation for everyone!
They’ve also optimized their caching systems with their very own SuperCacher!
It offers 3 types of caching systems, which are Static Cache, Memcache, and Dynamic Cache, enabling your site to handle up to freakin’ 100x more hits and boosts its loading speed by up to 4x faster!
What this does is that it stores data in the system’s RAM, allowing them to access the requested information in a quicker way and sending that information to screens using the most efficient route possible.
If the previous paragraph is completely lost on you, don’t worry about it – all you need to know is that this can improve your speed by up to 40%.
Last but not least, they keep all their software up to date.
How does this affect speed?
Outdated software runs the risk of being incompatible with their freshly updated peers, causing unnecessary slowdowns, and issues, and premature obsoleteness. By keeping everything updated, SiteGround keeps everything running like clockwork, helping servers run faster!
2. Quick Server Response Times All Over The World!
Server response time is literally a measure of how much time a server takes to respond to a request before it starts delivering content to screens. A good server response time should keep up with the aforementioned Web Vital Metrics.
We used our proprietary server speed checker (the one and only speed checker in the world as of this date #shamelessplug) to check our site’s server response time.
3. Unfailing Uptime Since 2014
With SiteGround, we’re guaranteed a 99.99% uptime.
We’ve been tracking SiteGround’s uptime since 2014 to put that guarantee to the test, using UptimeRobot to check on our site every 5 minutes (with self-updating counters, see below). Up till today, SiteGround hasn’t failed us yet!
Now, if you don’t want to get into SiteGround’s technical wizardry, you can skip to #4: SiteGround as a managed WordPress host. However, If you’re keen on finding out how they’re able to get these sorts of results, here’s what we found out:
SiteGround uses its own technology and handcrafted solutions to predict, avoid, and reduce downtimes, such as:
4. SiteGround Is A Managed WordPress Host
As mentioned in the intro, SiteGround is one of WordPress’s highly recommended managed web hosts. This award isn’t easy to come by; they had to get through thousands of support, security, and speed tests to earn that recognition.
With that recognition comes certain privileges that other hosts are not privy to, such as:
5. Customer Support That Works (24/7 Phone Support Available!)
Great customer support is a testament to a web hosts’ credibility, and SiteGround’s support team certainly exceeds expectations.
The team is extremely capable and very well prepared to handle even the most complex issues. They’re required to undergo a training boot camp, and they’re given frequent feedback and evaluation on their work in order to keep them on top of their game.
Let’s have a look at what their customer service has to offer.
Our experience with SiteGround’s customer support has always been pleasant and effective. We have never finished a live chat session unhappy or with a problem unsolved!
6. FREE Daily Backup (30 Days Shared / 7 Days Cloud)
SiteGround’s Cloud and shared hosting options come with daily backup, so you won’t have to worry about starting from scratch due to loss of data.
The daily backups are done automatically, so we can go along with our business without having to spend time backing up the data ourselves.
With their shared hosting, you’ll enjoy data backup for the past 30 days. If you want to revert to a change you made 23 days ago, you can easily do so within a few minutes via Site Tools.
Backing up data from a cloud hosting account is considerably more difficult, with many web hosts completely foregoing the service. SiteGround bravely offers account-rewind up to 7 days. To us, that’s pretty damn impressive!
The daily backups can be used as an option for disaster recovery as well, and the restoring process is absolutely free of charge!
If you submit a ticket, they’ll help you sort things out and your site should be restored within 15 minutes if there are no drastic complications.
7. User-Friendly Custom Dashboard – Site Tools!
We don’t like to change.
As a matter of fact, I find that most people don’t deal well with change.
So when we heard that SiteGround was getting rid of cPanel and replacing it with their own custom Site Tools, we freaked out a little, not gonna lie.
Turns out, we freaked out for nothing because it so happens that we LOVE Site Tools.
One of the biggest problems when it comes to interface design is that more features create more confusion, which defeats the purpose of creating these tools in the first place.
Site Tools solves this problem by designing the interface with efficiency in mind – they wanted to make it faster to find and do whatever you need.
Right off the bat, you’ll see that Site Tools implements the commonly used side panel on the left. This allows users to easily access and navigate all the features that Site Tools has to offer (as opposed to cPanel where you actually need to know what you’re doing).
Installing WordPress is a breeze with this interface. Head on to DashBoard, WordPress, Install and Manage, then follow the on-screen instructions.
Other important features like setting up email accounts are easily done too with Site Tools. Head on over to the email tab and you’ll find everything you need to set up a new email, no fuss no trouble.
Users that already know what they’re doing and know exactly what they’re looking for will appreciate the ability to pin certain functions at the top of Site Tools for quick access. This makes it even faster and easier for you to do what you want to do, without the hassle in navigating through menus!
The team at SiteGround has designed their interface so that you can do whatever you need to do in 3 clicks or less. They’ve also made sure that most things that can be done in cPanel can be more efficiently achieved in Site Tools.
Honestly, after using Site Tools, I find myself not missing cPanel at all!
