Congratulations on your decision to launch your new WordPress blog or website.
And one decision that you have to make when launching your first blog is choosing the right hosting provider with superior hosting service.
In this article I’ll share with you several tips that I’ve learned, that will help avoid headaches and frustrations later on.
Tips on choosing a reliable and fast hosting
- The first tip that I’d like to share with you is to never pick the cheapest option available.
Usually the cheapest option has a lot of features that can cripple your online business once you use it. It can cause a slow website loading for your users, it can also cause security issues, and it can cause a poor user experience resulting in more people leaving your website.
- The next tip that I’d like to share with you is that the best hosting provider is usually not the most expensive as well.
Because there are so many options right now, it’s really hard to decide, and going with the most expensive is usually not the most practical solution, especially if you’re just starting out.
- For my third tip, you’ll want to choose a hosting platform that is being used by a lot of customers worldwide.
Read the reviews, check what other experts are saying, look at the five star ratings, and the one star rating reviews of these hosting platforms.
In this article, I’ve already done the hard research for you because SiteGround is one of the best, if not the top WordPress Hosting Provider for beginners, for a lot of reasons.
- The next tip that I’d like to share is to choose a reliable hosting provider that would meet your web traffic and storage space needs.
You want to choose a hosting provider that has an option to go with a higher tier plan later on. This will help solve any expensive upgrades and addons later on.
A lot of the inferior quality hosting charge low monthly cost per month, but once you needed an upgrade, then they charge you astronomically for these server upgrades.
- And my last tip for you guys is to make sure that the web hosting provider provides a lot of security and daily backups. If they provide it for free, that’s even better.
But paying extra for extra peace of mind never hurts.
So one thing that you will encounter is the possibility of being hacked or worse, your account being taken over by malicious people and entities.
And one reason you need to choose a reliable hosting provider is that they have security measures in place that prevent these types of things.
Things like a DDoS attack or malicious codes injected on your website, can do serious damage to your online business. You’ll want to choose a website hosting provider that can handle these security breaches quickly (preferably within hours).
I’ve done the long and hard research on what reliable hosting provider I’ve used and recommend my answer is SiteGround.
The reason that I’ve chosen SiteGround for my website hosting provider for this website TRAFFICSALAD, is because it passed my checklist with flying colors.
In today’s article, I’m going to share with you a little more detail on what you can expect once you sign up with SiteGround (my affiliate link).
If this is the first time that you’ve been to my website, please don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and learn how to grow an audience of hungry buyers that would be happy to buy what you are selling.
SiteGround has been one of the most reliable and fastest cloud hosting platform I’ve ever used for my websites (and I’ve used dozens of them).
It includes automatic backups so that your online business has a copy of the latest version daily.
If you want faster websites, it has server locations all across the globe in different geographical locations so that it can serve your website faster depending on where your website visitor is coming from.
One way that SiteGround helps speed up your website is by providing you with a FREE SG Optimizer plugin that acts as a caching plugin and speed optimization plugin as well.
Why I choose Siteground to host 95% of my sites
In the past 10 years working in the digital marketing industry and building my network of niche websites, I’ve tested a lot of different hosting providers.
I’ve tested the inferior quality and the cheapest options out there, and I’ve also paid for the most expensive ones, the dedicated and managed WordPress hosting providers.
If you’re just starting out and or you don’t have a website that gets at least 100,000 visitors per month, then SiteGround would be your best option.
And here’s why I came to that conclusion: it has the technology (powerful networks), speed (advanced caching in an ultra-fast network), persistent storage space (storage volume), right collaboration tools, staging feature within the account, uptime guarantee, and the customer service you can expect from an enterprise level hosting provider, while being totally affordable.
You can get started for as low as $7-$15 USD per month.
I also like that SiteGround has CPANEL or a control panel. It’s really important to use a control panel that I’ve been familiar with.
A lot of the cheap and manage hosting providers have their own control panels and layouts that can be quite confusing and intimidating to use. Those aren’t user friendly, especially for new beginners who are just starting out.
And finally, I picked SiteGround because they have been really responsive and quick to resolve any issues that I might have on my website.
Whether it can it might be a technical issue or a billing issue, you can easily jump on a chat with the SiteGround team and they can totally help you out.
What I Loved About Siteground (Pros)
If you have a website that is getting less than 100,000 monthly visitors, SiteGround is my best recommendation and here’s why (SiteGround is what I’m currently using for 95% of my Niche Websites)
Top Security
Without getting too geeky about the technical details, I want you to know that with SiteGround you are in excellent hands, your online business that is.
If you experience any DDoS attacks or malicious softwares being installed in your website start ground will detect that and help you resolve those issues immediately.
I had a personal experience on how SiteGround helped me resolve a malicious code that has been causing issues on one of my websites.
They notified me that one of my sites is causing an issue; they put down the site immediately and worked with me to get the issue resolved as soon as possible.
Security patches and maintaining a safe environment for all your online business needs is a top priority of the SiteGround team.
