Get SiteGround WordPress Hosting

SiteGround has been known as one of the world’s best WordPress hosting available today, numerous users are pleased with this web hosting service headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. But c’mon, can they really be that good? Seriously!

Well, that’s precisely what this SiteGround WordPress hosting review goals to find out.

I will admit which I was a little skeptical initially, but that changed quickly. In fact, a lot that I’ve moved this website to them and I’m utilizing their GrowBig GoGeek plan.

For their commitment to uptime, speed, security, and support – it truly is the superior web host right now! And I’m not the only one that ❤️ them.

I included tons of unbiased social media and trusted hosting review sites evidence in this SiteGround hosting review. Remember that reliable hosting is still being the #1 factor in the WordPress optimization guide.

Comment if you have questions, but I believe you’ll like them 🙂

Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links, which means Affapress earns a small commission whenever you end up purchasing products we recommend. However, the opinions written are only based on our experience and not how much they pay. Please continue to support our work and learn more about our affiliate links policy.

1. #1 in Multiple Facebook Polls

WordPress Hosting is a closed Facebook group with almost 10,000 members focused on WordPress hosting solely.

Every year members are asked to vote for their preferred web hosting. Can you figure which WordPress hosting company got the most votes?

That’s right. SiteGround has been voted as #1 WordPress hosting for two years in a row now (#1 in 2017’s poll and #1 in 2016’s poll). It included over 350 voters who are proficient in WordPress hosting.

They were also rated #1 in numerous other polls by various WordPress Facebook Groups (you can click each image to see the poll).

In various discussions, there’s also many who recommend using SiteGround.

Ivica runs the WordPress Speed Up Facebook Group and ranks them #1 on his resources page. Ivica isn’t a SiteGround affiliate or is sponsored by them, he’s just been a customer for many years.

 

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2. Perfect Scores from Trusted Hosting Review Sites

Apart from many polls conducted on various social media such as Facebook and Twitter, SiteGround also gets perfect scores and ratings from many trusted hosting review sites like HostAdvice, HostSearch, Trustpilot, etc (you can click each image to see the review).

 

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3. High Uptime (99.99%)

Rather than using ready-made software solutions, SiteGround prefers in-house crafted solutions to ensure high-quality hosting experience.

• Their platform is built on Linux containers that provide great stability during unforeseen traffic spikes.
• SiteGround was the first to introduced account isolation technology for customer security.
• They built their own proactive server monitoring system that monitors their servers every 0.5 seconds and also proactively fixes any problems without human intervention, thus ensuring amazing uptime.

I’ve analyzed uptime, speed and overall performance of the SiteGround test site.

The test site has already established an average uptime of 99.99%, which is 0.2% better than the 99.79% industry standard which is exactly what they guarantee their customers.

Last 12 month average uptime (2018)

• January average uptime: 100%
• February average uptime: 99.97%
• March average uptime: 99.99%
• April average uptime: 100%
• May average uptime: 99.97%
• June average uptime: 100%
• July average uptime: 100%
• August average uptime: 99.99%
• September average uptime: 100%
• October average uptime: 100%
• November average uptime: 99.99%
• December average uptime: 99.95%

If you’ve ever experienced internal server errors, bad gateways, connection failures, and other messages when your website goes down, you shouldn’t get this with SiteGround. Other WordPress hosts say 99.99% but neglect to deliver. Not SiteGround.

 

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4. Fast Load Time (722ms)

In the same 12-month period, the SiteGround test site found average page loading times of 722ms – faster than the 890ms average load times I came across from other web hosts.

That’s very good, among the fastest I’ve seen.

It was very constant also. No spikes or slow loading times whatsoever. Up to now, so good.

Last 12 month average load time (2018)

• January average speed: 730ms
• February average speed: 730ms
• March average speed: 693ms
• April average speed: 735ms
• May average speed: 733ms
• June average speed: 699ms
• July average speed: 737ms
• August average speed: 688ms
• September average speed: 712ms
• October average speed: 737ms
• November average speed: 762ms
• December average speed: 715ms

Overall, SiteGround is quite fast.

