SiteGround Review

SiteGround Review - Quick Summary

In mid-2013, I was giving a presentation at a conference in Thailand and, after the curtains fell, I started speaking to a few of the attendees.

A few of them were extremely earnest, asking a lot of technical questions about my business and hanging on nearly every word.

The guys in question were actually SiteGround employees and, after discussing my web agency and whitelabel team, they (obviously) recommended their service as a solution to the problems I was having with the existing Canadian hosting services.

I’ll be completely honest. I was skeptical (to say the least). I’d tried so many lackluster hosts in the past that I’d finally just conceded defeat and relegated myself to an eternity of crappy web hosts.

But, I really clicked with the guys I talked with and decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After two short months of using their services, I transitioned more than 150 of my clients' websites to SiteGround and haven’t looked back since.

SiteGround’s exceptional service saved me and my company thousands of dollars and an incalculable number of hours and, over the next few sections, I’ll explain the technical reasons behind their superior service.

In the world of web hosting, commission-fueled recommendations don't mean much.

Without hard-hitting facts and data to back up claims, you can be all but certain that the “recommendation” in question is driven primarily by the desire to make a quick buck off of your naivety… NOT to provide you with an unbiased look at the company in question.

We get this…

Luckily, with our fully integrated client management systems, we’ve been able to collect more than a decades worth of data on dozens of different hosting services including: uptime, downtime, load speeds, and more.

You can see the live tracking here. Read more about our 4-step research process here.

And now, I’m going to share some of those juicy numbers with you…

The following data was collected over a ~12 month period from December 14, 2016 to January 13, 2019.

One of SiteGround’s biggest selling points is, without a doubt, the insanely reliable uptimes offered by their servers. Clocking in at 99.92% for their shared SiteGround hosting service (a.k.a. the ‘cheap’ hosting), this company does not disappoint.

These tests were conducted using their Iowa data center, and the results were pretty darn good considering that there were only 5 short outages over more than 2 years.

If you consider that iPage — one of the oft-proclaimed “top” Canadian hosting companies — had an uptime of only 97.6% (yes, you read that correctly) and more than 100 outages over the same period, this is ridiculously low.

Testing & Review of SiteGround's Downtime

Here are some records of our 2018 uptime reports. As you can see, all of the ranges are between 99.9% and 100%.

This test is specifically from Toronto and was tested monthly on the 23rd of each month last year (as you can see in the image above).

I think it’s pretty safe to say with downtimes as short as these, you won’t need to worry about your website for more than a few (561 to be precise) seconds.

Here’s another screenshot of our dashboard showing the uptime of each individual site/host over the past few years. Pretty solid.

One of the interesting conundrums of reviewing web host companies is that many readers (errantly) assume that local data centers will always trump data centers stationed overseas or in an adjacent country. And it’s easy to see why.

The proximity of a data center goes a long way in determining the speed with which your website data will be delivered to your audience.

The closer the center is to your end users, the less distance the information has to travel, and the faster delivery (should) be. However, it’s important to realize that, with regards to data centers, quality trumps proximity.

Unfortunately, Canadian data centers are still working to rise to the growing demand.

While they are leaps and bounds ahead of Australian (sorry mates) and many Asian data centers, they still tend to rely on unreliable and out of date software making them less effective than their United States counterparts.

Luckily, SiteGround’s North American data centers are located in Iowa and deliver incredibly fast speeds to the country’s Northern neighbors (a.k.a. YOU!)

Besides the location of their data centers, SiteGround has also gone a long way in building their own out-of-the-box caching tool called the SuperCacher, which can speed up a website up to 5 times.

There is more, they have recently launched their unique Ultrafast PHP setup that is available on the GrowBig, GoGeek, and cloud plans and could add an additional speed boost of up to 30%.

In addition, it’s worth mentioning that SiteGround uses Google’s most powerful processors and this also adds to the overall stable and fast service.

Here are some of our test results from Toronto and Montreal:

Not too shabby, huh?

The screenshot below is from one of our client’s eCommerce websites before and after switching over to SiteGround. I think the graph speaks for itself.

If that isn’t enough to sell you on SiteGround’s speeds, then here are a few more tests that we ran throughout 2017 and 2018 from 5 different locations across Canada.

To someone all about speed, you might want something faster. If this isn't impressive at all, then you'll be glad to know that they decided to break their own record with the new version of the SG Optimizer plugin.

This tool allows WordPress websites to further improve speeds by as much as 30% with their improved Memcached support and dynamic cache purging.

