You decided to pursue your passions, to build an online business and/or to share something with an audience?
Or maybe, you are already having a website hosted somewhere but you are upset with the service provided: bad support, downtimes, slowness,… and a terrific ability to give you HEADACHES!
I feel your pain, trust me, I went through all this! (*** Argh! Bad memories emerging! ***)
There is no doubt. It is high time for you to find the right website hosting!
The research of a (top-quality) managed website hosting provider:
When I had the idea to start this blog a few years ago, I went to my favorite search engine and typed “cheap website hosting services“. BOOOM! In a blink of an eye, I had millions of managed hosting solutions to choose from. It could not have been easier!
The best part? Most of the hosting companies out there seem to guarantee an “unlimited, 99.9% uptime hosting with a 24/7 support“.
That’s really awesome!!!
…Until you place your order and find out a few days later that your purchase was a total waste.
To put it straight, my experience with the (3) previous companies I tested has been AWFUL: slow/laggy server, terrific downtimes, corrupted backups, security weaknesses and numerous business days being wasted with a low-skilled support.
Trust me, it has been a nightmare!
For their defense, I must admit that I’m far from being the “average Joe”.
Indeed, as you may notice on the animated image below, my server have to deal with some massive traffic as I’m spiking at up to 5 millions monthly views.
Why I am writing a review about Siteground:
Heck, it’s pretty hard to find honest reviews of any web hosting provider. Because of that, I get asked about the web hosting a lot.
The most common question is not only who I recommend as WordPress hosting, but also which one do I use myself.
As I explained above, I struggled a lot and wasted enormous time and energy due to bad hosting services — until few months ago, when a friend recommended me to use SiteGround.
Siteground doubled its customers base in 2015, bringing the company to about 500,000 domain names worldwide, with data centers across United States, Europe, and even Singapore.
That’s an impressive growth which shows they must be doing something right.
Decent uptime? Fast loads? Good support? Extra features?
Due to my previous experiences, I was still a bit afraid to go from bad to worse… so I spent hours reading comments about their managed hosting services.
There is hundreds testimonials to be found. And when I saw they were ranked as best website hosting for small business in so many blogs and review websites; I decided to migrate straight away!
And yes, the crowd was right! SiteGround provides an high-quality service: my server is smooth (even with huge traffic going through), the uptime is amazing and the support lightning fast.
I’m so glad my friend told me about this top-notch hosting provider, as it allowed me to get rid of a lot of struggle and I can now focus on what matters: my business and the happiness of my customers!
Let me tell you exactly WHY I believe SiteGround is the best hosting company around!
Key features:
- Free domain name, email account, CDN and daily backup.
- Location specific hosting with 3 data centers (USA, EU and Singapore).
- Unlimited bandwidth, emails, DB.
- 99.9% Up Time guarantee and SuperCacher.
- One-click install for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
- Managed hosting on all accounts: auto-updates and server-level maintenance.
- Payment method: credit card (with 30-day money-back guarantee).
- 24/7 technical support.
Disclosure:
(i) Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.
(ii) Please understand that I have a stunning experience with SiteGround, and I recommend them because they are helpful and awesome, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Bluehost, Arvixe and several other competitors offer higher affiliate commissions; but they are not the best in my opinion.
What is best website hosting for small business?
(competitive benchmarking)
The results below were shared by SiteGround. They are based on unbiased tests performed with real accounts created on 12 of the most popular web hosts on the market:
Bluehost, HostGator, iPage, Fatcow, Justhost, AsmallOrange, InMotion, WebhostingHub, Arvixe, GoDaddy, GreenGeeks and A2Hosting.
A. Loading speed: Siteground loads websites faster!
- Industry average loading time: 4,7 sec
- Siteground loading time without cache: 1,7 sec
- Siteground loading time with cache: 1,3 sec
“We have used Pingdom to test the loading time of identical WordPress websites hosted on the 12 different hosting companies. The faster loading result for SiteGround was achieved with the SuperCacher switched on for the website.”
