SiteGround WordPress Hosting Review (2020): Best WP Hosting?

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Review summary:

SiteGround’s first term is very competitively priced. In fact, it’s around 60-70% cheaper than what you’ll get from WPX or WP Engine.

Server performance is on par with that of significantly more expensive web hosts. This makes them excellent for small-business and e-commerce websites.

Live chat quality is great, though I wish it was easier to access.

Their backend interface is dated and not beginner-friendly, but it gets the job done.

Just make sure to install your own WordPress malware scanning and removal plugin, because SiteGround’s free security plan doesn’t include malware removal.

SiteGround WordPress hosting plans & pricing

Pricing per month:

You can purchase hosting for one, 12, 24, or 36 months upfront.

Note that SiteGround’s “WordPress” hosting costs the same as their regular “Shared” hosting service and runs on Apache servers.

As far as shared hosting goes, these prices are quite high. However, you do get exceptional uptime and website speed, both of which make SiteGround excellent for e-commerce and small-business websites.

Does SiteGround offer public discount promo codes?

There’s no discount code available for new buyers – the first term is already heavily discounted compared to SiteGround’s standard hosting cost.

However, when your first term is about to expire, they will send you an email with a discount promo code that you can use when renewing your plan.

This offer changes over time. For example, right now you can get a 20% discount if you renew for two years, or 30% off if you renew for three years.

What’s the deal with SiteGround’s one-time set-up fee?

Update: as of June 2020, SiteGround no longer charges a set-up fee when you buy a monthly term. The information below is for historical reference only.

If you choose the monthly subscription, SiteGround will charge you a one-time hosting set-up fee. This fee doesn’t apply to any of their longer terms.

I guess this fee is SiteGround’s way of nudging buyers towards their longer terms, but I can’t say that I like the approach.

On the flip side, the one-time setup fee is fully refundable under SiteGround’s money-back guarantee.

Does SiteGround offer student hosting at reduced prices?

Yes, they do – you can sign up for it from SiteGround’s student hosting page. All student plans come with the same configuration and resources as the StartUp plan discussed above.

The student plan costs $1.99 per month, which is a 50% discount on the standard promotional first-term price. You can purchase hosting at student prices for one year only.

After the first year, students pay the standard discounted first-term pricing on their second term, followed by standard renewal prices for subsequent terms.

To verify that you’re a student, you’ll need to register with SiteGround using an email address in an .edu domain.

For more student discounts, check out our student hosting rankings.

Does SiteGround offer custom WordPress plans?

If you need more resources than what SiteGround’s basic WordPress hosting plans offer, you can buy their custom Cloud hosting.

Cloud hosting isn’t listed on their “WordPress hosting” page, but a customer support agent assured me that the service is optimized for WP websites.

Does SiteGround accept PayPal payments?

This one’s a little tricky.

If you try to pay, you’ll only see credit cards as an available payment method.

However, they do actually accept PayPal as well.

To pay via PayPal:

• Initiate the purchase process and enter your personal details
• Leave all credit card fields (card number, name on card, expiration date) blank
• Submit the form

You’ll get an error message saying that you forgot to enter your credit card information.

Now contact SiteGround’s customer support and tell them about this, and they’ll send you a PayPal payment link via email/Live Chat.

Cumbersome design, but it gets the job done.

Are SiteGround’s prices negotiable?

Unfortunately, they are not. If you’re looking to haggle, see our list of hosting providers with negotiable pricing.

SiteGround hosting resources and restrictions

How much data transfer (bandwidth) do you get?

SiteGround does not limit bandwidth on any of its WordPress hosting plans.

Instead, they limit the maximum number of users your websites can serve per month.

Why is SiteGround’s monthly user limit unusual?

Note that these limits are per hosting account, not per website hosted.

What’s interesting is that these aren’t hard limits, only educated estimates.

SiteGround simply took the average amount of server resources a typical visitor uses and, based on that, estimated how many unique visitors they can “afford” to allow to your websites per month.

So if your website uses more resources than “average,” your monthly visitor limits will be lower than listed.

But how is “average” defined? Unfortunately, we don’t know – and this ambiguity is my main concern with SiteGround.

If you’re a typical user planning to host typical WordPress blog with posts, images, and other “standard” content, you can probably trust the listed unique monthly visit limits.

