If you’re thinking about setting up a WordPress website and need hosting, or if you want to move from your current hosting provider, I’m going to review SiteGround Hosting. I’ve been with them for about a year now, and I’ll share the good, the bad, and everything else you need to know. Stay tuned.
Siteground: https://saranguyenonline.com/siteground
Get your Social Media Checklist: http://saranguyenonline.com/special/social-media-checklist
SiteGround Hosting Review – Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Sara Nguyen, and on this channel, I make tech and social media easier for awesome entrepreneurs like yourself. If you’re new to this channel, consider subscribing for all of the latest product reviews, social media marketing tips and training. And at any time during this video, check out the description for links to all of the resources mentioned in this video. SiteGround is a website hosting company headquartered in Bulgaria.
They offer a range of hosting plan suitable for small businesses, whether you’re a blogger, bricks and mortar business, professional service provider, e-commerce store, and they also have options that scale for larger business and enterprise hosting as well. I moved my websites to SiteGround over a year ago. If you’re interested in signing up with them, I’ve put a link to them in the description.
Here’s what I love about SiteGround hosting.
Pain-free website migration.
When I moved from my previous web hosting provider to SiteGround, migrating my existing websites was painless; literally, everything migrated smoothly without any hiccups.
They took care of the whole process and communicated with me at each stage of the transfer, so I was never nervous about what was happening with the migration. Most website hosting providers offer free website migrations, but not all migrations go seamlessly, so it was a great start to have the website migration problem-free with SiteGround.
Amazing support.
One of the main reasons I’ve moved from my previous hosting provider was due to their atrocious customer support. There’s nothing worse than having something go wrong on your website and then waiting an hour to talk to someone from your hosting provider about it, only to have them refer you to a knowledge article on their website. Or to be told that you need to get a web developer to fix it because it’s out of their remit.
It’s extremely, extremely frustrating. With SiteGround, their customer service is literally the best I’ve ever encountered for a hosting provider.
They are available through a ticket based system, live chat, and 24/7 telephone support. Every agent I’ve dealt with has been quick to respond, highly knowledgeable in helping me resolve the issue and really pleasant to deal with as well. SiteGround provides hosting support beyond related issues to hosting. They also help out with WordPress and other CMS-related issues as well. Their support really is 10 out of 10.
Free SSL certificates.
SSL means when you visit a website an encrypted link is created between the website and your browser. It’s the S in https, S meaning it’s secure. In the past, you only needed SSL if your business accepted credit cards or any other sensitive details. Now having SSL is a factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm and Google Chrome also alerts users that your site is not secure if you accept any information at all, even an email address.
SSL isn’t free with all hosting providers, and the cost varies between providers as well. SiteGround offers unlimited free SSL certificates on all accounts. It was also really easy to install, a few clicks from your cPanel and it’s all done. Super fast hosting. SiteGround servers are optimised for speed, and they’re equipped with the latest hardware and software to ensure your website loads quickly.
With my previous hosting provider, I used to get emails and messages from my audience about how slow my pages were loading. With SiteGround, I haven’t had any complaints about my website speed.
You want a fast loading website because it’s a better user experience and Google has also indicated that website speed is one of the signals used by their algorithm to rank pages.
High uptime.
SiteGround guarantees an average 99.99% uptime, which is impressive by any standard and they live up to it.
If they failed to provide this, then they will provide you with an account credit. You are able to monitor uptime from inside your customer area. To put it into perspective, 99.99% uptime means your site may be down for about four hours in any six month period, but I haven’t needed to worry about my website not being available. Over the last 12 months, SiteGround has consistently upheld their promised uptime.
Here’s what I don’t like about SiteGround because no one can be perfect, right?
Yearly billing.
SiteGround only offer monthly billing for their larger hosting plans for cloud hosting and dedicated server accounts.
For the shared plans such as StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek the minimum subscription period is one year. A lot of businesses like to pay monthly to ease cash flow, so I thought the yearly billing was a little bit annoying, but they do give you such a competitive price for the yearly fee that it didn’t bother me too much.
No coupon codes.
If you Google, SiteGround coupon codes, you won’t find one because they don’t currently allow for coupons or promo codes when purchasing from their site. They do have various discount deals during the major holidays, which you can watch out for. Money back guarantee, only within 30 days. SiteGround’s refund policy is that you have 30 days to request a refund after purchasing a plan with them.
After that, they don’t do pro-rata refunds if you choose to leave them.
Limited storage space.
Compared to other web hosting providers, SiteGround’s storage space is a little on the small side. With the StartUp plan, you get 10 gigs of webspace, which is suitable for about 10,000 monthly website visitors. If you need more, the GrowBig plan gives you 20 gigs of web space which suits sites that receive around 25,000 monthly visitors. I’m personally on the GrowBig, and I haven’t had any issues with it.
If you want to upgrade from GrowBig, the GoGeek plan gives you 30 gigs of space. SiteGround recommends this plan for websites that get around 100,000 visitors every month.
If you’re larger than that, you’re better suited with their cloud hosting or dedicated server plans. Overall, would I recommend SiteGround? Yeah. Yeah, I would. SiteGround is perfect for solopreneurs and small business owners who need a reliable web hosting service and competent and responsive customer support. SiteGround’s pricing is pretty much on par with most web hosts.
They pride themselves in customer service, speed and security, and you might experience over the last 12 months they’ve lived up to the expectation, and I do think they are one of the best hosting providers on the market. If you found this SiteGround review useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.
And if you’re looking for more ways to grow your business, download my Social Media Checklist. I outlined all of the things you need to do to get up and running on social media so you can start leveraging the power of social to make more sales with ease. To get your hands on it, simply click on the link in the description below and thanks for watching.
Get your Social Media Checklist: http://saranguyenonline.com/special/social-media-checklist
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 40: Want Better YouTube Videos? Use This Tool. (Yep, it’s his simple)
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 41: Someone Needs Your Rescue from Fyre II – Will You Answer the Call?
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 39: YouTube Success: Revealing the Not-So-Secret Formula
