SiteGround Review
$3.95
ProsSiteGround has become the best host for Joomla and almost any other CMS you can think of. The servers are fast, tech support is excellent and they have many features you will not find with other hosting companies.
ConsNot any yet
Bottom LineSiteGround is an excellent choice, they provide a great service at a great price. We see the most positive reviews from experts in the Joomla community. If you are familiar with Joomla, SiteGround will make a great new home for you site.
Editor review
The Best Joomla Host
Signup and Setup
Signup was easy and took less than 5 minutes. At the end of the registration process you have to be careful which plan options you select. When we reached the bottom of the page there was a premium support option which we left checked and it didn't raise our price at all (free for 3 months).
There were other options like Domain Privacy, Daily Backup, HackAlert Monitoring which will significantly raise the price of the plan over several months. It's nice having access to these options, but be careful before you purchase your plan and make sure you are getting only what you need.
Once signed up you will receive emails with all the account and login info. A customer service representative called to ensure everything went well and and we were happy with the service so far.
Installing Joomla
Installing Joomla was trouble free. We installed our site using an akeeba backup restore. If you need a new Joomla site several options are available, including Softacoulous and installing Joomla from scratch.
SiteGround uses cPanel and 99% of all Joomla extensions work without issue on cPanel servers. File permissions are correctly configured. Developers test on will are sure to test for this type of configuration unlike Joomla on Windows or Joomla on the plesk control panel.
For those not familiar with setting up Joomla manually, SiteGround provides it's own set of tutorials. The easiest way is Softaculous, a 3rd party one-click installer. It is found in the cPanel control panel and allows you to set up Joomla very quickly.
Running Joomla
With Siteground’s server setup we did not make any php or file permission changes everything worked correctly right 'out of the box'. This saves quite a bit of time during the initial setup, as well as day to day operation and maintenance.
We have not experienced any server issues when upgrading the Joomla core or any of our extensions.
Speed/Uptime
Joomla pages are very fast and the site load quickly. Navigating around in the backend administrator interface is smooth and without any lag.
Our speed monitoring services confirm that the servers are fast 24 hours a day. We created a homepage with thousands of words on it and several web compressed images. This page loads in 800ms to 1,000ms. These are respectable times for not having caching or any other joomla optimizations.
When it comes to uptime, it has been near perfect. The site is consistently available with almost zero downtime. In a couple of cases we broke the site when testing Javascript and CSS optimization plugins.
Support
We tested support with a couple of basic questions. They replied very quickly with answers that resolved the issue.
We even had one more fairly advanced issue, we had added a 3rd Party Content Delivery Network (CDN) to a site and we were seeing issues in a couple parts of the world. After some basic troubleshooting we were able to determine the issue was not with SiteGround but the 3rd Party CDN. Even though it was not their issue SiteGround worked with us to get it resolved.
Conclusion
Installing Joomla was a piece of cake. With knowledge of using cPanel's file manager and MySQL Databases, we were able to do a clean install of Joomla within minutes of sign up. SiteGround has excellent uptime and speed.
The prices are very competitive with excellent technical support. They are a huge supporter of the Joomla community.
We are very pleased with SiteGround and will continue to host sites with them and recommend them to our web design clients.
Pros and Cons
Excellent Prices
Joomla installs without issue
Free Joomla templates
Memcached available for all hosting plans
Helpful knowledge-base and tutorials
User reviews
PHP 5.5 Not Available
Joomla 3.4 reports that Siteground is running PHP 3.3, which is no longer supported, and recommends PHP 3.5 or higher. Support at Siteeground reports that PHP 3.5 is only available with their Cloud account, but they will upgrade a site to PHP 3.4. For a site that aspires to be Joomla friendly it's odd that they don't offer the PHP version that Joomla strongly reccomends.
Pros and Cons
Starting with siteground, first impression
I just start using their service, and first impression was awesome, since I talk to Ivan ( sales person ).
Pros and Cons
UNBEATABLE SUPPORT
thanks siteground
Pros and Cons
Simply the best
When it comes to building websites I know what I am doing. When it comes to hosting and solving problems related to hosting I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That's why I use Siteground> They are my go to guys for hosting. When I have an issue I post a ticket and usually have an answer (and solution) in 5 minutes. I can concentrate on what I know and when it comes to hosting, my Siteground guys have my back.
Pros and Cons
Purchased 12 hours ago
Customer service is first class. I purchased about 12 hours ago and just sat back down to my computer. My website is transferred over and I will finish everything on my end in the morning. I spoke with live chat before buying, right after, and just a few minutes ago because I had a quick question. These guys are really great.
I was surprised to get a call (from a real person) welcoming me and thanking me. That kind of stuff doesn't happen today. So far so good and I'm really impressed
I'm expecting a fast loading website and that's what led me here. I will keep you posted.
Pros and Cons
Customer service!
Customer service!
Impressed all the way around
If you are looking for a hosting company. You must choose Sitegrounds I promise you that you would regret any other choice.
Pros and Cons
The add ons that come with hosting packages are equally as amazing. They seem to have partnered with amazing companies as well.
Awesome! Awesome!
These guys are just simply awesome.
you know when you get the best kind of treatment
but just don't know how to explain it.
that's siteground
Pros and Cons
you know when you get the best kind of treatment
but just don't know how to explain it.
that's siteground
Siteground should be called SiteHaven
Due to their clean and easy site, very informative help section, a super duper prompt support, I am moving all my sites from Godaddy to here. I just love this hosting solution.
