This article is for the SiteGround’s clients who find the renewal prices too high for the service. This is for shared hosting clients, i.e. who is using the following SiteGround’s plans: StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek.
Below I will explain what options you have after the first billing period is over if you don’t want to pay 2-3 times more as you paid before.
Please note, this article was written a while ago (you can see this by the dates of the previously published comments).
The general idea of the article and the recommendations are still actual though.
If you do NOT use WordPress, then this section with my recommended hosts is for you. Other sections include SiteGround’s alternatives mostly to WordPress users.
Since 2013 I’ve been using more than 100 hosts and got plenty of personal experience regarding hosting promises, client support, performance and the risks that hosting clients have. Apart from that I’ve been analyzing reviews and getting my readers’ feedback on particular hosts. In addition, I’ve been monitoring 15 hosts performance since 2016. Also, I have been recommending some of the best hosts I’ve encountered on my way and I constantly get my readers’ feedback on my hosting recommendations which really encourages me.
My experience helps me see the hosts which suit better for different kind of users with certain requirements and in particular circumstances. And in this article I’d like to sum up my recommendations regarding alternatives to SiteGround shared hosting for current SiteGround’s clients.
Being happy with SiteGround during the first cheap billing period
Before all, SiteGround’s shared hosting plans had been one of the best possible options for beginners. And it used to be a superb option for people who start out with their website or who value a high-quality and friendly customer support.
Being a current SiteGround user or considering this host, you might notice that the renewal price which is triple of the initial price is probably too much. And it makes you sad.
What are your options now?
Why not staying with SiteGround?
Indeed, this is a matter of two arguments: the value you get for the price and your priorities. To put it simply, if you are generally satisfied with the current service, and the price increase is just a not pleasant fact (but you can cope with after all), then there’s no reason to leave SiteGround.
The point is that SiteGround’s shared hosting business model is based on attracting clients for comparatively low price. But after the initial period which can last up to three years, the price increases significantly. And this is where SiteGround makes money.
In other words, as regards SiteGround’s shared hosting, this host makes most money on renewals. Otherwise SiteGround could not run its business and could not provide the clients with outstanding service during the first billing period.
The clients who win the most with SiteGround are the new SiteGround’s clients before renewal. This is the SiteGround’s market advantage – offering generally good services for the small price for the first invoice.
But there are also many clients who did not utilize the SiteGround features to a great extent or did not use technical support as often as others. And these clients may question if it’s worth paying a triple price for the renewal period now.
If you are one of these questioning clients, I have something to offer to you. But the options come with their drawbacks. And I explain it all in the following chapters.
Alternatives to SiteGround – the criteria of the options
When speaking about SiteGround alternatives you always need to keep in mind your priorities. They can be price, performance, support approach, tools and other options.
In other words, you need to clearly understand what you may sacrifice if you want to cut the increased hosting cost.
To make the structure of my article easier, I will use the price as a starting point when suggesting you alternative options to SiteGround.
Almost all alternative hosts which I have chosen have the same prices for both first billing period and renewals. In other words, the prices of these alternative hosts do not increase after the first billing period. This is a long-term advantage compared to SiteGround.
Also there is another rule of thumb that makes sense to always keep in mind. If one hosting is cheaper that another, then there are more restrictions with the cheaper host (e.g. the number of website hosted). Also, if everything looks equal except the price, then the cheaper host has the worse quality (usually, this means worse or/and slower support).
Let’s get to the particular recommendations now.
Why I don’t recommend A2 Hosting as an alternative to SiteGround in this article
Indeed, in this article you will not see me recommending A2 Hosting, although this is one of the hosts that I recommend to some users.
The reason is that A2 Hosting has basically the same flaw as SiteGround. I.e. it has very attractive prices for the first billing period. But the renewals are quite expensive. Thus, migrating to A2 Hosting will simply repeat the current situation in the future in a year or two and then you will likely want to search for another host to migrate to cut your hosting costs.
And in this article I want to give you a strategically as long-term solution as possible about which host to move from SiteGround. That’s why I suggest you other hosts which do not have the too high prices after the renewal. But of course, if you intend to migrate from A2 Hosting too after the first billing period is over, you can do it. It’s also a sort of strategy to move from one big host to another using the cheap promotional prices for the first couple of years.