Most websites that host with SiteGround have an average load time of 1.3s, and this is the fastest compared to other hosting providers:

1.8s load time:

1.7s load time:

1.4s load time:

1.1s load time:

.23s load time:

People who migrated to SiteGround always get a significant speedup:

 

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5. Speed Technology

SiteGround’s speed technology is one of the primary reason people choose them. They use a robust combination of the latest speed technologies such as SSD drives, NGINX servers, HTTP/2, PHP7, and 1-click Cloudflare CDN. Quite simply, if you host your website with them it’ll load super fast!

Also, remember to use their SG Optimizer plugin and Supercacher that will further improve load times. HHVM is only available on their cloud hosting plan but it’s faster than PHP7.

A video below shows how SiteGround significantly speeds up your website:

 

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6. Always The Latest PHP Version

The most important reason for using the latest PHP version is to ensure you are running on a version that is fully supported and patched regularly for security vulnerabilities and get big performance gains.

You can always depend on SiteGround to integrate this latest technology.

Uncertain what version of PHP you’re running? Use the Display PHP Version plugin.

SiteGround’s SG Optimizer plugin also checks for new versions of PHP, compatibility with themes/plugins, and updates you to the latest version. This is very convenient since most people don’t upgrade as it usually requires manual steps – but their plugin does this for you.

 

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7. Supercacher + SG Optimizer

SiteGround’s Supercacher and SG Optimizer plugin team up to cache your website (static, dynamic, memcache), purge dynamic cache when content is updated, configure HTTPS to force SSL (if applicable), and keep your website upgraded to the newest version of PHP.

What is Supercacher?

SuperCacher is a web caching service that they developed internally and exclusively at SiteGround. It sits ahead of your web server (e.g. Apache). Every time a browser requests to load a web page from SiteGround’s web server, the web server returns the HTML result to the browser as well as the cache stores a duplicate of that same page. Next time that particular web page is requested, the request gets served from the cache straight as the web server sits idle. The cache is known to decrease the the impact of many visitors/hits on your website’s loading speed significantly by sparing the resources of your host server and delivering the websites significantly faster. SuperCacher is flexible, as it has some layers of caching available and more to come in the future.

HHVM is only available on a cloud hosting plan.

What is SG Optimizer?

SG Optimizer is a plugin made to link WordPress with SiteGround Performance services. It’ll not work on another hosting service provider. It has few different parts managing specific performance optimizations; SuperCacher Config, HTTPS Config and PHP Config. But I believe the most valuable part is the ability to update to the latest version of PHP.

 

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8. Free SSL Certificate and CDN

Because of the proliferation of cyber attacks and website hacks, Google has shifted certain aspects of their algorithm to favor secure and encrypted websites. Namely, websites with an SSL (secure socket layer) encryption.

With SiteGround, you will get a free SSL certificate installation (which normally costs around $60) from “Let’s Encrypt SSL” that will instantly bolster your website’s security and search engine optimization.

Furthermore, they’ve included the free integration of Cloudflare’s CDN in every plan.

Which means, Cloudflare will cache the data and content from your website on their global servers, then deliver that content to your audience from nearby location. Thus accelerating the delivery of your content and improving the user experience for your visitors.

WordPress recommends utilizing a CDN like Cloudflare in their speed optimization guide.

1-Click Cloudflare Activation

In cPanel you can activate Cloudflare in only 1-click.

With simply a click on the “Activate” button, the Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN) will cache your site content and will distribute it over multiple data centers across the world.

Next, you navigate to the “Settings” tab and set the Cloudflare settings to Aggressive Caching, Minification of Static Resources, and activate Railgun to accelerate the connection between Cloudflare and the server. Doing all of this will give your website faster load times.

