The setup work is done for you, and the second-year price is the thing to plan for.
SiteGround takes the setup work off a first WordPress site and prices the first year for it: the domain, the certificate, the migration and the server-side caching arrive with the plan, and the software updates itself. The number that decides the purchase is the renewal, which is printed beside the introductory rate and runs to several times it. What a reader is choosing is an easy first year on a plan that becomes ordinary priced at the second one.
Not for you if the site is expected to stay on the same plan for years. The introductory rate covers twelve months, and the term that follows is billed at a rate several times higher, so the saving is a year rather than a commitment.
How SiteGround scored
Why trust these scores: the overall 4.4 weights these five at 30% performance and infrastructure, 20% plan range and scalability, 20% support and reliability, 15% ease of use and setup and 15% price and value. Performance leads because a host is judged by how fast the page arrives before anything else is noticed: the storage type and the software serving it decide that, and a well-made panel cannot make up for a slow server. That weighting is the same one every review in this group uses, which is what lets the totals be read across them. The plan limits, the traffic policy, the backup schedule and the point where staging begins are read off the plan comparison, and the price side comes from the same page together with the terms that govern it. Availability is the one figure the terms of service carry in full, down to the compensation and what the promise does not cover, so that score rests on a written commitment rather than on an uptime number alone. No vendor can pay for a score. Read how we rate.
What we like
- The work that usually precedes a first launch is inside the plan, from the domain to the certificate
- The panel keeps WordPress and its plugins current without a decision from the owner
- Staging arrives one rung up, early enough to test a change somewhere other than the site visitors are on
- Backups are held apart from the live data and reach back thirty days, which covers a late-noticed mistake
- Support is staffed around the clock at every price, not only on the top plan
Watch out for
- The renewal rate is several times the introductory one, so the first year is not what the plan costs
- The entry plan covers a single site and ten gigabytes, which a growing blog passes early
- Growth above the shared tier means dedicated cloud resources rather than another shared plan, so the ladder jumps where it should step
- A domain is free for one year and then billed at the registrar rate, outside the refund window
- Downtime is judged from the host's own records, and a site that exhausts its plan is not counted as down
How we rated SiteGround
SiteGround’s prices are published on the plan comparison, and the obligations that come with them are published in the terms of service, so this review reads the two together. The plan pages carry the rates, the term, the storage allowances, the traffic policy and the point at which a staging environment becomes available. The terms carry the uptime guarantee, the compensation owed when it is missed, the refund window and the rules that apply when an account is closed. Nothing on this page was measured by us, since no account was opened for it. The five scores below are editorial judgements, weighing what the company publishes against what a reader buying the plan would receive, and the date each page was read is given at the end of the article.
Performance and infrastructure
SiteGround runs its shared plans on Google Cloud rather than on hardware it owns, and the premium network tier and eleven data centres across four continents come from that arrangement. Every plan carries the in-house CDN, which the company puts at more than 170 edge locations, a wildcard SSL certificate issued and installed before the first request, caching at several levels including a dynamic cache at the server, and a web application firewall that updates itself. Backups are taken daily and held in a location separate from the live site, with thirty days of restore points kept on every plan.
The part a reader has to weigh is the storage that comes with that infrastructure. The entry plan carries 10 GB, the middle one 50 and the top one 100, all described as Premium Google storage, and traffic is not metered on any of them, which is the more generous half of the pair. From the middle plan upward the servers run PHP about 30% faster than the tier below, a figure the company publishes rather than one a reader could check from outside. On the effect of moving onto the stack, SiteGround reports a median 78% faster load across migrations made between January and June 2025, measured by Google Lighthouse TTFB and Speed Index: the company’s benchmark of its own migrations, which is worth reading as such. 4.5 for infrastructure that is current across the whole ladder, with the entry allowance the part a growing site meets first.
Plan range and scalability
Three shared plans carry the WordPress side of the range. StartUp covers a single website and 10 GB, GrowBig removes the website limit and lifts storage to 50 GB, and GoGeek takes it to 100 GB and adds Git staging, a private DNS and white-label access. The company’s own capacity note puts them at roughly 10,000, 100,000 and 400,000 monthly visits respectively, which is the nearest thing to a sizing guide the pages offer. Above the shared tier the range leaves shared hosting altogether and becomes cloud hosting: four fixed instances running from $100 a month for four cores and 8 GB up to $400 for sixteen cores and 20 GB, each with 5 TB of transfer and dedicated resources, and a configurator for a machine that fits none of the four.
The distance between the top shared plan and the cheapest cloud instance is what shapes the ladder, since $7.99 a month and $100 a month are the two rungs either side of it and nothing is sold between them. A site that outgrows GoGeek moves to dedicated resources rather than to a larger shared plan, and although the move is supported, it is a change of environment rather than a setting. Within the shared tier the increments are gentler, because storage and the website limit rise plan by plan while the caching and security layers stay the same at every price. 4.4 for a range that covers a first site and a busy server, with a wide step where the middle should be.