But I will focus on a long term hosting choice for you. At the same time it does not mean that you have to sign up for the long-term contract! Many hosts that I suggest as alternatives to SiteGround in this article have similar prices for both monthly and yearly plans, or at least the prices do not increase at the renewals.
Alternatives to SiteGround’s GoGeek plan
If the renewal price of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan is generally okay to you
This section will not help you pay less, but you can get more for the same price switching to another host. If you need to pay less than SiteGround’s GoGeek’s price, skip to this section.
The renewal price of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan is almost $35/mo. If you have just one website, then for this price you can get a fully managed hosting service provided by a number of companies. (By the way, for hosting multiple websites see the sections below starting from this one.)
And in super-duper short, “fully managed” means qualified and approachable support, turbo-charged performance, tools and services which make the technical part of managing your site easier such as advanced security, more frequent or longer-stored backups, staging area. Some hosts even offer no-hassle and free service for cleaning your website in case of contamination or a hack (e.g. WP Engine, Kinsta).
These features make the price of fully managed hosting bigger compared to more mass-market (and more affordable) hosts. And if you have multiple sites, it can be quite expensive. But if you have just one website, then these hosts can suit you perfectly for the same budget as you pay with SiteGround now. Moreover, you will likely benefit from migrating, because these hosts are in the higher quality category than SiteGround.
Although SiteGround’s GoGeek plan may look like not bad on a shared hosting market, it’s still has a kind of legacy of a shared hosting performance. In other words, if you website is heavy (very resource-intensive) and your speed expectations are high, SiteGround may be not the dream choice for you.
And if you are ready to pay the renewal price of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan, but you are lacking speed performance, then I’ve got two articles for you so that you could have a look at alternative hosts within a similar pricing range:
If you follow the above links and read the articles, you will see that the hosts that I can recommend in this segment are WP Engine (if you have 1 site), Kinsta (if you have 1 site), WPX Hosting (very affordable for upto 5 sites) and LiquidWeb.
I’d separately emphasize WPX Hosting. This is even a cheaper option whereas its performance and features are top-notch considering the plan allows upto 5 websites. I’ve reviewed this host: a short review, a longer review and the analysis of WPX Hosting reviews.
A comparatively advantageous feature of the recommended hosts I’ve just mentioned above as SiteGround alternatives is that you can pay monthly and the price does not change after the initial period. Also, the per-month price is not very different compared to a longer term contract. Paying monthly has a great advantage that if something goes wrong you are not tied with a long-term contract.
If you have not decided yet, the sections below describe other alternatives to SiteGround.
If you want to pay less than the renewal price of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan
If your main concern is pricing then here are my thoughts for you. SiteGround’s GoGeek plan after the renewal has a pricing of a fully managed hosting. In other words, you can switch from SiteGround to another host and pay less, but it depends on how many websites you have and what resources and support options you need.
Having just one website
If you have just one WordPress website which is not very large and not very popular, have a look at FlyWheel hosting. This host is a comparatively low-budget alternative to SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. But its disadvantage is that it’s quite restricted in terms of storage (5 GB) and monthly traffic (25K visits per month). And it does not offer phone support. Daily backups and staging area are included. $25/mo (month-to-month contract) is a good price for this kind of offer. And if you have even less monthly visitors (upto 5,000 visits), then there’s a FlyWheel’s Tiny plan for just $15/mo monthly plan.
Another affordable option is LiquidWeb’s Spark plan. This is a more classic hosting solution, although very solid one. $19/mo when paying monthly. More technical uses or the owners of the website with high traffic will likely prefer this affordable option.
If you have not much traffic, then Lightningbase can be a super affordable ($10/mo paying monthly) but really high-performance option for you. A pretty small host which focuses on a very-well managed infrastructure.
WPX Hosting is also a great and affordable option. If you appreciate very user-friendly support (read my review analysis of WPX Hosting reviews), it’s definitely worth taking a look at it. This comes with price $25/mo when paying monthly. This host is the most advantageous when you have multiple websites though (it’s cheaper per site then).