What happens if you exceed your monthly user limit?

Actually, they won’t allow you to exceed it.

If your websites approach the limit, SiteGround will contact you and ask you to upgrade your hosting plan to one with more server resources.

How much storage space do you get with SiteGround?

The 10 GB on the Startup plan is generous; a single WordPress website s highly unlikely to ever approach 10 GB in size.

For the GrowBig and GoGeek plans, whether the allotted storage is enough will depend on your needs.

For example, if you’re planning on hosting 20 websites on the GrowBig plan, you’re looking at an average of 1 GB per site, which will be enough for simple WP blogs but not for much beyond that.

Overall, the provided storage limits compare favorably with what other WordPress hosts offer – as long as you’re not planning to host more than 10-15 sites.

Please see my recent article on how much server storage does a WordPress website need for more.

Is there a limit on the number or size of MySQL databases?

Although there’s no limit on the number of databases you can create, there’s a limit on their size:

While 500 MB is enough for the majority of typical WordPress blogs, these limits are still low when compared to other WP hosting providers – most competitors allow 1.5-2 GB databases on their cheapest plans. See our article on how big your website’s MySQL database can get.

Additionally, you’ll be limited to 10 concurrent database connections on the lowest plans and 20 connections on the highest plan.

This may not be enough for some advanced websites, in which case we recommend that you consult our recommendations on the hosts with the highest database connection limits.

Do subdomains count towards SiteGround’s plan’s website limit?

No, they don’t.

Many WordPress hosting providers treat subdomains the same as a top-level domain.

At SiteGround, you can create as many subdomains as you want and they will not count towards your plan’s website quota – only top-level domains do.

If you need to host a lot of websites under different domains, see our guide to the cheapest hosts with unlimited websites.

Is there an Inode limit at SiteGround?

An inode limit denotes the number of folders and files that you can store on your hosting server.

SiteGround’s plans have the following inode limits:

To put this in perspective, a basic WordPress blog with just a few pages and plugins will use around 9,000 – 13,000 inodes. A blog with 250 posts, multiple images per post, and 30-40 various plugins installed, currently uses up 25,000 inodes on my server.

The 150,000 inodes on the StartUp plan are generous  – you’re unlikely to ever need this much for a single website unless you upload tens of thousands of images.

Whether the 300,000 and 450,000 Inode limits on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans, respectively, are enough, will depend on how many websites you want to host with them.

That’s still a lot of sites given the price and compared to other hosting providers, but it’s a limitation you need to keep in mind.

If your websites require a lot of Inodes, please see our guide to hosts with the highest Inode limits for more.

How many emails can you send from SiteGround?

To combat spam, SiteGround limits email sending as follows:

These limits apply on a per-account, not per-domain basis.

Generous limits overall, considering WP Engine doesn’t allow you to send emails at all, and WPX has a 100/hour limit (per domain).

These limits are more than enough for all business communications and even enough for small-scale email marketing campaigns.

SiteGround user interface and usability

Does SiteGround offer cPanel?

Yes, SiteGround offers cPanel for with its WordPress hosting at no additional cost.

Unfortunately, it’s a dated version of the control panel, but it gets the job done:

From SiteGround’s cPanel you can perform all the standard operations, including:

• Managing domains and subdomains
• Using auto-installers for WordPress, Magneto, Joomla, and pbpBB
• Enabling WP Auto Update and other WordPress tools
• Creating and managing email and FTP accounts
• Creating and managing databases
• Setting up URL redirects

And much more. As is the case with cPanel, the interface is not very beginner-friendly. I definitely prefer WP Engine’s and WPX Hosting’s interfaces.

How to add a domain to SiteGround?

You can do that through cPanel’s Add Domains form after logging into SiteGround.

After you click Add Domain, go to your domain registrar and point your domain at the correct DNS, which you can find at SiteGround under My Account -> Information & Settings:

This is a standard procedure that should be familiar to anyone who ever hosted a website.

Installing a WordPress website on SiteGround

When I logged into my SiteGround account for the first time, I immediately saw a WordPress-installation form.

Installation took less than a minute.

You can also install WP at any time using the WordPress auto-installer in cPanel.

Managing files at SiteGround

You can manage files either by creating an FTP username in cPanel and using an FTP client such as FileZilla, or by using SiteGround’s built-in File Manager.

