SiteGround is an amazing web hosting company that offers three different shared hosting plans: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. Each of these plans have pros, cons, and different quirks and features. With three totally different plans, it can get confusing in terms of which one to choose! So, on this page, we’ve taken the time to compare SiteGround’s StartUp vs GrowBig vs GoGeek to help you make the best decision possible!
We’ve been using SiteGround for many years now, and have tons of experience with their web hosting—in fact, we use SiteGround every single week, so we’re in a unique position to break down the pros and cons of SiteGround like nobody else! And if you know Web Hosting Buddy, you know that we don’t ever do fake reviews, and we don’t let hosts bribe or influence us in any way—we tell it like it is, 100% of the time!
With that said, we wanted to take a quick moment to remind our visitors that if you happen to purchase SiteGround hosting from this page, we might receive an affiliate commission. This does NOT affect our opinion in any way, and SiteGround knows this! We give you the honest pros/cons no matter what—we just wanted to be as honest as possible, because that’s what Web Hosting Buddy is all about! 😊
Are you ready to jump into some awesome info comparing SiteGround’s StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek plans?! Alright, let’s go!
StartUp vs GrowBig vs GoGeek – Which SiteGround Plan?
We realize that some of our website visitors are just looking for a quick summary, and not a ton of info. For those visitors, we’ve summarized some of the awesome things about each plan in the next section to make comparing them quick and easy!
You can check out the summaries below, and then visit SiteGround to see what you think! Or, if you’re looking for more in-depth info, you can read the entire page.
SiteGround StartUp – The Budget Plan
SiteGround’s StartUp is their entry-level plan that comes packed with tons of features, despite its awesomely low price. At $6.99/month using our SiteGround coupon, it’s an extremely good deal for what you get. Let’s take a quick glance at some things that are included in the StartUp plan:
- 10GB storage space
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 24/7/365 chat/email/phone support
- Free SSL certificate
- Lightning fast servers
- 30-day money back guarantee
- $6.99/month with our SiteGround coupon
No matter which SiteGround plan you have, we love the fact that all of their servers are managed equally well. Everything just plain works, and there’s rarely (if ever) a problem with SiteGround being down, or an issue that affects uptime. From our testing, they’re also one of the fastest web hosting companies we know of, even on their cheapest StartUp plan.
The cool thing about even the cheapest SiteGround plan, is that they offer a 30-day money back guarantee, so this means you have an entire month to host your website, test it out, and see if it’s a good fit for you, and if not—you can just get your money back, simple as that! For that reason and more, we seriously recommend checking them out!
SiteGround GrowBig – The Best Value Plan
The next step up from SiteGround’s entry level StartUp plan is their mid-tier GrowBig plan. This is the plan that we recommend the most to people for a few different reasons. One of the most popular reasons that we recommend this plan all the time is that for only $3 more per month, you get access to all three levels of their SuperCacher plugin, as well as advanced backups and some other really high-end features, making it the best value SiteGround plan in our opinion. Some of the features of the GrowBig plan include:
- 20GB storage space
- Advanced on-demand backups
- 24/7/365 chat/email/phone support
- Full access to all three levels of their SuperCacher plugin
- Free site transfer
- 30-day money back guarantee
- $9.99/month with our SiteGround coupon
When you compare all of the different options that SiteGround has, we really think the GrowBig plan is the one that represents the best value for most people. Does GoGeek have more features? Yes. Is StartUp cheaper? Yes. But we truly think GrowBig is the best of both worlds, and personally it’s our favorite SiteGround plan, so we recommend taking a moment to check it out!
SiteGround GoGeek – The Ultimate Hosting Plan
If you need top-shelf, best of the best hosting, we really recommend checking out SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. It’s the only thing we recommend as a true alternative to the powerhouse that is WP Engine, and it’s a plan that has nearly everything you could want in a hosting company. From priority support to white label hosting options, you can really run a business with the GoGeek plan—it truly is one of the best, geekiest, all-in-one hosting options out there! Some of the awesome features that GoGeek has include:
- 30GB storage space
- Advanced priority support
- White label hosting
- White label client management
- Pre-installed Git
- 30-day money back guarantee
- $14.99/month with our SiteGround coupon
Is the GoGeek plan for everyone? Nope, definitely not. But if you do need the best of the best—it’s well worth it in a lot of ways. SiteGround’s GoGeek plan really represents the pinnacle of shared web hosting—it’s truly just about the best you can get on that front, and it’s what we recommend to people when they want something that’s close to WP Engine level good for WordPress hosting, or hosting a site on the best shared environment you can get. So, if you haven’t checked out GoGeek, we recommend taking a look!