Support and reliability
The desk is open at every hour on all three plans, through chat, ticket and phone, and the top plan buys a place in the queue rather than a fourth channel. The commitment a reader can hold the company to is the uptime guarantee, and its terms are specific. Availability is promised at 99.9% a month, and where it is missed the compensation is five per cent of that month’s hosting fee, claimed through the client area. Two conditions shape what that promise is worth: the compensation can only be spent on extending the term of the same service rather than paid back as money, and the downtime that counts excludes scheduled maintenance, attacks and a site that has reached the resource ceiling of its own plan.
What sits alongside it is the operational side. Backups run daily into a location separate from the live data, a restore can reach back thirty days, and from GrowBig upward an extra copy can be taken on demand before a change is made. The guarantee and the support tiers apply to shared hosting; the cloud plans carry their own arrangement and a shorter refund window. 4.4 for around-the-clock support and an uptime figure the company commits to in writing, on terms that are published in full rather than implied.
Ease of use and setup
Most of what a first WordPress site needs before launch is done by SiteGround. A domain is included, the certificate is issued and installed without a step, WordPress is installed from the panel, and an existing site is moved across by a migration the host performs. Once the site is running the software updates itself, and two plugins the host maintains, one for caching and one for security, are installed with it. The account panel is where everything is managed, and on the top plan the collaborator and client features allow a site to be handed to someone else without the account being handed over with it.
Staging is the feature that separates the plans, and it is worth knowing where it starts. A test copy of the site is available from GrowBig upward and Git is added on GoGeek, so a change can be rehearsed before a live site sees it, while the entry plan offers neither, which is a real constraint once a site has visitors. WP-CLI and SSH are present at every price, so a developer is not limited to the panel, and the site builder and the AI features are part of the plan rather than separate purchases. 4.6 for an onboarding that carries the domain, the migration and the updates, with staging sitting one rung above the entry plan.
Price and value
Everything on the pricing page is quoted for one term: twelve months, paid in advance. At that term StartUp is $2.99 a month, GrowBig $4.99 and GoGeek $7.99, and each renews at a figure printed beside it: $17.99, $29.99 and $44.99 a month. The second term is therefore where the plan’s real price appears, at six times the first on the entry tier, and the distance between the two numbers is the whole of the discount. No longer term is offered at a lower rate, so what a reader chooses between is one year at the introductory price and a renewal at the standard one, rather than between three lengths of commitment.
Two lines move the total on their own. The domain is free for the first year only, after which the registrar’s rate applies, and a registration fee is not refundable in any case. Storage is fixed at the tier bought rather than added on, so a site that outgrows 10 GB changes plan rather than buying space. Leaving is handled in the client area, and the terms are explicit that a cancellation only takes effect once every one of its steps has been completed, so a partly finished request leaves the service running and the fees accruing; on termination the account’s files are deleted, and backup copies may be kept for up to sixty days without the company being obliged to. 4.2 for a first year that is genuinely cheap and a renewal that is not, on a term taken one year at a time.
Who SiteGround is for
SiteGround fits a WordPress site whose owner would rather the setup were done for them, and the three plans split that audience between them. A first site with one domain and a handful of pages is matched by the entry plan, where the domain, the certificate and the transfer are the host’s work rather than the owner’s. A reader running a handful of sites for a business or for clients is matched by the middle rung, where the website limit disappears and staging begins, both of which matter once a site is live. Someone who wants a developer workflow is matched by the top plan, where Git, a private DNS and white-label access sit beside the staging environment. Two situations point a reader elsewhere. A site that has already outgrown shared resources is better served by a host that sells its next size as a shared plan, because the step here is to a cloud instance at a hundred dollars a month. And a reader who wants the same bill in the second year should weigh a host whose introductory rate sits closer to its renewal, because this one is priced for the first year.
Frequently asked questions
Can I cancel in the second year and get the renewal back?
What happens to the free domain if I cancel the hosting?
Does the plan renew on its own, and will I be told first?
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Our verdict
SiteGround is the plan for a site being put online for the first time by someone who would rather not assemble the pieces, and the decision inside it is which rung to start on. The entry plan carries one site and ten gigabytes, which suits a site still being written and outgrown on storage before it is outgrown on traffic. A reader running several sites, or a shop, should begin at the middle rung, where the site count stops being a limit and a staging environment becomes available, since a live site wants both long before it needs them. Start on the plan that fits the first year, and plan the renewal into the budget, because the rate is what the plan costs and the first year is what it costs to find that out.
Not for you if the plan has to keep fitting as the site grows. Once the allowance for the tier in use is spent, the next step is a bigger plan rather than more room bought onto the current one, and the smallest allowance sits on the entry tier.
Sources
SiteGround (siteground.com), checked 15 September 2026: the shared and cloud hosting pages for the plan limits, the introductory and renewal rates and the included features; and the terms of service for the availability commitment, the compensation attached to it, the refund windows and exclusions, and the auto-renewal and cancellation clauses.
ElevenReview Editorial Team
Reviews & StandardsElevenReview is an editorial team. Ratings are built from published specifications, vendor documentation and named third-party benchmarks, and the sources we used, with the date we checked them, are listed on every review.
Last updated Sep 15, 2026 · Some links on this page may be affiliate links; see our Affiliate Disclosure.