Speed managed by Experts
Configuring and optimizing your website to load fast is one thing that I talk about here on my blog.
SiteGround’s servers uses Super Fast Google Cloud servers, which makes your website load faster than when hosted on inferior hosting providers.
There are also plugins and caching solutions that SiteGround includes in your account to help you gain faster loading time and website performance.
Reasonable pricing plans
Shared Hosting Plans – Perfect plan for beginners
Managed WordPress Hosting Plans – All the plans of SiteGround are upgradeable to a managed WordPress hosting package.
Dedicated Hosting Plans – If you need more server resources, you can check out their dedicated server plans.
Custom Hosting Packages – Want an enterprise level hosting? Contact their support.
Reseller Hosting Packages – For people who are planning to sell website design and management for other online businesses.
You might think that will all the features that SiteGround has, it has to be expensive.
But it’s actually one of the most practical website hosting providers right now.
In choosing a WordPress hosting provider, you really get what you paid for.
I would strongly advise anyone not to pick the lowest and cheapest hosting providers. There are usually performance and security issues when a hosting provider only charges less than $2 per month.
SiteGround starts at less than $7 per month and you’ll get all the features of a powerful WordPress Hosting solution, without the hassle and headache from inferior hosting providers.
If you click the link below and sign up for your SiteGround account, choose WordPress hosting to get started.
There are different pricing tiers, and let’s check out the first plan, the StartUp plan.
The StartUp plan starts at only $4.99 per month (from $14.99 per month) and includes hosting for 1 website. The recommend traffic limit for the starter plan is less than 10,000 visits per month.
It includes all the features like Free WordPress migration, Free SSL (secure socket layer), daily backup, an out-of-the box caching features, unlimited databases, and a 30 day money-back guarantee, just in case you change your mind about SiteGround.
The next plan is the GrowBig plan and is currently the bestseller hosting package for WordPress hosting in SiteGround. It starts at $7.99/month (from $24.99/month) but now includes Unlimited websites, and up to 25,000 visits per month.
This is the plan that I recommend for beginners, even if you just have one website. It’s provides you with some buffer once you generate more traffic to your website.
And you want more traffic to your website, right? Because you want more people visiting your blog and buying your products and services.
The small amount of difference between the StartUp plan and the GrowBig plan can save you a lot of money down the road.
If you want to learn how to launch a profitable blog, check out this article and step-by-step guide
The final tier available is the GoGeek plan, and it’s suited for accounts that have websites that have less than 100,000+ website visits.
This is my current SiteGround account level and is perfect for advanced users.
If you have an existing portfolio of additional sites that are already generating income and a significant amount of traffic, then this is the plan that would be best for you.
Awesome Siteground Customer Service
I would like to share my personal experience with dealing with their customer support team.
The first thing you need to do is login into your SiteGround account.
You need to get logged in before you can ask for questions.
And that makes total sense because they don’t want to waste time answering support and technical issues for people who are not SiteGround customers.
Once you enter your SiteGround account, there are multiple ways to contact customer support.
But that’s the only thing that I didn’t like about this experience.
It can be quite confusing and hard how to find the link to contact customer support.
It used to be that there was a chat icon option, but the request for starting a chat hides in one of their contact pages.
Once you found this link and start a customer request or support issue, you’ll have to choose whether it’s a technical, accounting, billing, or any other issue with your account.
I’ve tested this support request multiple times of the day. I’ve tested it in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, during work hours, during holidays, and I always got a hold of an actual person.
If it’s something that they can resolve within the chat, they’ll be happy to assist me with the issue.
If it’s something that requires one of their engineers to look at, I usually get a response within 24-48 hours.
Overall, I’ve super happy with my customer experience and how SiteGround handled the issues that I’ve encountered.
For a website hosting provider that can provide immediate resolution to most of my hosting problems, I’m totally satisfied knowing that my online business is in the good hands of a reliable hosting provider.
Thousands of customers
Because SiteGround has been in business for quite some time, they have hundreds if not thousands of customers worldwide.
When I was still in the Philippines I went with SiteGround when I first launched my blog, and when we immigrated to Canada, I’ve tested other hosting platforms and solutions, but I always come back to SiteGround for 95% of my websites.
Reliable Server Performance
You want a hosting provider that won’t give you headaches, especially when you generate more traffic on your website.
You don’t want people to see a broken website or a site that went down because of an increased or spike in website traffic. You want a fast loading time for visitors when they land on your website. The powerful cache and server performance of SiteGround all contribute to providing a great user experience.
Daily Backup Available | Restores from Backup | On Demand Backups
One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve done before was not having backups for my entire website or having outdated backups.
Nothing is worse than the feeling that you’ve just lost hours of work because of a server failure or a website failure, and you couldn’t retrieve it because you didn’t have real-time backups or daily backups.
