SiteGround Review

Each pricing package also comes with a host of extra features and tools, which is quite normal for hosting providers. 

Standard Web Hosting Pricing

The standard hosting from SiteGround falls into 3 main pricing plans, and they are fairly easy to understand. 

As with all hosting, the price you see is usually the month price if you take it for 12 - 36 months in advance. It's worth keeping in mind, it doesn't really matter which of the areas you go for, as the pricing will be the same.

Managed WordPress

If you are like the 200million people or however many entrepreneurs and website owners use WordPress these days, you are probably going to be looking for a host that offers dedicated WordPress Hosting. 

If you are an affiliate marketer looking for blog hosting or affiliate marketing website hosting, then you again probably use WordPress due to how quick and easy it is to get a site up and running. 

SiteGround are officially recommended by WordPress.org, so you know you are going to be in good hands if you decide to choose them to host your site. 

The managed WordPress packages will look and feel a bit like the standard hosting package you have seen above, with a few additions.

SiteGrounds set up wizard will take you through an automated WordPress installation, you get access to a WordPress transfer plugin and they also deal with automatic updates of both WordPress and plugins for you. You also get access to staging tools that allow you to carbon copy your site and play around with it, without breaking your main site.

WordPress Hosting Pricing

The WordPress hosting from SiteGround falls into 3 main pricing plans, and they are fairly easy to understand. 

As with all hosting, the price you see is usually the month price if you take it for 12 - 36 months in advance. It's worth keeping in mind, it doesn't really matter which of the areas you go for, as the pricing will be the same.

WooCommerce Hosting

As more entrepreneurs open their own stores and move away from traditional sites such as Shopify or BigCommerce in search of more flexible platforms, WooCommerce is one of the go-to platforms.

The WooCommerce hosting from SiteGround is essentially the same as the WordPress one, as it's part of the WordPress ecosystem. 

This hosting plan will of course come with WooCommerce installed, ready to go or can be migrated from another WooCommerce set up.

WooCommerce WordPress Hosting Pricing

The WooCommerce / WordPress hosting from SiteGround falls into 3 main pricing plans, and they are fairly easy to understand. 

As with all hosting, the price you see is usually the month price if you take it for 12 - 36 months in advance. It's worth keeping in mind, it doesn't really matter which of the areas you go for, as the pricing will be the same.

AutoScalable Cloud Hosting

If you don't want to share servers with others and want dedicated hosting all to yourself, then grabbing something like cloud hosting might be the best thing aside from renting a real server. 

Cloud Hosting provides a more cost effective approach, and also opens up the possibility of selling and renting out your own cloud server to others. 

It's worth noting, you are going to be paying more for this than you would for your shared hosting, so it's definitely something you want to think about to understand if it will be beneficial for your business or blog. 

The Cloud Hosting solutions offer the ability to purchase more RAM and CPU to start scaling your business, as well as using automation rules to scale without you needing to get involved. 

You will also get access too all the same features that are found in the shared hosting options.

Cloud Hosting Pricing

The Cloud hosting from SiteGround falls into 4 main pricing plans, and they are fairly easy to understand, you can also configure your own set up if you are feeling fancy.  

As with all hosting, the price you see is usually the month price if you take it for 12 - 36 months in advance.

What I Liked About SiteGround?

There are a number of reasons that I liked SiteGround and why I decided to write this SiteGround Review, aside from being recommended to me by someone I see as an affiliate mentor when it comes to blogging.

I also felt the following where big factors in my decision to move. 

Speed & Reliability

For me, the main draw with SiteGround is the speed and reliability.  

According to sites like Pingdom and other sites, SiteGround currently have an average up time of 99.99%, which is really good. They also have an average load time of around 400-500ms, which again puts them as above average against other hosting providers. 

You can also hook it up to CloudFlare CDN for a quicker, even more reliable service. 

Ease Of Navigation

The other factor that got me hooked on them was the fact that they offered everything in an easy to find way. 

For me, I know how to navigate Cpanel and other hosting server control panels, but for may they don't. I was getting fed up with companies such as BlueHost telling customers they had to pay $14 or whatever a month to use Google Mail or Outlook etc to manage their emails and basically hide the fact you can make email addresses and use the servers inboxes.

SiteGround have a tab for emails, you can easily generate new addresses, they give you the server info, and if you fancy it you can go use something like ZohoMail to read your emails without having to access the server. That's good customer service in my eyes. 

Hosting a website shouldn't be rocket science, and it shouldn't be hidden behind charges. 

Brilliant Customer Support

I wanted to move most of my sites (I have loads to be honest, dotted onto different servers currently), but the main one was obviously this one. I didn't fancy doing this myself, as to be honest, I couldn't be bothered and I have messed it up in the past. 

SiteGround offered to do it for free. I tried to use their plugin, but sadly it kept failing due to the current set up. 