Advanced users can also use Secure Shell (SSH) to access their servers. To use it, you’ll need to generate an SSH key pair from cPanel under the Advanced section, then use a tool like Putty to connect.

How quickly do websites hosted with SiteGround load?

As multiple reports, including this one, have consistently shown, websites that load slowly are abandoned by more users.

As always, I set up a test website on the server and recorded its load speed once per hour using GTMetrix.

In total, I took 47 speed measurement:

Overall, the average load time was around 0.7 seconds. The recorded minimum was 0.5 seconds and the maximum was 1.5 seconds.

That’s excellent speed and on par with what you’ll get from WordPress hosts that cost five times as much.

How do SiteGround’s servers handle traffic spikes?

Using LoadImpact, I simulated the type of server activity you would expect to see if 200 people visited the website simultaneously.

My goal was to see if the server maintained its performance in the face of such a traffic onslaught.

Here’s a summary:

The server response rate, indicated by the blue line on the chart above, remained stable at ~30 milliseconds throughout the test, with just one brief spike to a tolerable 132 milliseconds around 9 minutes into the test.

The above implies that even if your website regularly serves 200 (and possibly more) users simultaneously, the server’s resources will not be strained.

Here, again, SiteGround’s server performance matches that of significantly more expensive hosting services.

SiteGround Hosting safety and security

Does SiteGround offer free website backups?

SiteGround offers daily automated website backups on all its WordPress hosting plans. Each website backup (snapshot) is stored for 30 days and takes up no storage room on your server.

Restoring your website from a free backup costs $30. If you are looking for hosts that do not charge for restorations, see our list of top web hosts with free backups and restorations.

If you’re on either the GrowBig or GoGeek plan, you can also create up to five manual backups for free. If you’re on the StartUp plan, you’ll need to pay for each backup you create manually, which is a shame but not a major issue.

Manual backups use up server storage, which is the case for all hosts I’ve reviewed so far.

SiteGround Hosting’s automatic scans

SiteGround offers multiple malware-prevention plans:

“Guardian” is SiteGround’s custom-built malware-detection software. By default, Guardian scans are only done on request. However, if your website receives more than 1,000 visitors in a given month, Guardian will run scans automatically.

SG Scanner is the company’s premium (paid) malware tool and costs around $25 per month. SG Scanner will run daily automated scans regardless of the traffic your website receives.

Unfortunately, neither of the two options above include malware removal. If a virus or trojan is detected, SiteGround will provide a list of the infected files, but it will be up to you to clean up.

If you want malware detection AND removal, you’ll have to buy SiteGround’s Sucuri package, which costs a dizzying $200/year.

It’s a shame that they charge such a premium for a service that’s offered complimentary by multiple WordPress hosting providers, including WPX. Though given SiteGround’s relatively low price, this is perhaps understandable.

If free malware removal is important to you, check it our guide on top hosts that detect and remove viruses for free.

Is 2-Factor login authentication (2FA) available?

Yes, you can enable two-factor login authentication to enhance the security of your SiteGround admin panel.

To do this, log into your account, click My Details in the top-right corner, then click Enable next to Two-factor login.

Supported authentication applications include:

• Google Authenticator
• Duo Mobile
• Authenticator

Once you enable 2FA, you’ll need to provide a one-time passcode, generated by your authentication app, in addition to your regular password, to log into your account.

How many failed login attempts does the system accept?

I tried to log into my account using an incorrect password to see how many attempts SiteGround’s security system would allow me to make before locking down my account.

After more than 100 attempts, my account was not locked and I was still able to access it immediately using the correct password.

I thought the system was maybe recognizing my IP address as “safe” and therefore allowing me to make this many incorrect attempts. So I switched my IP address to one in Eastern Europe using ExpressVPN and tried again – with the same result.

I reached out to SiteGround’s Live Chat and asked about this, and they told me the system should lock my account after around 20 failed login attempts.

The support operator demonstrated this by trying to access my account using an incorrect password and indeed my account was locked down (they promptly reactivated it).

So it appears that an anti-brute-force security system is in place, but for an unknown reason, I was unable to trigger it from my computer.

What if you forget your account password and lose email access?

What happens if you lose access to your email account and your hosting password? Can you regain access to your server?

I asked support about this, and they told me that I would need to contact their support team and undergo a “custom legal procedure that varies from case to another.”  

