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The SiteGround StartUp plan is arguably one of the best entry-level plans of all web hosting providers currently available. In terms of CPU power, it’s able to overcome the others so far. With the use of SSD drives, free SSL, and premium support, I’ve often called SiteGround as “Apple” in the world of web hosting.

When I initially switched over to SiteGround, I decided to buy the StartUp plan and it was truly satisfying! Later I upgraded to the GrowBig GoGeek plan and it’s better bang for your buck, and costs just 2$ 8$ more monthly and you get 2X 4X the server resources that can really speed up your website, premium 30 daily backups + restoration and you can host unlimited websites!

If you are planning to run blogging seriously, I would recommend spending the extra money and investing in the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. GoGeek is a plan I currently use! That’s why my website can load very fast, and I come so high in Google Search results since speed is one of the main factors in SEO.

For this time I will only focus on reviewing the details of the StartUp plan. What are the advantages and disadvantages compared to other plans and when should you choose it?

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1. #1 Rated WordPress Host

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

WordPress…

Joomla…

And Drupal…

Moreover, WordPress Hosting is a closed Facebook group with more than 10,000 members who focused solely on WordPress hosting.

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

That’s right. SiteGround has been voted as #1 WordPress hosting for two continuous years (#1 in 2017’s poll and #1 in 2016’s poll). It involved more than 350 voters who are proficient in WordPress hosting.

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

In several discussions, there are also many who recommend using SiteGround.

Ivica runs WordPress Speed Up Facebook Group and ranks them #1 in his resources page. He isn’t a SiteGround affiliate or is sponsored by them but only been a customer for years.

Apart from many polls conducted on Facebook, as shown above, SiteGround also obtains perfect scores and ratings from numerous trusted hosting review sites such as HostAdvice, HostSearch, Trustpilot, etc (you can click each image to see the review).

 

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2. StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek

The main difference is StartUp can solely host 1 website but nevertheless 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 create a staging site to test code, plugins, designs, before releasing. All higher plans include everything in the previous lower plan.

Here’s the full comparison chart:

Here’s a breakdown of each plan:

StartUp – Cheapest plan at only $3.95/month, it’s just enough to host one website with very little traffic. Nonetheless, it’s better than any other hosting plan at $3.95/month available but lacks additional server resources, large storage space, priority support and the exceptional backup tool that you get with the other plans (even though you still get a free daily backup). In my own experience when using this plan, I’ve got 99% uptime and thoroughly no internal server or other hosting errors.

• Hosts 1 website
• ~ 10,000 visits a month
• $3.95 a month
• All essential features
• 10 GB space
• Free SSL from Let’s Encrypt!
• Most suitable for someone who started their first website

GrowBig – At $5.95/month the GrowBig plan is the most popular one, and for good reason, it’s the best choice for your money for anybody who starting in the online business industry. It allows you to host lots of websites, has almost 2x server resources compared to StartUp, double storage space, priority support, staging plus includes 30 daily backups and backup restoration tool.

There is advanced caching if you use the SG CachePress plugin, but as I mentioned in my WordPress speed optimization guide, I prefer to use W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket.

• Hosts unlimited websites
• ~ 25,000 visits a month
• $5.95 a month
• All essential features
• 20 GB space
• Free Wildcard SSL certificate for a year
• About 2x server and email resources
• Priority support
• Backup & restoration service
• WordPress special cache
• 3 levels of SuperCacher
• Best bang for the buck for someone who has multiple websites

SiteGround GrowBig Review

GoGeek – Considering using Semi-dedicated, GoGeek has around 4x faster than standard shared hosting! At a fraction of the expense of a dedicated server at $11.95/month. It’s ideal for people who have large websites but don’t want to spend $75+/month on cloud hosting.

It includes all offered at GrowBig along with staging (for testing websites before launching), unlimited restores by SiteGround’s support team, plus essential eCommerce features such as 1-year free Wildcard SSL and PCI compliance for credit card fraud protection.

