If you are planning to start a website, eCommerce store, or blog, your first requirement is to find a good hosting provider. There are plenty of options to choose from hosting providers. In this post, I will do a Siteground review and why it is good for your website or blog.

For any web hosting providers, one has to look at following features to make a decision:

• Uptime of Hosting Servers
• Page loading time and speed stats
• Migration of existing website to Hosting provider if you already have a website
• Site Security
• Affordability
• System and Customer Support
• Beginner Friendly.

Based on these factors, one can decide whether a hosting provider is good or bad and does it meet your web hosting needs. Let us see how SiteGround performs to these factors.

Siteground Hosting Features

1. Unlimited WebSites hosting  ( except for basic plan)
2. 40GB hosting space on GOGeek Plan
3. ~100000 visits monthly on GOGeek Plan
4. Free SSL
5. Daily backup
6. Free Email
7. Free CDN with each account
8. 30-day money-back guarantee
9. Speed boosting Cache
10. Staging sites ( GrowBig and GoGeek plans) 
11. 24/7 Amazingly Fast Support 

SiteGround Uptime

Server uptime is one of the crucial factors in choosing hosting providers.  You don’t want to lose business or traffic because your website is down due to a hosting server being unavailable. SiteGround offers 99.9% uptime of servers.  Let see what 3rd party sites or saying about SiteGround. As measured by HRANK , a third party hosting providers,   Siteground 

HRANK measured uptime is 99.99%. HRANK is an unbiased third-party reviewer. (Credit HRANK)

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Page loading time or speed stats

Page loading time or speed stats are important factors for Google Ranking. In fact top ranking pages  need to load in less than 2 to 3 seconds to rank higher in Google rankings.

Siteground infrastructure moved to Google Cloud, which led to  40% faster processors for all servers. Script executions on all plans will become even more efficient and this will result in faster website load and less resource usage for all customers.  

Data supported for HRank shows Page response times for SiteGround as follows:

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Data shows Siteground responds as ranging from 500 ms to 750ms for the last two years.  It is much within the range of 2s load time we needed. Below screenshot shows, historical performance:

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Free website transfer

Transferring an existing website effortlessly is another key factor for choosing hosting providers.  

• SiteGround offers, automatic WordPress migrator plugin to transfer websites to Siteground. This is an easy plugin for migration WordPress sites.
• IF migration needs to be done by experts, It will cost a small fee (30USD/24EUR/20GBP/30AUD per site). 

For beginners, the automatic migrator plugin does the work for you. I did use this migrator plugin when I switched from GoDaddy to SiteGround myself. Migration completed in 2 mins without any hiccups.

Ultimate features at no extra cost

Siteground provides a lot of great features as part of the hosting plans. Below are some the features:

1. Free SSD storage: SSD storage uses Flash memory to deliver superior performance and durability.  This will make page loading speeds faster.  SiteGround plans give storage from 10 GB to 40 GB based on your hosting plan.
2. Free SSL — SiteGound provides Free SSL certificates. This will make your website secure and enable padlock on your website. This will increase trust and authority of your website.
3. Free Daily backups – Your website is backed up daily automatically. No need to install additional backup plugins
4. Free CDN — Siteground provides Free CDN  which will deliver your content faster for  HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. Nowadays , the majority of web traffic is served through CDNs, including traffic from major sites like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon. Bluehost hosting is the only other web hosting provider I’ve seen that offers this kind of CloudFlare account.
5. Speed boosting Cashing: SiteGround provides the option to add a plugin for caching images and WordPress page loading faster.
6. Staging option:   Staging option lets you create one click staging site for a live server which can be used by developers and designers to test their code , before pushing to production.

Site  Security

SiteGround offers Free SSL for your website security. Along with that , you get following features:

• SG Site Scanner to let you know if your site is under attack, antispam tools SpamAssassin and SpamExperts, hotlink protection, and IP address blocklists. It scans all the links on your homepage to make sure that they’re clean.
• SiteGround also offers an interesting feature called Leech Protect, which lets administrators prevent users from giving out or publicly posting their passwords to portions of the site. 
• Another helpful tool is SiteCheck. This automatic software scanning tool checks your website to see if there is any malware in the code or on the site. Running it periodically is a good idea since the last thing you want to see in your email inbox are messages from irate users saying that visiting your website infected their computers.

Support System

SIteGround has one of the excellent support systems. Support teams are available 24×7 by phone, chat, ticket.  They are very responsive and will respond within a minute or two for a support request. I  personally used support service and have very good experience.

Beginner Friendly

With all the above features, one can have a doubt whether it is beginner friendly.   SiteGround is absolutely beginner friendly with their quick site builders, automatic website migration and quick customer support.  Their support team is knowledgeable and can help you with any questions you have.

Staging Sites

Staging option lets you create one click staging site for a live server which can be used by developers and designers to test their code , before pushing to production.           

This is very useful for developers and designers to test their code in staging before releasing the code to live sites. It also offers backup of live sites before migration from staging to live site.