So I provided some Cpanel details, let the guys in for around 30 - 60mins and boom. Done. 

Other hosting providers do offer this service, but these guys went above and beyond what I would have expected with me having issues at my end and them being more than patient with me. 

Freebies

To be fair, as SSL certs became open source a while back, you get access to a SSL with pretty much every host. 

But, not every host give you the option of sorting out a CDN (Such as CloudFlare) and also sort out the SSL's etc for you. 

SiteGround have made it super easy to link your CloudFlare account up, as well as turn different settings on, without needing to be in the cloudflare account. 

Other hosting providers don't offer this, or they say you can have one, but not the other.

Money Back Guarantee

Again, I would say this is more common these days, but I still praise hosting providers who offer 30 day money back guarantees. 

If you happen to go for one of the big boy hosting packages, such as the Cloud or VPS then you only get 15 days, probably due to the server loads and time it takes to set up, but still 15 days is two weeks of testing and running your sites. 

Free Hosting If Uptime Drops

I hadn't actually realised this when I signed up, but SiteGround actually offer a compensation plan based on their uptime. 

If your average network uptime is below 99.9% they will offer you 1 month free hosting. Similarly if it drops below 99.00% you get an additional 1month free hosting.

Now you hope that you do ever have to grab this compensation, but it's worth knowing they are working hard to ensure a high uptime for your site and that they do provide compensation if they drop the ball. 

What I Didn’t Like SiteGround

Honestly, so far I haven't found much to dislike about SiteGround. 

I have had some issues with CloudFlare as I used to have it set up through their site for my other websites (as my old host didn't provide that service) and it has caused a few teething issues. But I can't fault SiteGround for it, and I haven't reached out for advice yet, because I am stubborn and I want to put my IT degree to some use! 

Yes, I did at least 12 months of networks and I was sober for at least 4 of those lessons.

Who Is SiteGround Good For

I can see SiteGround being useful for a number of different scenarios, with a few of them being quite obvious based upon their packages. 

Affiliate Marketers

For those in the Affiliate Marketing business and or who run Affiliate Marketing blogs, good hosting is a must. 

Search Engines absolutely love quick loading sites, they lap it up and reward you as part of their algorithms. If you have two sites with roughly the same content and authority, one will outrank the other if they have better or quicker hosting. 

Affiliate Marketers also want straight forward hosting providers, that allow you to get set up quickly and in the simplest way possible. I don't want to sit and take 2 or 3 hours fighting with random buttons or talking to support trying to get a site set up. 

Most of us will also want a server or host that is optimised for WordPress, as again it's a quick way of getting a new site up and running and looking amazing. 

eCom Site Owners

SiteGround have hosting packages specifically designed to host and run WooCommerce sites on, a bit like the WordPress hosting. 

As with any website, a website that is quick, but also reliable is a must if your livelihood. A website that crashes or can't be accessed even for a few hours in a month could be thousands of dollars of lost revenue. 

Knowing that a host guarantee 99.9 up-time gives you that extra peace of mind. 

Knowing the fact that you can get your WooCommerce site installed as part of the set up process and that you can even get your site moved over from other hosts for free, also means that you can save time, and more importantly money when it comes to getting everything sorted. 

Everyday Bloggers & Website Owners

If you happen to be an everyday blogger, or simply someone who wants to run a website for a local charity or even museum, then you might want an easy to build and run website. 

Using SiteGround can be a great way to get a simple but awesome looking website up and running using their standard hosting + their choice of website builder. 

Not every web owner knows how to use WordPress, or simply don't like the user interface and prefer to use something else. Having the option of Weebly installed onto your server, means someone who may not have the tech confidence can get a really professional set sorted in just a few hours of work. 

Authority Site Owners

The final group that I feel could really benefit from using SiteGround are those website owners who run large Authority Sites. These sites can generate hundreds of thousands of views each month, and need resilient and reliable hosting to handle these quantities. 

Utilising the power of dedicated cloud servers means you have the ability to scale as your site scales, at an affordable price. Lots of hosts don't provide that scalability, or ease of scalability. Other hosts give you the ability to use their cloud servers or dedicated hosting, but then charge a fortune to scale and grow. 

Verdict & Final Thoughts

SiteGround have been really good over the last few months, from helping me move the site over to just giving me the tools to set everything I want up quickly and without having to botch different plugins and platforms together. 

I also have to say that having an easy to use platform that allows me to get on with building this site out, also makes me very happy! I have never been 'happy' about a host. I have also recommended hosts because I felt they where at least semi decent, I think this is the first host I actually rave on about. 

You can get started with SiteGround from just £2.95 a month, yes you need to grab it for 12 months+ to get that deal, but that's an absolute steal! Let me know if you enjoyed this SiteGround review and if you have decided to take the plunge!