If you want even less price and want a comparable resources with what you have with SiteGround (number of websites allowed, storage, traffic), then you need to sacrifice something. The following sections are about it.
Having multiple websites
If you have multiple websites which are not very large in size, I suggest looking at the following two options.
The first one is WPX Hosting, that I already mentioned above and reviewed here. Its main advantage is support (read more about it here). $20-25/mo is the price for 5 websites and 10 GB Storage.
Another option is a small host that focuses on fully-managed WordPress hosting and higher performance – Lightningbase. This is a great managed WordPress hosting which is very affordable if you have upto 3 sites with not much traffic. And for the price less than $20/mo (month-to-month contract) you get hosting for 3 domains, 5GB space, upto 25K views monthly, superb performance, great support, reliable 30 daily off-site backups, CDN and more than ordinary security protection.
Compared to SiteGround’s GoGeek plan, Lightningbase hosting does not have a phone support and it is a much smaller host. But this host will give you reliably superb performance.
Sacrificing the features and/or quality and saving more
Cutting the costs on your hosting. There are cheaper hosting plans which provide on-par performance. There are so called semi-dedicated or advanced shared hosting plans which have extra CPU and RAM server resources allocated for to account. The typical price for this kind of service is below $20/mo and often within $15/mo.
For this price you don’t get the support that is ready to please you every minute, but there’s a technically efficient support. There’s no advanced security, but the default hosting security is provided. There’s no staging area and sometimes there are even no backups. So, the most importantly, you get the good performance (speed) comparable with what you get with SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. There’s no whistles and bells, but you get a solid hosting option which is enough in many ways.
My recommended hosting plans which can help you save a good sum of money compared to GoGeek plan by SiteGround are the following guys in the pricing segment $10-16/mo:
- VeeroTech (SSD Business or WordPress Pro plans). On a top of comparatively good performance and really helpful support you get daily backups (stored for 30 days) and extra security in terms of DDoS.
- GeekStorage (Performance Hosting plans). It’s even cheaper than VeeroTech. But you don’t get even less whistles and bells. In particular, there are no automatic backups except one last-night backup for emergency purpose. Performance and ticket support – bare minimum alternative of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan if you want to save big with no speed sacrifice.
- I also want to draw your attention to semi-dedicated and high-performance shared hosting plans at the following providers: MDDHosting, HawkHost and even Cloudways (I recommend it carefully with restrictions – see this post). Also, I have published the article that consists of my email recommendations to one of my readers who needed a hosting alternative to SiteGround. For the price in the range of $10-16/mo you can get a pretty powerful shared hosting option.
Saving even more
If you want to pay even less than $10/mo (and I’m talking about the renewal price, not the promotional price), then you are entering an ordinary shared hosting zone. And so you have basically two options:
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Sacrifice the speed of your site (in addition to sacrificing all the other whistles and bells like advanced security, backups, staging area, extra approachable support etc). It’s not a bad option if you have a light-weight website. Just choose an affordable shared hosting. Of course it can’t be compared to the service of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan, but if you decided to downgrade like that, it’s still a way to go. I’d recommend then going to my main page with the recommended hosts and choose the one that fits your budget and your other requirements. Among others I’d like to emphasize GeekStorage attractive Performance plans (considering their server performance and adequate support).
But I would not recommended going with a very affordable shared hosting plan if you have a heavy or multipurpose theme with tons of plugins. For this kind of websites (as well as for e-commerce websites) you need more server power. In other words, raise your budget and read the above sections where I write about more powerful hosting options.
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The second option to save big (and even win the speed) is to buy a self-managed VPS or cloud hosting like DigitalOcean. You need to know Linux or be ready to learn it. It’s a huge sacrifice in a technical support and quite big savings. For as much as $5/mo you get speed as with $15/mo shared hosting. Anyway, I would not recommend going this cheap way unless you know what you are doing.
In most cases focusing on your business is more important than spending time on learning and managing the server. In addition you have a big risk of downtime if something goes wrong. And if you are not experienced in Linux, “going wrong” can be often.
