8.6 / 10
SCOR

SiteGround

Avantaje

• Great capabilities for WordPress people
• Outstanding customer care

Contra

• Some upsells within the account platform

Any time the topic of WordPress having comes up, SiteGround is recommended– it’s also on our own list of the best Blog sponsoring organizations. I spent a month evaluating SiteGround’s companies to see if they live up to the hype.

I used our method for testing web hosting services to examine SiteGround in four main categories: ease of use, efficiency, customer service and price. Hosting impressed me almost constantly, demonstrating that it is truly one of the best web hosting services for WordPress people.

Ideas and costs: All WordPress all the time

SiteGround offers several types of online having:

• WordPress or shared having
• WooCommerce opening
• opening in the sky
• Reseller having

Reseller having is aimed at web agencies and small hosting companies, so we’ll focus on the other plans. If you’re curious about reseller hosting, check out our list of the best reseller hosting companies.

Here’s a quick break of the customer-focused types of web hosting offered by SiteGround:

Let’s examine these opening types more closely.

Shared and WordPress having

Shared hosting places dozens or hundreds, maybe chiar thousands, of websites on a single site, giving each blog a specific amount of storage, speed, and processing energy. This limits the number of pages your site can have and the number of regular customers it can handle, but it also makes shared having more affordable than other kinds of having. &nbsp,

WordPress hosting is typically shared hosting that is designed specifically for WordPress, a content management system ( CMS ) for creating and managing website content, such as blog posts. WordPress having generally includes pre-installed WordPress, plus points like automated WordPress improvements, specialty themes and specialty plugins.

WordPress opening is used for all shared hosting at SiteGround. The programs on the Web Hosting website are similar to those on the WordPress Hosting page. WordPress isn’t pre-installed, but every program comes with the following WordPress functions:

• WordPress configuration witch
• Auto-migrator for transferring an existing WordPress blog to Hosting
• WordPress auto-updates
• WooCommerce enabled
• Speed optimization addon
• Security optimization widget

These WordPress capabilities are so powerful that using SiteGround with a site builder or another CMS doesn’t make feeling, as you’ll miss out on SiteGround’s best features.

The shared and WordPress having ideas for SiteGround even include:

• Free website for the first year
• Secure socket part certification for increased security
• Daily updates
• Caching şi CDN for superior speed
• Firewall defense
• AI anti-bot method
• Email having

The major differences between ideas are, according to the majority of users, the storeroom, speed, and sales. Here’s a breakdown of how these variations shake out:

WooCommerce opening

WooCommmerce is a popular e-commerce widget that makes it easy to create an online store. You’ll receive the same services regardless of the site you buy from, as shared/WordPress hosting plans are similar to the ones offered on SiteGround’s website.

opening in the sky

opening in the sky involves storing your website on several interconnected virtual servers. If one of those servers goes down, your site stays functional by pulling data from another server, ensuring continuous uptime. opening in the sky is also highly scalable, allowing you to add resources (like bandwidth and storage) as needed rather than forcing you to choose from a limited selection of plans. These benefits make cloud hosting a great choice for fast-growing sites, especially business websites.

The freedom of cloud hosting is a part of SiteGround’s cloud hosting, along with the managed WordPress features we’ve previously discussed. The most affordable pre-built plan is JumpStart at$ 100 per month, which includes enough storage for at least 400 pages and enough bandwidth for 5 million monthly visitors. You can also make your own schedule, customizing the bandwidth, storage and processing power to meet your needs.

Use convenience of SiteGround: Generally simple

I created an account and site with SiteGround to identify ease of use for three vital aspects of web hosting: the order process, account supervision and website/server management.

the procedure of purchasing

The WordPress purchase operation is divided into two pages. You’ll pick your site on the first page, then make your accounts and enter your payment details on the next site. You can also choose the length of your agreement and buy any add-ons you’d like.

