SiteGround Web Hosting Review

In 2004, a group of friends in Sofia, Bulgaria, decided to set up their own company. More than a decade later, SiteGround has become a web-hosting service that spans over 500 employees and services more than 2,000,000 domains worldwide. Their offices, initially only in Bulgaria, have spread to the United States, the UK, and Spain.

Customization seems to be one of the main selling points for this company. Most of its solutions are tailor-made for its clients’ software requests. SiteGround crafts server architecture and carefully selects hardware for clients according to their individual needs.

Other selling points include customer service support and uptime guarantees, which have been consistently pointed out by user reviews. Potential downsides for the company’s features so far revolve around pricing issues that may mislead customers about what is included versus what they deliver.

Pricing

SiteGround’s Startup option provides one website with unmetered traffic, free SSL, Daily Backup, free CDN, unlimited Databases, managed WordPress, 100% renewable energy match, 10 GB web space, 10,000 visits monthly, and a 30-day, money-back guarantee. This option starts at an introductory offer of $6.99 per month.

SiteGround’s GrowBig option is their bestselling hosting package at the introductory price of $9.99 per month. This version provides all the Startup features along with an increase in monthly visits to 25,000, a doubled web space capacity of 20 GB, and the addition of Speed-boosting Caching, Staging, and the Add Collaborators features.

The GoGeek premium option takes it even further with 40 GB of web space, 100,000 visits monthly, and the addition of Ultrafast PHP, Priority Support, and Highest Tier of Resource features for a whopping introductory price of $14.99 a month.

The tradeoff is that after the initial introductory periods, prices revert to the regular prices.

Support

SiteGround’s customer support has been mostly positive, with customer reviews specifically pointing out speedy replies, professionalism, and a friendly demeanor in most interactions. This positive reception is partially due to the overstaffing of customer support staff who offer quick responses to phone calls and live chat inquiries.

Advanced Priority Support is a premium feature advertised as prioritizing a customer’s service request and automatically sending them to the most experienced team members.

A tutorial section on the website details further step-by-step info on aspects such as FTP, SuperCacher, and Staging.

Pros

Better-than-average loading speed of 673ms, placing it in the top 10 in terms of speed
Complimentary single website site migration feature
Complimentary SSL certificate and content delivery network, protecting web user security and making access faster for site visitors
99.9% uptime guarantee ensures that barring any unforeseen circumstances (such as site maintenance and user negligence), their speed will remain consistent at the given number
Friendly to beginning and veteran developers, with features crafted to their needs

Cons

Lack of a free domain name means they will charge you $15.95 a year if you create one with them
Renewal rates are almost double the initial introductory rate
SiteGround does not offer Windows-based servers, instead of relying solely on Linux servers

Conclusion

For a web-hosting company that prides itself on customization, SiteGround delivers on many factors. Loading speed and uptime guarantees are some of the best in the industry. Its customer service support provides rapid responses to customers.

The seams only begin to unravel when you take a look at its pricing model and realize that in the long run, you will be paying almost double after the introductory price wears off or if you have to register for a new domain name.

Whether you think that is a fair tradeoff or not is dependent on your experience. We hope that our SiteGround review can help you make that choice.