If you have an e-commerce website(s)
If you are running an e-commerce website, let me tell you a word of caution – I’d definitely recommend stop thinking of shared hosting plans and move to more powerful e-commerce solutions with knowledgeable technical support. It will cost $30/mo and more. Read this for more details.
The hosting recommendations and considerations that I’ve written above in this article totally apply to e-commerce websites too. But you need to keep in mind that e-commerce software requires more server resources to run smoothly. Technically, you can even use an ordinary shared hosting for your e-commerce website. And many hosts do advertise this option on their cheap shared hosting plans. But if you want to have an acceptable speed, you need a VPS-level hosting.
There can be only one reason why you may want using comparatively affordable shared hosting (less than $10/mo) for e-commerce website. Even if the hosting plan is a powerful shared hosting like SiteGround’s GoGeek, it can be used only in case of your business is not really running yet and you still in the phase of setting it up and tuning it. Don’t expect to get any decent speed. And of course no sweet cookies like backups, staging area, extra security and so on.
You can’t get a desired fast speed on a shared hosting running an e-commerce shop. It will be not as fast as you would really want it. It does not mean very slow, but definitely your visitors will notice that it’s not fast.
However, if GoGeek plan of SiteGround did satisfy you with speed, then the most powerful shared hosting options from other hosts can still be an option for you. Read the section above for the options in this case. In short, I recommend the powered shared hosting plans in a pricing range of $10-15/mo provided by VeeroTech and GeekStorage. You get not worse performance for less money, but you lose extra approachable support and other sweet options that you enjoy at SiteGround’s GoGeek plan.
High-performance or semi-dedicated shared hosting plans (I describe these options here) can also be used.
But after all, the VPS-level hosting plans with the pricing starting from $30/mo is something that you ideally need to look for to get acceptable speed and service. Get back to the above sections starting from this point and re-read my SiteGround’s GoGeek’s alternative hosting suggestions.
Alternatives to SiteGround’s GrowBig plan
If the renewal price of SiteGround’s GrowBig plan is generally okay to you
The renewal price of SiteGround’s GrowBig plan is almost $20/mo. This price is below the price of a fully managed hosting of an entry level provided by most other hosting companies. In other words, for this price you have a quite limited choice of other fully managed hosts.
The reason why SiteGround’s GrowBig plan costs less than other advanced managed hosts is that this plan is a middle point between a shared hosting and managed hosting. Before all, with this plan you get a quite moderate performance and not that level of priority support compared to what you get with more expensive plans.
So, if you are satisfied with renewal pricing, but still looking for another host, then SiteGround may disappoint you with something. In many cases there are two reasons for that:
- You website or websites become heavier and you need better speed.
- You website or websites get increasing traffic and you think of getting a similarly priced host but which can handle your traffic.
Let’s see these options separately.
If you need a better or a comparable speed
For noticeably better speed for the similar money you need a powerful shared hosting plan. You get more speed but in return you get less service.
If you have just one website and your traffic is comparatively small, consider these hosts and the advanced plans first for a great speed (with prices $10-19/mo on monthly plans): FlyWheel, Liquidweb, Lightningbase. I discussed these options above.
The options above are not shared hosts and have better service quality (infrastructure, security, backups, support). So they are more preferable options if their restrictions (the storage, the number of pageviews/visits, the number of sites which is one site for this price less than $19/mo).
But if you go out of these restrictions (number of sites, pageviews), then in order to be within the budget I recommend the following options among shared hosting plans. They will give you great speed (because of the higher RAM/CPU resources compared to typical shared hosts). These options are also suitable for handling tons of traffic. Here they are:
- VeeroTech (SSD Business or WordPress Pro plans). On a top of comparatively good performance and really helpful support you get daily backups (daily backups stored for 30 days) and extra security in terms of DDoS.
- GeekStorage (Performance Hosting plans). It’s even cheaper than VeeroTech. But you don’t get even less whistles and bells. In particular, there are no automatic backups except one last-night backup for emergency purpose. Performance and ticket support – bare minimum alternative of SiteGround’s GoGeek plan if you want to save big with no speed sacrifice.
Great performance and technical support with tickets – this is what you get with these hosts under $16/mo. Notice that you are not bound with long-term contracts. Month-to-month pricing is just 10-15% more than early contract pricing.
