My opinion about SiteGround, the WordPress host 2021 | Woocommerce Easy Booking ***** My opinion about SiteGround, WordPress 2021 hosting. In this article, I try to describe SiteGround's features, prices and offers, and explain a few concepts related to web hosting, websites and the Internet in general. According to my experience, SiteGround is the best WordPress 2021 hosting in terms of quality/price ratio: for 7$/month, you have a super fast hosting and are quiet for 4 years, with an instant 24/7 customer support.
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Introducing SiteGround SiteGround is a host specialized in WordPress, which hosts more than 2 million sites. The company was founded in 2004, has offices in 4 countries (United States, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and United Kingdom), and data centers on 3 continents. Their specificity is ultra-fast specialized WordPress and WooCommerce (managed WordPress hosting) hosting at low cost. SiteGround is specialized in WordPress, which is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) on the market. WordPress is recommended for sites and businesses that aim to grow over time: thousands of themes, extensions, and a large community are available. Specializing in a domain allows you to be better than a generalist: SiteGround is part of this new generation of specialized high-performance hosting providers. Specializing in a domain allows you to be better than a generalist: SiteGround is part of this new generation of high-performance hosters specializing in WordPress and performance SiteGround offers fast, free, and automated WordPress installation in all of its offerings. Indeed, each offer includes this WordPress installation, but also : 
a migration of your existing site hosted elsewhere 1
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Automated WordPress component updates an advanced caching system that makes sites very fast 24/7 access to expert WordPress and hosting customer support and many other things described below
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SiteGround speed: ultra-fast sites Their web hosting service is built on the best technologies available combined with their unique solutions created in-house. This powerful and practical approach makes your sites faster, safer and easier to manage. Customers who took their hosting after January 1, 2021 are hosted on SiteGround's Google Cloud platform and benefit from powerful and technically superior hosting services. Indeed, their Google Cloud-based hosting platform uses its ultra-fast network and SSD persistent storage. On top of that, SiteGround adds its own server configuration with several custom speed optimizations. The speed of your site can significantly affect its search engine visibility and conversion rates. These are important factors if you want your site to succeed and generate revenue for your business. That's why SiteGround works on in-house technologies that allow your sites to work faster:
Google Cloud with SSD persistent storage and ultra-fast networking NGINX Direct Delivery enabled for all sites Free CDN option for all sites Several software solutions at the server level: HTTP/2, Memcached, additional PHP Optimization via OPCache extension, and more.
Distributed SSD persistent storage SiteGround uses Google's SSD persistent storage, which has several redundancies. In the rare cases where the hosting server fails, they can simply run a new virtual machine on another hosting node in their cloud space and simply attach the distributed storage volume to the new instance, instead of the failed one, without wasting time restoring backups. State-of-the-art network for faster sites Google is known to maintain one of the fastest and most powerful networks, which means that using their service will result in high speed for websites hosted at SiteGround. It is hard to think of another better connected global network! 100% renewable energy SiteGround explains that their partner matches 100% of the energy consumed by its global operations with renewable energy and maintains a commitment to carbon neutrality. Google has been a leader in
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energy efficiency through its achievements in reducing computing emissions by improving service and data storage efficiency and diverting waste.
And my opinion on SiteGround, where is it? It happens: I first present you the official features. WordPress security at the top level SiteGround manages the security of your sites at the server and application level. They offer you a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate that protects your data, as well as daily backups that guarantee your peace of mind. They prioritize security and proactively protect your site from malicious code and hacking attacks that can affect your traffic and credibility. Custom WAF A WAF (Web Application Firewall) is maintained, for which they constantly write new security rules. Every year, they add hundreds of custom rules that block various known vulnerabilities. AI Anti-Bot System SiteGround also develops unique solutions such as its anti-bot AI system that effectively blocks millions of security threats every day.
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Domain name management Enjoy the convenience of managing both your domain and your site in one place. SiteGround offers affordable domain name registration and transfer services, a user-friendly domain management panel, DNS services, and services needed for domain name management. Domain name registration is offered with more than 50 extensions such as .com, .fr, .net, .info, .org, and more. Use their migration service to transfer your domain to SiteGround and manage it with your SiteGround hosting.