• Hosts unlimited websites
• ~ 100,000 visits a month
• $11.95 a month
• All essential features
• 30 GB space
• Free Wildcard SSL certificate for a year
• About 4x server and email resources
• Priority support
• Premium backup & restore
• 1-click WordPress Staging
• SG-Git for repository creation
• Pre-Installed Git
• Free PCI compliance
• Fastest shared hosting plan available and mainly for someone who runs large websites

SiteGround GoGeek Review

 

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3. Half The Server Resources of GrowBig

SiteGround’s StartUp has fewer server resources as compared to higher plans, this is what plays a key role when it comes to your website speed! GrowBig is much faster than StartUp because you get more server resources.

You can find out the difference in server resources on SiteGround’s features page.

Here’s the number of server resources included in each plan:

 

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4. Comparison with Other Hosting Provider Plans

The SiteGround StartUp plan is far more reliable when compared to any other entry hosting plan out there. For instance, DreamHost recently launched a “Starter” hosting plan for only $2.59/month. That’s so cheap – actually one of the cheapest.

Still, DreamHost states that the average website only uses 5 minutes of CPU power a day. That’s just 300 seconds. Now compare this to SiteGround’s 10000 seconds per day of CPU time allowed for the StartUp plan – that’s nearly 3 hours! This gives you an idea of how big the gap is in the CPU power between SiteGround and other hosting providers.

If you find your existing hosting provider’s entry-level plan isn’t cutting it, you might consider switching to using SiteGround. It’s just more powerful.

 

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5. <1s Load Time & 99.99% High Uptime

Speed is crucial for my website! I always try and make sure that my website runs as fast as possible and having a good host is vital in that equation. The StartUp plan is much faster than any other hosting provider at that price range however in case you cough up the extra 2$/month and try out the GrowBig plan you’ll get a lot more server resources.

SiteGround’s speed technology is one of the main reasons why I chose them. They employ the latest NGINX servers, solid states drives (SSDs), PHP7, Cloudflare CDN, and HTTP/2 enabled servers. In other words, it has the best tech for your website; qualified hardware and software!

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

From the analysis of the test site has been set an average uptime of 99.99%, which is 0.2% better than the 99.79% industry standard which is just what they guarantee their customers.

In case you’ve ever experienced internal server errors, bad gateways, connection failures, and other messages when your website goes down, you’ll never get this with SiteGround. Other WordPress hosts say 99.99% but neglect to deliver. Not for SiteGround.

Within the same 12-month period, it found average page loading times of 722ms – faster than the 890ms average load times I came over from other web hosts.

That’s very good, one of the fastest I’ve ever seen.

It was very constant too. There’re no surges or slow loading times at all. Until now, so good.

Overall, SiteGround is pretty fast.

I initially used Bluehost but was disappointed a few times. My website often didn’t load fast and sometimes I was getting internal server errors. Since I migrated to SiteGround I was able to see a striking difference in my Pingdom scores, but also by clicking through my pages (give it a try)! I don’t need to worry anymore about my website getting “randomly” shut down.

I’ve used SiteGround StartUp, GrowBig, and I’m currently on their GoGeek plan. In the past when my website still didn’t use a lot of high resources it could be loaded in 1s on StartUp, but I rely on it to make a living (which needed more resources and better performance) so I upgraded. I wouldn’t write this SiteGround StartUp review if I never used it.

SiteGround Speed Optimization Features

Here are several of the main features that SiteGround has to speed up your website speed:

SiteGround Has Faster Load Times

My WordPress site loads only in <1s on SiteGround, and I’m not the only one who gets it. Here’s a chart which compares the average load time of websites running on several of the most popular hosting providers.

4 Data Centers

SiteGround currently has 4 data centers (Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Singapore) so depending on where your visitors come from most, you can choose the data center that is closest to those visitors.

Cloudflare CDN

SiteGround StartUp (along with all their web host plans) come with Cloudflare’s free CDN. This can enhance both your website speed and security by hosting heavy elements of your website on multiple servers around the world so that visitors can access your content from the closest server.

Activate Cloudflare in SiteGround’s cPanel to make your website load faster.