If you need to handle more traffic
Actually, the hosts that I just mentioned above suit great for handling more traffic. These hosts are great options for both a single website and multiple websites. However, these hosts (VeeroTech and GeekStorage) at the price below $20/mo have limited service of an advanced type. For example, staging area and extra security protection are missing.
Another option within this price range that I recommend if you have one website is LiquidWeb WordPress plan. $19 per month on monthly plan and you get 15GB space, iThemes Security Pro service included, staging area and the famous LiquidWeb support (phone, chat, tickets). This is a premium option and it’s more advantageous than shared hosts mentioned in the previous paragraph.
If you want to pay less than the renewal price of SiteGround’s GrowBig plan
Some of the hosts that I mentioned in the previous section are actually cheaper than $20/mo. So you are welcome to read that again.
And now let’s see the advantages and disadvantages of the options I suggest as a replacement of SiteGround’s GrowBig plan:
- VeeroTech’s WordPress Pro costs $11/mo and is pretty powerful. Compared to SiteGround’s GrowBig plan you will definitely not lose speed. SSD Business plan is a similar plan but with more storage which cost $16/mo (yearly contract is even cheaper). Daily backups for 30 days and extra DDoS security is good bonus to the service.
- Another alternative that I can recommend is GeekStorage. Its Performance plans (PX-1, PX-2, PX-3) are limited in terms of number of websites and storage, but they are more powerful (faster) than its unlimited plans. PX-3 is the most powerful plan in this series and it costs $20/mo if paid monthly (and less than $10/mo on yearly contract).
The general advantage of the above options is that you get the hosting infrastructure which is more than enough for hosting websites. The technical support is very good and makes it safe for you in case of issues.
Both alternative companies are not large compared to SiteGround. Anyway the hosts are well-established, solid and reliable providers.
Saving even more
If the price $10/mo is still too much for you, then there are still options for you.
You have basically two choices: using an affordable shared hosting plan of a reliable hosting provider or going with unmanaged VPS / Cloud. I’ve explained these options in the section above.
In short, for this price you can’t be expecting a very high speed if you have a heavy website with lots of plugins. But if you choose a shared hosting plan carefully, the performance will not be a problem compared to SiteGround’s GrowBig plan. I suggest looking at GeekStorage’s Performance plan PX-2 before all. For less than $7/mo on yearly contract you get very good server resources for this price.
And as regards unmanaged VPS or a cloud option, this will give you much better performance that you can get with any shared hosting. And it costs as much as $5/mo. But you get no technical support as you can get with any managed hosting (including any shared hosting). You need to know Linux or learn it being aware of the risk of failure (downtime, broken site etc).
Alternatives to SiteGround’s StartUp plan
If the renewal price of SiteGround’s StartUp plan is generally okay to you
The renewal price of SiteGround’s StartUp plan is almost $12/mo. This is not cheap, but it’s less than the pricing of fully managed hosts of similar configuration.
The most of the SiteGround’s StartUp plan price you pay is for the client and technical support. So, if you appreciate the service you get with SiteGround and the price is not a concern to you, why not renewing the SiteGround’s StartUp plan and continue enjoying it? But I think it’s overpriced (I mean the increased price after renewal).
However, if you don’t use tech support often or you are not satisfied with it or any reason, I’d suggest finding a more affordable host with the same or even better performance. GeekStorage and VeeroTech are the great option to choose from. You can read my short reviews of these hosts on this page.
If you want to pay less than the renewal price of SiteGround’s StartUp plan
The main advantage of the SiteGround’s StartUp plan is the combination of the tools, performance and support for affordable price (before renewal). By the way, as regards its performance, it’s very good, but comparable with other great-performing shared hosts.
If your main concern is speed, then I’d suggest considering more technically advanced plans from other hosts. My suggestion is the following:
GeekStorage (Performance Hosting plan PX-2). It costs almost $7/mo with annual contract. You will get better speed than SiteGround’s StartUp plan. But you will have to take care of the backups completely yourself. GeekStorage keeps only one last-night backup for emergency purpose. And there’s only ticket support (although it’s good).