 

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9. StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek

The primary difference is StartUp can only host 1 website but nonetheless comes with tons of features. GrowBig includes more server resources (faster website), priority support, and 30 daily backups (instead of 1 with StartUp). GoGeek includes even more server resources (considered semi-dedicated hosting) and you can make a staging site to test code, designs, plugins, before releasing. All higher plans include everything in the previous lower plan.

Here’s the full comparison chart:

Higher Plans = More Server Resources = Faster Website – SiteGround’s GrowBig and GoGeek plan include more server resources which will make your website load faster (number of servers is being the #1 factor in the WordPress optimization guide). GoGeek is semi-dedicated hosting and is approximately 4x faster than StartUp for $11.95/month, compared to a dedicated server that runs $269/month or their cloud hosting for $80/month. So if website speed is important for you, I would choose GrowBig or GoGeek which include more resources. In addition, they come with priority support, daily backups, WordPress auto-updates, and enable you to host unlimited websites.

You can see the distinction in server resources on SiteGround’s features page.

Here’s how many server resources come with each plan:

StartUp – Cheapest plan sufficient for hosting 1 website with little traffic. Better than most $3.95/month plans from other hosts but server resources shortages (for speed), storage space, priority support, and backup restoration tool (although you still get 1 daily backup). 99% uptimes, no internal server and other hosting-related errors from my own experience.

• All essential features
• Host 1 website only
• ~ 10,000 visits
• $3.95/month
• 10GB Space
• Lacks server resources

SiteGround StartUp Review

GrowBig – Host multiple websites with almost 2x more server resources than StartUp (resulting in faster load times). Double the storage space, priority support, and staging. Comes with 30 daily backups, restoration tool, and advanced caching for SG Optimizer.

• All essential features
• Host unlimited websites
• ~ 25,000 visits
• 30 daily backups
• Priority support
• Backup & restoration service
• WordPress special cache
• $5.95/month
• 20GB space
• 3 levels of SuperCacher
• Wildcard SSL certificate
• About 2x server resources
• About 2x email resources
• Best cost/value ratio

SiteGround GrowBig Review

GoGeek – Semi-dedicated hosting and is approximately 4x faster than regular shared hosting plans. Perfect for people who want a very fast website but don’t want to pay $80/month for cloud hosting. Includes staging (for testing before releasing), unlimited restores by SiteGround’s support team, and eCommerce features like 1-year free Wildcard SSL and PCI compliance for credit card fraud protection. GoGeek comes with all features of GrowBig plus everything below:

• All essential features
• Host unlimited websites
• ~ 100,000 visits
• 1 click WordPress Staging
• Premium Backup & Restore
• SG-Git for repo creation
• WordPress special cache
• $11.95/month
• 30GB space
• Free PCI Compliance
• Pre-Installed Git
• About 3x server resources
• About 3x email resources
• Fastest shared hosting plan

SiteGround GoGeek Review

 

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10. High-Performance WordPress Host on All Plans

Among the special features that SiteGround plans include (which almost every other web hosts don’t) is managed WordPress hosting on all plans.

That means automatic WordPress core updates and patching, automatic WordPress installation on account setup, plus features like the SuperCacher caching plugin, site staging, and 100% free site transfer service.

Set SiteGround to update WordPress core/plugins in the cPanel automatically.

Also, they are serious about security by constantly monitoring for WordPress related vulnerabilities and proactively protecting users with custom WAF rules.

They maintain WordPress plugin updates, make daily backups free of charge in case a random occurrence might bring down your website. (That is amazingly common, like when two plugins don’t work well together and you’re filled with the feared white screen of death).

But that’s not absolutely all. Additionally, there is stuff for power users as well of their GrowBig and GoGeek plans such as pre-installed Git, WP-CLI for easy command line management options, PCI compliance for e-shops, 1-year Wildcard SSL for free, priority customer service, free backup and restore.