StartUp, GrowBig & GoGeek – Detailed Feature Comparison Chart
In order to help you get a really clear idea of how the StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek plans compare to each other, we put together this chart that compares and contrasts their features in a variety of categories. Take a look at the table below to understand which features are included (or not included) in the various SiteGround plans!
SiteGround Plans Compared – In-Depth Reviews
So far in this article, we’ve gone ahead and summarized some of the most important points and features related to the different SiteGround plans, which we hope is incredibly helpful in understanding which plan might be the best for you.
However, because we’ve got so much personal experience with SiteGround, we wanted to take the time to review each plan to give you an idea of what we generally like/don’t like about each option. So, without further ado, here are some more important things to note about each plan, from our own experience.
SiteGround StartUp Review
When it comes to SiteGround’s StartUp plan, we have a lot of great things to say about it—and this is for good reason. It’s basically one of the best deals you can get anywhere in terms of shared hosting, and this isn’t because it’s the cheapest, so let us explain…
At $6.99/month with our SiteGround coupon, it’s one of the most affordable options in shared hosting. Are there cheaper plans? Sure, there are some popular shared hosts that offer Hosting for less than $3/month, and in some cases less than $2/month, but you really have to consider what you’re getting for the money that you’re spending, and THIS is where the StartUp plan really shines.
When you start talking about hosting for a few dollars per month, the first thing that becomes very clear is that support generally sucks—and that’s just the honest truth. Aside from Bluehost, it’s hard to find a hosting company with great support around that $5 price point (yes, they’re slightly higher than that, but totally worth it). Sure, nearly all hosting companies offer some form of support no matter how much you spend, but generally speaking, it’s the biggest expense that hosting companies take on. And because of this, in our experience, it’s often the first thing to suffer when it comes to low cost web hosting.
SiteGround is quite a bit different here—their cheapest plan (StartUp) has the same basic support as the GrowBig and GoGeek Plans. It doesn’t have the priority support option that GoGeek has, but we can tell you from our experience that their basic support is already super fast. Their support funnel typically tries to send you to a chat with a technician first to see if the problem can be resolved without a ticket (and it often can). From there, if you need more in-depth help, they will generally set up a ticket so you can proceed from there if a senior technician needs to look at your issue.
Often times with low cost web hosting, you’ll find that security is another thing that doesn’t work well, simply because they just don’t have the resources to stay on top of it. With SiteGround, these haven’t been issues at all, even with the StartUp plan—they’ve been one of the most secure hosts that we use on a regular basis.
With all that said, we simply can’t say enough good about SiteGround’s StartUp plan—it really offers people the chance to try SiteGround and get really high quality web hosting at a relatively low entry price point, and we would highly recommend checking them out!
SiteGround GrowBig Review
Moving on from SiteGround’s StartUp plan, GrowBig is the next level up that really has some awesome features for the money! It’s our favorite SiteGround plan, and the one we recommend the most to our readers, friends, family, and anyone who wants an awesome web hosting plan that’s a level up from the basic version. While we’ve already covered some of the technical details about the GrowBig plan on this page, in this section we’re going to explain a bit more about why we think it’s such a good plan, and what we like the most about it.
To start with, the GrowBig plan unlocks the full functionality of SiteGround’s SuperCacher plugin, which is amazing and can help make your site lighting fast. The cool thing about their SuperCacher is that unlike a lot of third-party caching tools, it’s created from the ground up to work with their servers, so ultimately it’s going to be better than any type of third-party solution that you add in terms of effective caching with the SiteGround servers.
The SuperCacher plugin also has some other really cool features that include the ability to exclude URLs, and automatically purge the cache after making changes to the website. Automatically purging the cache after modifications is insanely helpful because it’s super annoying to have to constantly purge the cache after you make repeated changes to a WordPress page (like when you’re editing content or trying to make a CSS edit).
