SiteGround Hosting Review (2024) for Beginner Bloggers & Marketers
Welcome to our SiteGround hosting review. If you are a newbie who is searching for the best web hosting plan for blogs and websites, SiteGround hosting is probably the best place to start your journey.
In this review, we are going to show you all the important things you need to know to help decide whether the SiteGround hosting is the right choice for you, or not. We will look at the important SiteGround features, SiteGround pricing, pros, cons and discounts.
Let’s get started.
But before that, if you want to know how to choose a web host read this.
What Is SiteGround?
SiteGround is a web hosting company that was started in the year 2004, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since its start, more than 2,000,000 domains have used SiteGround’s hosting services. This is one of the few web hosting companies that is officially recommended by WordPress.
At present, the main services offered at SiteGround include hosting for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, PrestaShop and WooCommerce websites. SiteGround is popular for its great uptimes and excellent server speeds.
Now, let’s continue this SiteGround hosting review and have a look at all the important features it has to offer.
SiteGround Hosting Features
Google Cloud Platform
After January 1, 2020, SiteGround has started using the Google cloud platform for hosting all its customer’s websites. They have started using Google’s SSD persistent storage, which means almost perfect uptimes and greater speeds for your websites and blogs.
Remember that this feature is available only for customers who have signed up for the SiteGround web hosting after January 1, 2020.
Fully Managed
Automatic WordPress and PHP Updates
SiteGround provides a fully managed hosting service. Meaning, all the maintenance part of your hosting is taken care of, by the hosting company itself. You don’t have to worry about the outdated WordPress and PHP versions.
SiteGround updates them automatically for you so that you can concentrate on things that are important for growing your business rather than maintaining it.
Caching
When you are using SiteGround web hosting for your blogs and websites, you don’t have to worry about caching. By default, SiteGround enables static caching for your website. You don’t need to install a third-party caching plugin.
Also, there is an option to turn off the caching or add additional layers of caching for your blog. These additional layers of caching include dynamic cache and Memcached.
SG Optimizer Plugin
This is a WordPress plugin developed by SiteGround that helps improve the performance of your WordPress website hosted on SiteGround.
This plugin allows easy integration of SiteGround optimization features such as super cacher, dynamic caching, environment optimization, front end website optimization, media optimization and more, with your website.
Great Security Features
Constant Monitoring
The team of security experts at SiteGround constantly keep an eye on security vulnerabilities on website and server levels. Security patches and enhancements are constantly released to keep all kinds of attacks at bay.
Regular Site Backups
SiteGround automatically backs up your site and keeps 30 copies on your account. If your site breaks down because you tried something adventurous or because something unwanted happened that is not under your control, you can always restore your website with a few simple clicks of your mouse.
The website backup and restore feature offered by SiteGround is completely free, even for their basic shared hosting plans.
Free CDN Feature
SiteGround hosting has partnered with Cloudflare to provide free content delivery network service to all its customers. This feature will boost your website’s speed even more while adding an extra layer of security.
Money Back Guarantee
SiteGround hosting offers a no questions asked 30-days money-back guarantee. If you are unhappy with their services, you can ask for a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Please note that this money-back guarantee doesn’t include new domain registration fees.
Free SSL
All the hosting plans at SiteGround include free Let’s Encrypt standard and wildcard SSL certificates. And the standard SSL comes preinstalled on your site.
SiteGround Plans and Pricing
Now let’s have a look at the different plans offered by SiteGround hosting and their pricing structure. The main types of hosting services offered by SiteGround include shared hosting, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and Cloud hosting.
The plans and the pricing structure for shared, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting are the same. Here are the different plans and their pricing.
StartUp Plan
- Can host 1 website
- You get 10 GB of disc space (webspace)
- SSD storage
- Best suitable for sites with less than 10,000 visits per month
- Free SSL
- Free CDN
- Daily website backup
- Fully managed WordPress hosting
- Unmetered traffic
- Unlimited database
- Free EMAIL accounts
- 30 days money-back guarantee
The StartUp plan costs $6.99 per month when you sign up for the 12 months plan. The same will cost $19.99 per month if you choose to pay monthly, instead of yearly.
GrowBig Plan
The GrowBig plan has the following features.
- You can host unlimited websites (depending on the available resources)
- 20 GB Web Space
- Is best suited for websites with 25,000 visits or less per month
- Can create up to 5 on-demand backup copies of your website
- Advanced caching and speed-boosting options
- Staging feature that allows you to create a copy of your live site on a separate staging environment
- Unmetered Traffic
- Free SSL
- Daily Backup
- You can add collaborators to your site. These collaborators will get their own SiteGround accounts and individual login details to access the site tools.
- Free CDN
- Free Email
- Managed WordPress
- Unlimited Databases
- 30-Days Money-Back guarantee
The GrowBig plan costs $9.99 per month when you sign up for the yearly plan. If you want to pay monthly, the same plan will cost you $29.99 per month.
GoGeek Plan
GoGeek plan has all the features of GrowBig plan, with the following differences.