If your main concern is paying monthly, then my first recommendation for you is VeeroTech’s SSD Micro plan. For just $6/mo (month-to-month) you get decent performance, a ticket support, daily backups stored for 30 days.
There are other shared hosts which offer plans below the SiteGround’s StartUp renewal price. You can have a list of my recommended hosts here.
Conclusions
SiteGround shared hosting plans may seem like unbeatable options because of comparatively high quality of the service for the low price during the initial billing period. But when your first billing period is over you have to pay almost a triple price for renewal. In some cases this price may be justified. But in most cases you are not simply ready to pay that much.
In this article I presented alternative hosting options for you which let you take advantage of better performance or/and fewer prices. If it’s time to move on to another hosting from SiteGround, you have my recommendations now.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need a more personal advice.
P.S.: I have not mentioned Cloudways which could be considered as a much cheaper and faster alternative to SiteGround. I have a whole article devoted to this host. Continue here if you are interested.
You can download a PDF version of this article (722 KB):
G’day Michael,
From the land “down under” ( Australia)…
It’s bee a little while since we corresponded.
I see you still haven’t lost your touch with knowledge base,
well done on this article – I do my own hosting of my own websites but,
due to sickness, its delayed me updating fully my present sites!
I’m considering hosting a small number of low budget sites for others
in the near future – so it was good to get some background.
thank you.
sincerely
Bruce
Good day, Bruce,
Glad to hear from you! 🙂
I’m in a sort of an idle mode to support of what has been done on this website.
Please note, this article was written a while ago (you can see this by the dates of the previously published comments).
The general idea of the article and the recommendations are still actual though.
Wishing you a speedy recovery!
I’m not sure why this post showed up in my newsfeed this morning. Many of the prices are out of date. For instance while SiteGround’s first-year discount is still an insane ~$3/month the normal, non-discounted price is now $17.99/month. That’s much higher than the $12/month you mention.
I’m not sure why SiteGround comes in for so much hate since, or why you’re singling them out in particular, since as you say, signup discounts are common as muck.
I think it’s significant that you offer middle-tier alternatives such as Kinsta and Flywheel, because in my opinion that’s where SiteGround should be positioned in the first place. Their signup discount gets them shoveled into “best hosting for under $5/month” affiliate-link-farming “review” sites. I can excuse distracted purchasers from failing to read plain text like “From $2.99/mo. Regular $17.99/mo” but it’s irresponsible, inexcusable, and trashy for reviewers to do it.
I happen to like SiteGround but I’m always on the lookout for alternatives. Most of my clients come to me with existing hosting plans but I do occasionally get asked to help them switch from genuinely bad hosting. So I appreciate posts like this. I also really appreciate the work you’re doing.
The final thing, though, since the prices are out of date: Are the alternatives in this post current? I see you include WPEngine as an alternative, but in the last year, I’ve noticed performance declines from my handful of WPE client sites.
Once again I really value the work you do. Thanks.
Hey David,
Thanks for your detailed comment!
Although the update date of the article is recent, I wrote this post some time ago, and you are right, I need to update the prices in it. They keep changing pretty often.
I had been using SG for quite a long, but a couple of years ago it just dropped in quality of performance and support. Besides, I started to get lots of negative personal messages from my audience complaining about similar issues and wondered why I still continued to recommend this host. So it was not an isolated issue with me. My loyal audience is not huge, but I listen to them carefully. And I have to say, that I very. very rarely get negative feedback on the hosts I recommend, which is not typical by the way, since people are more likely to share their negative experience rather than a positive one. It all was a huge sign that there was something wrong with SG. This is how this post appeared. Although for a low entry fee it could be a short time choice anyway 🙂 Also for many clients SG may still work well, that’s fine, SG is not trash after all and stand above lots of other hosts.
Also, I can’t compare SG with Flywheel or Kinsta, they belong to difference grounds, although these hosts may look similar to some extent. SG is closer to A2 in this context, since they have more similar business strategy compared to FW or Kinsta
As regards WPE, thanks for your feedback, I will take it into consideration.
