What makes a good web host?

It’s pretty much the same as what makes a good party host.

Whether you’re building a website or going to a party, you want a host that will let you do your thing, make it easy for you to find your way around, give you what you need to have a good time—and be available if you need them.

Now, while I can’t say anything for that friend’s birthday you have coming up next month, I can quite confidently say that, when it comes to your WordPress hosting, you can’t go past SiteGround.

If you have any sort of website or blog—business or personal—that’s built on WordPress, you also need a host that understands and caters to WordPress.

Enter SiteGround—a web hosting company with a variety of options that are built for and perfectly tailored to your CMS.

Why WordPress-specific Hosting?

So why is this so important anyway?

Well, your entire website relies on your host to keep running. So, as an extension of that, you rely on your host to keep reaching your audience. You know that to even think about having a great website, you need a web host that will deliver consistent and reliable uptime, fast speeds and good security—otherwise, what’s the point of building a website in the first place?

Beyond having a good host that delivers what they promise is having a host that integrates with and enhances your website. One that was designed specifically for the way your site was built and complements your CMS. The way SiteGround is for WordPress.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to use a WordPress-specific host if you have a WordPress website. Not at all. There are many great hosting companies out there that work well with any CMS, and you could get by just fine with any of them. But the key benefit of a WordPress-specific host is its integration with the CMS—basically, it’s tailored to WordPress and comes with a range of built-in optimization features that specifically enhance WordPress websites.

Plus, you get the support and expertise of a hosting company that fully understands WordPress, which can be a huge plus if you’re your own tech guy.

Our SiteGround Review for WordPress Users

SiteGround Company Overview

SiteGround was founded early in the Internet Era, in 2004—a year after WordPress itself was founded, I might add.

From there, it pretty much grew with the internet. Along with the millions of new websites coming into existence grew the need for hosting providers to support them. SiteGround quickly became a leading name.

Today, the company hosts over 500,000 domains (a number that’s still growing) on their wide range of hosting plans, from CMS-specific plans for WordPress and Joomla to high-performing cloud hosting and affordable shared hosting, and all the way up to enterprise solutions.

SiteGround has a solid reputation in the industry and comes endorsed by WordPress themselves, on top of consistently holding the top spot in WordPress Hosting Directory’s Best Hosting Providers list.

If that’s not enough to convince you to check them out, I don’t know what will be!

SiteGround WordPress Hosting: A Review of the Top Features and Benefits

As a WordPress hosting provider, SiteGround offers a huge range of features to make running your website that much easier.

Firstly, all of the WordPress hosting plans are managed, which means they’ll automatically update your site and plugins as security patches are released—in other words, your hosting service is looked after by someone. Things like your site speed, security and updates are all monitored, and support is on hand if you need it. Unless you have a lot of time and energy to devote to keeping your site running, secure and up to date, this type of plan will definitely take some of the pressure off.

Where SiteGround particularly stands out though, is with their built-in WordPress tools. These are designed to help you develop and manage your site, and they integrate beautifully with WordPress to make things generally faster and easier for you. Think: 1-click installer, free site transfers, support for the WordPress command line interface, staging, various levels of caching and more.

Bear in mind that while some of these features and tools are available on all plans, some are only available to users on higher-tiered plans.

On top of all that, SiteGround delivers fast speeds all-around through a unique combination of technology: a free CDN (CloudFlare), HTTP/2 and PHP7 support, leaner architecture and their very own caching tool known as the SuperCacher. If that’s all a bit too technical for you, just know that while your overall website speed is dependent on a lot of variables, SiteGround works hard to keep things efficient and quick—and if your site speed can be improved, this web host will do it.

Plus, the promise of reliable 99.99% uptime is certainly reassuring—and they deliver on their promise. No host can guarantee 100% uptime because that’s literally impossible, but SiteGround averages even above the industry standard of 99.9%. They manage to do this through a combination of efficient LXC technology, their own high-performing backup system, proactive monitoring and more.

If you want to know what that means for your website, an uptime rate of 99.99% means your site shouldn’t be down for more than a total of 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds each year, or 8.6 seconds per day.

And of course, a good host wouldn’t be what it is without top-notch security, constantly monitored as part of your managed plan, and dependable support. SiteGround easily ticks both these boxes.

They proactively monitor for WordPress vulnerabilities in your site and plugins, automatically applying updates and backing up your system daily. This hosting service also comes with a bunch of free security add-ons for valuable extra layers of protection. And, the support team is fantastic—responsive, available 24/7 and offering both telephone and live web chat for instant assistance as well as the traditional ticket system, which is practically unheard of.

SiteGround Plans and Pricing

When it comes to pricing, SiteGround isn’t the cheapest—but nor is it the most expensive. They offer three plan levels, starting at $4.95 per month and going up to $14.95 a month for when you’re managing multiple websites and need more storage space.

Now, this isn’t as cheap as some other competing independent web hosts (like InMotion Hosting, which starts at $2.95 per month and Web Hosting Hub, starting at $2.99 per month). On the other end of the scale, there are big name hosts like Bluehost with WordPress hosting plans starting at $19.99 per month. What you need to do here is compare the features offered by each host and weigh them against the price, ultimately choosing a web host that works for both your needs and your budget.

Something else you should note is that SiteGround’s plans are somewhat limited in terms of web space, which could be a downside if you’re expecting to grow quite quickly. However, in this case, you could pretty easily just scrap the shared hosting plan altogether and upgrade to a cloud or enterprise hosting solution—both of which are also offered by SiteGround and are simply not tailored to WordPress.

Who Should Use SiteGround?

With so many amazing features packed in, SiteGround makes for an incredibly useful tool no matter what level of skill or experience you have.

For WordPress beginners, SiteGround’s phenomenal support, knowledge base and tutorials will teach you absolutely everything you need to know and guide you along the way. They also have their very own range of free WordPress themes and plugins, so you can get everything to create a beautiful website in one convenient place and save yourself a lot of time and trouble.

If you’re running a business and its website, this host lets you register, host and manage domains all from your account, which will instantly streamline your operations by keeping them all in one place. SiteGround is easy to scale with your business as you grow, too, with cost-effective plans to suit higher storage and traffic needs as well as cloud and enterprise solutions if you want to move away from shared hosting altogether.

And even if you’re an experienced developer and WordPress pro, SiteGround is a great option to make your life easier and reduce your workload, especially if you’re managing websites for long-term clients. It gives you plenty of freedom to use FTP, different versions of PHP and other programming languages, and test new sites, themes and custom code on a dynamic staging site.

Final Words

SiteGround is a fantastic web hosting option for WordPress websites. It offers all the speeds, security, reliability and uptime you’d expect of any good host and heaps of handy, WordPress-specific tools and features to take a lot of the hassle and headache out of running your site.

It adds value no matter how much or little you know, so it’s worth looking into even if you’re a WordPress whiz!