How to Choose and Buy Web Hosting on SiteGround

This is a simple view of SiteGround’s prices. Click here to see all prices.

Each plan includes all the features from the previous plan. So the GrowBig plan includes all the features from the StartUp plan and extras and the GoGeek plan includes all the features from the GrowBig plan and extras. The number of monthly visitors indicated per plan on SiteGround’s website is only an indication; it is not that with the GoGeek plan the 400,001st visitor will not be able to visit your website.

WordPress Hosting Plans

For my beloved WordPress users: SiteGround’s pricing plans for WordPress. The plans for WordPress are very similar to shared hosting. And… they are actually. There is no difference between shared hosting and WordPress hosting. With both hosting plans you can install WordPress as CMS, there are no differences in pricing, specifications or features.

With SiteGround’s WordPress hosting, you can simply migrate your site through their SiteGround Migrator plugin. In addition, SiteGround’s site tools allow you to adjust autoupdate settings for WordPress, enable and disable staging and manage WordPress installations.

WooCommerce Hosting Plans

As with WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting is no different. You can choose from the StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek plans. After creating your account, you can install both WordPress and WooCommerce.

Cloud Hosting Plans

Cloud hosting is where the real experts host their websites. Unlike the previous plans, with cloud hosting you get to build a plan that meets your requirements. You can choose how many CPU cores, RAM and SSD storage you want. Cloud hosting plans start from $100/month, but the price changes as you customize the specifications. There are four preset plans: Jump Start, Business, Business Plus and Super Power.

SiteGround’s Other Services

To make your experience at SiteGround better, SiteGround offers a number of other services. For example, you can have your website migrated (or do it yourself) and you can purchase domains.

Website Migration Services

If you want to migrate your website to SiteGround, you can easily do it yourself. WordPress users who like to take matters into their own hands can use the SiteGround Migrator plugin 100% free of charge. If you prefer someone else to do it for you, you can choose to have your site migrated by an expert from SiteGround. However, this does cost $30 and the process can take up to 5 business days until the transfer is complete.

Of course, you can also transfer your files manually using an FTP client such as FileZilla.

Domain Name Registration

At SiteGround you can find not only hosting services, but also domain registration. For $17.99 a year, you can buy a top domain. This is a bit more expensive than Bluehost, but not much difference. Domains can be easily managed through the SiteGround dashboard.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Plan on SiteGround

Now that you know what options there are to choose as a hosting plan, it is important to know which plan to purchase. Every website is different, and thus every website has different necessities. To begin, you can determine what the requirements of your website are.

Determine Your Website’s Needs

To determine what your website’s needs are, you need to pay attention to a few factors. These factors can include traffic, storage, number of websites, number of email accounts and speed. Here are the most important factors to consider:

Traffic and Bandwidth Requirements.

To keep your website up to speed you need to have enough bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data your site can transfer to visitors in a given time. Bandwidth determines how fast your website’s content is delivered to visitors. Higher bandwidth is able to deliver more content and thus can help increase conversions.

The amount of traffic from your website often helps a lot when choosing a hosting plan. SiteGround has a monthly traffic forecast for each plan. If you know your traffic volume, you can make your choice based on this information. Does your website exceed the amount of traffic SiteGround indicates for web, WordPress or WooCommerce hosting? Then cloud hosting is probably the best option for you.

Don’t know yet how much traffic you’re going to get because you’re just starting to create a website? Then choose the plan where the least traffic is indicated. This is the cheapest option for getting your website online. As your traffic increases, you can always upgrade to another plan.

The cheapest plan offered by SiteGround is the StartUp plan.

Type of Website

What type of website are you building? Is it a simple blog or a more complex e-commerce site? Different types of websites have different requirements, so you’ll want to choose a hosting plan that’s tailored to your specific needs. For example, if you’re building an e-commerce site, you’ll need a hosting plan with features like SSL certificates and WooCommerce.

Once you’ve determined your website’s needs, you can start comparing SiteGround’s hosting plans to find the one that’s right for you. Consider factors like price, features, and support when making your decision. And remember, SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can always switch to a different plan if you find that your current plan isn’t meeting your needs.