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My domain name at SiteGroundAdd caption
Messenger service Create at no extra cost an unlimited number of email accounts, professional email addresses with your own domain (like admin@sdesignservices.com), and check your emails from anywhere with their webmail clients. SpamExperts has been added to protect you against SPAM. You can also create forwarders and autoresponders, etc.
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The interface for creating an email via the cPanel offered by SiteGround
Quick installation of WordPress To install WordPress in your SiteGround hosting, you can do it the traditional way by sending the files via FTP, or in one click via their auto-installer.
The WordPress auto-installer at SiteGround via Softaculous
Availability (uptime) According to tests conducted by independent companies, the availability of SiteGround hosting is 99.99%. Servers on 3 continents, 6 data center locations, 194 CDN servers
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Location of SiteGround data centers on 3 continents, as well as CDN linksAdd caption Any purchase of hosting at SiteGround offers you to host your site in the data center of your choice : Europe
London (United Kingdom) Amsterdam (Netherlands)
North America
Chicago (USA) Council Bluffs (United States)
Asia
Singapore (Singapore)
In addition, the CDN offered free of charge by SiteGround, or the CDN of your choice, will serve the Web pages of your site from the location closest to your visitors. The CDN offered by SiteGround is Cloudflare, which is one of the major players on the Internet. It serves 90 countries and 194 cities around the world. According to my tests, for the same price, a site hosted by SiteGround in London loads faster in France than a site hosted by OVH in France.
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The loading speed of a site is more important than the location of its server. You can also tell Google in your Search Console if you are targeting a particular country:
Tell Google that you want to target a particular country If you are in France, Switzerland or Belgium, take the SiteGround London or Amsterdam data center. SuperCacher
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The 3 SiteGround caching systems SiteGround SuperCacher is a unique cache service developed in-house at SiteGround. When a browser requests a Web page from a SiteGround server, the Web server returns the HTML result and the cache stores a copy of this page. When the same page is viewed again by a visitor, the server will return the cached copy. The cache system is known to drastically improve the loading speed of websites. The SiteGround SuperCacher works with 3 layers: a static cache, memcached, and a dynamic cache. Option 1 is available for all their offerings. Options 2 and 3 are available for their offers 2 and 3 (GrowBig and GoGeek).
Free HTTPS SSL in just a few clicks
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My free SSL certificate at SiteGround An SSL certificate is required for each website. It adds the S to http which becomes https. Cryptons An SSL certificate can cost from 100$ to 1000$ per year per site: fortunately, SiteGround allows you to install one for free with no limits, in 3 clicks. This is the Let's Encrypt SSL. WildCard A WildCard SSL Certificate is an SSL that applies to all sub-domains of a domain name. Paid SSL SiteGround allows you to purchase an EV SSL for $499/year, if you are interested. Once purchased, its installation in your account is free, youpi. Dedicated SiteGround IP address You can get a dedicated IP from SiteGround for $54/year. See SiteGround hosting plans with 50% discount
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CDN
The CDN CloudFlare option at SIteGround A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a content delivery network that rapidly distributes content from websites around the world. It plays a major role in the performance of a website. SiteGround offers you the one-click activation of the free Cloudflare CDN, and also their pro offer ($14.99/month).
Free migration to SiteGround Get professional website transfer performed by their experts or automated WordPress migration with an easy-to-use WordPress plugin. A website migration usually means: change hosting provider, change hosting server. It involves transferring the files, database, and any site hosting configuration from one host/server to another.Migration carried out for you by the SiteGround team of experts SiteGround offers a professional migration service that includes the transfer of all your files and databases. The service is free for 1 site on the GrowBig and higher plans. If you have more websites to
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transfer, they also offer to perform your migrations for only 30$/site: they will do all the work for you! They migrate more than 50,000 sites per year and know all the ins and outs to make the process smooth.
Migration with their free SiteGround Migrator plugin
For those who migrate their site themselves, SiteGround makes the task easier by providing a specific plugin free of charge for all : SiteGround Migrator.
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SiteGround Backups
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SiteGround Backup and Restore SiteGround automatically makes a daily backup of your site and database files (and even emails). It is possible to restore the version of the day of your choice: site files, database, or all your sites at once.
