Is SiteGround a good option for hosting WordPress sites? In a word, absolutely!
SiteGround is the top pick of many WordPress users for a reason: the company has designed their hosting services to be as WordPress-optimized and customer-centric as possible. From a custom-designed WordPress caching plugin, to a free CDN account, to excellent customer support, using SiteGround will ensure that your WordPress site is served to visitors as quickly and reliably as possible. There are a number of hosting plans available, making it an excellent choice for novice or veteran webmasters alike.
I have used SiteGround to host my own WordPress site since June 2015. The speed delievered by SiteGround has been a major factor in allowing my site to rank 1st in Google for valuable searches like “Chicago SEO expert,” “Chicago SEO consultant,” “SEO consultant Chicago,” and “Chicago SEO consulting.”
Affiliate Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the SiteGround links, I’ll receive a commission from the sale. If you do not want to use my affiliate link, here is a non-affiliate link to SiteGround. Either way, I truly believe SiteGround is the best WordPress host and your site will run faster as result of using their service, but don’t take my word for it. Please also do your research on Twitter and Facebook and you will find that a bevy of other WordPress users singing the praises of Siteground.
1. Designed for Speed, GREAT for WordPress SEO
Slow-loading pages hinder your site’s ability to rank well for its targeted keywords. Google announced in 2010 that page load speed is a ranking factor in its algorithm. If you are looking to grow your site’s traffic with organic visits from search engines, improving your site’s page speed should be a top priority. Having a fast hosting service is an easy way to improve the load times of all your site’s pages.
SiteGround is a company that knows WordPress inside and out and has specifically designed their hosting services with WordPress speed optimization in mind. They created a WordPress caching plugin, Supercacher, to enable WordPress sites to load faster and even offer a free account with the content delivery network, Cloudflare, to further quicken page speed. The Cloudflare CDN caches site content and distributes it over a large network of servers situated throughout the word. When a visitor comes to a WordPress site that is using Cloudfare, the content is delivered from the nearest server, and the site loads incredibly quickly.
With the help of SiteGround, my WordPress site has been able to achieve blazing fast load times of less than 0.4 seconds, faster then 98% of tested sites on Pingdom’s Website Speed Test…
…and straight “A” grades on WebPageTest.org.
2. Highly Reliable Uptimes
SiteGround consistently achieves uptimes of over 99.99% and they provide a guarantee to back it up.
3. Easily Navigable, User-focused Interface
SiteGround also provides an easy-to-use cPanel interface for accessing your site’s files. This is incredibly helpful when looking to improve the page speed of your site. You can simply run Google PageSpeed Insights on a page of your site, click “Download optimized image, JavaScript, and CSS resources for this page,” and then replace the un-optimized files with the optimized files in the File Manager of the cPanel (the CSS, JS, and image files can typically be found in the “wp-content” folder.)
4. Auto-Update Tool
The Auto-update Tool ensures your WordPress plugins and WordPress Core updates occur automatically and that your site is always backed up. This allows SiteGround customers to focus on creating content for their WordPress sites rather than spending their time on website maintenance.
5. Industry-Leading Customer Support
SiteGround prides itself on its excellent, round-the-clock customer support. Their staff is available instantly by phone or live chat or within 10 minutes through their ticketing system. This is a company that knows the importance of investing in their people. Every three months all key departments (sales, support, admins, developers, designers, marketing) pass through highly specific training courses to further their knowledge in their respective areas of work. SiteGround has received over 1200 reviews on whoishostingthis.com and boasts an impressive aggregate rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Most of these reviews mention the outstanding quality of customer service and support they have received from SiteGround’s highly trained staff. The company knows that a motivated team provides the best service. To this end, they regularly recognize the company’s top customer service performers on their blog.