As regards the alternatives, yes, they are up to date. This is why I update the article date in the first place. the only update i’d add is that MDD and Veerotech have not been popular among my audience, so I have not been getting any feedback on them for quite a long time neither positive nor negative.
Thanks for your time!
Hi Michael,
Do you have any experience with these hosts? hosterion, fastcomet, rocket (dot) net !!
Thanks a lot for the great analysis.
Hey Rafael,
I’ve not had personal experience with these hosts 😉
thanks for the article!, how about namehero? do u recommend it for woocommerce based stores?
It looks like a host with the disadvantages like A2, i.e. attractive lower price with high renewal costs. Otherwise, it looks OK.
Very useful opinions about all hosting, I wanted know your words on Hostinger and their services.
In short, I don’t recommend Hostinger. The only case I’d accept using it, if you want the cheapest possible hosting option before renewal. But no great quality should be expected. If you could add a dollar per month, then you could already have a much better choice of hosting options.
Thanks for all your work. So appreciated.
But I’m confused on costs–I’d love to see an updated version of this article (it’s dated 7/2020). When I go to the sites you recommend, their prices are way higher than what you’re indicating (eg: Veerotech WP Pro plan lists at $49.95/mo, not the $11 you mention), so I’m not seeing the comparison to Siteground costs here.
Maybe there are intro offers, but it does me no good to get a good deal for the first 3 years and then need to pay $50/month going forward from there. Transition costs are usually non-trivial.
Happy to move from Siteground–I’d love to move away from SG!–but not if it’s going to cost me more, AND have transition overhead. I was going to go with Greengeeks, but they’re not on your list. (Wanting managed wordpress, email, spam control, security).
Not sure what to do, so might end up staying with SG. (Ugh.)
Thanks for any thoughts.
Alice,
Thank you for your comment. Indeed, I have a mistake in alternative plans description on Veerotech’s part. I will check and update other hosting pricing ASAP if see that hosts changed their prices.
Instead of Veerotech’s WP Pro plan I meant Grow plan. Currently it’s $13.95/mo if you pay monthly and $11.86/mo if you pay biennially. The prices do not increase after renewal. Other billing terms are also available. Prices depend only on a billing term (monthly, quaterly, semi-annulaly and so on).
Veerotech’s WP Pro plan is a different product and it’s rather a fully managed VPS service (and it’s priced accordingly). You would suffice powered shared or semi-dedicated plans as they give good performance. Veerotech’s Grow plan offers 4 GB RAM. And it provides great performance comparable to Siteground’s GrowBig or GoGeeks plan that you are currently using as I assume.
Regarding “managed WP” that you mentioned. This is a very broad term and a buzzword. Veerotech’s Grow plan includes taking care of your backups, WAF (security), RAID (data reliability), email anti-spam solution etc. So in many ways this is managed hosting. Compared to SG, Veerotech lacks Staging environment, and chat/phone support (although Siteground cut these support channels to a certain extent since some time ago).
Veerotech’s Grow plan would be a good and cost-effective substitute for Siteground.
As regards GreenGeeks, it’s a good hosting, but it has a similar flavor as SiteGround, i.e if you go with its shared plans you would get a serious price increase after the first billing term (which you don’t want). And it will be more expensive than the well-performing Veerotech’s option. And Greengeeks is mostly attractive to newbies. Since you already have experience with hosts, less “marketing-ish” hosts like Veerotech which focus on more experienced users are simply cheaper and very likely to be better solutions for you. Also, you don’t need to be technical though to use hosts like Veerotech.
Michael, thank you for the helpful and informative reply. I’m grateful.
Yes, Siteground “GrowBig” is what I’m on. A little concerned about support at VT, though you’re right that SG has slipped in that department since I joined in ’16. VT does say “24×7 Tech”–is it true?
Yeah, I don’t know what “managed WP” is, either. Is it about WP security? You think SG GrowBig is equivalent to VT Grow for WP?
No, I don’t need handholding after my sites are migrated. I know how to use cpanel and WP dashboard, and my sites aren’t complicated.
Email is important, though. Spam protection seems to be similar. (not a fan of Spam Experts, but they get the job done.)
What other differences should I be aware of?
Again, thanks.