I tried pressing for more detail, but all I could learn was that the procedure would likely involve providing a notarized proof of identity, among potentially other documents.

Additional services and freebies

Does SiteGround offer free SSL certificates?

As is standard practice at most reputable hosting services these days, SiteGround offers free LetsEncrypt SSL certificates for all websites you host on their servers.

To activate your certificate, fire up cPanel and scroll down to the Security section, then click Let’s Encrypt.

The free cert. is activated by default for the primary domain you add when creating your hosting account. For any additional domains you add later, you’ll need to manually activate the certificate from the page I show above.

Do you get a free domain with SiteGround?

As of early 2019, SiteGround did not offer free domains with its WordPress hosting plans.

However, they do sell domains. Here are some pricing examples:

Renewal and initial domain purchase prices are the same.

These are fairly standard prices in the hosting world. For cheaper domains, try dedicated registrars such as NameCheap.

Does SiteGround offer free website migrations?

SiteGround offers free migration on GrowBig and GoGeek plans. This includes moving one WordPress website or one entire cPanel account.

If you’re on the StartUp plan or if you want to migrate more than one website, SiteGround charges $30 per migrated website.

Migration usually takes less than an hour and does not involve website downtime.

It’s unfortunate that the free migration only covers one website, but it’s better than nothing.

How safe is it to buy from SiteGround?

Does SiteGround offer a money-back trial period?

SiteGround offers a 30-day full money-back guarantee on all plans and terms. What’s more, the guarantee covers the one-time setup fee you pay when signing up for SiteGround’s monthly terms.

This is a standard industry offering. If you need more than 30 days to test out a host, check out my best hosting with long money-back guarantees page.

To receive your refund, just cancel your account from the Billing page within the specified time – no need to contact support and request a refund.

The advertised refund time is up to 21 days but in my case, it was almost instant (see below).

Does SiteGround offer refunds on unused subscription months (pro-rated refunds)?

Officially, SiteGround does not offer pro-rated refunds – so if you buy the 2-year term and cancel after one year, you won’t receive a refund for the unused 12 months.

However, a customer support team member told me that if you’re “very unhappy” with their service and decide to cancel before your term is up, you should contact their Billing department and they’ll consider refunding any remaining unused months.

If you’re looking for more providers that offer these types of refunds, please see: best pro-rated refund hosting companies.

SiteGround Hosting Content Delivery Network (CDN)

SiteGround partnered up with the popular provider CloudFlare to offer free CDN to all users.

You can activate it from cPanel to instantly improve website load times for your visitors.

Some of you may ask: “but isn’t CloudFlare generally free for bloggers anyway?”

And you’re right – there’s nothing inherently special about being able to activate CloudFare from SiteGround’s control panel. It just makes things easier.

Plus, through SiteGround, you also get CloudFlare’s Railgun service for free – a $200/year value. Railgun improves connection speeds between your server and CDN servers by optimizing compression of some resources. Although to be fair, this is probably of little use to anyone but the most demanding webmasters.

SiteGround WordPress Staging

SiteGround allows you to create a clone (Staging) of your website. You can experiment on the Staging without altering the live site.

The Staging feature is available for GrowBig and GoGeek plans only. This was a bit disappointing, as many other hosts offer Staging on all their plans.

You can create a Staging from cPanel.

The Staging is created under a subdomain and comes with all the functionality and management options of a standard website.

When you’re ready to push the changes from your Staging to the live website, just click the Push to Live button:

Two notes:

1. Stagings use up server storage capacity equal to the size of your original website. Be careful.
2. When you push your changes to the live site, any changes you made on the live site since you created the Staging will be overwritten. If this is a problem for you, see my WPX Hosting review – their Staging feature solves this issue.

Live chat customer support quality

You can reach SiteGround’s live chat customer support team 24 hours a day, all year long.

Overall, I found their support team very capable. They answered my questions quickly and fully.

In the process of writing this review, I probably asked them around 30-40 questions total, and I received a satisfactory answer to each one.

Queue times are practically non-existent – I rarely had to wait more than 15 seconds before a connection to an agent was established.

My only gripe with their live chat is that it’s difficult to find. Most hosting companies prominently display a “Live Chat” button on their website, whereas SiteGround requires you to navigate a maze of information to find it.