After recommending SiteGround for several years, the year 2020 came which was not easy for a lot of businesses including SiteGround.
As a tip of this iceberg every client could see that SiteGround cut off its online and chat support (update March, 2023: chat support is back but hidden behind a couple of pages of its “knowledge base” pages, but migrations even between main domain ad subdomain are now not free and cost $25). It allowed the host to cut off the costs obviously and optimize the support stuff workload. Honestly, I wondered how SiteGround could keep such a good support quality (and multiple support channels like online chat and phone) before all these years before whereas its prices for the first billing period (up to 3 years) were so little.
I assume that in 2020 many SiteGround’s clients started looking for a cheaper alternative in order not to pay the high renewal prices. And it put the business model of SiteGround on a risky edge. SiteGround probably could not continue getting enough profit from the retained clients who pay the full price after renewal. And the host had to cut the costs.
The quality of support noticeably decreased. This resulted in many negative reviews. People started migrating from SiteGround more and more.
SiteGround had a very good reputation. And I hope the host will find a viable balance between its prices and the service quality.
Meanwhile I put SiteGround on hold and stop recommending it. If you are looking for an alternative, I suggest looking at my article which is entirely devoted to this issue.
P.S.: By the way, I see that tons of people recommend Cloudways as an alternative to SiteGround. In some cases it’s indeed a brilliant option. But I’d suggest reading my words of caution about it. Cloudways is not just a cheaper and faster alternative to SiteGround. It has its drawbacks.