Consider Additional Features and Add-ons

After purchasing a hosting plan from SiteGround, you can purchase additional services. You do this by clicking on Marketplace in the dashboard bar at the top and then scroll down to Additional Services. Here you will find the following add-ons:

SSL Certificates

An SSL certificate is a security measure that encrypts all information exchanged between your website’s server and visitors, securing sensitive data such as credit card transactions, login information, email content and more. If you process credit card payments, an SSL certificate is crucial. However, it is also advisable for all websites because Google’s search algorithm considers it an official ranking factor.

SiteGround offers three options for SSL:

• Let’s Encrypt SSL: is free and for small size websites, mobile compatible and works for three months.
• Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL: is also free and is for medium size websites, it is also compatible with mobile and works for three months.
• Premium Wildcard SSL: is for large business websites and costs around $7 per month, it is valid for 1 year and unlocks all features for SSL.

Site Builder

With a hosting plan from SiteGround, you can use a drag-and-drop site builder: Weebly. Weebly makes it easy to create beautiful websites without needing technical skills.

There are four options available:

• Free: use the site builder without additional features. There are ads visible on your website.
• Starter: use the site builder with some features, there are no ads from Weebly on your website.
• Professional: use the site builder with almost all features, there are still some limits here and there.
• Business: use the site builder with no limits.

There are better alternatives to Weebly that have more features and are cheaper such as Elementor. Elementor is a powerful website builder for WordPress with a free version. The pro version unlocks all the features. If you want to know more about this fantastic drag-and-drop page builder, check out my Elementor review.

CDN

CDN is short for Content Delivery Network and ensures that your website loads faster worldwide. It is useful to use CDN when you have traffic from multiple countries and continents. CDN stores the content of your site across a global network of servers. When someone visits your website, the content will load faster.

Suppose your website’s servers are located in the United States. When someone from Europe visits your website, the content of your site has to go from the U.S. to Europe. That can take a while. When someone from Europe visits your website and you have CDN enabled, the content is loaded from the European server. Your site content then loads much faster and provides a better user experience.

SiteGround offers a free option with a bandwidth of 10 GB. The premium option has many more features such as dynamic caching and unmetered bandwidth.

Site Scanner

SiteGround’s site scanner helps protect your website by constantly crawling and analyzing pages for traces of malware. You can be kept up to date on scans by email.

There are two options:

• Basic site scanner: scans URLs daily and sends email reports.
• Premium site scanner: scans URLs and files daily and sends email reports.

Dedicated IP

By purchasing a dedicated IP, your website operates from one unique IP address instead of an IP address shared with others. A dedicated IP can result in better website performance because you are no longer sharing an IP address but you are the only one using it. SiteGround recommends using a dedicated IP if you have an SSL certificate installed on your website.

Hosting relocation

During the purchase process of a hosting plan, you need to choose where you want your website to be hosted. SiteGround has multiple data centers in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia, among others. Adjusting your hosting location to one that is close to your users can improve your Web site’s performance.

Private DNS

When you host your website with SiteGround, you automatically use their nameservers. This allows everyone to see where you host your website. With a private DNS, you can change the name servers to your own domain, making it look as if you own the host server.

How to Buy Web Hosting on SiteGround

Now that you’ve gained enough knowledge about the differences between SiteGround’s pricing plans and the extras available, it’s time to buy a hosting plan and install WordPress (and possibly WooCommerce). The process is quite simple and straightforward. Just follow the following instructions:

Create a SiteGround Account

In the first part, we’re going to create an account with SiteGround. You will need this account to manage your websites and domains. So make sure all the information you enter, such as emails and passwords, is correct. Let’s begin.

1. Choose a Hosting Plan

First, you need to choose a hosting plan. Earlier in this guide, you learned how to choose a plan, so you should be fine.

Go to SiteGround’s website and click on Hosting at the top. Then select the type of hosting you want to purchase. For this guide, I will choose WordPress Hosting.

On this page, choose the hosting plan you want. Click the blue GET PLAN button.

2. Choose a Domain Name

After clicking the blue button you will be redirected to a page where you need to choose a domain name.

If you don’t already have a domain name, you can purchase one from SiteGround for $17.99 per year. To do so, enter the domain name you want to use. Make sure your domain name has no spelling mistakes. If your domain name is available click Proceed.

