SiteGround Review My Opinion From A Happy Customer

Last updated on August 1st, 2018 at 06:35 pm

Are you unhappy with your current hosting account? As bloggers, we all know that there are several companies that offer hosting. This SiteGround review is going to show you why I chose them over any other hosting company.

Before moving to SiteGround, I had been with HostGator for 8 years. When I started this blog, I was still on HostGator. As you know, I started this blog to move away from freelancing and turn this blog into a full-time business through digital products and affiliate marketing, you can read my story here.

I was pretty much happy with them and would’ve stayed had I not run into the issues I started having. One day it took well over 10 minutes to reach support.

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Truthfully, I don’t even remember why I needed support. However, I do remember that I got tired of waiting and closed out the live chat without ever reaching anyone.

I’ve now been with SiteGround for 8 months and I felt like it was time to share my personal experience.

I didn’t want to write this SiteGround review too early. It was important for me to wait to see if I was happy with them, before I recommend them. Plus, I wanted to get familiar with some of their features.

Why I Moved

No one ever wants to spend time moving a site. If you’re a new blogger, eventually, you’ll have to move your blog to another hosting account.

Don’t worry, it’s just a fact of blogging life. The great news is that you’ll end up with a great hosting account. (if you do your due diligence before you move)

Or you could end up making the biggest mistake of your life. Well, nothing in blogging is that horrific.

I can honestly say, I am happy with my decision and I will be staying put for a while.

Of course, life would’ve been great if I didn’t have to move at all. I remember it took me a whole weekend to get all my sites moved.

Besides HostGator’s support, I also moved because I was paying a lot of money monthly.

At that time, this blog was extremely new. I was considering moving from HTTP to HTTPS.

Unfortunately, with HostGator, I was going to have to pay extra. Because the plan that I was on, did not allow HTTPS.

I was already paying $24.95 per month and didn’t want my costs to go up. So I started browsing online trying to find a better more affordable hosting solution.

I had heard so many people talking about EIG hosting companies, while I really don’t know what that means. All I knew was that people were having terrible experiences with them.

So my goal was to find an affordable managed WordPress hosting company that had great customer support.

How I Made My Decision

I spent about a week doing some research and I read review after review about different hosting companies. That’s how I found out about SiteGround.

I spent time reading all the different reviews from customers. Before I buy a product, I’ll always spend time reading the reviews of customers. After all, the customers are usually the companies biggest cheerleaders.

After reading all the reviews, I reached out and contacted their support. They took the time to look at my Hostagator account traffic and then recommended the GrowBig account.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t actually move forward after he recommended which account I should choose. Instead, I spent time reading all the features of the different hosting plans.

Finally, I decided to move ahead and sign up.

I paid for 3 years in advance, because I wanted to save as much money as possible.

Plus, I have no doubt that I continue working hard to grow this blog. As you know, my goal is to move away from my WordPress freelance business. If you don’t know my story, you can read it here.

I Migrated My Own Sites

SiteGround does offer a free site migration for your first site. If you have more than one WordPress blog, I believe it will cost $30 per site. I am not 100% sure on the pricing, you may want to contact their support if you’re moving more than one blog.

Related: How to Move a WordPress Site From One Host to Another

Regardless of whether you choose to move your own blog or use their support to do it for you, here are a couple of the things that I am sure you’ll love.

Quick Customer Support

As you know, I hate slow customer support, that’s one of the reasons I left HostGator. The first thing I did, was test out the support system in SiteGround.

I was amazed at how quickly they responded to my live chat ticket. You can watch the video below to see how quickly they responded. I’ve later learned that the GrowBig and GoGeek clients get priority support.

Not only that, but I love that they take their support seriously. I don’t know about you, but I only contact their support if I need help ASAP.

This means that I need help with something right now, not tomorrow or 5 hours from now.

Host Multiple Websites

I chose the GrowBig plan because I have more than one WordPress site. Unfortunately, the StartUp plan only allows you to host only one blog.

