Given the small number of Dutch hosting companies that offer top services and top performance to their customers, Rickid web design has started looking for an international hosting partner that does meet these requirements. What followed is a true search through the international hosting landscape for a “high quality” hosting company. The requirements included: the support team must be available for 365 days and 24/7 every day and have the right know-how. Also, hosting must have shockingly fast charging speeds, a super security, proper pricing, user-friendly interface, good reviews and the most important thing that the support can quickly switch to in case of problems such as if there is a webshop out of the sky. As a far as this search has finally reached, Rickid ended up with an international party based in Bulgaria called Siteground. This blog will show you what Siteground offers and whether this also suits your business.

What is Siteground?

Siteground was founded in 2004 by 2 students and has been through an extraordinary development ever since. It now has more than 500 employees and manages nearly 2 million domains including many well-known online users. SiteGround is a web hosting platform that allows users to buy a space for their website on the Internet. This space allows you to put your website or webshop of your company on the internet and as a result you are findable by third parties.

Hosting types

The company offers 4 plans for hosting types namely:

Web hosting

This plan is made for websites of small and medium-sized businesses, but can also be used by individuals.

WordPress Hosting

This plan would be suitable for users with a WordPress website. It is an easy-to-use option yet extremely powerful. More information will follow in this article.

WooCommerce hosting

SiteGround says it is “designed to help you sell more online.” As the name implies, this hosting is intended for those who use the eCommerce Woocommerce plug-in in WordPress to host their webshop. More information will follow in this article.

Cloud hosting

This hosting, purpose-built for “high performance sites”, takes a company site to the next level with high performance features.

hosting-options-siteground

Pricing

Startup

For $6.99/month, this plan offers one website, 10GB of space, 10,000 visits and unlimited traffic. It also comes with free SSL, daily backup, free CDN, free email and unlimited databases. The user gets both administrator WordPress and a 100% renewable energy match. If the user is in doubt after buying this plan, the company guarantees a refund within 30 days.

GrowBig

This one costs $9.99/month and promises a wide range of benefits. It comes with unlimited number of websites, 20GB of space, unlimited traffic and 2500 monthly visits. Like the Startup plan, GrowBig also offers free SSL, daily backup, free CDN, free email, managed WordPress, unlimited databases and a 100% renewable energy match. If this plan does not satisfy users, they can still get their money back within 30 days. Some of the other benefits are: on-demand copies, speed-enhancing caching, staging and an option to add contributors.

GoGeek

If a user pays $14.99/month, they’ll be offered unlimited websites, 40GB of web space, 100,000 monthly visits, and unlimited traffic. This plan also includes free SSL, daily backup, free CDN, free email, managed WordPress, unlimited databases and a 100% renewable energy match. Again, if this plan is not suitable for a user, they can get a refund within 30 days. There are a number of other advantages that captivate the buyers. These are speed-enhancing caching, on-demand backup copies, staging + git, add contributors, white label clients, highest level of resources, ultrafast PHP, and priority support.

hosting-options-2-siteground

Cloud hosting

The prices for the cloud differ quite a bit with the rest of the hosting plans. There are 4 different cloud hosting plans

Access – easy start in the cloud
For $80.00/month this subscription offers
3 CPU cores
6GB memory
40GB SSD Space
5 TB data transfer.

Business – optimal cloud experience
For $120.00/month this subscription offers
4 CPU cores
8GB memory
60GB SSD Space
5 TB data transfer.

Business Plus – advanced performance
The plan costs $160.00/month and includes
5 CPU cores
10GB memory
80GB SSD Space
5 TB data transfer.

Super Power – premium server power
For $240.00/month includes this plan
9 CPU cores,
12GB of memory,
120GB SSD Space
5 TB data transfer.

cloud hosting options

If you need more SSD space, CPU cores or memory, you can increase it even more by putting together your own cloud hosting. Depending on your wishes, you can place the sliders in the right position to compose the custom hosting.

build-your-own-cloud

Performance

Performance and uptime are the two most essential factors that keep a site running. They ensure that the site is always live for its visitors and that the servers are always up-to-date. With an average uptime of 99.99%, it is known as the best hosting company in the entire industry.

