2017 SiteGround Reviews: Expert Rating (4.2/5.0 Stars)
Headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, SiteGround is by all estimates a small company size-wise but make no mistake about their performance and potential. For over 12 years the company has been in existence, top performance has been consistent. And even though they work as a small team (about 400 employees), their practical and deliberate efforts towards delivering impeccable web hosting services is relatively impressive.
And besides their reputation for excellence, SiteGround has also been honored and recommended by WordPress as a top and reliable WordPress hosting provider. It’s actually not enough for them to offer managed WordPress hosting on all their plans so beyond that they offer a support you will love plus friendly user interfaces to refine your web hosting experience.
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This cuts across all their web hosting services, from shared hosting to cloud hosting to dedicated hosting. Beyond that, you are also set to experience most recent speed technologies, top security solutions, free SSL certificates, and best of all an incredibly stable platform. Be sure to check the rest of our SiteGround review for a lot more about the company, including their 0ther dark side
Ratings
- Features 4.0/5.0
- Reliability 4.5/5.0
- Ease Of Use 4.5/5.0
- Pricing 3.8/5.0
- Customer Support 4.5/5.0
Overall Rating:
SiteGround Hosting Review
Whichever hosting plan you go for, one thing you are guaranteed from SiteGround is plenty of features just as we saw earlier in our introduction. Top amongst them is the managing hosting service that cuts across all plans. However, the plan limitations, as you will see later in our review, don’t sit well with some users.
The clear difference displayed in the running of SiteGround that sets it apart from other web host comes from the fact that the company is founded on quality hosting and excellent customer service. Users have nothing but marvelous things to say about the service provided by this web host. From high-end performance to speed to customer support and reliable server uptimes and of course transparency.
Their unique user interface will simply make your life easier because from it, you can manage all important aspects of your account. However, when it comes to pricing, not so many of us have nice words for them. If you are just starting out and looking to find a budget web host, SiteGround might strip your hope away. But looking at the quality of service you get, the pricing is to an extent justified.
Pros
Blazing Speed
Unfortunately, in web hosting a lot of providers make promises they can’t keep, the most popular one being that of speed and best performing servers. It’s only later that one realizes they were kind of duped. SiteGround does indeed make a similar promise but with fast speeds to back it up. Load times are astoundingly quick with the TTBT (Time to first byte) being recorded as excellent by industry standards.
Great Performance
When it comes to performance you can be assured that they will be able to live up to a high-end performance because they have four major data centers around the world: in London, Chicago, Singapore, and Amsterdam. Of course this influences their performance in a positive way because, depending on where you are in the world, you files will travel faster to the nearest data center. Unlike other web host with servers in a centralized location that can’t serve areas that are further off. It also allows a generous allocation of resources with up to date software for its shared hosting server.
Excellent Customer Support
If you read the many SiteGround reviews touching on interactions with the SiteGround customer support, it almost sounds unbelievable the amazing adjectives used to describe the site’s staff and the help they received. Customers are finding SiteGround’s customer support professional, well versed in technical issues, friendly and fast.
As a result, more users continue to migrate to SiteGround rather than having to put up with poor customer support offerings from other web hosting providers. In fact, the company has gone a step further and put up the profiles of all their employees. So when you contact customer support, you can see the profile of whoever is helping you on the other end.
Community Centered And Transparent Work Ethic
While most companies in the web hosting industry are not interested in dedicating their time to community-based activities, it is refreshing to see a site that is not only involved, but they do it despite the high cost involved for them. Note that supporting WordPress or Joomla communities is an expensive affair that requires time and constant travel.
Furthermore, displaying uptimes and IP addresses for the site’s data centers shows a transparent company with nothing to hide. These endeavors, in addition to publicly speaking against PIPA and SOPA legislation, shows a true commitment to the web community’s wellbeing.