8. 6 Datacenters In 4 Continents
SiteGround has 6 state-of-the-art data centers around the world, namely in Iowa (US), London (UK), Eemshaven (NL), Frankfurt (DE), Singapore (SG), and Sydney (AU).
Naturally, countries that are closer to the datacenters get to enjoy SiteGround’s speed in all its glory.
You can check out which data center is closest to your target customers over here.
However, what if your target demographic is situated in a country without any data centers, such as India or Canada?
Theoretically, your customers would have a less than ideal experience, dealing with slow response times, which isn’t good for business.
But, don’t fret.
SiteGround is still extremely fast in countries without data centers, as proven in our detailed server speed test results.
For example, look up point #2 earlier in this article and check out the response time from Canada – a rocking 29 ms with the server located all the way in the USA!
Results pinged from countries like India (66 ms) and Japan (70 ms) also tested well, proving that SiteGround’s speed is consistently quick across the globe. In other words, SiteGround is fast EVERYWHERE.
All you have to do is select the server closest to your region, and let SiteGround do its job.
Remember, that they’ve got 6 excellent data centers spread across 4 continents.
Just make sure to pick a data center that is nearest to your target customers!
9. SiteGround’s Introductory Price @ 53% Off
SiteGround is a web host that takes pride in their service and quality, and they are known for many things… However, discounts and price cuts aren’t one of them.
Even during Black Friday, SiteGround doesn’t offer much in terms of discounts.
This is why we think that their introductory price of 53% off is an amazing deal, considering the services you’ll enjoy.
If you’re serious about hosting your website with SiteGround, we recommend subscribing for 3 years to optimize their introductory price, maximizing your savings.
After all, if you’re not happy with their service for any reason whatsoever, you’re allowed to cancel your subscription and get your money back within 30 days, so it’s totally risk-free!
SiteGround Disadvantages
1. Limited Resources
As amazing as SiteGround’s features and services are, the web host isn’t without its drawbacks. For example, their shared hosting options are limited so you’ll only get a certain amount of SSD space for the plan you signed up for, such as:
If you require more resources, you have no choice but to upgrade to the next tier.
2. Higher Price For Renewal
You may get to enjoy 53% off the price tag as a new user but once your subscription ends, you’re going to have to fork out the full price (Starting from $14.99 to $39.99 per month) to renew your contract, which obviously offends most people.
Furthermore, SiteGround made the unpopular decision to raise their prices recently after moving to the Google Cloud Platform, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.
It shows that SiteGround is dedicated to delivering good value and experiences to their customers, but unfortunately, speed and resources don’t come free.
As web builders ourselves, we feel that it’s really quite unfortunate that SiteGround increased their prices so much. We felt that their prices were slightly on the high side before, but with this price revision, they’ve put themselves in the premium category!
However, as purveyors of web hosting services, we have to say that this price increase is a necessary move. SiteGround is just doing what any self-respecting company should be doing – looking for ways to constantly improve themselves.
If the cost of the improvement is the price, then so be it. At least they’re providing the kind of value they WANT to provide for their customers.
If you want to enjoy more savings, it’s advisable to max out the subscription term as a new user, so you won’t have to pay the renewal prices so soon!
SiteGround’s Plans & Features
SiteGround has plans to cater to all users, from small businesses to enterprise clients. Let’s have a look at what they have.
2. Cloud Hosting
SiteGround’s Cloud hosting option is an ultra-fast fully managed service that comes with 24/7 VIP support. If you’re in the market for cloud hosting, their plans range from $80 – $240 a month.
3. Dedicated, Reseller & Enterprise Hosting
Updated in August 2020: SiteGround has stopped offering dedicated hosting.
You’ll also get to enjoy reseller hosting or enterprise hosting if those are more up your alley. The plans don’t come cheap but it comes with exclusive benefits you can’t get anywhere else. Basically, you get what you pay for!
Although SiteGround offers a wide range of hosting options for different purposes, we personally feel that their shared hosting option is good enough for 85% of the websites.
Verdict: SiteGround Is Highly Recommended!
I think it’s clear by now that SiteGround is by far our favorite web host.
Speed is the most important thing to us because it directly correlates to sales, and SiteGround has continuously exceeded expectations.
They’ve created tools and optimized their servers to increase server response times and decrease loading speed.
Thanks to their features like the Supercacher (which can increase loading speeds by 40%), PHP7 implementation, and moving their infrastructure to the Google Cloud Platform, they’re able to efficiently deliver data to screens across the globe.
Their support team is top of its class, and they work very well with WordPress as a managed WordPress host.
You won’t have to worry about a thing when you host with SiteGround. Just pick a hosting location closest to your target market, and let them handle the rest.
With our substantial experience with SiteGround (5 test sites, remember?) and numerous interactions with their support, we can confidently say that you can’t go wrong hosting with SiteGround. We highly recommend them, especially for those of you serious about your website!
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Siteground Pros
- Lightening Fast Load Times
- Quick Server Response
- Excellent Uptime
- Recommended By WordPress
- Fantastic Customer Support
- FREE Daily Backup
- User-Friendly Custom Dashboard
Siteground Cons
- Limited Resources
- Higher Price For Renewal