As WordPress continues its explosion in popularity among designers and developers, services geared toward the WordPress community are cropping up all over the Web – among them, managed WordPress hosting.
A cursory Google search turns up a long list of providers (along with their resellers) that claim to meet specific needs of WordPress-based sites. Some succeed, some don’t, and choosing blindly can cost you big in terms of speed, reliability and frustration.
In this article, we’ll focus on a leader in the managed WordPress hosting space – SiteGround – and offer some objective information to help you decide if this is the best choice for you.
SiteGround has been around since 2004, when a few college buddies banded together with a business idea and ran it from their own digs. These days, the company’s 220 employees tend to 320,000 domains. The company is frequently on the roster of community events such as WordCamps, summits and conferences, as both speaker and sponsor. They’re also featured on WordPress.org’s list of recommended hosts.
With such a solid history of growth and industry participation, we’d expect a fairly good showing in terms of speed, reliability, ease, customer service and value. Generally, SiteGround does not disappoint.
Access to a 34-location content delivery network (CDN) – standard with all WordPress accounts – helps images load faster than if they were stored on the same server as the site. Three strategically located data centers (in Chicago, Amsterdam and Singapore) and up to three levels of caching further boost speed.
So how does real-world performance stack up to the claims? Pretty well, it turns out. Please note that, for our test, we did not turn on SuperCacher, which reportedly can speed your site up considerably.
For our tests, we used a sample site running the default 2015 theme with no plugins, from a computer in central New York state. The page we used totaled about 11 KB.
| Server Location | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 2 |
| Melbourne | 4.58s | 3.39s | 3.43s |
| Dallas | 624ms | 848ms | 715ms |
| NYC | 754ms | 611ms | 598ms |
On average, the best performance came from the closest server location, as we’d expect. Speed remained relatively stable from test to test for the same locations.
Here, we tested our sample site assuming 40 concurrent users for a duration of five minutes.
Here, too, speed was mostly consistent, even under the stress of limited traffic.
Our test site also scored an ‘A’ in both PageSpeed and YSlow tests using the tool available at GTmetrix.
SiteGround promises to go beyond the call of duty, adding convenience and ease by installing WordPress for you. They’ll even transfer an existing WordPress site from your old server (and you know what a pain that can be!).
Also installed for you: Your choice from nearly 60 themes (check them out – they’re free even if you don’t have an account). However, the designs are dated (circa 2008) and don’t reflect current trends such as full-width templates, hero images, Google’s material design, large type, flat images and long, scrolling home pages. Also missing are extras such as contact pages and social media tie-ins.
In other words, you’re better off finding a free theme from wordpress.org.
An enhanced cPanel (try a demo) includes a WordPress-specific section with links to features such as a staging server, automatic updates, Git, and more.
We tested the advertised 24/7 support by accessing the live chat function late on a Friday night. As with most live chats, a text box appeared, into which we entered a few questions. A screen advised that eight customers were ahead of us.
We didn’t even have time to make a cup of tea though: A friendly rep popped up within less than a minute. We asked about a discrepancy in the themes listing: While the thumbnails indicated compatibility with the latest version of WordPress (4.2.3 as of this writing), the detailed write-ups pegged this at version 3. The rep assured us that all themes are fully compatible with 4.x. We also asked how quickly WordPress would be installed once we open an account (“a few minutes”) and how soon a theme could be added (“about a minute”). Three answers in less than four minutes. Not bad.
SiteGround also promises no wait time for support calls and a response to tickets (a service available only to customers) within ten minutes or less. We called – there was no wait.
We have to give bonus points, too, for the depth of WordPress information available right on the site, from tutorials to hundreds of FAQs.
Uptime in 2014 exceeded 99.99%, according to the company’s own statistics. Should your site be down for more than 0.1% over the course of a year, SiteGround promises compensation. Checking your site’s status is easy: Just plug in your domain, and voila! The tool practically dares you to dispute the claims.
Another live chat (again, initiated within a minute) didn’t yield any hard data on typical server loads or resource usage. However, the rep assured us that load balancing is a priority, with each server hosting a mix of busy and low-traffic sites. To allow for spikes in traffic or data, servers are not loaded to full capacity.
Murphy’s Law applies in full to the interwebs, so an effective response to problems is arguably even more important than prevention. According to another equally cheerful SiteGround chat buddy, servers are equipped with a monitoring system that detects inconsistencies within half a second and responds automatically with what he described only as “a resolution protocol”. Live personnel monitor everything 24/7, so they’re able to step in if necessary.
Sites are backed up daily, and you’ll have up to 30 complete backups (depending on your plan) should something go wrong.
Until now, we’d never run across a hosting provider that keeps a solid inventory of not just server parts, but also have entire extra servers plugged in and ready to go if ‘Something Bad’ happens. Color me impressed.
All WordPress plans include the basics, along with a few extras:
The Startup Plan (currently $3.95/month) is the most basic, ideal for sites with 10,000 visits or less and requiring up to 10GB of space.