Here’s the thing about most web hosting provider’s customer support: it's mostly pretty bad.

You can imagine our complete and utter surprise when we contacted SiteGround for help with a few hiccups and received effective and nearly instantaneous feedback.

Customer support is a point of pride for SiteGround and their knowledgeable support staff is available 24/7/365.

Support options for SiteGround:

1. Live Chat (24/7)
2. Ticket System (typically answered in 24 hours)

Here’s a quick snapshot of their customer support chat window. (expect a wait time of about… 10 seconds)

The #1 weakness that hackers and other internet ilk exploit to breach your website and steal your customer’s data is outdated plugins and website themes.

As technology continues to evolve, previous iterations of website software become open to new vulnerabilities unless they are “patched” by the developers.

Think of it like a fence surrounding a secure compound.

Unless the fence is refurbished and fixed on a regular basis, it will become worn down with time and rust, erosion, and other forces of nature will make it vulnerable to anyone and everyone looking to gain entry.

Luckily, SiteGround does all of the heavy lifting for you and sets all of your websites to auto-update so that you no longer have to worry about installing the latest patches or software updates.

With SiteGround, you can literally set it and “fugget” it.

In addition to the uber-reliable uptimes, wicked fast load times, and regular security updates, SiteGround also offer one especially valuable bonus to keep your website running smoothly. (A bonus for which most hosts will make you pay handsomely)

This is the all-inclusive Security plugin which covers all security related areas of your website.

Another great feature included with each plan is a free CDN (or content delivery network) that will spread out your website files over 200 locations worldwide to guarantee the fastest load times possible… No matter where your audience is viewing your content.

SiteGround offers a free Cloudfare CDN setup with every hosting package, saving you $20/month (or more).

Along with this is the Supercacher system that dynamically implements multiple caching systems like static caching, dynamic caching, and the all famous Memcached---tremendously speeding up loading times.

SiteGround offer totally free SSL.  

But wait, there’s more…

With Google’s recent security updates, having an SSL (secured socket layer) is all but mandatory

That is if you want your website to rank on the first or second pages of Google’s SERP (search engine results page).

An SSL is effectively an encrypted tunnel between your website and your visitor’s device that keeps all private information exactly that… Private.

It’s kind of like sending a letter to your friend in a secret language known only by the two of you. If you sent the letter in plain English, any Jane or Joe who intercepted the letter could quickly read and decode the secret message.

However, by encrypting the information with a secret language, even in the event that the letter was intercepted, no one would be able to determine the contents of the letter.

Luckily, SiteGround provides your website with an SSL certificate — again, entirely free of charge.

This is especially useful if you run an eCommerce business, as many of the most popular payment processors won’t even allow a transaction to occur on an unsecured connection.

Another great feature offered by SiteGround is their 1-click WordPress installation.

As soon as you login to your dashboard, you’ll see an option to install WordPress with (literally) one click and, after setting up your user name and password, will have your website cocked, locked, and ready to rock in a matter of minutes.

Unless you’re planning on creating a brand new website, you probably have several gigabytes of valuable content that is already being hosted on your current site.

Unfortunately, transferring this data from one host to another is a pain in the ass of Jurassic proportions.

In my SiteGround review, the only real issue that I experienced with the company's service is that it can get a little bit pricey if you aren’t quite ready to make the 2-3 year commitment required to secure their lowest cost offer.

If you want your website hosted on a monthly basis, you’ll be looking at a fee of $14.99/month for one year of service which is pretty steep considering the price point of some of their competitors.

However, with no hidden fees, SiteGround's pricing is actually significantly less than companies like GoDaddy. And considering the sheer amount of value they bring to the table, I’m more than happy to pay this for myself and my clients.

If you consider the amount of time spent dealing with customer support (or just trying to get ahold of them) at other hosts, the extra few bucks is a no-brainer.

Unless you’re looking to setup a dedicated hosting service (which is completely unnecessary until your website generates at least 50,000 visitors — not to be confused with views — per month), you’ll want to opt for SiteGround’s shared hosting plans.

Here’s the breakdown of what they cost and what you’ll get…

There is no shortage of viable web hosts to choose from.

However, considering the massive amount of value offered by SiteGround: from their blazingly fast data centers, reliable uptimes, and incredible customer service, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better deal out there.

We’ve been using them for years and have yet to be disappointed by their service. Give them a try for yourself and let us know what you think.

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References and image credits:

• ShivarWeb.com
• WebNoo.com
• WebHostingSecretRevealed.net