One other awesome thing that the GrowBig plan adds is the ability to use their website staging environment. This is also another incredibly helpful feature because you don’t have to continually go back and edit where the DNS points on your local machine to see changes on a test website/web server (which is how it used to be forever). In addition to not having to mess with your local machine, it allows you to be able to have a test website in a dedicated environment where you can easily make changes without affecting your live site, and copy to/from that staging environment and so on. This is a feature that they reserved for the GrowBig and up plans, and honestly this alone (with no other features at all) makes the GrowBig plan worth it!
Ultimately, the GrowBig plan is our favorite because it is a great middle ground between StartUp and GoGeek, for only a few dollars more per month. If you haven’t taken the time to check out SiteGround’s GrowBig plan, we highly recommend it!
SiteGround GoGeek Review
At the top of this list in terms of SiteGround plans, we have the GoGeek plan—which has all the high end features you could possibly want from SiteGround. But, the GoGeek plan does come with a higher price tag, leaving some people to wonder whether or not it’s worth it. Let’s take a closer look!
The two things that really distinguish GoGeek from GrowBig are the ability to white label a hosting login and priority support. Both of these features probably aren’t something you need if you’re a casual user, or even a business hosting a WordPress website (often times, the GrowBig plan may be enough for businesses too).
In terms of the white labeling that SiteGround offers with GoGeek, it’s a really handy feature to have if you are reselling hosting, or providing portals for web development clients etc. Sure, you can also do this if you’re running your own server (which maybe you are if you’re working at that level), but SiteGround bundles this is a way that makes it really simple to use and easy for clients to access. This is nice because if it’s something you’re interested in, you don’t have to manage user portals, security, and all sorts of other stuff—SiteGround takes care of all of this for you (at least on the server management side).
In addition to the white labeled features, priority support is really one of the top features for the GoGeek plan. Not only do you get top-level support, but you’re also getting access to SiteGround’s top-level engineers right away, which is different than chatting with an entry-level technician, and then needing to have your issues escalated to a senior technician later.
We want to be super clear that SiteGround base level of support is better than most other hosting companies, but priority support does take it to a slightly better level. That said, it’s probably not something that everyone needs, and is something that may not be worth the price increase depending upon your own hosting needs.
No matter how you look at it, the GoGeek plan is an awesome thing for people who want the best of the best in terms of shared hosting, and if you haven’t yet, it’s worth checking out!
SiteGround Hosting Plans FAQ
In the section below, you’ll find some of the most frequently asked (and searched) questions and answers about SiteGround’s most popular hosting plans (StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek)!
SiteGround GoGeek vs Cloud Hosting – How do they compare?
SiteGround’s cloud hosting is similar to having your own VPS/dedicated server, without some of the configuration options that you get from Web Host Manager (WHM) in cPanel, or a similar setup.
It’s really intended for power users and people who need to harness the capability of a dedicated server-like setup, but still want to host with SiteGround.
For most people, one of their shared hosting plans (StartUp, GrowBig, or GoGeek) will have more than enough power and cost considerably less.
What is the SiteGround renewal pricing for StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek?
Upon renewal time, there may be other discounts available for your account which you’d have to discuss with SiteGround specifically (such as renewing for a longer term, etc.).
With that said, the standard renewal pricing (at the time of writing) for StartUp is $14.99/month, GrowBig is $24.99/month, and GoGeek is $39.99/month. Again, this varies depending upon the level of discounts (if any) that might apply to your account (which would need to be discussed with SiteGround billing support).
Which SiteGround plan is the best value?
We think that the GrowBig plan is the best value, primarily because it includes staging and the full function of the SuperCacher plugin. It’s a great middle ground between StartUp and GoGeek, and we think is has most of the features that people are really looking for.
Is there really a big difference in response time with the SiteGround GoGeek priority support?
Yes. SiteGround has priority support with the GoGeek plan only, and this means that they answer tickets faster, chat support happens quicker, etc. You’re also matched with a more senior technician too.
That said, their basic support is awesome and better/faster than most hosting companies from our experience, and most people probably don’t require the GoGeek level of support (but if you want the best support around, then GoGeek is an option to consider).
Which SiteGround Plan is the fastest?
In terms of their shared hosting plans, GoGeek is the fastest and has the most resources available/allocated to it. GoGeek is their flagship hosting plan, so naturally it’s going to perform the best.