The GrowBig Plan ($7.95/month) works for sites with up to 25,000 visits and adds a handful of features:
To all that, the GoGeek Plan ($14.95/month) offers additions that are ideal for sites garnering up to 100,000 visits and engaged in eCommerce:
Value, stability, service, and ease of use definitely make SiteGround a WordPress host to consider.
All in all, SiteGround makes an excellent showing among managed WordPress hosts. Tiered plans mean you don’t pay for features you don’t need, while all the extras are available at a reasonable cost. Server speed is consistently demonstrable. However, where SiteGround shines brightest is in its service. It’s fast and helpful – not at all like the automated, impersonal interactions typical of hosting behemoths – but, given the vast WordPress-specific resources offered on its site, DIYers may never need it.
Get 60% when you try SiteGround for yourself and let us know how it stacks up against the competitors in the comments!
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View Comments
I’m glad you’ve had a good experience at SiteGround. Mine started off great as well; speedy site with good support.
Then they made a change to a htaccess file on one of my sites on New Year’s Eve. It took the site down and they didn’t even bother to check and see if their changes worked or not. Since it was the night of a holiday, it went unnoticed until the January 2. When I asked about it then they were very unfriendly and unappologetic for taking my site down.
That's certainly not a positive experience Bill, sorry to hear about that.
One thing I will say, in SiteGround's defence, is that you hear these stories about *every* host. These things seem to happen regardless; businesses screw up sometimes. It's how they deal with the screw ups that matter. For the person you dealt with to be friendly and unapologetic is unacceptable, and I am sure that his or her boss would be pretty damned unhappy to hear of your experience!
Hi, saw this great post about Siteground. I've been using the Siteground Cloud platform since November 2014 and are really really satisfied! Especially with their support. I have premium support on mine and if I submit a ticket I do not only get a status report investigating the error but also replies under 10 minutes from the time the ticket was send.
The only minor problems I have encountered is some problems with the website and phpmyadmin and cpanel when I have upgraded the specifications of my cloud hosting.
Due to their quick support and affordable prices (Cloudflare is for example included for free plus free SSL and dedicated DNS), I can recommend Siteground to all readers here too
Hi Espen,
Glad to know you're happy with SiteGround. They have an amazing support staff, who are not only helpful and quick to answer any questions you may have, but also have an extensive knowledge about WordPress platform.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Espen. Have a great day.
Thank you, Espen!
I'm glad that you liked the article, and that you have had a positive experience with SiteGround.
Tom
I switched to SiteGround about 6 months ago after being with one of the "blogger recommended" hosts. I have been really happy and whenever I need to get in touch with Customer Service, which so far has been for questions not problems, they are very helpful. I recently added another domain and upgraded to the Grow Big package. They were very helpful in getting everything transferred over and set up.
Hi Bob!
Yes, one of the reasons why I like SiteGround is that it's very simple and easy to work with. I'm happy you like it too.
Cheers,
Tom
Check this out and you'll see how bad they are:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/going-ostrich-the-ultimate-hosting-provider-not-to-do/
Hey John!
Having had experience with plenty of hosting providers over the years, I can tell you that they all let you down at one time or another – so one can find that sort of problem report for any given hosting company. The best one can do is try to find a supplier that fails as least as possible, and acts gracefully when problems do happen. While that post does show cause for concern, even the author admits that his experience with SiteGround has otherwise been pleasant – and I would bet that his problem was solved soon after that.
In any case, it's always good to see other points of view, so thanks for sharing that with us!
Cheers,
Tom
One thing is bad ... Page visit 10,000
You can always upgrade to GrowBig or GrowGeek.
Also just to be clear, It is an approximate number of visits, rather than a restriction. Meaning, you aren’t restricted to 10k visits and won’t be charged extra if it exceeds.
Hi Sayan.
10,000 visits should be more than enough for most sites, but if your site generates more traffic you can always opt for a more suitable plan.
Tom
I'm moving my hosting when it expires in Decemnber (current hosting is soooo unreliable) and Siteground is on my list of preferred companies, so this would be fantastic to win!
Hi Keely,
I hope Siteground works for you. Good luck!
Cheers,
Tom
I had time to use this provider, I hope I will win to be able to continue using Siteground :) thank
Hi!
I'm glad you like Siteground. I hope you win too!
Cheers,
Tom
I've been thinking of signing up at siteground and setting up a job portal in Wordpress. I guess now it's the time! I've used siteground to build a website for a friend of my father's. The customer service was awesome, and this is exactly what every hosting provider should have.
Hey Jojo!
Yup, now would be a great time to sign up.
WordPress is one of my favorite plaftorms, and with SiteGround to host it, your website would already have most of what it needs to start on the right foot. :-)
Thanks, and good luck!
Cheers,
Tom
I tried SiteGround before and didn't really like it but that was years ago. Maybe this will give me an opportunity to test it out again and then transfer all of my sites over.
Hi Tan,
Services like SiteGround are constantly being improved. Hopefully, the things you disliked have been solved since then.
Cheers,
Tom
Hi,
I am using siteground for one of my site and would like to say it is faster than my current provider (not to mention the name).