- 40 GB Web Space
- Can have up to 100,000 site visitors per month
- Git integration
- You can have white-label clients
- You can use more server resources than any of the other shared hosting plans
- You get priority support
The GoGeek plan costs $14.99 per month when you sign up for the yearly plan. The same will cost $44.99 per month when you choose the monthly payment option.
Is There a SiteGround Discount Coupon Code?
Right now, SiteGround offers a discount of up to 65% on many of its web hosting plans. These discounted prices are applicable for new sign-ups only.
SiteGround Monthly Plan
SiteGround has recently launched the monthly plan. With this option, you can now sign up for the SiteGround shared, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting accounts by paying monthly. Read our article about SiteGround monthly plan to know whether paying monthly is a smart idea or not.
How to Migrate Websites to SiteGround Hosting?
There are two ways to migrate your WordPress website from your current hosting company to SiteGround hosting.
Free WordPress Migrator
If you want to handle the migration yourself, there is an easy way to do that. It is to use the SiteGround WordPress Migrator plugin.
All you need to do is generate a token from your SiteGround hosting account to initiate the migration. It is completely free to use and you can have as many website migrations as you want.
Professional Website Migration
This is a paid way to migrate your existing website to SiteGround. It can cost you up to $30.00/site. This is the ideal way to migrate your site if you don’t want to deal with the technical hassles that come with migrating a site from one web hosting to another. You can have the peace of mind as everything is handled by experts who have been doing this for years.
What’s Inside the SiteGround Hosting Account?
Now let’s show you the inside of our SiteGround hosting account. This way you can be certain of what you get and what you don’t when you sign up for a new SiteGround hosting account. This is our demo account and the plan we have signed up for is the SiteGround StartUp plan.
The ‘websites’ section is the place from where you can access all your hosted websites and add new ones. As we are on the StartUp plan, we can only host a single website.
When you click on the ‘WordPress kit’ option in front of your website’s name, a pop-up will open up as shown in the image below, from where you can access the different WordPress tools.
Similarly, if we click on the ‘site tools’ option, we will be taken to another page from where we can access all the tools necessary to maintain our website. We can also access WordPress tools from this page.
Different tools can be accessed from the panel on the left.
If you want to start a blog using SiteGround read this article titled how to start a blog from scratch.
SiteGround Limitation
The only limitation with SiteGround shared hosting plan is the availability of limited disc space (webspace). This is not a problem if you are planning to host one or two websites on your SiteGround hosting account. But when you host multiple websites, the available web space may get filled very fast.
If you notice closely, you can see that the available webspace for the StartUp plan is 10GB. This is perfectly fine for the StartUp plan because you can host only one website on that plan. And 10 GB space for one website should be plenty.
But when you look at the disc space available for the GrowBig and GoGeek plans which are 20 GB and 40 GB respectively, available space may not be enough, especially when you are planning to host many websites on a single hosting account.
SiteGround Hosting Review Verdict
Overall, SiteGround is the best possible hosting solution for beginners and intermediates. Although it has a limitation when it comes to the availability of disc space, it shouldn’t be a problem for you if you are planning to host less than 2 websites.
If you are planning to start a brand new website or blog or if you already have a website that has less than 100000 visitors per month, SiteGround hosting should be the right fit for you.
SiteGround offers great uptimes and server speed, decent pricing structure, and a good support team. Sign up for the 12 months hosting plan to get the best SiteGround deal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SiteGround a Good Hosting Company?
Definitely. SiteGround has been active for more than 15 years now. As mentioned above, they have already served more than 2,000,000 domains worldwide. If their hosting wasn’t good enough, those numbers would have been different.
Who Owns SiteGround Hosting?
Tenko Nikolov is the main founder of SiteGround. In fact, SiteGround was founded by him and his friends studying at the university in Bulgaria in 2004.
Is SiteGround Better Than GoDaddy?
In our personal opinion, based on our experience we can confidently say that SiteGround is a better hosting company than GoDaddy, at the time of writing this article.
How Much Does SiteGround Cost?
We have already mentioned the prices above. You can get the best SiteGround deal when you sign up for the 12 months hosting plan.
Does SiteGround offer free Domain?
No. SiteGround doesn’t offer a free domain name. If you want to purchase a domain name at SiteGround it is going to cost you an extra of $15 per year. And that’s the reason why we recommend buying the domain name at NameCheap and then connecting it to your SiteGround hosting account.
Which is Better SiteGround or Bluehost?
We personally prefer SiteGround over BlueHost. But that doesn’t mean BlueHost is a bad hosting company. If interested, you can check BlueHost’s offerings from here.
Which SiteGround Plan is The Best?
For a beginner blogger, SiteGround’s StartUp plan should be more than enough. If you already have a blog or a website that gets decent traffic or if you are planning to start the second blog in future, go get the GrowBig plan. Don’t forget to sign up for the 12 months billing cycle.
Is SiteGround Secure?
Yes. SiteGround offers a range of security features. Free CDN, Free SSL, and regular automatic site backups are some of them.
What is SiteGround Sitebuilder?
SiteGround offers a free Weebly site builder for all its customers. You have the option to choose the Weebly site builder instead of WordPress or other CMS when starting a new website.