WordPress Caching

If you have a WordPress site and run it via Pingdom or other speed testing tools, you might get messages such as browser caching, minify, gzip compression need to be improved, etc. SiteGround recommends using their internal SG CachePress plugin, but I would prefer to use W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket instead. These plugins have lots of better reviews and integrate with Cloudflare + KeyCDN combined so that they can reduce your website load time in multiple seconds.

Your hosting and cache plugin are the two most crucial factors when it comes to WordPress site speed optimization.

 

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6. StartUp is Good for Whom?

• You only need to host 1 website.
• You don’t need priority support.
• You don’t need numerous server resources/plugins.
• You need less than 10GB of web storage.
• Your website has less than 10,000 visitors/month.
• You don’t use lots of (high resource) plugins.
• You’re having technical issues with the host you’re currently using.
• You want a free Let’s Encrypt SSL (but don’t need a premium SSL).
• You want to get automatic updates, backups, free domain, and email features.
• You want to get SiteGround’s core speed technology and Cloudflare’s free CDN.
• You want secure hosting with actual 99.99% uptime and spam prevention.
• You want a hosting company with a great support team that actually will help you.
• You’re running a hobby website, not a serious or big business website.

When to Upgrade to GrowBig/GoGeek?

• You need more server resources for faster load times.
• You have multiple websites and need 20GB+ of web storage.
• You want priority support to get tickets answered more quickly.
• You use lots of WordPress plugins (or high resource plugins).
• You want to create staging sites (GoGeek required for this).
• You want to SG-Git or Pre-Installed Git for WordPress repository creation.
• You need a premium Wildcard SSL certificate or PCI compliance for an eCommerce site.
• You want to use advanced caching, though plugins like WP Rocket provide better ones.
• You run a business website and rely (or have a plan to rely) on it to make a living.

 

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7. Amazing Customer Support

The one thing that SiteGround users like most is their customer support, and looks like I’ll also be one of them! SiteGround has some of the best customer support I’ve ever met.

Chat support can normally solve your issue in just 5 minutes:

Then tickets are usually answered only within 8 minutes:

As you can see from the pictures above, SiteGround is super fast in answering any chats and tickets raised! That’s the fastest in the industry!

You will no longer need to wait up to 30 minutes for someone to help you (like Bluehost). SiteGround’s support mostly responds tickets in less than 10 minutes with priority support (GrowBig or GoGeek required for this). But even if you don’t have priority support, they can still be super helpful and knowledgeable about WordPress plugins, Joomla extensions, etc. For several times, I’ve had to contact SiteGround customer support and they always took the time to dig up into my website and really solve the issue. That makes a big difference.

I usually get an answer within a few minutes after submitting a ticket:

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

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

Still not believing? Here are some compliments about their support from Twitter:

 

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8. cPanel Demo

If you’re not currently hosted with SiteGround and are curious to see a cPanel demo, this can help you to explore the various options after you purchase a SiteGround plan. You’ll see many useful features like WordPress installer, auto updates, staging, Cloudflare, mail options, and a lot of other features that make your website run smooth and load fast. That includes tools for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

 

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Final Thoughts

So that’s a complete review of the SiteGround StartUp plan. It’s cheap to get started, and it surely has more power than all other entry-level plans on the market. And in case you need more resources for your website, you can always upgrade it to GrowBig and GoGeek!

GrowBig is $2/month more buck and will assuredly make your website load faster, plus you get priority support and other great features. And if you would like an even faster website with semi-dedicated hosting, GoGeek can be a better choice. Regardless, if you’re currently still using one of the terrible hosts in Facebook polls above, you’ll be happy you migrated. Right now I’m on their GoGeek plan, but that is $11.95/month ONLY because I’m obsessed with website speed (and relying on my website to run an online business and earn a living). Unless you truly need this, the StartUp and GrowBig plans will be fine.

I hope that my SiteGround StartUp review could help you to choose the right web host plan. If you still have any questions, feel free to ask me anything in the comments section below! I seriously do love SiteGround, that’s why I took the time to write such a long review.

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