SiteGround Review | Web Hosting Sun

SiteGround.com Web Host

Web Hosting with all the bells and whistles

Getting Started

SiteGround developed an Account Setup Wizard to help new users breeze through the initial setup process. The Setup Wizard allows you to quickly upload a new website or execute a transfer of your existing website. The process is fast, intuitive and allows users to hit the…SiteGround running…minutes after the initial account setup is over. For those users still on the fence about what website software to go with, the wizard will recommend a few based on what the user is looking for. It even lets you set a reminder to run the wizard at a later time, and saves any progress as you go if you feel like taking your sweet time.

In addition to the Setup Wizard, SiteGround has services for both WordPress and Joomla. If you know that you are going to be using either of the Content Management Systems, then purchasing the WordPress or Joomla plans will save you money. Even if you have an existing WordPress or Joomla site, they have a free transfer feature, even with their cheapest hosting plan.

Key Features

Limitations

After doing some searching throughout the webisphere, it was fairly difficult to find complaints or limitations regarding SiteGround. There are some reviews of Siteground that have some negative feedback regarding CPU usage max outs for those with WordPress implementations, but only if they didn’t chose a high enough hosting package.

One could complain that SiteGround’s renewal fee is very high. As seen with other hosting plans, it is actually higher than average. The initial sign up fees are quite low, and exceeds standards when you consider all of the great services you receive with each plan. Once that first cycle is finished though, you will be paying regular fee. This price is high, but it is reasonable considering the benefits from each plan.

Pricing

SiteGround plays the game just as loose as the rest of the web hosting companies out there, that is when it comes to  first year shared hosting pricing. However, you’ll find they charge on the high end compared to their competitors after that first year is up (ranging from $10 to $30 depending on which of the 3 plans you choose). This can be justified by taking into account the options, perks, performance, and overall quality you get with SiteGround’s shared hosting compared to other hosts.

Shared Hosting Plans

Three Main Plans:

1. StartUp – $3.95/mo

   With this plan, you will receive the following key features:

   • One website
   • 10GB of Web Space
   • Receive up to: 10,000 visits monthly

Here are the additional features for those who like to know the details on what you receive:

• Free site transfer
• 24/7 Support
• Free app installs
• Free email accounts
• Unmetered traffic
• Free SSL & HTTP/2
• cPanel & SSH
• Free website builder
• SSD storage
• 30 Days money back
• Free daily backup
• Free cloudflare CDN
• Unlimited MySQL Database

1. 1. 2. GrowBig – $7.95/mo

With this plan, you will receive the following key features:

1. • Multiple websites
   • 20GB Web space
   • Receive up to: 25,000 visits monthly

Below are the additional features:

• Priority technical support
• SuperCacher for great speed
• 1 Year free Wildcard SSL
• 30 Backup copies avaliable

Included are all of the additional features mentioned in the Startup plan.

3. GoGeek – $14.95/mo

With this plan, you will receive the following key features:

• Multiple websites
• 30GB Web space
• Receive up to: 100,000 visits monthly

Below are the additional features:

• Fewer accounts on server
• Free PCI Compliance
• WordPress and Joomla staging
• One click GIT repo creation

Also included are all of the additional features provided in both the StartUp and GrowBig plans.

Cloud Hosting Plans

The great thing about SiteGround’s cloud hosting is the variety of plans that are offered. When it comes to pricing and options, you have more flexibility with the cloud hosting than you would with their shared hosting plans. You also have the option of creating your own cloud hosting plan, which makes the services really adaptable for any company or individual needs. Cloud hosting comes with most of the features that one would receive with shared hosting.

Cloud Hosting Features include:

• WHM and cPanel, along with Softaculous autoinstaller
• MySQL5 & PostgreSQL
• 5 PHP versions & HHVM
• Apache/Nginx & CentOS
• Exim Mail Server
• Private DNS Server Setup
• IP Tables Firewall
• Free Domain Name
• 1 Dedicated IP
• Free SSL Certificates
• SSH Access

There are four separate cloud hosting plans to choose from:

• Entry: This plan comes with 2 CPU Cores, 4GB Memory, 40GB SSD Space, and 5TB Data Transfer. It is priced at: $80.00/mo.
• Business: You get 3 CPU Cores, 6GB Memory, 60GB SSD Space, and 5TB Data Transfer. This is priced at: $120.00/mo.
• Business Plus: You receive 4 CPU Cores, 8GB Memory, 80GB SSD Space, and 5TB Data Transfer. All priced at: $160.00/mo.
• Super Power: This plan comes with 8 CPU Cores, 10GB Memory, 120GB SSD Space, and 5TB Data Transfer. Priced at: $240.00/mo.