Support client SiteGround 24/7
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Screenshot of the SiteGround support page This service will change you from your usual hosting providers ... SiteGround offers 24/7 customer support by phone, chat, and tickets, without waiting time.
Their stats : 90% of requests are resolved in the chat room there is practically no waiting time for the chat, you have a contact person almost immediately 2 minutes of waiting time on average only for phone support! I've already waited 30min or 1 hour with other hosting providers, what about you? ultra-fast response to tickets Of course, the support is in English, since SiteGround is an international company. Would you prefer support in English with a 2-minute wait that immediately solves most of your problems, or support in French with a 1.5-hour wait that does not solve any problems? SiteGround cPanel
The entire SiteGround cPanel
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The entire SiteGround cPanel SiteGround offers its own interface to manage your account with them and other options. Most of the additional features are in the cPanel where you will find dozens of features and options.
Officially recommended by WordPress.org SiteGround is part of the handful of hosts recommended directly by official WordPress. SiteGround hosting offers and prices
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Types of SiteGround hosting The first 3 offers on the home page: Reliable Web Hosting, Managed WordPress Hosting, and High Performance WooCommerce Hosting are the same: the purchase link leads to the same place, it's their reputable shared hosting, which starts at $6.99/month. Autoscalable Cloud Hosting is a different type of hosting called "Cloud", from 80$ to 240$/month. Cloud hosting is similar to a VPS, virtual dedicated server, reserved for particular uses.
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SiteGround hosting offers (February 2020) The prices displayed for the 3 SiteGround offers are: $6.99/month, $9.99/month, $14.99/month, for their StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek offers respectively. In Euros, this makes (currency exchange rate of July 20, 2021): $7.30/month, 9.90/month, $14.99/month.
Differences between offers Be aware that each of the plans offers what it takes for any standard site: speed, SSL, free CDN, daily backups, enough disk space for a huge site. Number of sites: 1 site for plan 1, unlimited sites for the other 2 plans, it's easy to understand. You will only be limited by the disk space and the number of visits on plans 2 and 3, but you can put as many sites as you want. 16
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Disk space: more than enough to put several sites in each plan. Monthly visits: you will find them in your statistics, like Google Analytics. Premium Bonus: 1 migration offered, SuperCacher, advanced backups, staging, collaborators
If you are not at 3$ per month, I recommend the second offer. If you know that you need the 3rd one for your own reasons (disk space, visits, GIT, white label), take the 3rd one. If the budget to within a few $ is very important to you, the first offer at 6€/month will already be very good.
Discount prices and promotion at SiteGround Attention, there is a tip to know: promotional prices are valid for your first purchase only. Knowing that you can buy your hosting at SiteGround for 1 year, 2 years or 3 years, it is in your best interest to take 3 years with your first purchase, because the prices will double when you renew. You read correctly: prices will double upon renewal. This is the "tip to know" at SiteGround. Some people call it a trap, but knowing that :
They offer a 50% discount for 1, 2 or 3 years (your choice). The discount price for 2 years is therefore equal to the regular price for 1 year. There is no obligation to renew after these 2 or 3 years. Their "regular" prices are displayed under the promotional prices. It is written under the offers: "We require annual/multi-year purchase paid in advance. VAT may also be charged. Special prices are applicable for your initial invoice after that regular prices apply. "Purchases are paid in advance, on an annual/multi-year basis. VAT may be added. Special prices are applicable for your initial invoice after that regular prices will apply ". The prices without discount are the normal market prices for WordPress hosting (10/20/30$/month).
So there's really no reason to feel trapped. If you don't know which offer to take, nor for how long: to maximize your price/quality ratio, you should buy the 1 or 2 offer for 3 years. Within 3 years, things will surely happen at your place, change of host, new site, resale of the business, etc., you have time to see it coming. You are not obliged to renew after these 3 years. You will be able to change host or do whatever you want. Many people satisfied with SiteGround stay at home by paying the regular rates from the 4th year and are still satisfied: it will be up to you. Here are some scenarios that will help you understand how they work:
You take the offer 1 to 6,99$/month for 3 years, it costs you 251$ = 218€, and you are quiet for 3 years. You take the offer 2 at $9.99/month for 3 years, it costs you $359 = €313, and you're safe for 3 years.