B. Performance: Siteground handle more traffic!
- Industry average hits handled: 2852
- Siteground handle 3x more, without cache: 8276
- Siteground with cache: over 230 000
“Apart from loading speed, we have tested how many hits can be successfully handled in two minutes by each of the 12 accounts with the same test WordPress website. The test was done with the help of the Siege testing and benchmark utility. The higher number of handled hits by SiteGround was achieved with the SuperCacher switched on for the website.”
C. Support: Siteground got a 24/7 amazingly fast support
Phone: “We pick up immediately!”
- 4 companies had over 10 minutes wait time.
- Only 2 other companies picked up immediately.
- 90% of the hosts do not have non-US phone line.
“When you call on the phone you usually have a pressing issue. Having your call picked up immediately is really important. Unfortunately this does not happened everywhere.”
Chat: “We solve the issue in 5 minutes!”
- 2 of the tested companies have no chat support!
- Avg. wait time on chat before pick up: 10 min..
- Avg resolution: 21 min..
- Only 4 hosts solved the issue in under 10 minutes.
“We contacted the LiveChat of the 12 tested companies and SiteGround with one and the same simple request and recorded how much time was needed for the issue resolution including the wait time before the chat was picked up.”
Tickets: “Our first reply is in 8 minutes!”
- Average Industry first reply near 8 hours.
- Only 2 companies are below 1 hour.
- No other company is below 10 minutes!
Solution: “We resolve more issues faster!”
- Only SiteGround and 4 other companies resolved all the three issues.
- Average industry resolution time: 11 hours.
- SiteGround average resolution time: 31 minutes.
“We asked each company 3 questions over their ticketing systems: one general, one WordPress related and one Joomla related. We averaged the first response time and the resolution times for each company base on these three questions.”
Is Siteground the best wordpress hosting site?
(my personal take on this wordpress cloud hosting provider)
Siteground Team & Support:
When my last hosting company tried to “force” me to transfer my business to a dedicated server,
I took it as an opportunity to dig into alternatives and I found Siteground.
My previous hosting provider had convinced me I couldn’t move forward without a high-priced dedicated hosting solution. I was definitely ready to do so (because I’m convinced you should never be afraid to spend money on your business), but only if I could count on a flawless and premium service.
This is why before placing my order, I connected first to the Live Chat though the “Pre-Sales Inquiries” tab to clear my doubts and make sure the support was as awesome as described.
I only had to wait a few seconds before being connected live with a Siteground “Support Guru”.
The support agent was very polite, efficient and skilled.
We did walk through an in-depth review of my specific needs and he ended up by recommending me a managed cloud hosting. The surprising fact is that this hosting plan was actually cheaper! While most of the company try to push an extra upsell, Siteground proved to truly care about the customers and they will not hesitate to suggest a cheaper alternative when it fits.
Following their proposal, I decided to purchase the cloud hosting solution.
The team helped me transferring my whole business to Siteground:
– Website Transfer (with large databases),
– Domain Transfer (4 domains),
– SSL installation,
– And more…
I wanted the whole process to happen without a single downtime so that it would not affect my customers and visitors. It was tricky but they have been amazing…
As a matter of fact, my business was online in less than 48 hours (including DNS propagation).
My seven support tickets were always replied in 5 to 15 minutes. And since then (over a 6+ months period!), my server and experience have been so smooth that I never had to contact them anymore.
Siteground Performance:
Siteground has been listed as a recommended WordPress hosting provider on the WordPress.org hosting page. This shortlist is based on a comprehensive look at all of the options available, including service monitoring and “secret shopper” interactions with the support over the past couple of months.
On my side, I have noticed a major improvement in performance since my blog is hosted with Siteground.
The platform is ultra-fast and the optimizations through the free CDN (Content Delivery Network) and SuperCacher make it even better.
This is a fully managed wordpress hosting which means that they will take care of common security holes with auto-updates, perform server-level maintenance and even provide backups if needed.