Alice,
Regarding support at VT, it’s quite to the high standards of such hosts (where you pay a moderate price, which is a couple of time less than the beginner-oriented hosts like SG and GreenGeeks after renewal). Yes, VT’s support is 24*7.
I also enjoy the response time of VT’s support. Usually I expect the ticket support to answer / solve the issues within a couple of hours on good shared hosts. VT support does it much better than on average on comparatively affordable hosts like VT. Here are my latest 5 tickets with response time (replies are mostly within 15 minutes):
Ticket 1
Me: 13:50
Support: 14:00
Support: 14:51
Me: 15:05
Support: 15:08
Me: 15:16
Support: 15:19
Ticket 2
Me: 16:30
Support: 16:39
Ticket 3
Me: 11:29
Support: 11:33
Ticket 4
Me: 16:30
Support: 16:53
Me: 16:56
Support: 18:55
Me: 19:07
Support: 19:10
Ticket 5
Me: 08:06
Support: 08:19
VT’s Grow plan is a good substitute to SG’s GrowBig plan. You get even more server resources. After all, moving from beginner-oriented hosts like SG and Greengeeks to industry working horses like VT is a very right move. You get performance and reliability for much less price. Hosts like VT do not invest a lot into marketing and can manage their support department better because they do not offer expensive phone support. Ticket support is the most cost effective way of communication in the most cases (unless you are a beginner or managing enterprise-level websites). Hosts like VT focus on performance and efficient support, whereas beginner-oriented hosts focus more on attracting newbie customers (it means higher marketing budgets, lower entry prices and consequently higher renewal prices).
As regards concerns, they are standard ones when you migrate. Make sure your website software works on new servers. By default there should be no issues.
The weakest point is emails. It’s probably the trickiest part. Generally I’d recommend to use third-party email solution like Zoho or Google Workspace (Formerly G Suite) where possible.
VT assist in migrating the sites for free.
You can contact their sales support department before signing up and share your concerns with them if you have any. For example, ask them how the migration process will go in your particular case (if you are worried about the migration). As regards performance, support and other things when everything is settled down with VT, I would not bother as it’s a high-quality host.
Thanks, Michael. Understood. At your recommendation, I am leaning toward giving Veerotech a run.
Re: email: Of course I already have google email separately, but I also want an account that isn’t, and Zoho–tried it and disliked it, so no thanks.
Re: Greengeeks, and them being more like Siteground than I might like wrt sales & renewal tactics. I appreciate the warning. But what’s your take on the green aspect, and their commitment to renewable energy? That does matter to me, too.
Thanks again.
Alice, green aspect matters. And I lean towards not putting responsibility on to someone else. But doing it first-hand. For example, donate to the funds or communities that I trust and aware of what exactly they are doing, or do something by myself in this respect without a middleman.
Agreed. But I can’t make my hosting service more green, unless I choose on that basis. 🙂 In any case, I hear you saying this is not something you take into consideration for hosting services, but keep closer to home. I understand and respect that perspective.
Alice, you are right. When recommending hosts I focus on quality and efficiency that users get per cost. I separate it from green initiatives and environmental community works (which I do myself). I’m glad that we have understood each other 🙂
Like every deal you can bargain, I was surprised too by the renewal prices so I’ve asked for a discount and got it, I’ve also read what you’ve write about their service and I’m 100% disagree they have great customer service and they take responsibility for the user experience, comparing to other hosts who basically telling you to go f yourself and find a developer or IT pro to help you.
Very interesting experience with asking for a discount, Tamir!
As regards SG’s quality, I used to recommend the host, but I started getting complains from my readers by email, especially regarding moving to Google Cloud. Reading other people’s experience I realized that they were not isolated cases. Anyway, if you have a great experience with the host, it’s awesome! SG is still much better than many hosts out there.
Thank you for sharing this article. Am not satisfied with the increased Price.
Yeah, many people are not. Feel free to consider the suggested alternatives.
Thanks for sharing this article. now i got an idea on choosing best hosting for my site. Thanks again, Michael
Cool! Feel free to ask any questions!
Thankyou for the article. I was not at all liking their new prices. Will look up for the reviews and finally select something. Kudos
Sounds good!