I have two concerns with this site. The tiny text that says discounted prices only apply to your first lease term is the first matter. It is located under the Extra Services section. I’m glad the text exists– some companies, like DreamHost, don’t display this information anywhere. But it’s so small that it can easily be overlooked, especially since it’s not near the main pricing information. Unfortunately, I’ve encountered this problem with the majority of the hosting providers I’ve tested, with Ionos being a notable exception, so it’s an issue in the industry rather than just a SiteGround issue.

My other issue is the Domain Privacy add-on. Domain privacy is a crucial service that stops your ownership information, such as the domain name, from appearing publicly in the WHOIS database. This is particularly important if you’ve connected your personal information to your domain, and it’s so crucial that most domain registration services ( including those provided by other web hosts ) include it as a built-in feature. You shouldn’t be paying an additional$ 12 to$ 24 per year for this service.

Account management

The SiteGround account dashboard displays links to all of the functions you’ll need to manage your account and website, using large text and generous spacing to make everything easy to find. The Billing section is also covered by the top menu, which is present in place of a drop-down menu like HostGator sau GoDaddy.

The first time you log in, you’ll see your hosting plan and a Set Up Site button. After you’ve created your site, the dashboard provides quick connections to your websites, domains and email marketing plans. A persistent upsell for premium backups, which I can’t seem to get rid of, is my main annoyance here.

Upsells are, unfortunately, a major part of the SiteGround account dashboard. There are more of them in the Websites section, but there is no way to delete them. Still, if you’ve trained yourself to ignore internet ads ( and let’s be real, most of us have ), you can easily skip over them to reach the functions you need.

Website and server management

The SiteGround website setup area is well organized, with clear options for updating or moving an existing website. You can also choose to use WordPress, WooCommerce or the Weebly Sitebuilder. This last choice surprised me because SiteGround’s plans pages specifically mention Weebly and are primarily a managed WordPress hosting company.

After I selected WordPress, I found … more upsells. This was another surprise, as Ionos is the only other host that’s tried to sell me new products during the website setup process. SiteGround offers clear options for moving forward without making another purchase, in contrast to Ionos.

Opening WordPress for the first time takes you to the SiteGround WordPress Starter. This plugin demonstrates how to pick a theme from a list of pre-made themes for various website types. I didn’t find the theme I wanted here, but this curated list is less overwhelming for beginners than searching the full WordPress. org theme database.

Next, SiteGround displays plugins for things like e-commerce functionality, image galleries, contact forms, and more. You can select as many of these as you like and SiteGround will install them for you.

You can get the bones of your site set up in a few minutes thanks to the simple and quick process. When it’s done, you’ll be directed to the SiteGround WordPress assistant, which includes quick links for viewing your site, managing pages and changing your theme. This feature is nice, but I expected SiteGround– a highly lauded web host in the WordPress space– to offer functionality closer to the Hosting.com ( formerly A2 Hosting ) Site Assistant.

The final surprise at SiteGround was that I had to enable SSL certification on my own. Setting it up only took a few clicks in Site Tools, but I was annoyed that I had to do it at all. Only Ionos and GoDaddy of the web hosts I’ve tested required that I set up my own SSL certification. Every other host does this automatically.

Server management tasks are also conducted through Site Tools, SiteGround’s proprietary answer to the industry-standard cPanel. I liked how simple Site Tools was to use, with sidebar links to all of its necessary functions. Its simplicity reminded me of Hostinger’s hPanel, the best cPanel alternative I’ve encountered so far.

Overall comfort of use

SiteGround’s website creation process isn’t perfect, but it’s not difficult. The upsells can easily be skipped, the WordPress starter is great and I didn’t need to contact customer support for assistance. This gives SiteGround an 8/10 ranking for ease of use. The SiteGround experience is easier than what you’ll experience with GoDaddy– ranked at 7.5/10– but more challenging than setting up a site with Hosting.com– ranked at 9/10– or Hostinger– ranked at 10/10.

SiteGround performance: Good uptime, reasonable speed

I tested two aspects of performance during my SiteGround review:

• Uptime: The percentage of time your site spends online.
• Site speed: How long does it take for your website to load.