If you know that you’ll be starting another WordPress blog anytime soon or just want more space to for your growth, start with the GrowBig plan. You won’t have to worry about looking for a new hosting account anytime soon.

<< Compare the Different Hosting Plans >>

Known For Their Speed

We’ve all heard the importance of using a cache plugin to help us improve our website speed. When I was hosting my site with HostGator, I used W3 Total Cache.

As soon as I moved to SiteGround I started using their SuperCache plugin. SiteGround is known for working hard on improving the speed of the websites. You can read about their speed technology, to see what I mean.

Free SSL

If you’re still not using HTTPS for your website, why not? So many hosting companies now offer Let’s Encrypt and SiteGround happens to be one of those companies.

While I am not using the Let’s Encrypt offer from SiteGround, my blog is using HTTPS. I purchased my certificate from Namecheap.

Free CloudFare for HTTPS

When I first moved to HTTPS, SiteGround did not offer free Cloudfare services for HTTPS. I believe that you had to pay an extra $10 per month to turn it on.

However, maybe a week after I switched to HTTPS, I contacted their support to ask them about their CloudFare service.

Here’s the support ticket of how they responded. You can see it only took 10 minutes for them to respond to my ticket.

Their support basically told me that they now offer free SSL for anyone who is using HTTPS. I was so happy, I had them turn it on for me. The best part is that it doesn’t cost me anything extra 🙂

If you start using SiteGround, which you can get signed up here. Make sure that you use their Free CloudFare service.

Free Backup and Restores

If you sign up for the GrowBig or GoGeek plan, you won’t have to worry about backups or restores. They do offer this service for the StartUp plan, but it is extra. I don’t know the price, you’ll have to contact their support.

While they do offer free backup service, I don’t recommend that you rely on them 100%. Every blogger needs to take care of their own backups.

There are several plugins that you can use like BackupBuddy, Updraft Plus or any other one on the market. I personally use BlogVault for this blog.

My 7 Months SiteGround Review

Now that you can see everything that SiteGround offers, you might be like me. You may NOT know that much about hosting.

I don’t, I just know that I need a hosting account that I can rely on and that has great uptime service. The last thing I want to worry about is if my site is down.

I personally use Uptime Robot to monitor my sites as well as my clients sites. So far so good, I haven’t had any issues.

While I’ve only contacted their support a few times, I don’t have any complaints with the wait time.

Right now, I am very happy with the GrowBig plan. As I said, I prepaid for 3 years in advance. Of course, when the 3 years comes up, I’ll have to decide what I want to do.

Hopefully, by then my blog traffic will have grown and I’ll have built up a loyal tribe. If so, then I’ll decide if I want to upgrade to one of their other accounts. Or I may have to migrate my site to WP Engine.

Either way, I’ve stopped looking for a home for my blog. For now, SiteGround is home and I highly recommend them.

Upcoming July 4th Sale

If you’re like me, you love saving money. Now’s your chance, especially, if you’re looking for a new hosting account. Starting July 1 – July 4 2017, SiteGround is offering 70% off on their hosting plans.

This means that you’ll be able to save BIG.

What I recommend you do is spend this weekend doing your due diligence on SiteGround. If you feel like they are the right hosting company for you.

Come back here on July 1st and pick up your hosting package through my affiliate link. As a “thank you” for purchasing through my link, I’ll send you a copy of my Ebook.

Make sure you clear your cache before you buy. As you’ll only get the Ebook if I get credited for the sale.

Final Take Away

If you’re unhappy with your current hosting account or just starting a blog, I suggest you do your due diligence before you pay anyone.

The last thing you want to do is spend money on any hosting service, only to find out you’re not happy.

I am not sure if SiteGround offers a refund on their hosting plans if you’re unhappy with them. That’s why you want to make sure that you contact their support and ask them as many questions as possible.

Sit down and write out all your possible questions.

That’s what I did before I migrated my sites. I wanted to make sure that it was the right decision for me.

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Have you ever moved your WordPress blog to another hosting company? Were you happy with the your decision? Let me know in the comments below.