My blog receives high traffic, needs to deal with thousands members requests and needs to load numerous plugins plus the e-commerce platform. Nevertheless, I have tested it through website speed analyzers (such as Pingdom or Gtmetrix) and the results are mind-blowing!
It is also very consistent. No spikes or slow loading times whatsoever.
Siteground Uptime:
Siteground quote that they do have “99.99% Uptime” and they “guarantee that if you ever experience more than 0.1% downtime on a yearly basis you will be compensated“.
By browsing their resources, you can read that it can be achieved thanks to the usage of Linux Containers (LXC), Pro-active Server Monitoring, Own Backup System and Secure Account Isolation.
I must admit that I have zero knowledge on those topics, but I never seen such a reliable web hosting service. I’m using Pingdom to track my website status (every 5 minutes) and I’m steady at 100% uptime nearly every months!
How to start your own website: in 3 steps
STEP 1: Choosing your hosting plan
Siteground offers three shared hosting plans:
- The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now.
- The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordPress and Joomla website speed.
- The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like staging and GIT integration.
Note: if you plan to drive more than 100,000 visitors monthly to your website, contact support through Live Chat — it may require a Cloud or Dedicated hosting.
STEP 2: Choosing Domain
A free domain registration is included in the SiteGround hosting service.
Brainstorm to find an effective domain name and you are good to go!
STEP 3: Review and Complete
Unlike many other hosting providers the advertised discount applies to any of the initial periods chosen during the sign-up process. Being able to get the low price for the one year period is awesome!
After nearly one year using Siteground, I can say that they surpass all my expectations and in my opinion it’s by far the best managed website hosting solution.
Let me know in the comments what you think about this review, how is your experience there (if you are customer) or any ask you could have about Siteground or website hosting in general.
Telephone No.32.2.5882891
Just curious, what plan are you currently using on your high traffic site? I’
Hello Jake,
I’m using the CLOUD hosting plan. And my current setup is as following:
This said I’m far from using all the resources, in most of the cases, shared hosting should be enough.
I recommend you to join their live chat (“Pre-Sales Inquiries”) to check this with the staff.
They got skills and will be able to recommend you with something accurate. And they are not salesy — I was planning to purchase expensive dedicated hosting at first, and they are the one who told me a cloud hosting would be sufficient for my usage.
Cheers,
Tanguy – Incognito007
nice jobe
How does this compare with WA as a hosting provider?
Hello Kavinah,
Firstly, let me put a disclaimer here: I’m not 100% confident in doing a comparison between those two,
as I never tested Wealthy Affiliate hosting.
But I would say the (-) are:
1. It could be quite annoying if you ever need to do the advanced tweaking.
At one point, you may feel it lack of control (e.g. they have no cPanel as far as I know).
You would also need to request support if you decide to use plugins which require connection to a 3rd party API…
or if you have database issues.
2. If you are trying to build a business, you definitely do not want to keep the “siterubix.com” extension.
If you use a custom domain, it’s better… but I’m not sure how it performs in terms of search engine optimization. I have always heard that self-hosted WordPress perform better.
3. If you ever decide to drive large traffic, it could be problematic.
I have seen it down/bugged quite a few time.
On the side note, when I was running large paid campaigns for Wealthy Affiliate itself,
I had Carson private message me about how Clixsense Traffic was a scam and why I should stop it immediately.
While I appreciate the concerns, the usage is different and I love to decide by myself what bring me the best Return On Investment for my business.
The (+) are:
1. It’s super simple and easy to get started.
2. You don’t need to pay another bill (if you already use Wealthy Affiliate for education purpose, which is great btw).
3. You have access to their “Site Comments” feature (where you can request people to comment on your blogs, against your earned credits).
This feature is awesome, and could really be a great help for anyone getting started. And interactions worth a lot for ranking purpose with Google Penguin algorithm.
So I would say that WA hosting is great to get started, and could be enough.