SiteGround is twice as fast as other hosting companies. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait long for your site to load. According to GTMetrix’s speed tests, the average load time of their sites is only 2.5 seconds. If all this seems too good to be true, users can also test the speed of siteground themselves on sites like GTMetrix.

gtmetrix siteground

In addition, Siteground has the latest speed technologies used to make WordPress load faster:

  • NGINX-based caching
  • SSD drives
  • PHP 7
  • Cloudflare CDN
  • HTTP / 2

Control panel

For most of its hosting plans, SiteGround offers the cPanel control panel, which is very easy to use. It also makes it easy for beginners to set up their websites. A theme called Crystal can help users change their cPanel theme, which offers many other functionalities in addition to visual changes.

In the Account Information section at the bottom of the main page, users can find all the necessary details about their hosting account, such as expiration date, IP address, name servers, server host name, hosting package, and server time.

left panel in cPanel

If a user wants to analyze their site, Account Usage is the place to go. This is located on the left side of the cPanel in the “Statistics” section. These are the items you see: main domain, disk space usage, inode usage, monthly transfer, email accounts, subdomain, parked domain, added domain, FTP accounts, and all SQL databases. The user can click further on ‘expand statistics’ to view the other details of their website.

SiteGround also provides backup tools if the user wants to restore files and folders. They don’t have to back up manually; SiteGround does the job automatically for them.

cpanel control panel

Datacenters

SiteGround servers are located in the following six areas:

  • London, UK
  • Singapore, Singapore
  • Sydney, Australia
  • Frankfurt, DE
  • Eemshaven, Netherlands
  • Iowa, USA.

The data centers claim to use the “highest level of redundancy for all critical components”. There is little to no risk of power outages as they use multiple power supply, on-site power generators, and enterprise-class UPS technology. All this guarantees a stable network connection. Google, SiteGround’s main data center partner, is one of the fastest and most powerful networks. Other powerful mechanisms provide faster connectivity and high bandwidth. Not to mention, SiteGround believes in green-friendly hosting and strives for 100% CO2 neutrality.

siteground data centers

WordPress Hosting

SiteGround offers some of the best features for WordPress hosting. These include free WP installation, free Migrator, free email, 24/7 WP support, unlimited traffic, one-click installations, managed updates, WP-Cli, WordPress staging and git integration and more. Below are some of these options described in more detail.

7/24 WP support

WordPress Hosting’s customer service team is among the top rated and versatile and helpful. They are available 24/7 to their needy customers. By understanding the customer’s concerns and resolving them in no time, they become more approachable.

one click WP installations

SiteGround saves users the time and effort of manually downloading and configuring WordPress. They offer an easy click-and-install option, and all a user has to do is simply customize their WordPress site. The WordPress Starter tool offers multiple designs and functionalities to choose from.

Free migration

By simply installing the free Migrator plug-in, a user can easily migrate their website. This plug-in safely transfers all the content of the website. Download the migration plugin of the wordpress repository here. A professional website migration service is also offered for 24,00 € / site Excl. Vat. The experts will then perform the migration for you and transfer your files and databases.

siteground-migrator plugin

Managed updates

SiteGround believes that prevention is better than cure. Therefore, it tracks vulnerabilities and patches from exploits to protect the site from potential threats. It also automatically updates WordPress sites.

Free Cloudflare CDN and SG optimizer

It offers an ‘unparalleled’ speed by displaying a ‘comprehensive WordPress solution’. It includes free CDN from Cloudflare and free SG Optimiser plug-in and is built on the best Google Cloud platform.

site-sg-optimizer-plugin-cloudflareCDN

WP-CLI

WP-CLI is a command-line interface that allows users to manage their WordPress websites from the command prompt. Upgrades can be performed, backups can be generated, new messages can be published, and most regular admin actions can be performed with a series of commands. This requires WP-CLI SSH access.

WordPress staging

SiteGround has a built-in Staging tool in Site Tools that lets you create and modify development copies of your WordPress websites. The simple push-to-live functionality publishes the development copy to the live version of your site. Before you publish your website, the tool backs up your live copy that you can later use to restore an earlier version.

SiteGround-Staging-tool-in-cPanel

Git integration

Siteground has a custom Git integration available that makes it easy to create Git repositories of your site. Git is simply a version control system for tracking source code changes during software development. Git integration is therefore a valuable tool for developers. This allows you to access, download, and edit repositories on local branches super-fast.

It can also be used to easily implement updates. The Git integration is supported not only by WordPress but also by other CMS systems such as Joomla, Magento and Drupal.

WooCommerce Hosting

This hosting for selling products and services also gives you all the options available to a WordPress hosting plan.

