Are you getting frustrated by your WordPress hosting? Sick of your site going down? Sick of it loading so slow? I run a number of my money making sites from Siteground. And it’s why I recommend it. If you’re still using Bluehost or Hostgator, then you really need to read this post! You’ll never look back.
Here are some of the reasons why I think you should move your blog over…
Siteground is designed for Speed
Siteground has really made an effort over the last few years to focus on speed. And for good reason – Google penalises slow websites. And wordpress by default can be quite slow. Here are some of the features that are unique to Siteground which make it good for hosting WordPress blogs:
Caching Plugins
Siteground offers a custom plugin that is designed to speed up your WordPress site by taking advantage of dynamic caching. Most of the top blogs use some form of caching plugin. Basically these plugins pre-generate the site and load it from a cache which speeds up WordPress. Unfortunately most of these plugins don’t work well with shared hosting and they can be super expensive. Siteground offers their plugin for free depending on the plan you have – and it’s built to work with the Siteground servers. So no need to do any complicated hacking on the backend. Just install the plugin and your site will start loading faster.
Latest PHP Versions
PHP is the programming language that powers WordPress. Earlier versions of PHP tended to be a bit slow. So slow that Facebook, who also uses PHP decided to fork PHP and create their own faster version. But these days PHP is very different and much much faster. In fact it’s faster than the Facebook Hack language!
Most shared hosts don’t run the latest version of PHP. This means your site won’t run as fast as it could. And most shared hosts are really slow at updating. It can be years before you get the faster versions. Siteground offers the latest versions of PHP and is committed to keeping their servers updated.
SSD Drives
Siteground uses fast SSD hard drives in all their servers. Cheap shared hosting tends to use mechanical drives which can be really slow. Especially on servers that have a lot of traffic.
Free CDN
Siteground also makes it really easy to use the Cloudflare CDN service. You can manage it through your hosting control panel. Using a CDN is a key step in speeding up a WordPress site. It offloads images and scripts to CDN servers which serve this content from a location close to the user. This can make a WordPress site load super quick.
Other Benefits…
And it’s not just about Speed. Here are some of the other reasons which make Siteground a top choice for wordpress hosting:
Free SSL
These days you need an SSL certificate. If you don’t have one, visitors can’t access your site using https://. Google will penalise this. In the Siteground control panel you can install an SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt for free and automatically. SSL can be super confusing but Siteground makes it super easy to understand.
Automatic WordPress Install and Updates
Most hosts offer automatic wordpress install. But Siteground also offers Automatic updates. It’s important to keep your WordPress install updated, mainly for security reasons. Knowing it’s taken care of is a big plus.
WordPress Migration
Siteground has a plugin that will migrate your WordPress site for you. Transferring a site to a new host can be a pain! The plugin makes it much easier. And if you want to have your site setup exactly like it is now, then they also offer a premium transfer service which is included free on certain plans.