Affordable

Siteground plans are pricier compared to other hosting providers but with the host of features you are getting , it is good value for the money and saved time and headaches you get going for cheaper plans.  Only comparable alternate providers are Bluehost with cheaper plans if you are looking at alternatives.

Here is Quick review of SiteGround web hosting

How to start a blog

If you want to create a website, you’ll need a domain name and hosting plan. I use and recommend Siteground as they are one of the best web hosting services with the best uptime and fastest loading times. 

Step 1: Get Domain and Hosting

Start by visiting Siteground and select Web hosting option. 

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As you can see, they offer three hosting plans but I recommend you choose the Grow Big plan as you can host an unlimited number of websites on the Grow Big plan.

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Select the plan and then follow the steps to complete the purchase. First, you’ll need to choose your desired domain name and then enter your billing and payment details. 

As soon as you submit the payment, your hosting account will be created. You can login to your customer area and continue with WordPress and Astra installation.

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As soon as you submit the payment, your hosting account will be created. You can login to your customer area and continue with WordPress installation. 

Step 2: Install WordPress

As you login to your customer area, you’ll notice an orange button at the top that says Set Up Website. Click that button and then select Start a new website > WordPress. 

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You will then need to enter another username and password. You’ll use this to login to your WordPress dashboard so make sure it’s different from your hosting login information. 

When you’re happy with your username and password, click Continue. Siteground will install WordPress for you and you’ll see a notification in your account area. Click on Manage Site button to see a login button next to the site you want to work with. This will take you immediately to your WordPress dashboard.

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Step 3: Pricing plans

SiteGround Pricing Plans

First things first: SiteGround offers you a good range of hosting options. But SiteGround shared hosting is that the one hosting choice preferred by most of the people as it’s affordable and also offers decent hosting features to start out a blog. So let’s discuss only shared hosting plans from SiteGround.

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SiteGround is currently offering 3 pricing options in shared hosting which are listed below.

• StartUp plan
• GrowBig plan
• GoGeek plan

Here are the details of all these 3 shared hosting plans from SiteGround along with their pricing and features.

1. StartUp plan: This is the cheapest shared hosting plan from SiteGround as it costs you just $3.95 per month (normally $11.95/mo) where you can install 1 website and you’ll get 10 GB of website space and handles up to 10,000 monthly website visitors.

2. GrowBig plan: This is the most popular shared hosting plan from SiteGround which costs you $5.95 per month (normally $19.95/mo) where you can install unlimited websites with 20 GB website space and handles up to 25,000 monthly visits.

3. GoGeek plan: This is the advanced shared hosting plan from SiteGround which provides you faster speeds and advanced features such as PCI compliant servers, priority support etc and costs you $11.95 per month (normally $34.95/mo) and you can install unlimited sites, you’ll also get 40 GB space which can handle up to 100,000 monthly visitors.

Important Note: The above-mentioned prices are promo prices. These promo prices are applicable just for the primary invoice. Once your initial term is over regular renewal prices apply.

What does it mean?

It simply means that, if your first invoice (first purchase) with SiteGround is only for 1 year, you’ll be charged the regular renewal prices from the 2nd year.

This is the rationale why you ought to buy their hosting for 3 years to save lots of more.

Pros & cons of Siteground Hosting

Pros

• Integrates with CloudFlare for improved performance and security.
• Automatic daily backups.
• Offers data centers in different regions for faster performance and availability.
• Phenomenal support materials.
• Excellent customer service.

Cons: 

• No monthly hosting plans because the minimum payment cycle is for 1 year (make bound to grab their 3 years hosting to save lots of more)
• It doesn’t offer you free domain registration (whereas other web hosts like Bluehost offers you a free domain for 1 year and offers you similar pricing plans)

Testimonials

Let us see what others are saying. These are third party reviewers which are unbiased.

Review from Pcmag:

Customer reviews from Trustpilot:

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Customer reviews from Trustradius:

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G2.com review:

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FAQs ( Frequently asked questions)

Is siteground a reliable web hosting provider?

Yes. Based on the uptime, technical features and great customer support, it is a highly reliable hosting provider.

Is SiteGround Hosting costly?

With all the marvelous hosting highlights they offer, you’d think they will be considerably more costly. 

When you register with SiteGround hosting as a 1st-time client, you get an incredibly affordable deal. As low as $3.95 every month to begin off with their basic shared/WordPress hosting plan, when acquired the yearly hosting package. Their GrowBig hosting plan begins for as low as $5.95 every month when you sign up with their yearly hosting package.

Why is SiteGround better than Bluehost?

Site Ground is known for its quality hosting services than Bluehost. In recent days, Bluehost was focusing on just capturing new leads every day and they forgot to maintain quality services.

SiteGround Provides You Best Loading Speed And Best Support At Effective Price.

Does SiteGround offer free domain?

 Siteground doesn’t offer Free Domain Name with their Hosting Plan, they charge extra fees for that, but the company always does the business with 100% transparency and this is the best part of SiteGround.

Final Thoughts

With SiteGround, you pay a bit more in the price for good technical features, but the solid security, customer service, and page loading speeds make this Web hosting provider extremely friendly for small businesses and new websites.

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