SiteGround Hosting Guide & Review
Contents
Website Hosting with SiteGround
A small business is only as successful as its online presence. Back in the early 2000s, merely owning a website domain may have been good enough to support your online traffic. Nowadays, however, that just doesn’t cut it. The 21st century saw the rise of a titan—the Internet, with which individuals and companies could share and collaborate with an exponentially large base of people.
Of course, e-commerce has established a strong foothold in the Internet’s interface. So much so, in fact, that many companies offer 100% online services and exist solely on the web. Competition has grown and so must your businesses online marketing strategies. For those who are seeking to build their online presence and viewership, it is essential to contract the services of a website host, and there are few better hosting services available than that of SiteGround Hosting.
Website Building and Hosting
Let’s start at the very beginning (after all, it’s an excellent place to start). To do this, we will use a theoretical example character, named “Joe.”
Website Building and Domain Names
Joe owns a small jelly business, with which he packages and sells jelly under his brand name. Maybe he even makes the jelly from scratch—it doesn’t matter. Now, Joe wants to make more money, which means he needs to sell more jelly to more people. He has a jelly stand in front of his house, but there just isn’t enough foot traffic. How will Joe get the word out about his jelly? Enter the Internet. Joe heard about a bunch of people on the Internet who love jelly, so he decides to make a website for his jelly stand.
First, he chooses a winning name for his jelly stand website called “JoesJellyStand.com.” Joe decides to build his website using WordPress.org. Unlike WordPress.com, where his domain name was free but read as “JoesJellyStand.WordPress.com,” with WordPress.org, Joe’s domain name is “JoesJellyStand.com,” which has more of a ring to it but it does not have a hosted spot for search engines. After he builds his website, with the super-easy drag-and-drop WEBsite builder interface, Joe publishes his site and waits for the customers to come running.
Months later, to Joe’s disappointment, the only online patronage he has gained has come from word-of-mouth customers. It becomes apparent to Joe that his website is not showing up anywhere on the Internet.
Why Isn’t the Website Getting Views?
Enter Google (and other search engines). There are more websites on Google’s database than could be counted by a single individual in their lifetime. When someone enters text into a search engine, sophisticated computer algorithms deduce the best-matched content, based on how visible the content is to the algorithm. It’s complicated in practice but, in theory, it’s simple: Joe’s jelly stand is not a storefront; it is the equivalent of a lemonade stand. The Internet is “Main St.” in Joe’s town. His brand name, “Joe’s Jelly Stand,” is a great name but it doesn’t have a searchable address location.
Everyone in town who wants jelly walks up and down Main Street (the Internet), where there are lots and lots of stores. People who want jelly go to the town’s guide (a search engine) and they ask, The guide then shows them a list of all the jelly stores that are on Main Street. The town guide does not tell the jelly shoppers about Joe’s Jelly Stand because Joe doesn’t have any real estate for a shop on Main Street. Enter web hosting. Joe made one critical mistake—he didn’t get his site hosted.
If Joe had enlisted the services of a website host such as SiteGround Hosting, he would have been provided with a storefront on Main Street. Then, when people ask about jelly shops, Joe’s Jelly stand will pop up on the town guides list, directing patrons to buy some of Joe’s jelly. Just because Joe has a website built and a domain name doesn’t mean that it is located on Main Street where everybody goes to buy stuff. Until he gets his website hosted on the Internet, no one will know about “JoesJellyStand.com” or be able to find it through a search engine.
Website Hosting with WordPress
Every website on the Internet comprises data. The data that makes up your website needs a place to be stored online, or else it can’t be seen by anyone else. When you have your website hosted, it is akin to renting a storefront for your site on the Internet otherwise it doesn’t have a location to be accessed. It would be as if you spent the time to build a great store, but you built it in your backyard. Not only is your backyard not zoned for commercial business, but it is also not visible to all the shoppers who are walking around Main Street, a mile away. How do you expect to attract clients? A website host provider takes a big crane and picks up your backyard store, lifting it high off the ground and places it in its little spot on Main Street.
WP.Com & WP.Org
WordPress (WP) has been a huge contributor to the DIY website building revolution. Online website building and host services such as WP offer developers a straightforward, intuitive platform to create and design web content without the need for experience in computer coding. Also, building your website on WP is free and includes a basic web host provider package. However, you sacrifice domain ownership.
If you do not own the domain for your website, then you don’t own the store. Every penny that runs through the cash register will see a cut, which goes to the owner of the domain. With WP.com, users will end up with a domain name that looks like, “BlahBlahStore.WordPress.com.”
So, how do you get all the benefits of using the WordPress site builder interface, without sharing domain ownership with WordPress? Well, you build your website through WordPress.org. WP.org allows users to create a custom domain name, which does not carry shared ownership. WP.org websites are fully owned by the developer and, therefore, the site owner is entitled to all of the accrued profits. These URLs look like “BlahBlahStore.com.” However, to build a WordPress.org site, one must already own their domain name, which is where SiteGround Hosting comes in.
SiteGround Hosting
To best understand the services and benefits that SiteGround offers, let’s go back to Joe and the jelly stand. At this point, Joe has finally admitted that he might need to up his game if he wants “Joe’s Jelly Stand” to be a success. So, he walks over to the town guide on Main Street and says, “I want to build my store here, on Main Street. Who do I have to talk to?”
