SiteGround Web Hosting Review
- Written by Steve Kowal
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All the good web hosting companies in the UK offer almost identical features. SiteGround is on the top of our list of the website hosting services that we have reviewed for several reasons - speed, security and their outstanding support. The best about SiteGround is their focus on your website performance.
Speed and reliability - we have pinged their London server from Manchester and the check-host is the impressive 7ms and from Pingdom 18ms, so the content will be delivered very fast to your UK visitors. MySQL are stored on SSD and they have RAID on their hardware, so the SQL queries are very fast. There is a custom caching mechanism to further improve the site performance. SiteGround have a 99,996% uptime of their servers, so your site will be available 24/7 with no downtime. One of the most vital tools is their SuperCacher, which is included in their standard hosting packages, no need to pay extra. SuperCacher has 4 main options:
- Static Cache - Pages are cached and stored on a different server and is updated once every 24 hours;
- Memcached - Caching results from database queries in RAM and if the same query is needed, it will be instantaneously taken from the RAM;
- Dynamic Cache - Cache web pages created from PHP and a database, you need to install a plugin to get this option working;
- Google PageSpeed - This option is a server level module that makes your site faster, by enabling mod_pagespeed in your Apache server;
We tested one site with and without SuperCacher activated and with the SuperCacher activated, it shaved 2.3 seconds on our load time.
Why we chose SiteGround
With SuperCacher you can increase website performance several times and reduce the impact of your website onto the server dramatically.
Security - they have free daily backups and through special in-house developed technology they managed to isolate accounts on shared server, so if one account is infected, the others are intact. In reality every account on SiteGround shared hosting environment is live on something similar to an isolated VPS environment.
In the control panel they have the option to auto update Joomla and WordPress, and the more updated your CMS is, the lesser the risk to get malicious access to it. To have a secured web site, you need to have a secured server.
Why we chose SiteGround
SiteGround frequently update server and control panel kernel and all their services, like: apache + PHP, MySQL, Exim, etc. SiteGround does monitor for attacks – both network and hack attempts, spam activity, abnormal resource usage by users and irregularities on a server level.
Features - even the cheapest shared hosting SiteGround offers is packed with all the bells and whistles for you to run your site at ease - 10GB space for your site, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases, Cpanel with 1 click installations of the most common CMS like Wordpress and Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop, free apps from siteapps.com, shell access, cron jobs, php version manager.
Another thing that makes the difference between the hosting providers is the support. Its always better when something happens to be able to call someone, and that someone to be able to resolve your issue. The good thing about SiteGround is they have real 24/7 support that is inhouse and not outsourced, they have admins and technicians available and they have different means of support - phone, chat and tickets.
Why we chose SiteGround
With an average response time of less than 15 minutes on tickets and practically no wait times on chat and phone, you get the best support!
To test that, wait till Sunday evening and call them, see if they will be able to help you out. If they can, that is the hosting for you.
All that comes at 2,75 pounds per month/excl. VAT/. For those space, bandwidth, features and support, that is an excellent price. Another good thing about it is that they have 30 days money back guarantee, so you can test the service for yourself with ease of mind.
Last but not least, we have taken into consideration the user reviews from some of the top review sites and it is 4.4/5 out of more than 100 reviews from 3 sites, you can see more details in the comparison table below. Or go ahead and check all of the hosting plans SiteGround offers.
The accumulated user reviews score is based on user reviews from serchen.com, trustpilot.com and reviewcentre.com
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Technical
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- SSD drives for all plans
- Enhanced Performance with NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free CDN
- User Apps Autoupdates
- Top LXC technology, automated monitoring and daily backup
- Strict firewall security rules
- Free Setup; Transfer
- Unlimited Traffic, Emails, DBs
- Free Daily Backup
- cPanel & SSH Access
- Free CloudFlare CDN
- Best website performance with SuperCacher
- Autoinstaller For Easy Start
- New fast servers with great performance
- Data center in London
- None
Support
- 24/7 Technical Support
- Free Setup; Transfer
- Free Daily Backup
- 24/7 European support line
- SysAdmins to care of your tickets in 10 minutes
- No wait times on chat and phone
- They provide expert application support apart from hosting (WordPress, Joomla, Magento)
- We didn't find any
Pricing
- Starts from £3.95
- Flexible plans
- Can be purchased monthly
- 30 Days Money Back
- The renew is a bit expensive
Backend Review
Here, we provide you some pictures of the SiteGround's backend (cPanel). cPanel is the control panel for most of the technical stuffs of your web hosting account. With it you can manage your emails, databases, subdomains, install scripts and applications, check your stats, etc. cPanel is a powerful and user-friendly tool that will help you manage your hosting account easily. Check out more tutorials here
Web Host Performance
The first and probably most important tool is Ping test:
Ping allows you to to test the reachability of a host and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer.
Check-host results show a super fast ping from the UK - 10ms
Pingdom test for speed performance from their Amsterdam server.
As you can see, the WordPress website, which is fully functional for years, loaded 88% faster than the other tested sites with 91/100 performance grade.
The loading time of the website was 1.09s.
A stress test from LoadImpact helps determine the capability of handling a certain amount of users (load) on your website. The goal is to see how your website will perform when subjected to both an expected and stressful amount of load.
Even with 25 users browsing through our website, the load time is equal (2.5s) to all of them.
Those are some very good indications.
You can also check the other Top UK web hosting companies, reviews and comparison here.
Visit SiteGroundAdditional Info
- Price: Starts from £3.95
- Performance (9.9/10)
- Support (9.9/10)
- Price (9.8/10)
- Reliability (9.9/10)
- User Friendly (9.9/10)
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thanks, Dimitar!
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I was having a problem with woocommerce product gallery (lightbox) and it turned out to be because of my .htaccess file, it was too bulky. If it was somebody else, they just would say that it was a woocommerce problem.
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Invest in people like him. Food vouchers & sports activities are not enough.
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Expect more success in your business.
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- quick, efficient and happy to help out when unsure and confused.
Strongly recommend!
We were sorry to hear about your experience. We checked carefully your case and we would like to clarify the situation regarding your account.
We understand you have been using our GoGeek plan to work on a project for an e-commerce website. You initially signed up for a GrowBig account, which was later on upgraded to a GoGeek account. After the upgrade, the account is moved to a new server and the old account is terminated, we provide full details about that in the upgrade ticket 3146782. In terms of charges, we use the amount you have already paid for the lower plan in October of 2018, and we ask you to pay the difference to the rate for the higher plan.
We checked your communication with our team and we found a chat from June 2, 2019, where you inform us that you are not satisfied, and you would like to get a refund for the GoGeek service. When our agent inquired what was the problem with the service you explained that it did not meet your expectation and it was not useful for setting up your online store. To help you with your project our representative has suggested you as an alternative building your eCommerce website with WordPress instead of the sitebuilder solution you have used previously without much success. He installed WordPress on your account and pointed you to tutorials on getting started with the platform, as you have indicated you would like to pursue this option.
In the same chat, our operator has also informed you that you are able to close your hosting account and we will give you back the money in full for your recent upgrade (ordered in May 2019) to the GoGeek service, a total of 60 USD. To complete this process you need to go through the cancellation steps in your client area. Our system logs show you have taken this action on June 9, 2019, and we issued a refund for the upgrade, and the account was terminated upon your confirmation for the cancellation.
If we can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.
Regards,
SiteGround Team