When you are professionally blogging or have a official online presence in the form of a blog or an online store, you'd always want your site to have the best hosting possible.
While there are tons of hosting services around, some costly (WPX, for example) while others cheap as dirt, I'd recommend you to go with the best web hosting for your site that is full of features and doesn't eat of your budget.
Today, we'll review SiteGround hosting which is feature-packed and affordable at best.
SiteGround is one of the top affordable (if not cheap) hosting services for bloggers worldwide. They are officially recommended by WordPress.org people and so you can trust your site on them.
I am using SiteGround on few of my sites and so far I am thrilled with their performance that I have decided to share the a data-backed SiteGround review so that you can get started with SiteGround.
Below are some points which will denote the benefits of SiteGround Hosting and why you should choose SiteGround Hosting over others:
SiteGround Hosting Review 2016 : Feature overviewIn this in-depth SiteGround review, we'll see how well it fits in the best hosting for bloggers tag and what are the features it has. SiteGround offers one-click WordPress auto-installation, auto-upgradation of plugins, site transfer, WP-CLI, Staging etc.
However, we'll not read the feature list from the official website but will research to see if SiteGround offers what it promises or is just a fad.
I have included data from trusted hosting monitoring metrics sites and personal research. I know this type of research ain't possible for you because you got to focus on your business and online marketing rather than doing research, hence thought of coming out with this review.
1) SiteGround Uptime:Site uptime actually is what matters the most, because cheap hosting sites actually lure you with below-earth prices and then your site is never up for your visitors.
However, if you choose a premium hosting like SiteGround, you can rest assured that your site is always open for your visitors and hence save you from business losses. Very few hosting services provide 100% and SiteGround is one of them.
This isn't to sell you off, you can check the data from here (credits: hostingfacts) to see SiteGround having a 99.98% uptime and a record actual 99.94% lifetime uptime stat (tracking since 2015).
A site with slooooooow loading means irritated visitors and poor conversions. At an average, 47% of visitors expect a site to load within 2 seconds and if it takes them more than 3 seconds to access the site, 40% of those visitors will abandon your site (maybe forever).
So, it is wise to choose a hosting that has good server response time and reduces your blog loading time.
SiteGround has an average server response time of 506 ms which is even faster than the industry favorite Bluehost at 550 ms. In an independent and bias-free experiment done by SiteGround itself, SiteGround was compared with 12 other standard hosting services like Bluehost, A2Hosting, Hostgator amongst others.
One reason behind SiteGround's blazing fast speed is using the Varnish Cache technology. It makes their server ready to go lightening speed. I don't want you drag you into boring tech stuff so here is the proof.
SiteGround ranked 2nd with an average loading time of 1.68 sec (without cache) and 1.3 seconds with cache plugin enabled. Check the screenshot.
WordPress sites are always prone to hacks and malware attacks thanks to the heck load of free themes and un-updated plugins. But, it is the duty of your hosting service (and of course yours) to keep your site safe in times of vulnerabilities.
SiteGround has several security measures that ensures your site is in safe hands. They provide SSL for free (which is a very important metric if you have transactions on your site and it s a key Google ranking factor) and have daily backup facilities in case anything goes down.
4) Daily Backups:One thing that I can't stress enough for site health is backup. Not only in case of accidental errors while dealing in the back-end, backups help you restore your site to the original version even if it gets hacked.
Backups are thus very important to restore your site and is yet the most neglected aspect. The sole reason for this is taking backup is cumbersome and most business bloggers like you and me don't want to deal with this.
This is where we need a service that takes automatic backups for us. SiteGround does that even easier by taking daily backups so in case of any accidental site loss you could restore it back to the latest previous day version.
They give you access to 30 copies of backup meaning each day of the previous month to choose from and restoring is easy like clicking on a button on the cPanel.
5) Support System: Best Hosting With Prompt SupportThe support system of any hosting decides its key business motives and the customer base. If a hosting has a poor customer service, that doesn't last long. SiteGround is probably aware about this and the service is provides is excellent if not the best.
SiteGround offers you 24/7/365 live-chat support irrespective of the plan you choose. They are also available on phone anytime of the day in case you chose that route.
This is SO important because we all make mistakes and have our fair share of bad days. Sometimes we can break a site with a plugin update or at other times we might need a guide to setup a simple task like name servers or even a subdomain.
SiteGround's customer executives are very friendly yet professional and help with the solutions promptly.
6) Beginner Friendly: Is SiteGround Good For Beginners?Most hosting can be great for those techie bloggers who can do things by their own. But, what about the rest of us who are either too busy to bother about the basics of a WordPress hosting or are beginners to the blogging space?
If you're one like that, SiteGround has got your back covered. With SiteGround's 1-click installs, automatic backups (as I discussed earlier) and awesome support it is best for beginners.
They also have a free site migration service in case you want to transfer your hosting from another host. Imagine how terrible this could be when we do it ourselves! But, with SiteGround you don't have to deal with the headache and all is done by experts after you fill in the details.
SiteGround offers you free staging area, it is basically great for designers who want their site to be designed in an offline and controlled environment before releasing it to the web.
This makes SiteGround one affordable hosting solution for designers and web developers out there who have to design and test sites rigorously before delivering it for approval from clients.
8) Affordable:SiteGround hosting is not only the best in features, it is also one of the most affordable hosting for anyone (bloggers/small business owners and freelance designers) out there.
SiteGround's 30 day money back policy makes this an even sweeter deal because you got to test the waters before getting into it. When I launched my first SiteGround hosted website, I was also worried and thanked them because they had this 30 day money back guarantee and I could bid them goodbye at any moment.
NOTE: That goodbye moment never came, though. I loved their service and am still a happy customer of SiteGround.
Okay, enough with the advantage and feature overview, what about the cons of SiteGround hosting? There is nothing as perfect in this universe and I know SiteGround also has some dents. Since this post is about the most unbiased SiteGround hosting review, I'd better show you all the possible changes that could make SiteGround even better.
Demerits of SiteGround: One Website At Starter Plan and Limited Space:SiteGround's basic plans allows you to host only one website at a time and the ability to host multiple websites start at $7.95 per month.
The Startup plan also provides 10 GB of space which is great for any website/brimming blog but in case you have a huge site that receives tons of traffic you might have to buy higher and costlier plans.
With this, we come to the pricing structure:
SiteGround Pricing Review 2016:SiteGround is probably the most affordable and feature-rich hosting service out there. It has plans that are best suited for every type of blogging profession. Here are it's basic plans and features:
SiteGround is probably the only hosting that understands the need of beginners and cares to provide them with that kind of service. Rarely does a hosting have free daily backups, free SSL in its lowest pan.
Apart from that SiteGround also manages to offer awesome support which is rare in the hosting industry. I use and therefore recommend SiteGround hosting to anyone looking for a better and reliable hosting that takes the headache off their head.
Summary
Reviewer
Anil Agarwal
Review Date
2016-11-16
Reviewed Item
SiteGround
Author Rating
Source: SiteGround Review: Best Hosting or Just a Fad [Most Data-Backed Analysis Till Date]
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