 

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11. Cloud Hosting

SiteGround’s Cloud Hosting plans are a definite step up of their Shared and WordPress plans. It’s mainly for bigger websites which have high traffic or need the ability to autoscale resources that means that your website doesn’t run slow or shut down during traffic spikes.

They start with the Entry plan that provides 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of memory, and 40 GB of SSD space for storage for $80 monthly. And they go up to the Super Power plan that provides 8 CPU cores, 10 GB of memory, and 120 GB of SSD storage for $240 monthly.

Every one of the cloud plans provides 5 TB of data transfer monthly.

Isolated Resources – Rather than hosting your website on 1 single server, your website is hosted on unlimited machines. This implies your website won’t be affected by anyone else’s (eg. if indeed they overclock their server on shared hosting). And because cloud hosting simulates a dedicated server, more resources are dedicated to hosting your website, making it load faster. There are plenty of advantages of cloud hosting nevertheless, you can conclude into performance, reliability, scalability (autoscaling), and security. Plus you have a significantly less chance of getting CPU overages particularly if you utilize autoscaling in the SiteGround cPanel to compensate for traffic spikes.

HHVM – Cloud hosting includes HHVM which is even more quickly than PHP7 (find out about HHVM here) and it can be activated in SiteGround’s cPanel when using their built-in Supercacher tool.

Cloud hosting often becomes a pretty good alternative to dedicated hosting. Whenever your online business reaches the point of requiring this, the support staff can be quite helpful in making your decision.

 

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12. Dedicated Servers

Even though cloud servers create virtual computers from the cloud, dedicated servers are physical computers that you can touch. They are extremely similar to the computer that sets on your work desk, except that they are a lot more powerful.

In these cases, you aren’t sharing anything. The entire computer is dedicated to doing all your work. SiteGround offers three kinds of dedicated servers. All of them are different kinds of Intel Xeon processors, that are build to be utilized as servers.

The standard dedicated server, Entry Server, is the E3-1230 with 4 CPU cores, 16 GB DDR3 memory, and 480 GB SSD for $269 monthly. The most advanced dedicated server has two E5-2630 CPUs, two sets of 6 CPU cores, 64 GB DDR3 memory, and two 960 SSD in RAID1 drives for $729 monthly.

Again, you’ll need to have an extremely demanding business to justify a dedicated server.

 

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13. Multiple Data Centers

Part of the reason that their server response times are so fast is that they provide their clients with access to multiple data centers located at strategic locations across the world.

When you sign up you are given the choice to choose your selected server location.

While data delivery speeds, on the whole, have speeded up through the years considerably, the physical distance between a user and the server can impact the loading times.

To handle that pressing issue, they have data centers in:

• Chicago, US (best for North America, South America, Africa)
• London, UK (best for Europe, Russia)
• Amsterdam, NL (best for Europe, Russia)
• Singapore, SG (best for Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South Pacific)

When you sign up for hosting services, you have the chance to choose where you want your data to be stored.

 

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14. Highly Knowledgeable & Responsive Support

A hosting service can have state-of-the-art technology and good security, but for most people, it’s what goes on when things go wrong that counts the most.

They are a company that prides themselves on client support. They make customer service a priority and it shows in their reviews and the devotion of their clients. Which is no small feat, considering that they’re handling over 1,500+ tickets, 800+ phone calls and 2,000+ chat requests every day.

Over 230 people at SiteGround are engaged with customer support only to ensure clients are taken good care of and support is provided in 3 languages – English, Italian, Spanish.

• SiteGround provides support for well beyond only hosting related issues – their repetitions assist with CMS questions as well.
• The official client survey results released by SiteGround every year show that their client satisfaction rate is continually scored over 96% (2014, 2015, 2016).

They offer 3 ways to get support:

• Live chat system is certain to get you an instant reply and it is available 24 hours per day.
• Likewise, phone support is staffed around the clock and will get you an instant reply.
• Submitting a ticket are certain to get you a reply in under 10 minutes – less if you have paid for one of their priority services.