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You take the offer 1 at 6.99$/month for 1 year only, it costs you 83$ = 72€, and in only 1 year that will pass quickly, you receive a renewal invoice of 179$ for the next year, and you start complaining because the prices have doubled. Yet, you read this, so you were warned! Note: prices are exclusive of VAT: if you are a private individual, they should add VAT. There is an option at the bottom of the site to display the VAT.
If you're not comfortable with these discount stories, you can see the other WordPress hosters selected
I explain it all here in detail
Reimbursement: satisfied or refunded SiteGround offers a traditional 30-day money back guarantee for standard hosting, and 15 days for cloud hosting. Their conditions apply.
See SiteGround hosting plans with 50% discount Details of the advantages of superior offers Several sites on a single hosting on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans You can add as many additional sites as you want. Maximize your hosting costs and resource consumption by grouping less resource-intensive sites under a single account. Dynamic caching on GrowBig and GoGeek plans Make your sites fly with WordPress-specific dynamic caching. By default, SiteGround enables NGINX Direct Delivery for all sites on their servers, which means that certain elements, such as your images for example, will load faster from the server memory. However, to unlock the best caching performance and loading time on your WordPress site, you can use the higher levels of their SuperCache service. These connect your site to their dynamic NGINX-based cache and Memcached service via their SG Optimizer plugin (this option is available on our GrowBig and GoGeek plans).
Staging tool on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans Create a copy of your site and test the changes before putting them online. Useful when your WordPress site requires updates and changes as your business grows. However, large changes can be risky, and it's good practice to test any major changes in a secure environment that won't affect your site in production. SiteGround has developed a tool that creates a copy of your site, allows you to work on the test site, and then push the changes to your live site with a single click. This staging tool is available on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans.
Higher resource level of the GoGeek plan More server resources for your website. 18
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The GoGeek plan allows you to use more server resources than other hosting plans. This includes more simultaneous connections and processes, more CPU power, longer process execution time, and more. Advanced priority support on the GoGeek plan Problems treated as a priority by their best technicians. Problems initiated on chat or ticket by GoGeek users are prioritized to their most experienced support agents available. This ensures that the quality and speed of technical support provided is exceptional.
Git Integration on the GoGeek Plan To help your development workflow, Git is preinstalled on GoGeek servers. SiteGround has also developed a unique interface with Git that allows you to create repositories of the most popular applications (WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal and PrestaShop) via a visual interface. Collaboration
Add collaborators Interfaces include user roles and access rights. On the GrowBig and GoGeek plans, you can add collaborators to your site. They get their individual account and can log in to the site's site tools, allowing them to create or maintain it for you. Collaborators can also contact support.
Transfer ownership of a site to your customers You can now transfer a website from your account to another SiteGround client and make recommendations on the hosting plan and additional services they would need. Especially useful for site designers, developers and agencies who send sites to their clients.
Reseller white label and customer access On the GoGeek hosting plan, you can register your customers as users in your account and give them white-label access to the site tools of the sites you create for them. When your customer logs in to the site tools on their website, they do not see the SiteGround logo or name anywhere. Choose SiteGround, OVH, o2switch, 1&1 or another host?
SiteGround or OVH? Anyone who has ever dealt with OVH customer support or their DNS zone management interface will be quite curious to try SiteGround, and rightly so. For the same price, SiteGround is faster than OVH, which is more specialized in WordPress, and offers much better support.
SiteGround or o2switch? O2switch is the rising star in French hosting for standard sites like WordPress, with a 5â‚Ź/month offer.
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I have only taken one hosting with them, so my experience is limited, but it was not as good as with SiteGround in my case. In addition, O2switch's support is "à la française" : phone service open from Monday to Friday from 9am to 12pm, and from 2pm to 7pm, compared to 24/7 at SiteGround. This can quickly slow down your projects, or leave you in a critical state without help for hours or days on end. However, I will need to re-test their services and compare performance.
1&1 or SiteGround? Ionos or SiteGround? 1&1 is now called Ionos, but the name 1&1 remains in people's minds and on web pages. SiteGround has set new standards for the Web hosting industry in terms of performance, and other hosting providers are struggling to catch up. I don't have good memories of 1&1, but the offers are to be searched. The "1$/month" call rate applies to the 1st month, and then it goes up to 8$/month from the 2nd month on. I find it more petty than the SiteGround promotion that lasts 3 years. At first glance, SiteGround is faster than Ionos.
