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SiteGround Review – Why I Switched to SiteGround Hosting
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(UPDATED JANUARY 27, 2021)
When I launched World of Freelancers a few years ago, things were a lot different.
I don’t mean things were a lot different in the world (although they obviously were), I mean things were a lot different with World of Freelancers.
For one thing, this site was originally named World of Scopists. For another, it was hosted on BlueHost.
Now not only is my website name much better since I rebranded, my website hosting is much better since I switched to SiteGround Hosting.
In this SiteGround review you’ll learn exactly why I switched to SiteGround Hosting.
SITEGROUND REVIEW
Why I Switched to
SiteGround Hosting
I switched to SiteGround in early 2018 for one very simple reason. I needed a really good server on which my site would consistently load quickly.
Once I switched to SiteGround Hosting, not only did I get that really good server that enables my site to consistently load quickly – I also found the best website tech support I’ve had in my life.
If you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur who wants your blog to be found on the internet – or if you simply want it to load quickly when people click on it – you really should choose a top-notch hosting company. In my opinion, the best hosting company is SiteGround.
If you’re a freelancer who wants to have a static website or basic blog to show your potential clients and you don’t need for people to find it by searching the internet, then speed may not be all that important for you. You may want to choose a hosting company that has a low-cost hosting plan.
When I launched the original iteration of my site on BlueHost, it began loading at an unbelievably slow speed of somewhere around seven seconds. A website should never take that long to load.
According to website guru Neil Patel, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and a one-second delay can mean a 7% reduction in conversions.
So, basically, no one was ever going to give my site a chance with it loading at that speed.
But what was the problem?
It was a WordPress site with a premium theme and it was designed by a professional web designer, so I figured the site itself was not the problem. However, I still had my designer do some troubleshooting to try to fix the loading speed. I did some work and research as well, all to no avail. We both concluded the problem lay with the server.
BlueHost told me switching from the shared server at their company to a cloud server would be the solution and would definitely speed up my site. Figuring it would be worth the added expense, I told them to go ahead and switch me to a cloud hosting plan.
Imagine my dismay, when after my site was switched to the cloud server, it was loading even more slowly, at about 11 seconds.
What an amazingly bad outcome from all the time and money I’d spent trying to fix the speed. It was pretty upsetting, let me tell you, to have my site now running at approximately the speed of an injured snail. But at least this showed me without any doubt what I needed to do: switch to another hosting company.
I did quite a bit of research of many different website hosting companies, and based on high SiteGround reviews and low cost, I chose SiteGround.
They helped me get my site switched over to their server, and as I expected, as soon as that was accomplished it began loading much, much faster. That was a big relief.
SiteGround impressed me from the very beginning and has continued to far exceed my other hosting company experiences to this day.
That first experience with SiteGround tech support was very positive. That was also a big relief. Even before BlueHost, several years earlier, I had a couple of other websites hosted on HostGator. Sometimes when chatting with the online tech support at both of these companies it seemed like I was communicating with some random, untrained person they’d pulled in off the street.
In the past almost three years that I’ve been with SiteGround, I find the tech support to be consistently top notch. They are endlessly polite, professional, helpful and almost always tell me exactly how to fix the problem or they go ahead and fix it themselves.
Only one time has the SiteGround tech support experience been not completely ideal, and that was when the person I was chatting with attempted to sell me an additional service that I didn’t need that he said would fix the issue I was having with my site. I didn’t buy the upsell and ended up figuring out how to fix the problem myself. This was an outlier, though, that did not fit in with the usual SiteGround tech support experience at all, and nothing like that has ever happened again.
One special touch that I really like about SiteGround tech support is this: every time you connect with one of their online support agents, you get to see their profile photo, their first name and a short bio that tells you a bit about who they are.
SiteGround has servers in six different countries on three continents, and they let you choose which server you want for your site.
The SiteGround servers are located in:
- Iowa, USA
- London, UK
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Sydney, Australia
- Singapore, Singapore
You should choose the server that is located the closest to where most of your website audience will be located.
SiteGround has three hosting plans: StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek.
The StartUp plan is for one website. If you’re thinking about starting an additional site or two, you should choose the next level up – GrowBig.
The GrowBig plan is what I chose because I have two sites and this plan gives me the option of starting even more. The GrowBig plan allows you to have as many websites as you wish.
The GoGeek plan is well-suited for sites with a huge amount of traffic as well as ecommerce sites.
You can learn all about these three hosting plans right here.
Each of these three plans have a special introductory price. In order to get the special introductory price, you’ll need to sign up for 12 months and pay for that 12 months up front.
SiteGround has a 30-day money back guarantee for their shared hosting plans and a 14-day money back guarantee for their cloud hosting plans. So if you find that you’re not loving SiteGround for any reason, you’ll be able to get your money back with no problem.
The SiteGround special introductory price is really good. When you renew, though, you’ll be paying the regular price, not the special price. So take that into consideration when you choose your hosting plan.
When their 12- or 24-month special price period is over, some bloggers start wondering if they should renew with SiteGround and pay the higher regular price or move to another, cheaper hosting company.
If I hadn’t already learned the hard way about cheaper hosting companies, I might wonder that too. But after wasting a lot of time and money – and gaining a ton of frustration – I know the right thing for me to do is to renew my plan each year and stay with SiteGround.
In my experience as a blogger, if you’re going to spend any money whatsoever on your blog, it should be for a quality hosting company.
I won’t ever waste time or money again with a sub-par hosting company. SiteGround is not the cheapest, but I don’t want the cheapest. With website hosting companies, you definitely get what you pay for.
Time is money – especially when you work for yourself – and there is enough frustration in the world now without adding any more to your life.
SiteGround provides me a fast-loading website along with excellent tech support, and this gives me peace of mind.
Fast-loading website on a good server + excellent tech support = peace of mind
Because I have had those past negative experiences with hosting and tech support at not one but two other hosting companies, I already renewed my SiteGround hosting once without hesitation and am going to renew it again when it comes up for renewal in early 2021.
Conclusion:
I don’t personally recommend many products here on World of Freelancers, but I do personally highly recommend SiteGround for your website hosting. I definitely made the right decision when I signed up with them. You can make the right decision too and also get 3 free months of SiteGround when you sign up right here.
Images by Kevin Phillips, Csaba Nagy
Original blog post – paste this back in at end of sale:
Sabina Lohr is a lifelong freelancer turned entrepreneur who created World of Freelancers to help others discover how to work for themselves online and live the freelance lifestyle. She’s always really enjoyed the freedom that freelancing brings, including several years on and off of working online while traveling and living abroad.
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