“Well, sir, many different businesses can help you to do just that, but the one that I would recommend the highest is SiteGround Hosting.” At which point, the guide points Joe in the direction of the SiteGround Hosting store, down the block and Joe sets off to see about getting a store built. He walks into the SiteGround Hosting storefront and says, “I want to create a jelly store, here on Main Street so that jelly-lovers will be able to stop into my store and buy some of my delicious jelly.” SiteGround Hosting says, “Great, that’s exactly what we do!” Then goes on to explain the exact services that they provide and how Joe’s Jelly Stand will benefit.
SiteGround explains that their services on are rendered a monthly membership basis. For a small monthly fee, store owners can take advantage of all of SiteGround’s hosting services. Since it costs money to operate a business of any kind, even an online one, site owners have a choice: Either pay a monthly fee for a host plan to host a proprietary domain name which they own completely or use a free domain name and pay a cut of all e-commerce revenue to the free domain name host website and manage WordPress for you.
SiteGround points out the window across the street to a new store being built. A sign on the front reads, “Sally’s Seashell Store.WordPress.com.” “You see, Joe,” SiteGround explains, “Sally, over there, she doesn’t own the name on her store and, therefore, she doesn’t have 100% ownership over the products she sells or the revenue she makes. As long as she has that store in that spot with that name, she is beholden to WordPress.com.”
“Why would she want to do that?” asks Joe. “Well, Joe, they told Sally that she could have that piece of land and all of the building materials for her store free of charge, in exchange for a shared domain name. That’s just fine for side-of-the-road lemonade stands, personal blogs, and vegetable carts but for a business, it’s just foolish. She traded convenience for ownership.
“What we do, here at SiteGround Hosting, for less than $5 a month you will have your own, private domain name and collect all of your store’s revenue—we won’t touch a penny. We will make sure that the town guide gives out your stores name and address to anyone comes to Main Street looking for jelly and you can design your store in any way that you desire, using all of the same materials that WordPress is giving Sally to use across the street.
“You see, Joe, we are in business with WordPress.org, which offers the website building technology for you to build your store. We provide the land for you to build it on and that is what your monthly membership fee is paying for—the server space (or storefront real estate) to host your store so that people can find you. And, you are going to want us around to keep your store accessible for customers, unless you want to handle all of the store remodeling, maintenance, security, and upkeep yourself.
Stuff happens, Joe, doors collapse, cash registers stop working, robbers break in but we will protect and fix all of those issues before, and as they arise. The physical real estate on which to build your shop, marketing your brand and solid storefront maintenance are what separates the failures from the successes in the e-commerce world, Joe.” So, Joe shook hands with SiteGround Hosting, built his WordPress.org e-store and two days later he had a million customers, thanks to SiteGround (actual experience may vary).
Why Choose SiteGround?
SiteGround Hosting is a WordPress.org, officially recommended web hosting service which is also being praised by its community in various Siteground reviews. SiteGround provides developers with all of the industry leading tools and utilities to create and maintain a dynamic, high-functioning, state-of-the-art website. No matter if you’re a blogger, publisher, merchant, vendor, manufacturer, service provider, or official reference database SiteGround offers an all-inclusive service to bring your website out of your backyard and put it into the world-wide-web marketplace arena. With options for shared hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated server hosting—and with server hubs in Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Milan, and Singapore SiteGround WordPress websites comprise over a half million domains across the world.
SiteGround Customer Support
SiteGround is dedicated to its customers. No matter the question, concern, situation, or IT problem SiteGround Hosting is available for consultation and troubleshooting, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Data storage is never a problem since SiteGround SSD technology is implemented for all monthly plans. SiteGround Hosting is all about enabling the fastest, smoothest, and most conclusive support possible for your website.
SiteGround Server Speed
SiteGround speed is as fast as it gets, using NGINX server technology. This significantly decreases the loading time associated with static content on your website. WordPress, Joomla, and Drapal all operate at the highest SiteGround Speed possible as well. This is thanks to the Geeky SuperCacher—a branch of the NGINX server technology, which increases the operating speed on Google through Memcached. And, thanks to the free Cloudflare CDN, SiteGround WordPress sites load seamlessly from anywhere on the globe.
SiteGround Pricing and Plans
SiteGround Web Hosting prices vary, depending on which of their three plan options you choose. For newcomers, small businesses, and personal websites the SiteGround Startup Plan offers all of the WordPress essentials needed to build a professionally functioning e-commerce website. For around $4 per month, members benefit from a single website domain name, 10 gigs of web content space and it can handle up to 10,000 visitors every month.
If your business is already off the ground a little bit, you may want to go with the Grow Big SiteGround hosting plan. With the Grow Big plan, users pay around $6 per month, for 20 gigs worth of storage space, up to 25,000 visitors a month capacity and unlimited proprietary website domain names, which can be very handy. The Grow Big plan also features a backup and restore feature, just in case the IT infrastructure on your end goes belly up.
The Go Geeky SiteGround Web Hosting plan is meant for large data usage websites and large business volume. This plan can handle over 100,000 visitors a month, includes 30 gigs of webspace, improved uptime and customer service and other great features and only costs around $12 a month. With unbeatable hosting prices and the highest industry quality website development software, SiteGround Hosting is a sure bet to take your online presence into a larger arena.
SiteGround is used by businesses and developers of all focuses and sizes because they offer premium technologies, industry-leading services, and top quality reliability. If you are looking to take your business to new heights, get seen, and be a success SiteGround Web Hosting works for the betterment of your online goals without bleeding their customers dry. In fact, SiteGround Web Host pricing is among the most reasonably priced on the market. SiteGround is perfect for website beginners, intermediates, and experts alike.