Do I host my own sites at SiteGround? Having worked on more than 500 sites over the last 15 years, I have a long history of using web hosting: various shared hosts, dedicated servers with system admin, and now cloud hosting. In my opinion, SiteGround is the best host for a company, a freelancer, or an individual who has 1, 2 or 3 "standard" websites: quality/price defying all competition quiet for 3 years for low prices site faster than competitors without taking the lead near-instantaneous support 24/7 community-proven host: no compatibility problems with your Web or WordPress providers (most serious Web providers will not work on a site hosted at OVH for example) Each website must choose its hosting according to its particularities, there are cases where other hosting providers will correspond better :
See SiteGround hosting plans with 50% discount Site with millions of visitors: in this case, we consider a dedicated server, or shared/cloud hosting 10 to 100 times more expensive than SiteGround, with outsourcing by system administrator specialists (leave me a word if you want good contacts in the field) Having worked on more than 500 sites over the last 15 years, I have a long history of using web hosting: various shared hosts, dedicated servers with system admin, and now cloud hosting. In my opinion, SiteGround is the best host for a company, a freelancer, or an individual who has 1, 2 or 3 "standard" websites:
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quality/price defying all competition quiet for 3 years for low prices site faster than competitors without taking the lead near-instantaneous support 24/7
community-proven host: no compatibility problems with your Web or WordPress providers (most serious Web providers will not work on a site hosted at OVH for example) Each website must choose its hosting according to its particularities, there are cases where other hosting providers will correspond better : Site with millions of visitors: in this case, we consider a dedicated server, or shared/cloud hosting 10 to 100 times more expensive than SiteGround, with outsourcing by system administrator specialists. You need to host dozens or hundreds of sites: in this case, I have a preference for CloudWays, and I explain it below You make dozens of niche mini-sites, PBN: you may need one IP per site (+54$/year at SiteGround), or other particularities; not being in this field, I prefer not to publish information on this for the moment.
SiteGround or CloudWays? I host most of my sites at CloudWays, which manages for me (and its other customers) Vultr and Digital Ocean cloud servers. They also offer, if it speaks to you, Linode, AWS (Amazon), and Google Cloud Platform. Why them? Because they allow me to manage many sites easily, create new virtual servers on the fly, apply configurations on 50 sites in one click (like ElasticMail), and offer flexible pricing that fits my business. CloudWays uses an interface that is designed to manage multiple servers and multiple sites very easily.
24/7/365 support like SiteGround and this new generation of hosters. There is no cPanel at CloudWays: it's a home-made interface, very technical, which requires a good understanding of the mysteries of the Web, networks and websites.
Conclusion In another article, I explain the importance of the quality of the hosting of a website. In short, it impacts the turnover of a company: you can't imagine the number of potential customers who go to see your company's site and decide not to contact you because of a negative detail on your site (or worse, who didn't find your site and end up at a competitor's site). I've noticed 4 major changes in the shared hosting landscape in the last few years:
Specialization (especially WordPress), and the race for performance The emergence and democratization of virtual servers and cloud hosting
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The prices of shared hosting. It is now normal that a powerful WordPress shared hosting costs 30€/month, and companies are starting to understand this, because part of their business often depends on their website. The 24/7/365 support that changed the game.
It is this last point that changes everything: once you get used to having a contact person immediately, at any time of the day, at night, at the weekend, during a holiday ... there is no turning back. Working on one's website is something that is done during and outside the "official working hours and days".
Internet users visit websites at all hours. Not everyone lives in the same time zone either. What a horrible feeling to have a technical problem with your hosting just when you were saying "here, I'll take the time to work on my site", and get stuck until Monday morning ... And who, nowadays, wants to phone, type numbers on the phone to find the way to a counsellor, wait for "an estimated waiting time of ...", while the whole world has switched to instant chat! Be careful, we're talking about unlimited and instant support for an automated service, such as Web hosting (or a phone, Internet, or SaaS software subscription with a monthly fee). Don't try to ask your web consultant, SEO, or developer to be available for you at any time: they are craftsmen, not multinational factories selling automated products to 2 million customers!
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