Look, there’s a lot of great web hosting companies out there. Unfortunately there are even more very mediocre ones and some very shit ones. And if you don’t know what to look for in a web host, then it can make choosing the best one for you even more of a pain in the arse.

It’s no surprise, from the title of this post, that I choose and recommend Siteground web hosting to all my clients. And I’m gonna tell you why.

Their technical support is great.

Like a lot of hosting companies, Siteground has 24/7 support via chat. Unlike a lot of hosting companies, their support team actually know their stuff. I’ve had more than a few support chats with other hosting companies, (one of which may rhyme with hazy cogames), who’s support person didn’t understand what I was asking and in one instance I had to correct because they were telling me something contrary to what was on their own website.

And, sure, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but when you’re relying on the person on the other end of the chat to give you the right information, they need to give you the right information! Especially when the incorrect information can cause you more migraines and frustration a few days later when the issue still isn’t resolved and you have to contact them again.

I’ve only one instance when my support request had to be elevated to a higher level and followed up. 9 times out of 10, the support crew answer my question the first time. And let me tell you, I tend to ask them every possible question I can think of, and they are always so patient and kind.

Another thing I love about their support is they don’t lay it on thick with the artificially effusive customer love. They are super friendly, patient and talk like normal people do.

Their servers are high quality

Great web hosting will have fast, reliable and powerful servers to ensure that can provide you the best load times possible, and to make sure their up-time is super high. Up-time is the amount of time their servers stay online and work as they should. A shitty server is going to mean your site may go offline when something goes wrong. Siteground web hosting provides high quality web servers.

They have a good user account interface

Siteground recently (about a year ago) updated their old account portal, which used the common cPanel interface to access things like ftp accounts, emails, ssl certificates, domains and sub domains, backups etc. The cPanel has been a really common interface for people to manage all sorts of aspects of their hosting account, but it wasn’t the best in terms of user friendliness, especially for people who aren’t developers.

The new account portal at Siteground is really easy to use and to navigate around. It’s much more user friendly for the average person with a menu on the left with easy categories to help you find what you want to do. And there is so much you can do all on your own without having to pay for extra functionality.

They have their own performance enhancement plugin

Siteground have even built their own performance enhancement plugin. What does that mean? It means that all the plugins you would normally need to add on to your website to make it work better and faster, you can do with the included Siteground Optimizer plugin. Its features include:

• 3 layers of caching.
• Minifying the front end code on your site.
• Optimising the server-side with https enforce, and cleaning up your database
• Optimising your images, reducing their size and load time.

This is a really good plugin and will help you no end when trying to increase the speed of your website. Another reason to choose Siteground web hosting.

All the ‘extras’ are actually included

Speaking of extra functionality, one of the main reasons I freaking love Siteground web hosting so much is for the extras you get, that come as standard on even their lowest tier hosting package. This is really important to watch out for, because although some hosting companies will have cheaper prices right out of the gate, by the time you add the ‘extras’ you’ve ended up paying more than if you had just gone with Siteground in the first place. And the point here, is that these extras I’m referring to, absolutely shouldn’t be extras in the first place if you want to run a website that conforms to best practice.

So what extras am I referring to?

-SSL Certificate

Every single website now, whether you accept online payments or not, needs to have an SSL Certificate for online security. Why?

• Because the data that is sent between the server and your website is protected by encryption which makes it extremely difficult for hackers to steal your data.
• Because it lets your customers know that you value security and that your website has been authenticated. They can see this by the little padlock icon that will sit at the beginning of your website url in their browser.
• Because Google favours websites that work over https. That is, websites that have ssl encryption. And no one wants to anger the Google Gods when it comes to ranking your website.

Some webs hosts will charge you extra for SSL and this can be up to an extra $180 per year. The thing with SSL Certificates is that anyone can get the free ssl and people mistakenly believe that you need to get the paid SSL because they think it provides much better data encryption. There is a difference between the paid and the free versions of SSL certificates, but it’s not to do with the level of data encryption. The data encryption is the same for both. The difference is that a paid SSL Certificate will give you some level of insurance if you’re site gets hacked and you lose money as a result, and it lets you place a security seal or badge logo on your website which undoubtedly makes your customers feel secure. However some hosts, don’t even let you know that free SSL is an option and force you to buy their paid version. Cough cough sounds like ‘hazy comains’ cough.

-Backups

Do not even get me started on this one! If you don’t have a back up enabled for your website, then do you even deserve to have a website! I say this out of love people, because I’ve seen the damage not having backups can do. Anyway, moving on. Almost every hosting company will likely offer you monthly backups included in the cost of the hosting package. But Siteground offers you daily backups. And if you want more than monthly backups, most hosting companies will charge you for it. Why would you need daily backups though?

Think about it. If your site gets hacked or you install a dodgy plugin and your site gets completely f*&^ed up, what do you do? You call your hosting company and ask them to restore the site for you. But the last back up they have is 28 days ago but only two days before you messed up your site, you had uploaded and updated a heap of content and images! All that work is gone now! Because the last copy you have of your site is before all that work. If you had daily backups, you would be able to restore the site to the previous day and you would be good as gold!

As an addendum to this, I will say that you should never just have one backup for your site. So, to get around this one, you could also install a good back up plugin like Updraft Plus or Backup Buddy so that even if your hosting company doens’t have a recent back, you can restore from your plugin. Note that you’ll need the paid versions of these plugins. However, restoring your website from a plugin isn’t as easy as one click.

-One Click Restore

What do I mean by one click restore? I literally mean, with Siteground, you only have to do one thing to have your whole website completely restored. You navigate to your backups, see the latest one at the top of the list from yesterday and click ‘restore’. That’s it! Seriously.

Worth. Its. Weight. In. Gold. When you’ve just realised your website looks like a dog’s breakfast because you messed something up, believe me, the last thing you want to is to fiddle around with your plugin backup, madly trying to read the instructions on how to restore the site because you didn’t think you’d ever have to actually restore the site.

For stress free website restores, Siteground web hosting is amazeballs.

Web Hosting Round Up

So there you go. These are the main reasons I use and recommend Siteground.

• Great technical support
• High quality servers
• Good account interface
• All the extras included
  • SSL Certificate
  • Daily backups
  • One click restore.

On the face of it they look more expensive than some of the other big name hosts, but don’t be fooled. Do your research and you’ll find that by the time you add all the extra costs in, you’ll be wishing you went with Siteground to begin with.

Just a note that there are some fantastic web hosts out there that are a level above Siteground, like WP Engine and FlyWheel, but they are also a level up in terms of cost. In my opinion and experience setting up hosting for my clients, Siteground offers the best balance of affordability and quality.  And they always seem to offer a reduced rate for the first year that you sign up. Check them out.

Note: I may earn a small commission but it helps me to continue to provide you great free content and advice.

If you’re not sure about Siteground, but want to do your own research on web hosting, I’ve prepared a list of things you need to know to help you choose a good web host. Some of them I covered in this article, but you’ll find a few more items in this e-booklet I created. Enter your details in the form below and my “How To Choose A Good Web Host” pdf will be on its way to your inbox.