SiteGround Pricing & Plans
SiteGround is a firm web hosting choice (as you can read in my review)! It’s especially great if you’re running a WordPress site or small business, due to its reliable speeds, modern technology, and amazing customer support. I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing web hosting companies to give you the upper hand when choosing the best web host. However, this isn’t yet another review, this is an overview!
Although I touched upon SiteGround’s pricing and plans in my review, I didn’t go into much detail. That’s what this space is for! I want to closely examine what SiteGround offers and whether it’s really worth the money you pay.
Visit SiteGround.com (£2.95/Month)
SiteGround Pricing Plans
| StartUp | GrowBig | GoGeek | |
| Monthly visits | 10,000 | 25,000 | 100,000 |
| Web space | 10GB | 20GB | 30GB |
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Data transfer | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| cPanel | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSD storage | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free CDN | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SPAM Experts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Auto Daily Backup | 30 copies | 30 copies | 30 copies |
| Free Site Transfer | No | Yes | Yes |
| PCI Compliant | No | No | Yes |
| Priority Support | No | Yes | Yes |
| SuperCacher | Level 1 | Level 3 | Level 3 |
| Cost (per month) | £2.75 | £3.95 | £7.95 |
SiteGround Pricing: StartUp
Let’s kick off with SiteGround’s StartUp plan from only £2.75 per month. There are a few key features here I’d like to talk about, namely:
- 10,000 visitors per month
- 10GB web space
- Unmetered data transfer
- Level 1 SuperCacher
10,000 visitors
This number refers to the number of unique visits your website can handle per month. Is this number high or low? Well, it really depends on the type of website you have! If you’re running a small business or blog then 10,000 visits on one site per month are very reasonable (maybe even ambitious)! However, if you’re the owner of a large online retailer, you may want to expand your reach a little further!
As SiteGround puts it “it’s merely a point of reference rather than a restriction”, you don’t have to fret too much. If you know your website receives a lot of traffic, you’ll want to upgrade to a better plan anyway to gain the extra resources and features. For me, it’s a great starting point, and I’d always recommend signing up to a cheaper plan first then upgrading along the way.
10GB web space
Web space is essentially the amount of data that your web server can store. Think of it this way, when you use a computer, anything you save (photos, videos, music), do, or install takes up hard drive space. This is the same concept when you’re hosting a website. 10GB on the face of it doesn’t seem like much, but when you learn the average web page size is around 3MB, it’s actually plenty.
Unmetered data transfer
Data transfer is the amount of data you can transfer from one place to your website, and vice versa. People often use something called an FTP client which allows the secure transfer of data from a user’s computer to their web server. This is particularly useful if you’re constantly uploading new images or files to your website.
SuperCacher
SiteGround’s in-house caching service is frankly excellent – I love it! The whole idea of it is to increase the loading speed of your website by applying some pretty cool technology in the background. The SuperCacher is broken down into 3 levels:
- Level 1: Static content cache (NGINX)
- Level 2: Dynamic data cache (NGINX)
- Level 3: Database queries results cache (Memcached)
For £2.75 per month, the SuperCacher is worth the whole monthly price in my opinion!
StartUp Plan Pros
+ Free drag & drop website builder
+ Unlimited MySQL databases
+ Multiple data centre locations
+ SSD storage
+ 30 copies of daily backups
+ Free SSL certificate
StartUp Plan Cons
– 10GB web space limit
– No free backup restore
– No free site transfer
SiteGround Pricing: GrowBig
The GrowBig plan is the perfect mid-range hosting for most users. Unless you’re running a big-time eCommerce business, I’d recommend the GrowBig plan to anyone. For the extra £1.20 per month (£3.95 per month) you’d be silly not to go straight for it. Although many of the features are the same (just extended), there are a couple that make the extra money worth it:
Unlimited websites
Via cPanel, the GrowBig plan allows you to have multiple websites under one roof. This is super useful if you want to host a range of websites, or a website and a blog with different branding. You’ll need to be mindful of the 20GB web space limit, but like we’ve explored previously, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Free backup restore
With the StartUp plan you gain access to free daily backups, but you can’t restore the data without paying for it. The GrowBig plan gives you access to restore any backups that have been automatically created. This is really useful if something were to happen to your website that’s out of your control!
GrowBig Plan Pros
+ Unlimited websites
+ SuperCacher Level 3
+ Free site transfer
+ Priority support
+ Premium resource allocation
GrowBig Plan Cons
– Unlimited websites only have 20GB web space between them
SiteGround Pricing: GoGeek
If you fall into the category of big eCommerce user that I mentioned earlier, the GoGeek plan is most suited to you. It steps up the game quite a lot, allowing 100,000 monthly visitors to your website. You’ll also be able to revel in SiteGround’s most premium features which I’ll talk about next! Although a little more pricey at £7.95 per month, SiteGround’s GoGeek plan is still very reasonably priced against some of it’s competitors.
On-demand backups
If something goes wrong with your website, the GoGeek plan gives you access to 5 instant backups at any given time. Backups are a real peace of mind, especially if you’ve spent a great deal of time and effort on your website.
PCI compliant
If you’re selling goods online it’s essential to be PCI compliant. The initiative is a global one applied to all providers and merchants for payment processing. Yes it’s a lot of mumbo jumbo that doesn’t really make sense, but it’s very applicable for eCommerce websites.
GoGeek Plan Pros
+ Pre-installed Git repositories
+ Staging environment for WordPress and Joomla
+ Geeky resource allocation
+ Free instant back ups
+ 100,000 monthly visitors
GoGeek Plan Cons
– £4 per month more expensive than GrowBig with similar features