Review: SiteGround WebHosting – 2020’s Best Hosting Service

Every website starts with a domain, and every domain needs a virtual area to lay a foundation and begin construction of that website. SiteGround checks all the boxes for 2020’s absolute best hosting services. They have continued to maintain privacy and security at the highest level with enhanced tools for E-Commerce, WordPress Websites and Professional Bloggers. Let’s take an in-depth look at why we choose SiteGround for our hosting.

Why SiteGround?

Upgrades and staying on top of the competition are always important and SiteGround takes this seriously. Basic search results tell us that they have serviced more than 2,000,000 domains worldwide and provide shared hosting, cloud hosting and privatized hosting for large and small corporations. They use SSD’s for backups and ground based stored data with a variety of web hosting plans, performance-enhancing tools, 24/7 around the clock customer support, and affordable rates. 

SiteGround is perfect for:

• New Website Users
• Advanced Website Designers
• E-Commerce Stores
• Professional Bloggers
• WordPress Websites
• Corporate/Business Websites
• Developers who want high-performance solutions and support
• Those who need features like SSH access and GIT repositories

SiteGround Features You Don’t Want to Miss

#1 SiteGround Website Builder

Basic WordPress site building tools with automatically installed plugins for beginners can feel very stressful. This is because new users have an idea of what they want, however they have a hard time knowing where to start. This is where SiteGround shines. They have including an in-house built solution for beginners called “WordPress Starter” – This starter pack makes the process of building your website easier than ever before. Quickly previewing a full fledged theme with place holder content from SiteGrounds Theme Gallery helps users visualize how their own website will look and be able to edit the text to make it personalized. Then, once a design has been selected, WordPress Starter will ask what functionalities would be needed for this new website. If a user plans on having an e-commerce store, WordPress Starter can have that setup for you with a click of a button. It will search and install all the best essential plugins needed to enhance your website. This is one of the easiest ways to get your blog or business online as quickly as possible.

#2 WordPress Migration

SiteGround offers complete website migration starting at $30 per site. The process of migrating from another host is typically straightforward, but if you’re more comfortable leaving the job to experts who will ensure that everything is functioning as it should be, SiteGround takes that responsibility out of your hands. Their migration tool called the WP Migrator transfers files and databases into your new SiteGround-hosted site.

#3 Web Caching

SG Optimizer is a web caching service exclusively found on SiteGround that can significantly improve website loading speeds. This custom WordPress plugin allows you to manage the caching of your websites from the Dashboard. All SiteGround-hosted WordPress sites come pre-installed with this plugin to ensure that your website is optimized at all times. With the plugin, you can enable certain features including file minification, image optimization, and GZIP compression. Those who subscribe to the GrowBig and GoGeek plans can utilize the WordPress Special Cache feature, while those on the StartUp plan can’t. There’s still the SuperCacher service that all subscription plans have access to, which increases the number of visits a website can handle at a given time. Using both SG Optimizer and SuperCacher, you’ll have a website that always loads fast even with a massive influx of traffic. We used Pingdom to test the homepage loading speed of one of our websites. The page speed improved drastically — it went from 5.92 seconds to 430 milliseconds after moving to SiteGround and installing the SuperCacher and SG Optimizer plugins.

#4 Security Features

SiteGround offers several security options including Leech Protect, which prevents users from accidentally giving out sensitive information like their passwords. We especially liked its anti-spam tools called SpamAssassin and SpamExperts, which scan all of the links on your webpage to ensure that they’re safe. SiteGround also offers SiteCheck, a smart software that scans your website for any malicious code. We recommend running it regularly to avoid angry mobs of visitors claiming that your website infected their devices.

SiteGround also offers daily WordPress website backups. This automatic feature guarantees that your data is always safeguarded should something go wrong. When restoring backups, you can choose which specific data to restore. But if you want to backup your data on-demand, you’ll have to be subscribed to the GoGeek plan.

#5 Impressive Uptime

Website uptime is extremely important because how will customers find you if your website is down? Thankfully, SiteGround guarantees a 99.99% uptime on an annual basis. This converts to roughly 8 hours and 25 minutes of downtime each year. We tested this by monitoring the uptime levels of four test sites with Pingdom. Across a period of seven days, only one website experienced one minute of downtime, while the rest achieved 100% uptime. If your website experiences anything less than that, SiteGround’s Terms of Service says that the company will compensate you with free hosting for one month.

#6 Around the Clock Support (24/7)

SiteGround takes pride in its industry-leading customer support. From free website transfers to 24/7 support through chat, phone, and e-mail, it’s no wonder why they consistently receive high customer satisfaction rates. When things go wrong with your website, it’s important to have a reliable support team by your side. There are several ways to connect with one of their experts, including:

• 24/7 Live Chat – Accessible any time of the day, it’s the quickest way to get a response from their support team

• Phone Support – Their in-house team is available round the clock to handle inquiries by phone

• Ticket-Based – Depending on the technicality of the question, users can submit a ticket online and will get a response based on where this question falls in the support channels. Some questions may get a reply quickly, while others may take a little more time. Either way, the tickets go to the best suited response team instead of just anyone. This is a definite advantage for SiteGround users, because we can be confident that the person helping us knows how to handle the matter correctly.

We tested SiteGround’s live chat feature and was amazed at how quickly we were connected to a chat representative. We inquired about SiteGround’s different hosting packages and received a clear and detailed response. We also called on a weekend to ask about WordPress migration, and the representative was able to walk us through the process patiently.

What are SiteGround’s Web Hosting Plans?

SiteGround offers three shared hosting plans. All plans have unlimited email accounts, a 30-day money-back guarantee, SSD persistent storage, a caching system, and 24-hour customer support. Here are its plans:

StartUp ($6.99/mo.)

Ideal for users who run small-to-medium-sized websites, such as personal blogs and business websites. Advanced features such as staging and on-demand backup aren’t included in this package. It offers only 10 GB of space.

GrowBig ($9.99/mo.)

This plan can host an unlimited number of websites. You have access to more advanced features such as additional collaborators, staging, and on-demand backup. It offers 20 GB of storage. The downside is that it doesn’t offer priority support from their agents.

GoGeek ($14.99/mo.)

Aside from offering 40 GB of space, the GoGeek plan offers faster servers, letting your website accommodate as many as 100,000 monthly visitors. It also comes with pre-installed GIT repositories, white-label hosting, ultra-fast PHP, and priority customer support.

Click here for a full comparison of SiteGround’s plans.

Should You Try SiteGround?

Throughout 2020, SiteGround has maintained a solid uptime, which guarantees that you won’t experience downtime issues. This is especially important if you run an e-commerce site that receives a massive influx of orders each day. And with impressive load time, your website visitors can browse your website without delay. Pricing is also decent if you plan on taking advantage of their features in the long-term. It’s still a good idea to avoid high renewal rates by paying yearly instead of monthly subscriptions. Hosting Foundry is one web hosting company that can help you with your website’s needs, but while you can get cheaper web hosting plans from sites like Hosting Foundry and NameCheap, those web hosts’ plans have very limited features. SiteGround’s plans offer greater flexibility and control over your website. They have outstanding customer service with a customized ticket based approach to handling any type of technical questions online. For more information, head over to Siteground.com and enjoy fast, friendly service.