Pre-installation

The WooCommerce plug-in is pre-installed. It also installs the famous Storefront theme in advance, so that the workstation is fully ready to further configure the shop. Woocommerce allows you to sell any product or service, whether it’s physical products or digital content.

Out-of-the-box payment and shipping

SiteGround offers several options to pay for the product a user purchased. In addition, options are available that allow them to configure their shipping settings.

woocommerce-hosting-siteground

Joomla Hosting

joomla-hosting-siteground

Joomla is a popular Content Management System (CMS). It’s an open-source platform. Siteground provides fast and secure web hosting for Joomla sites. The one-click solutions bypass all the long and complicated procedures, saving a lot of time. In the Client Area, there are all the essential tools and services that become incredibly useful. Automatic installation is another economical option. Other site tools enable quick uploading of files to the server and help create databases and emails. For further website management, SiteGround provides first-class security, easy site and domain management, as well as reliable email services.

Drupal Hosting

drupal-hosting-siteground

Drupal is another free open source Content Management System (CMS). If a user needs high-quality Drupal hosting, Siteground can be a great solution. It offers a free Drupal installation. Drupal and its modules work smoothly on SiteGround’s servers. The websites created are safer and faster. The 24/7 expert help from SiteGround is always there to answer all a user’s questions. There are many other features such as SSH, Cloudflare CDN and a daily backup.

Magento hosting

magento hosting siteground

SiteGround offers a free Magento installation. There are other features such as domain name registration and ecommerce friendly hosting. It optimizes the server to make it compatible. Magento and also offers 24/7 daily backups. There is also free help with migrating and Cloudflare CDN integration.

Benefits Siteground hosting

  • Faster site loading
  • Excellent performance and uptime
  • Green-friendly hosting
  • Numerous hosting options
  • 24/7 customer support
  • Free daily backup
  • 30-day refund policy
  • Pre-installed plug-ins
  • Customizable sites
  • Easy-to-use dashboard
  • Simple control panel
  • Many data centers
  • Free CDN and SSL
  • Site migration plug-ins
  • Easy sign-in process

Cons of Siteground hosting

  • Higher price for renewal
  • A strict policy for overuse of data

Customer Service & Support

There are three ways to solve problems that you may encounter with the hosting of your website namely through the tutorials,the online knowledge base or via direct contact.

Tutorials

There are several tutorials available such as how to start with siteground, WordPress, email, drupal SSH and FTP, Joomla, Cloudflare and php Mysql. In these tutorials you will find several topics that will help you further. Step by step you will be guided through the subject, which will ultimately bring you to justice for the solution.

Knowledge bank

Another is possible to consult the knowledge base of Siteground. It covers various questions that you as a user can have, such as “how do I point my website to SiteGround?” or “What is a name server and DNS?”.

Contact via chat or phone

If you prefer to have personal contact with the support department, you can use the contact options. You will then receive the following choices technical support, advanced technical support, payment issues or affiliate support. If you have made a choice here, you should submit the issue by sending a description of it. Once you’ve done this, you can choose whether you want to contact support by calling or via live chat. A big advantage is that the Siteground support is available 24/7 to their customers, regardless of which account you have closed.

siteground help center

Conclusion

Rickid recommends SiteGround to anyone looking for reliable and cost effective hosting options especially for businesses. SiteGround has tools that make managing WordPress sites easy: one-click installations, managed updates, WP-Cli, WordPress staging, and git integration. Support responds very quickly with the necessary WordPress expertise available 24/7. The latest speed technologies are used that make WordPress load faster: NGINX-based caching, SSD drives, PHP 7, CDN, HTTP/2. In addition, Siteground proactively protects wordpress sites from hacks

SiteGround is popular, especially in the WordPress community, and is recommended by WordPress itself. Well-known websites use SiteGround, such as Syed Balki, founder of WPBeginner and Joost De Valk, Yoast SEO founder. With all the features it offers, it won’t disappoint any user. Not only WordPress, but it’s also the best and easy option available on the market for WooCommerce. Other CMS systems such as Drupal, Joomla and Magento are also excellently supported.

Want to know more about Siteground?

Rickid web design is a web designer who specializes in building webshops in WordPress and WooCommerce combination with hosting provider siteground. If you want to host a website/webshop or domain name at Siteground but you don’t know how to properly set it up Contact Rickid Webdesign! Rickid gives you practical information about Siteground. Finally, Rickid can give you a full inventory of the tools you need for your hosting project. Do you still want to give up the project? Rickid can then help you and also give you a quote and time estimate when hosting your project. Contact Rickid today!