I created a SiteGround test site using the Total WordPress theme and assessed it for one week to determine how well SiteGround delivers in these areas. Additionally, I examined SiteGround’s performance monitoring tools.

Performance tools

SiteGround includes a Speed Optimizer plugin with every WordPress install. The main purpose of Speed Optimizer is caching, a protocol used to store site data in a fast-access layer that is connected to either your server or your visitor. This fast-access layer retrieves information at the CPU speed level instead of the slower speed of the random access memory or RAM used for traditional data storage.

Dynamic Caching, which uses a cache on SiteGround’s server by default, is enabled by Speed Optimizer. You can also enable other types of caching to further improve your site speed.

Speed Optimizer offers a variety of other optimization tools, including automated weekly database cleanup, HTML/CSS minification and image compression. These tools can significantly increase website speed, especially if your website contains a lot of images or complex code.

A free content delivery network– CDN— is also included with all SiteGround plans. This increases the speed of your website because it stores data on several interconnected servers around the world, allowing visitors to pull their sites from the server closest to them rather than requesting data from a server on the other side of the world.

Uptime

If a visitor can’t access your website, there’s a good chance they’ll go elsewhere– and with 1.1 billion websites on the internet, there’s always somewhere else to go. This makes it crucial to keep your site online 24/7, or as close to it as possible, to prevent it from losing traffic, audience trust or, in the case of a business website, revenue.

SiteGround offers the industry-standard 99.9 % uptime guarantee on all plans, which means your website won’t go offline for more than 10 minutes every week due to server issues. I monitored my test site for one week with Better Stack, and it experienced no downtime whatsoever. This suggests that SiteGround is overextending its 99.9 % uptime guarantee.

The 100 % uptime experienced during my week of testing is similar to what I’ve experienced with hosts like Hostinger şi Ionos. This is also better than what I’ve experienced with other popular web hosts like HostGator, which had a full 7 minutes of downtime during my test week.

Site speed

Bounce rate– the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page– increases by 32 % when your site speed goes from 1 to 3 seconds. In other words, a slow website makes it less likely that your visitors will stay put long enough to become devoted followers of your site.

There are many ways to improve site speed, like installing a caching plugin if you’re using WordPress. However, the best way to guarantee good site speed is to start with a web hosting company that offers fast servers.

To simulate a real homepage, I used WebPageTest şi WebPageTest to conduct speed tests over the course of five days. I ran tests at different hours each day for both mobile and desktop users in various countries to understand the site’s speed for a broad range of users.

Based on these tests, I came up with the following average location-based site speeds (keep in mind, lower numbers are better ):

This allowed me to establish some overall averages:

• Average mobile site speed: 3.42
• 2.21 is the average desktop site speed.
• Overall site speed: 2.81

Although SiteGround’s average site speed is faster than Hostinger‘s 2.34 seconds, it falls within the recommended maximum of three seconds. In short, while this site speed isn’t ideal, it’s also not terrible, especially since I hadn’t activated all of the Speed Optimizer features or the CDN. You may be able to improve your site speed by enabling these features on your own site.

performance overall

With excellent uptime and acceptable site speed, SiteGround earns a performance ranking of 8/10. These outcomes are comparable to what I’ve seen with other reputable web hosts, such as Hosting.com.

SiteGround security: The best security WordPress users can get

SiteGround offers the following security features to all users:

Secure socket layer, or SSL, certification: An encryption protocol that encrypts data sent from and to your website, similar to email addresses that were entered via a contact form. SSL certification also tells browsers and VPNs your site is safe– some won’t even open a site without them– so most web hosting companies include SSL with all plans. Additionally, Google penalizes websites that don’t have SSL certification.
• Firewall protection: Software that scans traffic attempting to enter your site and blocks malware and harmful traffic. It’s kind of like the website equivalent of wearing a mask during COVID or flu season: most of the bad stuff is blocked, but the good stuff (air, or in this case, regular web traffic ) gets through. SiteGround maintains a regular update and configuration to keep your website safe.
• Anti-bot system: An AI system that claims to block millions of threats, like malware, every day.
• Security Optimizer: A WordPress plugin that makes it easier to implement a number of effective security measures, such as creating a personal login page URL.
• Daily updates: Automated backups that store a copy of your website on a different server from your main server. This allows you to quickly restore your site if something goes wrong.