Pros and Cons
Simply The Best
Just fantastic support and customer care. Amazingly fast and friendly service. Highly recommended.
Pros and Cons
anytime, anywhere to anyone
Over all, no one is perfect we are all humans but on the human scale i could say they are perfect LOL.
I would strongly recommend Siteground anytime, anywhere to anyone.
Pros and Cons
At the same time I hosted other sites with Godaddy, A+hosting, Bluehost and two others I can't remember. What kept me at Siteground was their customer service but Godaddy was good at that too. I was finally hooked by Siteground's simplistic approach. I found the others too business minded and trying to always con you into buying more and more fetures (some of which were not necessary). Most interestingly when i moved to Joomla the techs at Siteground assisted me alot (at the time, most host avoided tech support when it came to Joomla).
After my studies in the USA i moved back to Africa in 2010 and in spite of the painfully slow internet services here is still get to manage a couple of sites. Again, Siteground's customer service just blows me away, very customer oriented and very prompt - they tell you what you need to know and are not only concerned about the bill.
Finally any new client I get I always get them to switch to Siteground, that is how much i love their service.
Also a few bugs with their caching system but i know they will resolve that soon enough.
Fantastic support
Great support, thank you.
Pros and Cons
Great Services
no wait to talk to an associate, everyone are very polite. i like them.
Pros and Cons
Speed on services.
Great hosting company with outstanding services an
I have moved from Bluehost to Siteground and never looked back nor regretted my decision!
Pros and Cons
The fasted phone, chat and ticket response time
Excellent knowledge in Joomla, WordPress and more
Excellent optimization tools
Fast server
Highest uptime
Massively pleased and actually surprised at good s
Fantastic customer service and support, great hosting for my new business and lots of support from the Siteground team. Would recommend to anyone else.
Pros and Cons
Excellent live support
Online support very efficient. Excellent attention. They solve any problem very fast.
Pros and Cons
Hosting Plan Features
Joomla Features
MySQL Features
Support Options
Company Details
Notable Features:
- Fast Reliable Servers
- Live Chat Customer Support
- Super Cacher to make your site faster
- Wide Range of Plans and Excellent Prices
- Huge Joomla Community Supporter
Company Highlights:
Siteground is well known for it's Joomla specific features. Started in 2003 by a group of IT guys. 10 years later they have over 1100 servers spread out in 4 different locations around the world
View All SiteGround Prices & Plans
About SiteGround
SiteGround was established in August of 2003 in New York by a group of IT professionals. Though the company is relatively new, its customer-sensitive policies have brought it to the forefront of web hosting. SiteGround’s datacenter is located in Houston, Texas where its servers host over 150,000 sites. They also have offices in the United States and Europe.
SiteGround shared hosting, virtual private servers, and reseller packages. The company has received many distinctions including the ‘Best Joomla Host’ award. SiteGround accredits their success to “[their] profound technical expertise and unmatched quality of [their] customer care.”
Plans and Features
At $6.95 per month, SiteGround’s yearly hosting plan brings you a very enticing row of features starting with free setup and even a free domain name! You can have unlimited subdomains and parked websites pointing to your site. At a nominal fee, you can also host up to 6 add-on domains on your account.
Both storage and bandwidth are unlimited. FTP and email accounts are unlimited along with unlimited MySQL/Postgre databases. A wide range of server-side features are provided by SiteGround including support for PHP, Perl, Python, and Zend Optimizer. In addition, a whole host of free scripts and software are available to you including absolutely free installation of Mambo, Joomla, OSCommerce, phpBB, WordPress, phpNuke, Moodle, Drupal, MediaWiki, and even a line of ready-made CGI scripts.
Hosting Environment
Your account can be administered through the standard version of cPanel that SiteGround provides. From this panel, you can install scripts through Fantastico, manage your files, configure email addresses, restrict access to your site with IP filtering, edit MIME types and Apache handlers, etc. You will also find two of best industry standard database management software readily available phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin.
Joomla
Having received the 'Best Joomla Host' award, SiteGround is widely acclaimed for its Joomla-specific features. They also have a frequently updated section of attractive Joomla templates that would probably cost you a fortune elsewhere but just for being a SiteGoround customer, you get them free.
Tech Support
SiteGround Phone Tech Support: 1-866-605-2484
SiteGround has an excellent tech support team who known a lot about Joomla. You can contact support through one of three ways: email, a 24/7 hotline or live chat. SiteGround has built a reputation for itself for being one of the very few hosting companies in existence that can solve even the biggest of technical issues in minutes!
The phone and chat support solves level 1 issues that do no require actively accessing or altering customer files or databases. Otherwise the problem is pushed to the helpdesk where they will investigate the problem and resolve it.
Conclusion
You’ve got to admit it; for a hosting provider that’s still a fledgling, SiteGround has proven to be a prodigy. Their ultra-cheap pricing and the brilliant host of features that come with it leave very little to be desired. Plus, if you’re going to host a Joomla site, anybody can tell you that SiteGround is a name to be feared whenever Joomla hosting is brought up. Unlike many other one-hit-wonder companies that entice you with just free templates and installation, SiteGround actually backs you with a whole ton of technical knowledge and experience. All said, your Joomla site could be in no better hands than in SiteGround’s.
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