With SiteGround, you’ll have access to Daily backups, so if you’ve broken your site for any reason, you can easily revert to a working version with no problems. I didn’t realize how convenient it is to revive a broken website with quick backup restores. Thank you SiteGround for additional services like Instant backups, single backups, as part of your premium features offered to customers.
Overall Customer Satisfaction Rate is High
As you’ve probably noticed, my customer satisfaction in using SiteGround has been very high.
The performance, customer support and updates with technology have been getting better each year. I’ve been a customer for the last 10 years, while testing and trying out other hosting providers and I can say that SiteGround is one of the best options out there for the amount they are charging.
It really is a top-notch WordPress hosting solution for online entrepreneurs who are just starting out and even for those veterans looking for a reliable hosting provider.
Has a 30-day Money-back Guarantee
If you’re still hesitant to try it out, don’t worry because SiteGround has a 30-day money-back. Because of this, I haven’t seen a lot of complaints from customers in the past few years.
Launch your blog, try it out, and if you have any reasons or any issues with using this website hosting provider, simply contact customer support and they will process that the full refund for you.
Has Professional Website Transfer Services
What if you’re already using a different hosting provider and you want to move to SiteGround?
And you don’t want to deal with the technicalities of doing a backup on your old website, uploading it, and then not migrating everything properly, don’t worry because SiteGround can do these technical stuff for you for Free!
Has Professional Website Migration Features | Migration Service
SiteGround has a lot of different methods to help you move your site. You can also use their SiteGround migrator plugin to help you move your website from your old hosting provider to your SiteGround account.
White-label hosting service | Agencies Shipping Sites To Clients
Are you managing websites for other people or online business? Do you want to provide different user roles to your team members or clients?
SiteGround has an outstanding client interface with White-label access and Awesome Client Interfaces.
If you’re an agency or a web developer who offers client site management for other businesses, choose the Reseller hosting packages which allows you to do that within your SiteGround account.
New Control Panel
SiteGround has recently released a revamped dashboard, so once you log into your account, you’ll see this new layout and dashboard.
I actually liked it than the old CPANEL interface.
The layout for finding what I need is more intuitive. It also looks more modern, yet all the features that you love on the old CPANEL dashboard are still there.
Do you need to change your DNS?
Do you need to configure your SSL settings?
Do you need to access your email?
Yes, they are all available in the NEW control panel within SiteGround.
Wide Range Of Tools Available To Managed Your Hosting
Because SiteGround is Web-based, there’s nothing to install on your computer to access your account.
All you need to do is log in to your secured hosting account, install and configure your domain and everything as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.
NGINX-Based Static and Dynamic Cache – Levels Of Caching For Faster Sites
Without being geeky here, I want to share why it’s important to have caching to speed up your websites and load your blog faster for your website visitors.
Caching works by loading files, images, css, js in different servers so that they can easily access it. There are many types of caching like cloud caching, local caching, and server side caching.
SiteGround offers CloudFlare integration for free (basic features), and also a free caching plugin called SG optimizer.
It’s important to speed up your website because it can also help with search engine optimization and getting your sites ranked at the top of the search results.
Staging Sites Features | Staging Version To Production With Ease
Do you want to have a staging environment where you can do some tests first before you even publish it to your main website?
If you’re doing a lot of website changes, try using what’s called a staging site first.
You edit, test, and configure everything on the staging version of your site and once changes are ready, you publish it LIVE to the main website.
This will help avoid a lot of errors and mistakes that are front-facing and can negatively affect your brand reputation.
Friendly Webmail Interface and Your Own Email Accounts
With SiteGround, you won’t need to purchase a separate paid subscription for domain email services. Gsuite costs at least $5/month for business emails (yourname@domain.com).
Inside your SiteGround account, you can create as many branded emails as you want. And it can have inbox storage sizes that match your account storage space.
The webmail interface is one of the special tools available inside your SiteGround account. Email hosting will not be a problem because it’s already included in your SiteGround account.
This is one reason you’ll want to host your website on hosting companies like SiteGround instead of buying hosting from a domain name provider like Namecheap.
They already include email hosting in your hosting fees. If you have questions about any of these features, please reach out to support using any of the contact forms available on the SiteGround website.
Constant Security Monitoring | They Have Dedicated Security Experts
SiteGround has dealt with security monitoring issues. My personal experience with a malware issue in one of my sites has been great when the SiteGround team helped me fix what’s causing the issue.
They told me which folder and files where affected, help delete them and help get my site back up and running again.
Install Popular Applications With Ease | 1-click Setup
PHP Versions are Up To Date
Siteground plugins available for use
These are some features available for all SiteGround Accounts.
SG Optimizer – This plugin will help you speed up your website
SiteGround Migrator – This plugin will help you migrate your site to SiteGround servers.
What I didn't like about Siteground (Cons)
Advanced Features Are Not Prominent For Beginners
Won’t Teach You How To Build an Online Business
How to join the Siteground affiliate program
Once you join their affiliate program, you’ll get an affiliate link you can share in your blog, social media accounts, and online platforms.