This goes beyond the typical SSL certification and firewall protection that the majority of web hosting providers offer. There are some hosting companies with similarly robust security, like Hostinger şi Ionos, but the Security Optimizer sets SiteGround apart by offering features you’d otherwise have to install third-party plugins for. Of all the hosts I’ve tested so far, SiteGround offers WordPress users the best security. This earns it a 10/10 security ranking.

SiteGround customer support: Excellence in action

Web hosting customer service should be always available, quick to respond, and trained to handle a wide range of web hosting problems. SiteGround has won multiple awards for customer service, so I went into this part of the test expecting its customer support to be all three of these things.

SiteGround provides a knowledge base to assist you with simple hosting tasks on your own and offers 24/7 customer support via AI assistant, live chat, phone, and Helpdesk. I tested all of these customer support channels to develop a full understanding of whether SiteGround lives up to its reputation for excellent customer service.

Knowledge base

Tutorials and Knowledge Base are the two main sections of SiteGround’s knowledge base. Tutorials provide step-by-step guidance on complex topics like how to build a WordPress website, while the Knowledge Base provides quick answers to smaller questions like “how do I upgrade my hosting plan”.

Each article is simple to read, with step-by-step instructions and illustrations and clear language for beginners. However, I didn’t see a single video in the support articles I read. This could be frustrating if you prefer to learn through video.

Additionally, SiteGround provides an AI assistant trained in the SiteGround knowledge base based on OpenAI tech. The AI assistant is fast, pulling answers from the knowledge base in seconds and showing you the main information on-page with links to relevant articles for more information. It won’t, however, direct you to a specific person. You can also get the same answers at almost the same speed by using the regular search function, so the AI assistant doesn’t add much– the main thing it does is look flashy.

The quality of SiteGround’s knowledge base is similar to the self-serve customer support resources provided by most web hosts I’ve tested, with the main detractor– a lack of videos– existing on almost every hosting site. Hostinger, which offers a number of video tutorials, is the only web hosting provider I’ve tested and have a better knowledge base.

Direct communication

Reaching a SiteGround customer support representative is undoubtedly challenging. The Contact Us page doesn’t display a button for live chat or a phone number to call. There’s a list of categories for common questions instead.

A list of relevant issues is displayed on category pages. Selecting your problem reveals instructions for fixing it, with links to further tutorials. I selected the option to start a live chat or see SiteGround’s customer service number when I clicked” My issue is different.” I had mixed feelings about this process– most hosting companies list live chat and phone options directly on the Contact Us page– but everything was straightforward and the tools provided also make it easy to help yourself, reducing the strain on ( and the wait time for ) customer support.

A live chat representative responded in less than a minute. He responded to my inquiries and guided me through some fundamental settings, assisting me in getting a minor issue fixed in under five minutes. This is what I expected from an award-winning customer service team and very similar to what I experienced in my chats with the sales rep ( hi, Dimitar! ) prior to I signed up. &nbsp,

My experience calling SiteGround was similarly easy. The customer service representative immediately responded to my questions, including providing plugin recommendations for a feature that isn’t included in SiteGround services, and I spent less than two minutes on hold. &nbsp,

SiteGround doesn’t provide general ticket support. Instead, there are specialized support tickets for tasks like having the support team transfer an existing WordPress site to SiteGround. This ensures that your request goes directly to the appropriate branch of customer service and that they can perform the requested task without much back-and-forth. In less than two hours, which is faster than the turnaround times for other high-ranking web hosts like A2 Hosting, I submitted a question and received a helpful response.

