With GDPR coming into force, you're going to be looking at website hosting for your website. Having spent hours sweating over a hot laptop, I think I've found the answer: Siteground!
Siteground Hosting: The Pros
* Excellent reputation
Any time you do a poll in Facebook marketing groups or online marketing forums and ask the marketers there what hosting service they prefer, it’s amazing to see how Siteground always seems to come out tops. It’s extremely popular amongst online marketers – and they swear by it.
* Affordable
While it’s not the cheapest web hosting service on the market, it is highly affordable. For the value they provide, SiteGround is definitely underpriced. Most beginners on a tight budget will be able to afford SiteGround’s hosting plans.
* Very reliable
SiteGround has a 99.99% uptime – which basically means their servers hardly go down. This is crucial, especially if you’re running an e-commerce store. If your site goes down, you’ll lose sales. That will rarely happen with SiteGround.
* Easy to use
You’ll have no problems using SiteGround’s interface to manage your sites. It’s intuitive and everything is neat and well laid out.
* Free SSL certs
With Google blatantly pointing out security issues when a site doesn’t have SSL, it’s crucial that your sites have secure socket layer technology-enabled. Since it’s free with SiteGround, you’ll not have to pay for it. Wonderful!
* Migration service available
If you’re currently with another web host and wish to switch to SiteGround, you can contact SiteGround’s support and they’ll migrate your sites for you. There is a fee involved… but it’ll be done for you quickly and easily. No tech headaches here for you.
* Daily backups
SiteGround will automatically backup your site/s daily. In the very rare event that your site gets hacked or you lose your data, etc. you’ll always be able to restore your site with the backups stored on SiteGround’s servers.
* Unlimited email addresses
If you have virtual assistants and staff who need their own email addresses, you can create unlimited email addresses with SiteGround.
* Free Cloudflare CDN
CDN refers to copies of your web pages which are stored in many different servers across multiple locations. This will translate to faster page load times because your pages will be ‘pulled out’ from a location that’s closest to where the visitor is surfing from. This is a fantastic feature in SiteGround, and it’s free!
* Money back guarantee
You have 30 days to test SiteGround. If you’re not satisfied, you can always ask for a refund. This is highly unlikely because once you see how good they are, you’ll probably stick with them for years.
* WordPress staging
You’ll easily be able to create a WordPress staging site within SiteGround and test out your theme, plugins, etc. When it all looks good and functions smoothly, you can make your site live. SiteGround makes this highly technical process very smooth and easy for just about anyone to do.
* Support
SiteGround’s support is awesome. With 24/7 support round the clock, you’ll be able to chat with someone on their support desk at any time. If you have any issues with your website or hosting, you can easily contact them.
Siteground Hosting: The Cons
No hosting service provider is perfect and SiteGround has its cons too.
For starters, your usage is limited based on your hosting plan. You only get 10 GB of web space and you’re limited to 10,000 visitors on the StartUp plan. If your site gets more visitors and requires more web space, you’ll have to upgrade to the GoBig or GoGeek plans.
There’s also the issue of a higher renewal price. This seems to be a bugbear for many SiteGround customers, especially when they have to pay more once the introductory pricing ends. You’ll want to check with their support what the new pricing will be when it’s time to renew – and then you can make a better decision.
SiteGround does not offer dedicated hosting. If you wish to get dedicated servers, you’ll need to migrate your site to a web host that has this service.
Daily back-ups… We have tried to access the back-ups from Siteground only to find they didn't back up. Don't rely on your web hosting back ups, even if they say they'll do them. Get an external back up in place as well.
Support. Whilst Siteground is easily contactable, it's not always a smooth and pleasant experience with the responses leaving you wondering why you're actually hosting with them!
Past performance is no proof of future performance. Whilst Siteground has been brilliant in the past, do your research and see if they will meet your needs in the future.
Siteground Hosting Should You Get It?
If you’re a blogger or an online marketer who is starting out and needs reliable webhosting, SiteGround could be perfect for you. It’s affordable and has all the features a good web host should have. While it doesn’t have dedicated hosting, it’ll probably take you a while to reach a level where you can afford dedicated hosting and then you can move. Don’t pay more than necessary when you’re just starting out.
Update: After a serious issue with Siteground Hosting in 2019, we changed website hosts. We recommend you take a look at this post and determine if you still want to go ahead with Siteground.