That said, all of their plans are incredibly fast, so you really have to weigh the costs to determine if GoGeek is right for you.
Which SiteGround plan is best for me?
SiteGround presents three really great options in StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek, each with different pro/cons and different pricing. Personally, our favorite plan is GrowBig, but that’s our opinion, and while it’s a great plan, it’s obviously not the best plan for every individual situation as everyone has different needs.
At the end of the day, you really need to examine your own particular hosting needs, budget, and other relevant factors to determine which plan is best for you.
Also, SiteGround is great to deal with and always willing to talk, so it may be worthwhile to reach out to them directly to see if they have any recommendations on plans based on your situation.
Is SiteGround a good hosting company?
Yes! SiteGround is one of our all-time favorite hosting companies, and we simply can’t say enough good about them. From their high quality support, to lightning fast (and secure) servers, we use them every week and are big fans of their hosting.
Do I have to transfer my domain to SiteGround?
No, you don’t. While SiteGround does offer the ability to register your domains within their user portal, it’s definitely not a requirement for using their services. If your domain isn’t registered with SiteGround, you simply just need to point your DNS at SiteGround’s nameservers (which will be provided to you upon sign up).
How much is SiteGround?
The cost of SiteGround depends on which specific plans/options you choose. Using our SiteGround discount link, you can get the StartUp plan for $6.99/month, the GrowBig plan for $9.99/month, and the GoGeek plan for $14.99/month.
Is SiteGround legit?
SiteGround is a legit as it gets! We love SiteGround and use them ourselves for websites on a regular basis. They’re a great company with an awesome product and really, really good pricing!
Is SiteGround owned by EIG?
No, SiteGround is not owned by EIG. SiteGround is owned by SG Hosting Inc., its own company.
Sometimes people mistakenly think that all of the popular shared hosting companies are owned by Endurance International Group (EIG) because they do own quite a few of them such as Bluehost, HostGator, iPage, A Small Orange, etc. But there are still plenty of shared hosting companies that are not owned by EIG such as SiteGround and DreamHost.
Why is SiteGround so expensive?
In our opinion, SiteGround isn’t expensive at all. You know what is expensive? Wasting your time trying to deal with low quality support, servers that are constantly getting hacked, and a bunch of other nonsense that doesn’t apply to SiteGround.
In terms of pricing, they are very, very competitive with other hosting companies and when you factor in all the amazing features and reliability, they are one of the best values in hosting you can find anywhere!
Are databases free in SiteGround plans?
Yes! Not only are they free, but they databases are also unlimited with all three SiteGround plans (StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek).
Can I use a cache plugin with SiteGround?
Yes, you can. But honestly, we’d recommend using their SuperCacher plugin because it’s built from the ground up to work with their servers and it’s super easy to use, and really helps speed things up (especially with WordPress).
Is SiteGround GoGeek worth It?
If you need the geeky features that come with the plan, then yes—it’s absolutely worth it!
The real question is whether or not you need the white labeled hosting and client management, as well as the priority support and a few of the other bells and whistles that come with GoGeek. If you don’t consider yourself to be a power user and don’t have a super high traffic website, chances are that you might be find with a lower-tier (and cheaper) plan from SiteGround such as their StartUp or GrowBig plans.
Choosing the Best SiteGround Plan – Final Thoughts
SiteGround offers three of the best hosting plans around in the shared hosting world—they’re a great company, with amazing support and security, making them incredibly hard to beat and a great all-around choice.
In terms of their plans, the best way we can sum it up is this:
StartUp – This is the budget option packed with features and value. It’s missing the full SuperCacher functionality, and staging, but if you’re just getting started and want a quality hosting plan, it’s really hard to beat this plan in terms of pricing and value.
GrowBig – This plan is the best all-around option in our opinion. You get full access to the SuperCaching plugin, as well as staging and some other little bells and whistles. It’s really the option that probably appeals to the most people, and the SiteGround plan we recommend most often.
GoGeek – This is the big kahuna—SiteGround’s top plan, and it’s the one that’s packed full of their top features including white labeling and priority support. It costs more and isn’t for everyone, but if you want the best of the best, this is it!
We hope that you’ve enjoyed our guide on SiteGround’s hosting plans, and that this information was able to help you understand your choices a bit better! If you haven’t poked around on SiteGround’s website much, we encourage you to check them out!
Gentry