Pro tip: To ask a question related to a support ticket without triggering a full support process like a site migration, type” N/A” into form areas you don’t want to fill out.

overall customer care

My experience working with SiteGround customer service was excellent. The tutorials and knowledge base are comprehensive and easy to understand, helping even complete beginners accomplish website-related tasks in minutes. Although the Contact Us page doesn’t immediately provide contact information, its categories make it possible to get in touch with the appropriate team for your specific inquiries. The customer service agents are fast, helpful and pleasant to work with.

All of this gives SiteGround an overall rating of 9/10 for customer service. This ranking is great when compared to most other web hosts– even Hostinger, the company with the second-highest overall ranking from our hands-on testing, only achieved a 5/10 customer support ranking. Ionos, our second-ranking web host, is the only company to match SiteGround’s customer service, having also received a customer support ranking of 9/10.

Reputation

SiteGround has a stellar reputation, with an A+ BBB rating and a 4.8 out of 5 star rating on Trustpilot, and no open complaints. SiteGround has also won numerous awards, most notably four Stevie Awards for customer service.

Value of SiteGround: How does it compare to the rest of the market?

To understand SiteGround’s value, you need to understand what other top web hosts offer. Here’s a quick breakdown of the most affordable plans from our three top-ranking web hosts:

On the basis of this information, we can come a few conclusions:

SiteGround offers average introductory prices, situated right in the middle of Ionos ‘$ 4 a month and Hosting.com’s$ 2 per month– and equal to Hostinger’s$ 3 a month. However, Hostinger offers the lowest introductory prices for SiteGround for one year only, which is applicable for the first four years.
• SiteGround’s high renewal cost of$ 18 a month is dramatically more expensive than the$ 6 a month offered by Ionos or the$ 8 a month from Hostinger. Only A2 Hosting comes close in price, and Hosting.com’s most affordable plan is still$ 6 less per month.
• Average storage is provided by SiteGround, with Ionos and Hosting.com matching that number with 10GB. Of the three hosts compared above, Hostinger is the only company offering more storage on its lowest plan.
• SiteGround provides excellent WordPress features. Both Hosting.com and Hostinger offer WordPress site assistants, and Hostinger includes a speed optimization plugin, but you won’t get an equivalent to the SiteGround Security Optimizer from any other host.
• SiteGround offers good security, with most of the same security features you’ll get from other top web hosts. Due to its comprehensive security suite, which includes more advanced DDoS protection, Hosting.com is the only host with more server-side security features. However, Hosting.com doesn’t offer anything like the Security Optimizer plugin.
• The best customer service I’ve ever received from any web host is provided by SiteGround, which includes a wide range of tools for fixing things yourself, and the fastest phone service I’ve had. Of the hosts listed above, Ionos is the only company whose customer service even comes close to SiteGround’s customer service in terms of speed and helpfulness.

Overall, SiteGround earns a value ranking of 8/10. Top-notch WordPress tools are provided by SiteGround, but Hostinger and Hosting.com can provide them for less money. If you’re willing to manage WordPress yourself, Ionos is highly affordable and its customer service is as good as SiteGround’s. There are free and low-cost plugins for improving site performance and security, but the main things you can’t get from another web host are SiteGround’s Speed Optimizer and Security Optimizer.

SiteGround: Is it right for you?

To answer this question, we need to revisit how SiteGround performed in all of our testing categories:

Useability ranking: 8/10
• Performance ranking: 8/10
• Security position: 10/10
• Customer service ranking: 9/10
• Value ranking: 8/10

This gives SiteGround a top-ranking web hosting company an overall ranking of 8.6 and ushers in our top-ranking ranking. If you’re looking for high-quality web hosting– and especially if you’re looking for WordPress hosting– SiteGround is a great choice. There is a catch, though: SiteGround is significantly more expensive than the majority of shared and WordPress hosting providers.

If you’ve got a small budget and still want great customer service, I recommend Ionos. If you’re willing to accept less-than-perfect customer service in exchange for robust, low-cost plans, consider Hostinger— or check out our guide to the best cheap web hosting services.