SiteGround is one of the most popular web hosting providers for bloggers and small businesses. Their hosting is one of the most secure and reliable in the business with uptime averaging 99.99%.
Their packages include basic shared hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, and cloud hosting.
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I have been using SiteGround since May of 2015 to power all my websites and blogs. In this post, I will share my own report of SiteGround's performance, uptime, security, and stats for the last 12 months (2019 to 2020).
This report is based purely on my own experience with the hosting company.
I want to start with a few words about customer support.
SiteGround provides support and technical help through various portals, including telephone, email, and 24/7 live chat.
Over the last year, I've only needed to communicate with their support team once. This was regarding an issue I was experiencing trying to move my site to a sub-folder.
Now, for proof that this communication took place, I'm including a screenshot of the chat with the SG tech team. See image below/
Over the last five years, I've used SiteGround's live support around 3 or 4 times at the most.
Their representatives are always well mannered, polite, and somewhat knowledgable.
Their tech support is decent too, though, on a few occasions, they were not able to help me and instead referred me to one of their blog articles or help guides.
Personally, I fail to find their documentation or blog content helpful. Often, they're very thin and lack some thorough tutorial videos.
I own, manage, and host four WordPress websites with SiteGround. These include this blog, my web design company website, an eCommerce site, and an Amazon niche site.
Over the last twelve months, I'm' happy to report that I've experienced 100% uptime with all my websites on SiteGround, above the average of 99.99%. I'm currently on the GoGeek plan.
The GoGeek plan gives me 30GB of web space and traffic capacity for up to 100K visits per month. Currently, my site's traffic combined is around 50K visits per month mark.
Whilst I think the resources are plentiful for text-based websites and small eCommerce sites, they may not be substantial enough for large sites or sites that are image and video content-heavy. I recommend looking a cloud hosting solutions like Kinsta.
Check out this review of Kinsta here over on my other site at FVM.
Again, this is entirely based on my personal experience with websites hosted on Siteground. I can't speak for anyone else using SiteGround.
Page load time is something I'm quite obsessed about. Using a reliable hosting company is the first step to obtaining good website performance and quick load time. So, here is a quick report of the load time for two of my main website's that I have with SiteGround.
Magnet4Blogging is my main flagship blog. The site has over 50 static pages and 300 blog posts. The blog is built on a custom theme using Oxygen Builder with 27 active plugins.
Magnet4Blogging has been hosted on SiteGround since 2014, previously Bluehost, and receives around 25K unique visits each month.
Fabrizio Van Marciano dot com is my freelance web design services website. It currently has 20 static pages and 50 blog posts. The site is also built on a custom theme using Oxygen Builder, with 20 active plugins.
Fabrizio Van Marciano dot com has been hosted with SiteGround since 2017 and receives around 20K unique visitors each month.
How does this compare to the general average uptime and load time?
Here is a screenshot of the data taken from the Hosting Facts website.
Over the last year, I've not experienced any security issues with my websites hosted on SiteGround.
Part of the reason being that SiteGround's servers are generally well secured. The other reason is that I have my own measures in place using third-party security plugins and services.
Back in 2018, when I received an email warning about a possible Malware infection in one of my niche sites, SiteGround did little to help me resolve the situation.
They offer something called SG Site Scanner which comes at an extra cost. But that's all it is, a scanner that crawls your site and notifies you if your site has been compromised. If you have Malware, this service won't remove the Malware for you. Other web hosts like Kinsta offer both Malware scanning and removal.
Here's what option SiteGround offers instead:
"Account suspension."
That's right, if your website is infected with Malware, they do not offer a removal service, not even at a premium. Instead, you're prompted to get your site fixed with some tips, or face account deactivation.
That's what you pay the SG Site Scanner for, right?
The solution?
Don't bother wasting your time with SG Site Scanner. Put your money towards an external service. Check out WordFence or MalCare.
Let's start with the pros -
And the cons?
In general, I've been quite satisfied with the hosting services provided by SiteGround. But, I have a few concerns around growth and scalability and especially the inadequate security features.
For the time being, I'm happy to give SiteGround another year for hosting my sites. However, I do have plans to exponentially grow my blog in 2020 and 2021. So, moving Magnet4Blogging and Fabrizio Van Marciano Dot Com over to a host like Kinsta is still something I'm considering very carefully.
Do I still recommend using them?
Of course, I do. They're one of the best hosting providers around. But I'll leave that for you to decide.
