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SiteGround offers several powerful shared web hosting plans in which the GoGeek plan is considered the best and most expensive at $11.95/month.

GoGeek is semi-dedicated hosting and is around 4x faster than StartUp. That became one of the biggest difference between GoGeek and their other shared hosting plans – the number of server resources you get is the primary factor when looking for hosting since it most affects a website speed. So your website will load faster by using the higher plans.

This plan is ideal for a serious blogger, web developer, eCommerce business and websites that are expecting lots of traffic. If you want a plan for the future, then you can’t go wrong by taking this option. But for most people, GrowBig or even StartUp is sufficient, and it’s not necessary to pay extra money without the need.

In this SiteGround GoGeek review, I’ll explore the several essential features of the GoGeek plan to see if it’s indeed better than the StartUp and GrowBig plans.

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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

SiteGround StartUp Review

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

 

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3. Host Unlimited Websites

You can host as many websites as possible on your GoGeek account, just ensure you don’t outpace the CPU quota limits or your website could get a penalty to be temporarily shut down (this can happen with any host). For most websites, this shouldn’t be a problem, but I’ve listed several tips below to help prevent it.

In the past, I once encountered this problem on my website, but I was able to resolve it quickly with the help of SiteGround’s incredible support team who helped me better configure the plugins that I used.

Tips on Avoiding CPU Overages

• Monitor your website statistics through AWStats on your SiteGround cPanel.
• Setup Cloudflare and KeyCDN to help reduce too much CPU usage.
• Utilize the Wordfence Security plugin to block unwanted bots/IP addresses.
• Enable hotlink protection using W3 Total Cache and Cloudflare combinations.
• Avoid using heavy plugins or extensions which continuously run on your website.
• Install the Heartbeat Control plugin to prevent excessive resource consumption.

 

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4. Server Resources 4x More Than StartUp

You can find out the difference in the number of server resources on SiteGround’s features page under the “We Allocate the Resources You Need” section, and you’ll see that when you upgrade plans, you also get 2x more server resources. GoGeek has the most number of server resources and is around 4x more than lower shared hosting plans. And the result is that my website loads ridiculously fast even though it uses lots of high-resource plugins.

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

SiteGround says this about GoGeek’s server resources:

“Limited number of GoGeek users are hosted on each server. Thus we are able to provide up to 4x more server resources than on the lower shared hosting plans.”

 

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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.

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.

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

Don’t forget to activate Cloudflare on your cPanel that can help make your website run even faster. This comes for free with all SiteGround web host plans, but make sure you do this.

Also turn on aggressive caching, minify code, and Railgun to make even faster load times.

WordPress Caching

If you’re running WordPress and want your website loading as fast as possible, I would recommend using W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket instead of their built-in SuperCacher. These plugins have better ratings and integrate with Cloudflare + KeyCDN combined which can easily boost load times in multiple seconds.

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

Speed Optimization Tips (Outside Of Hosting)

• Configure W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket with Cloudflare or KeyCDN.
• Minify and combine all of the CSS and JavaScript files using the Autoptimize plugin.
• Utilize a lightweight theme, like a Genesis theme from StudioPress.
• Run your website via GTmetrix to analyze unoptimized images on the page.
• Resize large images (GTmetrix will tell you the correct dimensions).
• Specify the correct image dimensions in the HTML or CSS (GTmetrix will also tell you).
• Use the SmushIt plugin to losslessly compress all images on your website in bulk.

 

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6. 1-Click Demo Website Creation

GoGeek comes with one-click staging feature that lets you easily clone your website (in WordPress or Joomla).

You can utilize the clone website to test code, plugins, designs, and other features.

This unique feature prevents website owners from launching their website with untested code and plugins that can be harmful in some ways.

Once you ensure its performance and no more changes are required, you can launch the actual website.

 

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7. Backup and Restore Service

You get 30 daily backups, a free backup and restoration tool with the GoGeek plan. You can contact the SiteGround technical support team to restore a backup whenever you need.

If you’re unsure about restoring your website to an earlier version, then you want a reliable team who can just in case something unwanted happens, you now have that luxury with the GoGeek plan.

 

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8. Wildcard SSL & PCI Compliance

Free Let’s Encrypt SSL – All plans include a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate that you can find on your cPanel dashboard.

Wildcard SSL – GrowBig and GoGeek come with a Wildcard SSL certificate for 1-year, that secures your website and its subdomains while giving you a site seal to display on your website. After the first year of usage, it’ll cost $89/year.

Shopping Carts – SiteGround supports major shopping cart platforms such as Virtuemart, Magento, Prestashop, WooCommerce, etc. They also have an eCommerce hosting plan that is devoted to the best shopping cart performance.

PCI Compliance – Only included with the GoGeek plan to help prevent credit card fraud by uniting payments using 12 requirements.

 

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9. GoGeek is Good for Whom?

• You need more server resources (for faster website).
• You want to host unlimited websites with priority support.
• You need higher limits on your storage, database, and email.
• You want to create a staging site so that you can do testing before launch.
• You want SiteGround support team to restore your website for you when needed.
• You want a pre-installed Git that allows you to create repositories.
• You need PCI compliance to help prevent credit card payment fraud.
• You want 30 daily backups, automatic updates, free domain, and hosting migration.
• You need an actual 99.99% uptime with quick (priority) support that certainly helps you.
• You want to use NGINX servers, SSD drives, Cloudflare and other speed technologies.
• You want security protection from a team who regularly updates servers for new threats.
• You can pay $11.95/mo for great hosting, but don’t want to pay $80/mo for cloud hosting.

 

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10. Better Customer Support with Priority 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.

SiteGround’s GoGeek plan included with priority support to help you resolve issues faster. I wouldn’t take GoGeek only for its priority support since the regular support is equally helpful (and still very fast), but that’s just another perk of GoGeek.

With priority support, 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. 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 amazingly 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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11. 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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12. Free Website Migration

A website transfer is included for free in the GoGeek plan. 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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Final Thoughts

SiteGround has included every possible best feature to make GoGeek the best among all shared hosting plans.

At $11.95/month GoGeek has a low price if compared to their cloud hosting ($80/month) and dedicated servers ($269/month). It’s a perfect balance in case you want a super fast website, but don’t want to pay an arm and leg for hosting. It should be perfectly capable of running a high traffic website or multiple smaller traffic websites without the need to worry about server resources getting consumed and also websites getting shut down temporarily (a common problem that occurs in other cheaper plans).

Fast hosting is the #1 thing WordPress suggests in their performance optimization guide so while you can set up caching, optimize images, etc. You still have to rely on your hosting to provide adequate server resources to make your website always load fast. And that’s where GoGeek plays its role.

I hope that my SiteGround GoGeek review could help you to choose the right hosting plan, it’s certainly worth the extra few bucks a month in case you want a faster website. If you still have any questions, drop me a line in the comments below!

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