One day I once had a nagging problem with Siteground. But rather than upgrade, I worked with one of their technicians who made various changes to my website to limit the damage being done by spammers, and I haven’t experienced a problem since.

It had been such a pleasure, that they’re one of the only web hosts I’ve analyzed to obtain a perfect 10 out of 10 in support.

Seems too good to be true? Even after performing a background check and surveying other sources, I still couldn’t find any negative responses about their support.

 

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15. Security & Backups

A genius in web hosting technology, SiteGround provides what’s arguably the best security and backup services which consist of very own technology. To protect your website against outside attack, the web host has its own software set up, which carries out malware, and virus scans on a continuing basis. This is unlike other web hosts, that perform their scans once a day or once a week.

Protection Against Hacking

Additionally, SiteGround has a distinctive isolation system set up, which protects your website from being hacked if someone else’s website on your server is compromised. So, with SiteGround as your web host, you can make sure that you’ll not run into issues such as viruses and hacking.

Daily Backups

You understand how important it is to back up the data on your website. If you don’t, you risk losing both static data and dynamic data, some of which might be irreplaceable.

If you set up your website with SiteGround, you’ll need to ensure that you have a regular backup system set up. However, when your backup fails, they have you covered.

They are doing daily backups of all of their clients websites so when your backup fails or you will need to reclaim your data for some reason, you can contact customer support and get what you need.

You’ll get free daily backup copies (only one backup each day on the StartUp plan) of your website and a website backup and restoration service (only on GrowBig & GoGeek plans).

Hosting backup is similar to website insurance. User errors, hacks, deleted files, or website updates went wrong, can all be resolved with a backup restore instantly.

You are able to create and restore backups instantly on your own using the 1-click backup restore tool in cPanel.

Additional Security Services

Other great securities and backup aspects of SiteGround include hack alerts delivered to users on a weekly basis at a charge, and several protective measures in data centers including round-the-clock server monitoring, cooling systems, and uninterrupted power supply, among others.

The web host even goes so far as having replacement components for any server parts as well as replacement servers on hand to ensure performance is never compromised for too much time.

 

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16. Easy eCommerce Installs

eCommerce applications that power the website’s top sites, like Magento, can be especially difficult and problematic if you’re not technically inclined.

Luckily, SiteGround removes most of the hassle by making it easy to choose from 18 eCommerce applications and install your favorite one with 1-click.

In addition, they provide some additional features for better security including:

• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL – All plans feature a free Let’s Encrypt SSL in the cPanel.
• Wildcard SSL – GrowBig and GoGeek add a wildcard SSL for 1 year which secures your website and it’s subdomains while providing you a website seal to showcase on your website. After the 1st year, you will be charged $89/year.
• PCI Compliance – GoGeek includes PCI compliance (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) to avoid credit card fraud by uniting payments using 12 requirements.

 

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17. cPanel Demo

If you’re not currently hosted with SiteGround and want to see a cPanel demo, this can help you explore the various options once you purchase a SiteGround plan. You will see many features I’ve gone over including Cloudflare CDN, auto updates, auto installers, staging, backups, email, WordPress tools like their SuperCacher plugin, and a lot of other features.

 

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18. Free Transfers for Existing Websites

SiteGround will migrate you free of charge even though it’s impossible to guarantee there should be 0 downtimes thoroughly. This process will need at most 24 hours, in comparison this process may be paid or may take up to 30 days with other hosts.

The simplest way to request a site transfer is to do so when you initially sign up SiteGround. Simply click “Transfer an existing website” in the “Account Setup Wizard”.

You additionally have the choice to request a website transfer through the support section of your SiteGround Account.

This is an incredible feature if you decide that you would like to transfer your website later. Just navigate to “User Area > Support > Request Assistance from Our Team” and click on the “Proceed to contact us here” link.

Then, choose “Transfer Website”.

