Many of you who come by this page might have the same dilemma I had when I was deciding which Hosting Provider to choose for my blog. There are simply too many options to choose from, with each hosting site packaging their offers in attractive promotional bundles which can make comparison a bit difficult. After much going back and forth between different competitor websites and comparison site, I have decided to host my website with Siteground.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through to make a purchase.
1. Affordable Price
With an affordable price starting from $3.95 per month, you are able to get started with hosting on Siteground. I am on the GrowBig (affiliate link) plan primarily because I intend to have more than one domain and am drawn to their premium features.
Below is a snapshot of the plan overview. For more details, do visit their plan comparison site.
- The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now
- The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordPress and Joomla website speed
- The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like staging and GIT integration
Read: WHY I SWITCHED FROM BLOGGER TO WORDPRESS PLATFORM
2. Excellent Customer Service
Speaking from personal experience, Siteground’s (affiliate link) customer service is superb. The turnaround time for a response I had was maximum two hours and their service hours is 24/7. The people at Customer Service were knowledgeable and one of them even offered a full refund (this happened within the first thirty days of my sign up) when he acknowledged that Siteground was not able to do a website transfer from Blogger due do the fact that Blogger do not provide FTP/MySQL access.
There is an option where you are able to view the Customer Service Officers’ profile and rate his/her service provided. There is also an option where you are able to inform the manager about any feedback you may have.
I love this feature as it shows that Siteground is serious about serving its customers and it signals that they are always available if its customers require assistance.
3. Siteground is officially recommended by WordPress
What’s more to say! Getting the official recommendation by WordPress is like getting a stamp of approval. It also means that Siteground’s (affiliate link) services are fully integrated with WordPress and the people are familiar with WordPress’s inner workings. I do not have to worry if Siteground has an update that might not be compatible with my WordPress site.
4. Free WordPress Migrator and Professional Transfer Service (comes free with GrowBig and GoGeek Plans)
With Siteground, you do not have to perform the site transfer yourself and worry about data loss or doing it wrongly. I personally wanted to utilise this service to migrate my Blogger content onto my newly setup WordPress account when I realised Blogger do not provide FTP/MySQL access which means I import my Blogger XML files into WordPress (link to another blog post)
Nonetheless, I trust that with 50,000 site migrations performed a year, Siteground knows what they are doing and the volume of client seeking their assistance speaks for itself.
5. Daily Backups of your Content
Siteground (affiliate link) automatically save daily backups and keep 30 copies on your account. This is an absolute critical feature for all content creators out there. You do not want to lose your hard work because of a technical glitch or someone hacking into your account.
6. Free SSL Certificates and CDN to Protect and Improve Site Performance
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security protocol for establishing encrypted links between a web server and a browser in an online communication. The usage of SSL technology ensures that all data transmitted between the web server and browser remains encrypted.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other web content to a user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and the content delivery server.
This service is effective in speeding the delivery of content of websites with high traffic and websites that have global reach. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered to the user.
Siteground has four dedicated server locations on three continents to serve all its clients worldwide. With this, you can rest assured that your site performance is top notch.
If everything sounds so rosy about Siteground, you may ask, “what’s the catch?”
Yes, one thing to note about is the disclaimer for its pricing –
Note: Promo price applicable for the first invoice. Once your initial term is over regular renewal prices apply.
Which means the renewal price is not the cheapest out there. However, if you sign up with their 36 months contract straight, you will be able to enjoy the discounted rate for three years. This can add up to some considerable savings. If you know you will be requiring their services for the long term, why not maximise this good deal and re-consider your options three years later? Who knows what new pricing options Siteground can come up with in order to stay competitive?
Hesitate no more, sign up today to maximise the offer with Siteground! (affiliate link)