Dave @ Review.casa

By Dave Carr @Review.Casa

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Introduction – What is Siteground?

SiteGround was founded in 2004 in Bulgaria, on their homepage, they boast of having 2.8 million domains hosted.

SiteGround is a web host that promises to run your site up to 500 times faster and they have servers all over the world. But do the bold claims stack up?

They use Google Cloud infrastructure for top reliability and speed. And they promise to have your hosting set up very fast.

When you instal a site on SiteGround It comes with two plugins SiteGround optimizer and SiteGround security so that your websites are fast and secure.

SiteGround

Summary – Who is Siteground not for?

SiteGround is not for you if you’ve run your servers in the past, you will never get the same speed as running your servers.

So if you’re a server hosting junkie with the ability to be your sysadmin who wants top of the line speed from your website, then SiteGround is not for you.

Summary – Who is Siteground for?

SiteGround is for you if you want simple and easy.

Setting up a WordPress website with SiteGround takes less than a minute make a few selections and you’re guided through the process.

It’s not hard to see why SiteGround is trusted by 2.8 million websites.

If you can’t be dealing with messing about with cache plugins and security plugins and everything like that, then SiteGround is a good option for you because they provide a security and optimization plugin specifically tailored to their hosting environment, which makes everything so simple.

If you’ve had problems with your emails landing in an inbox before then SiteGround is for you as I’ve had no trouble in the past.

The pros and cons of Siteground

The cons

  • The image optimization settings can leave broken images on your website.
  • SiteGround is not as fast as they claim
  • If you use the Divi Theme sometimes it will hang where there are not enough resources because they’re being shared with a lot of people.
  • If you’re using something like Mozilla Thunderbird to manage your emails sometimes you might find that the emails won’t connect.
  • Seems like a lot of stuff is an upgrade.

The pros

  • It’s really easy to set up and manage websites with SiteGround.
  • The hosting dashboard is well laid out and everything is easy to get to and understand.

Improvements

  • Private DNS Service (Apr 2022)
  • SiteGround Cloud CDN (March 2022)
  • SiteGround Optimizer Plugin is Now Available for All WordPress Sites (Feb 2022)
  • Improved SG Site Scanner Security Service (Sept 2021)
  • Centralized DNS for Faster, Safer and Easier Hosting (Jul 2021)
  • One Multisite SFTP for all sites (Jul 2021)
  • Enhanced Protection Against WordPress Vulnerabilities with SiteGround Security Plugin Preinstalled (Jun 2021)
  • Geographically Distributed Backups for Enhanced Data Protection (May 2021)
  • Green Web Hosting (April 2021)
  • Optimized RAM Utilization (April 2021)
  • All SiteGround Accounts Using Site Tools (April 2021)
  • SuperCacher for All sites (Feb 2021)
  • New MySQL Setup (Jan 2021)
  • Brotli Compression (Jan 2021)
  • PHP 8 Available (Oct 2020)
  • Switch from cPanel to Site Tools (Sep 2020)

Pricing

the introductory offer from SiteGround starts at just £2.99 a month for a single website but if you go for the £4.99 a month offer and above you will be allowed to host unlimited websites.

Just bear in mind that this pricing will change after your first year when you go to renew.

SiteGround pricing

My experience with Siteground

At the time of writing this article, I have been using SiteGround for eight months now
it is a really good service.

Although sometimes I feel that the Divi Theme lacks the resources it needs because sometimes images might not upload and it just seems to lag sometimes.

This could just be me though as I came from running my own server to SiteGround so I feel it’s a bit of a downgrade.

But all in all, I think SiteGround really have a good product going.

The sitground dashboard

SiteGround dashboard is really nice when compared to cPanel. It’s organised it’s nice to look at it’s really well done.

If you’ve used cPanel you will know that it can be a real pain in the you know what, especially for a beginner, the SiteGround dashboard, on the other hand, is very easy to use for a beginner.

Everything is well organised at the top in tabs.
And on the homepage of the dashboard, there are tutorials on how to use the WordPress starter and optimizer plugins.

My SiteGround Account

This Siteground dashboard is shown in the image above.

From the websites tab, you can see all of the websites that you’ve created with SiteGround you can access the site tools and you can log in automatically.

SiteGround domains

The websites tab is shown in the image above.

From the Services tab, you can access information about your hosting service as shown in the image below.

SiteGround service

Conclusion – Siteground review

Would I recommend SiteGround?

Yes.

If you’re looking for a reliable web host then yes, I would recommend SiteGround.

If you’re on a budget and you need to get a website set up really quickly then SiteGround will be the solution that you’re looking for if you’re not too concerned about speed.

When it comes to the speed of your website I think that SiteGround has made bold promises that they can’t live up to.

Maybe that’s just me because I came to SiteGround after running my own server with Litespeed which is really really quick compared to SiteGround. It’s maybe two times quicker.

If you don’t want the hassle of running your own server and you want a hosting provider who pretty much does it all for you then SiteGround is definitely an option for you.

Alternative

Guru

Guru is a cloud hosting provider that uses Lightspeed servers and is a really quick hosting service.

If you’re looking for a really fast website then guru could be the service you’re looking for.

Full Guru review