But I still prefer to self-host everything to avoid the drawbacks I mentioned above,
and you may consider it as well once your business worth the extra spending :)
Let me know if that helps!
Enjoy your weekend.
Cheers,
Tanguy – Incognito007
Hello,
From last 8 months, I have been using SiteGround to host my big coupon sites as well as my amazon micro niche sites and i have been very much impressed with their service.
Specially their support, as they have very good staff with good technical knowledge.
A few months ago, I got some technical issues with my WordPress website, so i had to contact SiteGround Support staff for the help and within few hours of opening a support ticket, my problem was solved.
So, after 8 months, I can say, SiteGround is one of the best when it comes to Reliable Web Hosting. I also written a review on my website to tell more people about this hosting company so that they can leave all those ugly hosting companies and migrate to SiteGround for better service.
And I must say, you have written your points very clearly in this review. Great Work Done.
Regards,
Julie Schrier
Hello Julie,
Awesome. Thank you for your feedback! :)
It’s definitely a great feeling to know that you are backed up with top-notch support whenever you need it.
Before I came across Siteground, I have been with hosting companies that make you wait 30-60+ minutes on a “live” chat before an agent connects;
and he just let you know that he can’t help and that you need to log a ticket. Frustrating… :)
You are right, the first reply is super fast but actually accurate
and they seem to have the technical knowledge required to fix pretty much everything within a few hours.
I’m planning to get something started as well in order to leverage the power of Amazon affiliation.
Do you have lot of experience with it?
I’m just getting started through tutorials and connecting to people with experience in that field on Wealthy Affiliate.
I wish you lot of success with your websites, Julie.
Enjoy your weekend.
All the best,
Tanguy – Incognito007
hi thanks Incognito 007 and I have thought my niche and I would like to know what time it took to make this beautiful site to see if I think one like this because I love
Hello Edgardo,
Awesome. That’s already a great step! :)
It’s a bit hard to say how much time it took me – implementing WordPress is like a 5 minutes task.
Concerning the homepage, it was made using LeadPages (and their WordPress plugin) which is also quite fast using the “Drag & Drop” builder.
The small modifications and the numerous plugins I installed were also fast to implement and setup.
But it’s actually the learning curve and the research/tweaking that was time consuming… if you know what I mean :)
Plus, as you may have read above, I also had terrific hosting experiences in first months with Snoork and Bluehost;
which slowed me down in my progress until I found Siteground.
Stay tuned. I will probably share way more tips and tutorials on how to get started with online marketing and blogging in the next few weeks :)
All the best and Have a great day,
Tanguy – Incognito007
Incognito 007 hello I would like to know if you sell web to put them to work in adsense
Hello Edgardo,
I’m not using Google Adsense personally, but it’s really easy to implement on a blog/website if you wish to do so.
But be aware that they hate paid traffic and could suspend your account if you drive visitors from incentivized sources.
If you plan to monetize a blog/website with Google Adsense, you will need to (1) choose a niche and (2) setup a content strategy creation.
There is lot of tutorials to be found online and also some step-by-step resources to learn and implement this (wealthy affiliate university being a perfect example).
Ps. I’m planning to open a done-for-you “blog creation” package in next few weeks (including setup, hosting and optimizations). But I’m still working on some details for this ;)
What was your plan with Google Adsense? You already have a niche/passion or website you try to develop and monetize?
Have a great day,
Tanguy – Incognito007
Such a great and accurate article! This is exactly what I needed. I’m currently looking for an host as I’ll launch my website/brand that will be called “Alpha Personal Training” to promote my personal trainer and online personal trainer services. And you brilliantly answered to all my questions
Thank you Incognito007!
Hello Max,
This looks like an awesome project! I’m wishing you lot of success with that! :)
And thanks for your feedback, it’s awesome to hear that you found some value in this article.
Siteground has been a game changer for me as I can now focus on my business without extra struggles…
If you come across extra ask, or need help to launch and develop your business
– let me know :)
Have a great day,
Tanguy – Incognito007