6. A Variety of WordPress Hosting Plans
SiteGround offers a variety of hosting plans, making it useful for beginners who may be just starting a blog, veteran webmasters with larger audiences who may need a dedicated server, or anyone in between. SiteGround’s beginner tier shared hosting ($3.95/month) is best if you’re looking for a low-priced solution but the semi-dedicated ($14.95/month) and cloud hosting ($60/month) provide much faster load times if you are serious about achieving the most lightning fast WordPress site possible. If those plans still do not provide enough speed, the dedicated hosting starts at $229/month.
SiteGround’s Most Popular WordPress Hosting Plans: Startup, Growbig, and GoGeek
7. Recommended By WordPress.org and WordPress Users
SiteGround is listed as a recommended WordPress hosting provider on the WordPress.org hosting page and the company both sponsors and participates in WordCamps: informal, community-organized conferences that are put together by WordPress users. It’s easy to see why this detailed attention to the WordPress community and excellent customer support produces stellar reviews from WordPress webmasters. SiteGround received a 95% satisfaction rating in a recent client survey.
SiteGround Reviews from Real WordPress Users
While my experience with SiteGround has been outstanding, I wanted to gather the opinions of other WordPress users who host with SiteGround to provide an unbiased look at the hosting service. Below are real reviews from several WordPress users. I asked them to provide some pros and cons of SiteGround. Some of them disagreed on certain points, but, taken as a whole, these reviews provide an accurate look at where SiteGround excels and where it could use improvement.
I have multiple sites, and two of my main sites are hosted on SiteGround. I started using SiteGround in December 2017 and I am quite pleased with the experience so far. I also have a couple of sites that are hosted by Godaddy and HostGator.
PROS:
Support is only a few seconds away: While GoDaddy has done a fine job with support, it sometimes took me hours to get someone from the support team. I was with Godaddy for 3 years (last with VPS hosting), and on many occasions, was disappointed with support. SiteGround’s support is available in less than 2 minutes via chat, and have always been super helpful.
SSL with all the plans: Since I am a non-technical person, installing an SSL certificate was a pain with both Godaddy and Hostgator. With SiteGround, I know it’s there already and is one less thing to worry about.
Backup: While I use VaultPress to take backups, I wanted to do a server-side backup as well. GoDaddy made me pay for the backup, which then needed further technical installation. In a nutshell, I was paying for backup that comes free with SiteGround plans.
Speed: I have seen a significant improvement in site speed after moving to Site Ground. One of my sites was clocking 7 seconds (calculated with GTMetrix) when I was hosted on GoDaddy. That site now loads in less than 2 seconds with SiteGround (everything else being the same).
CONS:
No longterm subscription for hosting: In Godaddy, I could take hosting for up to 5 years. On my cloud hosting plan, SiteGround’s site offered me a maximum of up to 12 months hosting. This means that I will have to pay after 12 months, and there is a possibility that the price might go up.
Cloudflare SSL via SiteGround doesn’t work with non-www sites: If you have a site that uses the non-www version (such as https://example.com), then you can not use Cloudflare from Site Ground. They will recommend doing a redirect to the www version, which I found unnecessary. In this case, I had to configure Cloudflare myself.
Anti-AI bot may block some services: I was working with Ezoic to get them installed on my site. I was informed that the Anti-AI bot in SiteGround is blocking traffic from them and I would need to switch it off or get their IPs whitelisted. As a user, I don’t have the power to switch of the anti-AI bot and would need to reach out to the team to get it done (which they don’t recommend).
Cost: SiteGround is definitely on the higher side. A plan that cost me $40 on Godaddy is costing me $80 in SiteGround.
Sumit Bansal
Founder
Productivity Spot
https://productivityspot.com
Twitter: @ProductivitySpt
I have recently moved from Namecheap to SiteGround. I would love to list out a few things that I’ve noticed:
PROS:
Increased speed, decreased loading times (that’s a given with SiteGround). My average loading time went from 6.5 seconds to 3 seconds with SiteGround. The site is loaded with pictures, which is why my site is slower than average. Significantly improved uptime. Customer service is word class when you’re a beginner site builder. Cloudflare integration. Inbuilt caching.
