Dev4Press is using Siteground for almost 2 years now, and from the very start, we used Cloud Hosting plan. But, Siteground offers specialized WordPress hosting plans and many other different hosting packages.
SiteGround offers several types of hosting split into several groups: The Web, WordPress and Joomla. You can get the hosting that is best for you, in terms of price and performance. And, at the same time, you don’t need to be server wizard, because all the hosting packages are managed: you take care of your websites, and SiteGround will take care of your server, whether it is shared, cloud or managed solution.
For the purpose of this article, we will talk about shared and cloud hosting only. And, we will also include specialized WordPress hosting, that is an expanded version of the shared hosting.
Shared Hosting
This is the most common type of hosting, and with SiteGround, you have 3 different plans to choose from, based on the number of websites you want to host, the number of expected visitors and other advanced features you might need.
Most important features that all shared hosting plans have are free SSL via Let’s Encrypt, HTTP/2, SSD for storage, cPanel, free back, free CloudFlare CDN and more. GrowBig package includes free Wildcard SSL and website cache. Finally, GoGeek is the most powerful package that includes extra few more things, most importantly, your account will be on a server with fewer accounts, giving you more resources.
The only bad thing about the SiteGround shared hosting is the fact that it is a shared hosting, and just like any other shared hosting, you are sharing the server with other users. A single server can have 10 or more hosting accounts, and your websites share resources and the IP address with other websites from other users. But, considering the low price, shared hosting is a great deal for smaller websites, or as the starting point before you upgrade to a more powerful server.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress hosting plans are based on the standard shared hosting plans, but they include few things that are WordPress specific. That includes free transfer, WP-CLI, free WP installer and auto updater. GrowBig and GoGeek include SiteGround dedicated cache plugin for WordPress, and GoGeek includes staging and Git integration.
If you need to host small eCommerce shop (with WooCommerce or other eCommerce plugins), I would recommend using GoGeek plan. It includes PCI compliance (very important for hosting online stores, dealing with customer information, credit cards), it includes Git integration and a very important staging feature allowing you to test your website before deploying it to live website.
Again, the only downside for these plans is the fact that your account shares a server with other user accounts, similar to shared hosting. And again, the low price makes it great still for entry level websites or smaller websites or blogs.
Cloud Hosting
Now, we come to a really great managed hosting solution. Cloud hosting is more expensive, but it offers so much more than the shared or WordPress plans. SiteGround offers several prepared plans, but you can simply build your own plan by choosing how much CPU, RAM or display space you need.
Each cloud server is independent VPS server, it has own static IP (and you can buy more IP’s if you need), includes WHM and cPanel, and uses CentOS operating system. The web server is Apache with Nginx working as reverse proxy. All cloud plans include on wildcard SSL certificate and free Let’s Encrypt SSL for any number of domains and subdomains. All servers include multiple versions of PHP, including the latest and the best PHP 7.0 and 7.1, and you can choose which one you want to use.
When it comes to running WordPress on the cloud server, you will get some really great features: one click installer and updater, website staging area, Git integration, WP-CLI and SuperCacher plugin (SiteGround own plugin). Because you get WHM access too, you can create multiple hosting accounts – each one with own cPanel instance, so you can have each website with own cPanel.
