Our experience with SiteGround
Many user complaints and issues with their admin dashboard taking control of WordPress access. Not recommended for serious business owners wanting to scale up.
Our rating
1.0 / 5
Reviewed by the PremiumPress team.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
The control trade-off
There is a trade-off that PremiumPress customers should weigh carefully before choosing SiteGround.
Several users have reported that SiteGround's own admin and management layer sits quite deep inside the WordPress dashboard. It can feel as if SiteGround, and not you as the site owner, has the final say over core WordPress settings.
This has been a recurring frustration among site owners who want simple, unrestricted access to their own WordPress install.
If full control of your WordPress setup matters for your project, test this carefully during SiteGround's trial period before you move a live business site that earns revenue. It matters most for a custom PremiumPress theme install, where you will be making frequent changes in the admin area.
Pros
None reported by our team.
Cons
- Admin dashboard takes control of WordPress access
- Many user complaints
- Not recommended for scaling businesses
About this review
- Reviewed by
- PremiumPress team
- Our rating
- 1.0 / 5
- Our verdict
- Not Recommended
- Trustpilot rating
- 4.9/5
- Daily backups, 30-day retention
- Included
- Support: chat, phone & ticket
- 24/7
- Infrastructure
- Google Cloud
Plans and pricing
| Plan | Best for |
|---|---|
| StartUp | Entry shared plan with SG Optimizer caching |
| GrowBig | More storage, visitors and websites per account |
| GoGeek | Adds staging environments and priority support |
| Cloud / WooCommerce | Growing, high-traffic sites and online stores |
Our review, in detail
Who is SiteGround?
SiteGround has been in the hosting business for over 20 years and has built its reputation largely on customer service.
- A 4.9 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot, held over more than a decade of reviews
- A 98% customer satisfaction rate, by its own internal figures
- Around 3 million domain owners worldwide, according to the company
Products and tools
The hosting range covers:
- Managed WordPress hosting, with AI-assisted site management tools
- General web hosting for sites that don't use WordPress
- Cloud hosting for growing or busy sites
- WooCommerce hosting for online shops
- Reseller and agency programs for businesses managing several client sites under one account
SiteGround has added a wider set of tools in recent years. There is its own drag-and-drop website builder, an AI app-building tool called Coderick that creates functionality from chat prompts, a multi-model "AI Studio" workspace and email marketing tools.
Domain registration starts from around £9.99/year.
Performance, plans and support
SiteGround runs its hosting on Google Cloud Platform, not its own data centers, and adds its own server-level caching on top. It publishes case studies claiming large speed gains. One cited example claims 88.6% faster performance after a site moved to its platform.
The shared plans are called StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. Each step up brings more storage, more visitor capacity and more websites per account. GoGeek adds staging and priority support.
All three plans include SiteGround's own caching plugin, SG Optimizer. It is generally reliable, but it is one more layer to keep in mind when a page is not showing your latest changes.
Free daily backups are included on every plan and kept for 30 days. SiteGround's migration plugin moves an existing WordPress site across automatically in most cases, without involving the support team.
Support is open 24/7 by live chat, phone and ticket. The status page and changelog are both public. That helps when you need to work out whether a problem is on the server or in your own PremiumPress install.
Ready to get started with SiteGround?
Read another hosting review
Host Upon4.0 / 5Read review
GreenGeeks4.0 / 5Read review
DreamHost4.0 / 5Read review
This review is our own opinion, based on our experience and feedback from our customers. Your experience may differ.