CONS:
If you know code and the technical side of web building and data hosting, then the technical customer service may struggle to find answers for your questions. Cloudflare integration only works via SiteGround if you have a website that starts with www. I didn’t have this issue back in namecheap. Costs – it is not cheap, although the value for money is good. I wouldn’t move back to namecheap or bluehost, which I’ve both used in the past.
Paul Koger
Head Trader
Founder
Foxy Trades LLC
https://foxytrades.com/
Twitter: @paulkogr
PROS:
SiteGround offers a lot at the fraction of the cost you’d deal with if instead signing on with a competitor. I don’t think they do this as a rule anymore but they frequently run one-off promotions for free site transfers and have offered free domain names with new hosting services in the past. Regardless, they’re consistently among the most affordable, even as you scale, and their customer service (especially live chat) cannot be beat.
CONS:
There have been days where my websites have all loaded strangely and SiteGround couldn’t pinpoint what happened but also failed to notify me that there was a problem. I count on them to be my eyes and ears—that’s the job of any good web host. You can make mistakes but you have to own them. I think SiteGround sometimes has trouble owning their mistakes.
I recall being with Bluehost immediately prior to SiteGround and canceled before the first month was over because my website kept going down. It wasn’t hard to win me over after that!
Maddy Osman
SEO Content Strategist
The Blogsmith
http://www.the-blogsmith.com/
http://www.urbancheapass.com
CONS:
The billing department is awful. They are careless and slow. They caused me a lot of wasted time contacting them 3 times to get my billing and renewal issue finally finalized. This included 3 chat sessions and finally a service low quality rating complaint which was then quickly and satisfactorily taken care of. The problem was the chat operators not listening to my requirements fully and being thorough to update all of the aspects of my manual renewal. It seemed like a punishment for not toeing the credit card auto renewal line that they have set up for billing only. They do not offer multiple ways to pay or renew. Just heavy handed credit card auto renew only.
PROS:
Everything else! The technicians in the backend have bent over backwards to help me with multiple issues with my sites and provided me guidance and tutorials to fix things and use the cpanel which was all new to me. All issues are handled to satisfaction. They take customer service very seriously.
Gary Wicks aka Ollie the Blogger
CEO
Ollies Gamblin Blog
Pokershop.biz
Pokerhands.poker
https://www.facebook.com/PokerShopBiz/
https://www.facebook.com/Pokerhands.poker/
SiteGround is a great low-cost service for website hosting. It is low-cost but it does have a lot of value if you’re on the top two tier plans for their shared hosting. Their hosting is fast for WordPress but it’s not the fastest. For most websites its more than sufficient but this is where the one con of the shared plans come in.
All their plans are rated at the number of visitors per month a website receives. That may work if you only have one installation of WordPress on the account but it does not once you have multiple installations. The speed of a shared account will quickly degrade if you put 3 or more installations even with light traffic.
For a cloud account on SiteGround the con lies in the autoscaler. You can increase the CPU and RAM for your cloud server as the demand for your website goes up. The problem with this is that it only has to reach the threshold for increasing your resources once and then it will charge you for the whole month. Even if you only have one spike that lasts 1 minute it will scale for the whole month. It’s good because it will keep your site up without a hiccup but there’s no choice on when to autoscale aside from the percentage of resources used.
SiteGround is far superior to all other comparable hosting companies but it starts to lag when you start to compare to some managed WordPress hosting. For higher end websites such as eCommerce and very busy websites, a fully managed WordPress solution such as WP Engine is always recommended.
I look at each of my client’s needs and make a recommendation based on that.
Nick Leffler
Owner
Exprance
https://www.exprance.com/
Twitter: @exprance
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exprance
In sum, SiteGround is an excellent option for hosting services with WordPress. The customer support, WordPress-specific features, and attention to the WordPress community allow SiteGround to rise above other hosting services. The speed afforded by SiteGround will give you an edge on your competitors by providing a better user experience to your audience and a nice boost in keyword rankings. I highly recommend signing up for SiteGround hosting for WordPress so you too can experience what it’s like to have load times of less than 1 second.