Cons
Price
The price bracket for SiteGround’s hosting services is categorically expensive. The argument on many forums, SiteGround com reviews, as well as by the company itself is that you are getting a quality premium service in return. While that may be true, the prices are not reflective of the industry standard. Even other high end performing web host providers (e.g. InMotion) are not as expensive. This is a factor that has users opting for cheaper reasonably featured web hosts like HostGator and GoDaddy.
Restricted Target Group
While most companies start out with a niche target and branch into the next tier, SiteGround already has a set target group which is professional website developers building websites for businesses. This cuts out a huge part of the general market leaving many people unable to access the outstanding services offered by the company.
For example, the WordPress staging area is not a feature that is essential for an individual’s website or even a small business’s website. As a matter of fact, because of the target group, freebies like Facebook ad credits, AdWords credits, WordPress themes, Fotolia ad credits, name it, that are common on other web hosting providers are not available on this site.
Plan Limitations
This is one of the few unfortunate aspects of SiteGround; they limit disk space across all their shared plans. For those who do not need to upload a lot of images, PDFs, and videos, this is hardly an issue. However, it is a real headache for a blogger, for example, who has to upload all of the above onto their website. While it may make sense as they are trying to prevent abuse (you will find abuse caps in the terms and conditions), it still doesn’t make it inconvenient for the user.
Top features of SiteGround Hosting
Feature-Rich
Apart from automatic daily backups (which are invaluable when your own backups fail you) SiteGround has unlimited emails and databases and on top of that, the latest and most user-friendly cPanel. While this may seem like a standard feature for any decent web hosting service, not every web hosting provider offers the kind of features that come with it. Find out more about this new cPanel by watching the video below:
The company is also particularly focused on content management systems like WordPress and Joomla amongst others. In fact, they show off their inbuilt features’ ability to drive high-end performance on these systems. To make them really stand out though, the site offers outstanding developer features on their Geek plan which does free gift and staging areas as well as free PCI compliance.
Performance
The installation of four major data centers globally shows how serious SiteGround is about the site’s uptimes and reliability. It also shows that the company is not willing to compromise your business’s online presence by offering you a poorly performing server. Moreover, the company has some of the most stellar server uptimes in the web hosting industry.
Transparency In Service Delivery
Right from the onset, SiteGround has been open and honest as they can with their clients. They have an uptime monitor on their servers and provide the public with the IP addresses of all the company’s data centers which they have put up on their site. You can go ahead to test the speeds of the servers and verify their performance without even having an account with them. They are also very active in the supporting web communities like WordPress and Joomla.
As we earlier mentioned in this SiteGround web hosting review, it’s a very expensive affair to provide this kind of service and not just in monetary terms (though the service itself is costly). It takes a lot of time and dedication, and in their case, spreading out their services beyond Bulgaria to across the globe solidifies their culture of investing in people and communities which set them apart from their competitors.
Customer Support
There is no getting around the synchronized combination of the web, chat and phone customer support of SiteGround. The site is proof that customer support need not be a bane in the industry. They have not only invested in the best people but also in the best practices when it comes to customer support. Although it was not intended to shame any other web hosting provider into action, we are sure the users of other web host sure hope it does.
Conclusion
When the group of university students came together and formed SiteGround, none anticipated it would be turn out to be this huge. Now twelve years and counting and the company has outdone all its competitors with the exception of a lucky few. Raving SiteGround reviews add to their solid reputation as well. Once people speak to their staff they are reeled in by the custom solutions that the company has built to provide a stress-free hosting experience.
In fact, their commitment to great customer support has seen the company engineer an in-house chat software that gives users the ability to select and rate customer service agents that they have talked to before. In addition, they have their own ticketing system which has incorporated an algorithm designed to choose the right representative for the right technical support.
Overall, the company is without a doubt a leader in the web hosting industry. But for those looking for a cheaper alternative or a web host that is without some of the plan limitations offered by SiteGround, HostGator is an option you will never go wrong with. It’s not just an affordable host but one reputable for high-performance hosting services.
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