Dedicated Hosting

SiteGround also provides 3 plans for their dedicated hosting services. The plans are as follows:

• Entry Server comes with: Intel Xeon E3-1230 CPU, 3.20Ghz CPU Clock Speed, 4 CPU Cores, 8 CPU Threads, 8MB CPU Cache, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB SATA II HDD, and 5TB Bandwidth. Priced at: $229.00/mo.
• Power Server included with this plan is: Intel Xeon E3-1270 CPU, 3.50Ghz CPU Clock Speed, 4 CPU Cores, 8 CPU Threads, 8MB CPU Cache, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB SATA II HDD, and 5TB Bandwidth. This is priced at: $329.00/mo.
• Super Power Server comes with: 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2620 CPU, 2.00Ghz CPU Clock Speed, 2 x 6 CPU Cores, 2 x 12 CPU Threads, 15MB CPU Cache, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 4 x 500GB SATA III / RAID 10 HDD, and 5TB Bandwidth. Priced at: $429.00/mo.

Other Hosting

SiteGround also offers Reseller hosting, and Enterprise hosting. The Reseller hosting gives the reseller specific deals on the hosting, and other rewards based on a point system. The more points you earn, the more deals you get.

Enterprise hosting allows the enterprise company to craft their very own hosting plan. SiteGround makes this experience personal by offering personal account managers, custom on boarding, and 24/7 help desk support.

SiteGround’s seemingly infamous “SuperCacher” is a common talking point when reading about SiteGround.

A few quick tests using network-tools.com showed that the server IP through SiteGround was “from Bulgaria (BG) in region Eastern Europe” and had plenty of speed.  I also ran our webhostingsun.com domain through pagescoring.com and compared to other major sites, the speed to load the home page was great.

When using the Pingdom speed test, the website was faster than 54% of the tested websites. The load time was only 2.93sec and was tested from Dallas, Texas. Overall, the speed of the website was above average. There are many different factors that can play into making a site load fast, but no site will load fast without a good host. After all, they are the ones hosting your site on the internet! Below is an insight on the load time:

With just under 15 years of experience, it is no doubt that SiteGround is one of the best in the hosting market. There are few limitations. Each shared hosting plan comes with an extensive amount of features, not to mention the complete flexibility that you have with dedicated hosting and cloud hosting regarding the customized plans. If you are a large enterprise, or just a freelancer, you have multiple hosting options.

Among the many of SiteGround’s great hosting plans comes one of its biggest attributes…their support. If you are experiencing any difficulties with the services, you can choose from 3 different support options: live chat, phone, or ticket. If you decide to create a ticket, they guarantee that SiteGround support will answer within 10 minutes. The other two support services (live chat and phone), are instant. Not all hosting companies can say that they will respond back to you within 10 minutes, let alone having a phone number to call for support. Beyond the excellent customer service, SiteGround’s security is superb. They have developed a malware detection services called Hackalert.

According to SiteGround, “Founded in 2004 by a few university friends, SiteGround gradually but steadily turned into a leading web hosting service provider. With only a handful of people working from their university dorm rooms in the beginning, today the company has more than 400 employees and is constantly growing. We process 1500+ tickets, 1000+ phone calls and 3000+ chat requests per day. We proudly host more than 500,000 domains with this number growing by the hour”.

Tenko Nikolov, CEO of SiteGround, was going to university as a law student, while working part-time with the web hosting company. He enjoyed it so much he decided to peruse technology rather than law.

If you’re willing to pay a few extra bucks for quality, stability and performance after the first cycle, SiteGround is an excellent choice for you and your business no matter the size. Of course, if you’re Amazon or eBay, (first of all, I’m honored), you’ll still probably stick to your own in house managed services. But for anyone who is just looking to host around 50,000 of their closest friends each day, SiteGround will do the trick.