Further, it’s important to note that SiteGround can only transfer the files and databases of a single website without your email accounts and other account settings if your previous web host isn’t running cPanel.

You also have the choice to transfer your website to SiteGround manually, but I recommend taking benefit of the free transfer that is included with your plan.

 

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19. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

SiteGround might not provide a free trial of their services, however, they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee which is strictly the kind of security you will need if you’re looking for a web host.

That way, you’ll have peace of mind. You don’t have to totally commit to SiteGround if you don’t 100% satisfied with it in your first 30 days of use.

However, some conditions apply to this hosting company’s money back guarantee:

• You need to post a service termination request through the User Area.
• Preliminary orders for hosting services are covered only within 30 days from the day that SiteGround activated the service(s).
• Renewal orders aren’t covered.
• Domain name and domain privacy (ID Protect) fees aren’t refundable. These fees might even be credited upon cancellation, even if they’re waived within a promotion.
• Cloud and dedicated hosting services, paid support, and third-party services aren’t covered by the money back guarantee.
• Reseller packages covered only if a whole reseller package is canceled. This guarantee doesn’t apply to the termination of single accounts in a reseller package, too.

 

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20. Recommenced by WordPress, Joomla, Drupal

SiteGround is the only hosting company listed on all 3 recommended hosting pages.

WordPress…

Joomla…

And Drupal…

 

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21. A+ Feedback On Facebook & Twitter

If you spend the time reading these Facebook conversations actually, your choice is clear (listed by OnlineMediaMasters).

• Feedback On SiteGround
• What’s Your Take On SiteGround?
• Would You Recommend SiteGround?
• SiteGround Feedback For WordPress?
• SiteGround Load Time Improvement #1
• SiteGround Load Time Improvement #2
• SiteGround Load Time Improvement #3
• SiteGround Load Time Improvement #4
• SiteGround Load Time Improvement #5
• SiteGround Testimonial #1
• SiteGround Testimonial #2
• SiteGround Testimonial #3
• Reliable Hosting Company?
• SiteGround vs. Godaddy
• SiteGround vs. Godaddy
• SiteGround vs. WP Engine
• SiteGround vs Bluehost Cloud
• SiteGround vs. Bluehost vs. HostGator
• SiteGround vs. Godaddy vs. HostGator
• SiteGround vs. DreamHost vs. GoDaddy vs. HostGator
• SiteGround StartUp Plan Feedback
• SiteGround GrowBig Plan Feedback
• SiteGround GoGeek Plan Feedback
• If Not Bluehost, Then Who?
• Tired Of Bluehost
• HostGator Or Bluehost (Neither – SiteGround!)
• Bluehost To SiteGround (Happy Customer)
• HostGator To SiteGround – Good Move?
• SiteGround Support > Bluehost Support

Here are just a few of them (you can click each image to see the feedback):

Compliments about their support from Twitter:

 

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Final Thoughts

So.. Do I recommend SiteGround?

Yes – I highly recommend SiteGround.

In fact, a lot which I now use SiteGround (I’m on the GrowBig GoGeek plan), because not so way back when I made a decision to move this website over to them.

They really provide a very affordable and reliable web hosting service for your website (specifically for WordPress site).

They have industry-leading and impressive uptime levels, fast servers, strong security features, and excellent customer support that leave the competition in the rear-view mirror.

The few downsides of choosing them as your web hosting, in my opinion, far outweighed by the upsides.

So long as your website doesn’t go over the resource limits, you can be confident that your website will load quickly, be available when it’s needed, and will be secure to protect your data as well as your visitors privacy.

If you’re still in doubt with SiteGround, take benefit of their 30-day money back guarantee, meaning you can “try them out” and if you aren’t happy, then you’ll get your cash back.

I hope you found my SiteGround WordPress Hosting review helpful! If you have any query feel free to drop me a line in the comments but I attempted to cover in so far as I could.

Get SiteGround WordPress Hosting