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In 2004, three university students launched SiteGround in Sofia, Bulgaria — now dubbed the “Silicon Valley of Europe.”
Current CEO Tenko Nikolov started working as technical support at SiteGround back in 2004 when he was a law student.
SiteGround is now one of the largest independently owned hosting companies, with an international presence supported by six datacenters and over 600 employees. Overall, more than 2.6 million domains are hosted on their servers.
SiteGround has datacenters in Chicago, the UK, the Netherlands, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Singapore. For optimal performance, we recommend that you choose the datacenter that is closest to where most of your visitors are located.
Each of these datacenters utilizes high-end hosting technology and practices. For example, they use multiple power feeds to prevent electricity outages, and they also use multiple carriers to prevent interruptions to network connectivity. With these best-in-class datacenters, you get high availability, low latency, and exceptional reliability.
This network is amplified by the Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network). CDNs make up-to-date copies of your website on a regular basis and store them in cities around the world.
This is so a web visitor can access your site from a datacenter location nearest to them. The result: your site will load quickly.
SiteGround Features
SiteGround is widely recognized as a top hosting provider. They’re officially recommended by both WordPress and WooCommerce, and they’ve partnered with some of the most popular theme providers (Envato, Elegant Themes, etc.) — indeed, SiteGround is well on their way to becoming a household name like GoDaddy.
SiteGround is a gem when it comes to reliability and quality web hosting services. Their strategy is to provide services that are specially crafted to every client’s unique set of individual needs.
Customized Hosting Solutions
The web host does this by selecting hardware, crafting server architecture, and developing custom software solutions in a way that’s innovative.
SiteGround has made a name for itself as one of the best developers of game-changing technologies in the field of web hosting.
So, before you rush to choose one the more popular and most likely more costly web hosts, read on.
Site Tools
SiteGround recently replaced cPanel with their own in-house developed Client Area and Site Tools.
With this new interface, it’s much easier to manage your sites. These tools were built using REACT as a single application, which allows you to work more efficiently and access your account through any device.
Performance and Uptime
Server downtime is the worst enemy of any business site. This is because any time your website goes down (even for as little as 30 minutes), you lose potential clients, lose the faith of your current clients, and may drop in your SEO ranking.
That’s why it’s advisable to go with a web host that offers no less than today’s average of 99.9% uptime.
Uptime Guarantee: 99.9%
At SiteGround, that’s exactly what you get with a little extra kick to the mix. This web host offers all customers a 99.9% monthly uptime guarantee.
See below for how SiteGround compensates clients when they don’t reach that level. In my experience, you will likely never request a refund because they meet their target uptime.
Real-Time Monitoring
Unlike web hosts who track their servers in intervals of 1-5 minutes, SiteGround performs real-time tracking.
As a result, server problems are detected the instant they occur and as such fixed much faster. This real-time tracking coupled with the innovative server technology ensures minimal downtime.
Performance and Response Time
Many people get confused between uptime and response time. It’s really very simple. Uptime is the amount of time that the server is available. Response time is how long it takes the server to send out a web page. Just as with uptime, SiteGround provides excellent response times.
SiteGround only uses the latest technology in all its server hardware. User accounts are also moved occasionally from old hardware to new upgraded, faster servers to ensure flawless performance for all of its hosted websites at all times.
Fast Website Load Times
The company is one of the fastest web hosts out there with load time speeds ranging from 20 milliseconds to over a second.
Speed technologies provided include:
Why Does PageSpeed Matter?
Google PageSpeed is a measure of response time. But it is more complicated than you might think.
For example, a site might have a great PageSpeed on desktop computers, but a poor rating on tablets or mobile phones. The SiteGround support team can help you get the best PageSpeed possible — on all devices.
Server Security and Site Backups
SiteGround deploys sophisticated intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems that continuously scan for, and block, malware, and viruses.
Their proprietary systems enable them to fix problems immediately and foresee problems in order to take proactive action. This is unlike certain other web hosts, which perform their scans once a day or once a week.
Artificial Intelligence Defends Against Rogue Bots
In April of 2017, SiteGround launched is artificial intelligence (AI) platform to block malicious bots. Bots engage in brute force attacks that use massive server resources in an attempt to hack the login to a website.
Soon after the AI launch, SiteGround ‘s Hristo Pandjarov stated “We are already seeing amazing results from the operation of the system. Each hour it blocks between 500,000 and 2 million brute-force attempts across all our servers.”
Protection Against Hacking
Additionally, SiteGround has a unique isolation system in place, which protects your website from being hacked if someone else’s site on your server is compromised.
SiteGrounds managed WordPress hosting handles plugin and core updates for you. Since outdated plugins are frequently lead to hacks, this service is beneficial to WordPress users.
Video: This SiteGround video illustrates some of its main security strategies.
Free Automatic Daily Back-Ups
All SiteGround plans offer free backups and “restores” (restoration to an earlier version of your website). Specifically, you get free automatic daily system backups and 30 automatic daily backup copies.
Restoring your site to a previous version is easy: it takes a single click.
On-Demand Instant Backups
In addition, you can choose to create an “on-demand” backup instantly, at any time. This option is available for free on GrowBig plans and higher.
Situations where this might come in handy include before you publish significant changes to your website.
When you create an “on-demand” backup, you get the option to back up particular files, folders or email or your entire account.
Datacenter Security and Hack Alerts
Server security is your web host’s responsibility. But you are responsible for your website/application’s security. Poor coding can leave open doors to hackers. To help you, SiteGround offers Hack Alert, an early warning system developed by GlobalSign. Hack Alert can inform you of hidden malware in your site before it becomes activated.
SiteGround’s datacenter security includes:
The web host even goes as far as having replacement components for all server parts as well as replacement servers on hand to ensure performance is never compromised for too long.
Customer Support and Help
Another of SiteGround’s strengths according to the web host’s users is quality customer support help that’s professional, fast, and friendly.
The company deliberately places more than enough customer service representatives on each shift to ensure your questions and issues are addressed quickly whether you choose the route of live chat, email, tickets, or phone support. They also provide extensive tutorials that allow users to find answers and educate themselves.
Over Staffed Support Team
This over-staffing of customer support representatives sees SiteGround reply instantly to phone calls and live chat queries while submitted support tickets get at most a 10-minute wait for replies.
SiteGround also has a wide array of tutorials and webinars in its customer support arsenal. They feature useful basic and technical information on just about every web hosting topic.
Summary
From this overview, it’s clear to see that SiteGround excels in all of the important aspects of web hosting (i.e. performance, uptime, security, and customer support). In addition to that, the company’s hosting services come with tremendous features some of which are not offered by other web hosts.
Therefore, whether you’re a newbie or a pro, SiteGround makes a great web host choice as you get to enjoy efficiency, reliable uptime, flawless performance, outstanding support, class-leading security, and premium features regardless of which hosting plan you buy.
You get a generous 30-day free trial to request a refund, however, you should always do your homework before making a commitment to any hosting provider.
Site Starters was created as an education channel for people who are running a start-up website, or who are thinking of starting an online business.