If you already have a domain select I already have a domain name and enter the domain name you want to use. Then click Proceed.

3. Enter Your Personal and Billing Information

On the next page you must first enter your personal information. In the first section you create your account. When you are done, scroll down to the second section to enter your personal information. Finally, in the third section you enter your payment information.

4. Choose the Necessary Extra Services

In the next section you will see an overview of your order. Make sure that the correct plan and data center are selected. If they are not, click on the small gray button behind them to change them.

Choose the period you want. This period determines how long your hosting service lasts and when you have to pay again.

Under Additional Services, make sure Domain Registration is checked if you don’t have a domain yet. I also recommend buying Domain Privacy. Without domain privacy, anyone can see your personal information. The site scanner can be useful to improve the security of your website, but it is not necessary.

5. Review Your Order and Complete Your Purchase

The final step is to review all the information you entered. Once you are sure everything is correct you agree to the terms of service and privacy policy and click Pay Now.

After you have completed your purchase, you will receive an email confirmation and you can login to the SiteGround dashboard.

Set Up Your Website on SiteGround

Now that you have created an account with SiteGround, you can set up your website setup by installing WordPress, among other things. By installing WordPress, you can easily manage your content. To start setting up your website, go to the client area.

1. Install WordPress or Other CMS

When you first log in to the client area you will see a welcome message and a SET UP YOUR WEBSITE button. Click this button to start the installation process.

On the next page you can install WordPress. If you already have a website you want to migrate click Migrate Website and follow the steps.

To install WordPress, select Start New Website and then click WordPress. If you also want to install WooCommerce click WooCommerce, this will install both WordPress and WooCommerce.

2. Add Extras

If you want, you can choose to add extras. However, you may have already done this during your purchase. Decide if you want to purchase any extras or click Finish and wait until WordPress and possibly WooCommerce are installed.

3. Choose a Theme

When the WordPress installation is complete you will see the WordPress Starter wizard. To get started, click Start Now.

You will now be given the opportunity to choose from a wide selection of WordPress themes. It doesn’t matter now which one you choose, you can change it later.

Related: How to Install a WordPress Theme Step-by-Step [2 methods]

4. Add Plugins

After choosing a theme, you can choose plugins to install. Plugins can be useful. An example of such a useful plugin is Elementor. With Elementor, you can easily create pages by dragging and dropping elements. Adding the suggested plugins is not necessarily required.

After choosing plugins, the website setup is ready. Click Complete to complete the process.

Within minutes, your website will be ready for use with the theme and plugins you added. You can login to your site dashboard at http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin and edit your website and add content from there.

That was all! You now have your own WordPress website with SiteGround. You can now start adding plugins, designing pages and adding content.

Conclusion

In this guide, you learned how to choose and buy web hosting from SiteGround, a popular hosting company known for its fast and trustworthy hosting. You’ve learned three things:

1. Why SiteGround is a great choice for web hosting.
   SiteGround offers different types of hosting, such as WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, shared hosting and cloud hosting. SiteGround’s features include speed and performance, security and reliability, and customer support. The company has created three plugins for its customers: the SiteGround Optimizer plugin, SiteGround Security plugin and the SiteGround Migrator plugin. With these plugins, WordPress website owners can easily adjust their hosting settings such as caching, frontend optimization and site security through their own website’s dashboard.
2. How to choose the right hosting plan for your website.
   The right hosting plan is important for the performance of your site. Of course, you want your site to be fast and visitors to have a good user experience. Therefore, it is important to consider factors such as bandwidth and the type of Web site you are creating. SiteGround offers several plans with different features. You can also purchase additional services such as CDN, SSL certificates and a site scanner. By analyzing your website’s needs and comparing SiteGround’s hosting plans’ features and prices, you can find the plan that suits you the most.
3. How to buy web hosting from SiteGround.
   You’ll know step-by-step how to purchase hosting from SiteGround and what to look out for during the purchase process. For example, you know that it is important to buy domain privacy if you have a domain, otherwise everyone can see your personal information. After creating your account, you can independently install WordPress with associated themes and plugins.

I wish you good luck with your new website. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements I am always available to answer them. For 24/7 support you can contact SiteGround, their customer support is really good.

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