Hostinger vs SiteGround: Which is the Best Webhost for Bloggers?

Ah, web hosting. Not the most exciting or glamorous topic out there, but one that we, as bloggers and website owners, have to put some thought into if we don’t want to screw up our blogs.

Failure to properly research which web hosting provider is most suitable for your needs could result in your website being down, loading slowly, or draining your bank account every month unnecessarily.

Hostinger and SiteGround are two of the most popular and reputable hosting providers out there, but while they have their similarities, they are also different in many ways as well, and so I decided to create this Hostinger vs SiteGround comparison to help you figure out which is the best web host for you.

So, with all that said and done, let’s get into it.

Hostinger vs SiteGround: Which is the Best Web Hosting for Bloggers?

What is Hosting?

If you’re not a newbie blogger, feel free to skip this section and head straight to my Hostinger vs Siteground comparison.

If you are new to blogging and you have no idea what hosting is, bear with me. I’ll try and keep it simple.

In order for your website to exist online, you will need a place for it. Your hosting provider will provide that place, at a monthly cost.

Think of your hosting provider like a landlord. You pay them the rent each month, and they let your website ‘live’ as a tenant on its own little place on the web.

You will still own your domain name and all of the content on your site (and the site itself of course), but the hosting provider will provide the space for your website to exist.

What to Look for in a Good Hosting Provider

When deciding which hosting provider to go with, you need to consider the four S’s: Speed, Security, Scalability and Support.

Let’s take a closer look at what these words really mean in terms of blogging and why they are so important.

Speed

Site speed is considered one of the most important ranking signals for your website, period.

If you have a slow site, the user experience will be negatively affected and people (including potential customers) will often leave your site without bothering to wait for the page to load, even if it only takes a fraction of a second longer than it should.

When this happens too often, Google will penalise your site by refusing to rank your articles highly, meaning nobody will find them.

A good web host will ensure that your site is as speedy as can be from their end.

Security

Even the smallest bloggers need to make sure that their website is safe and secure.

A good host will provide a free SSL certificate (the little padlock next to the URL means that a website has an SSL certificate and that all user data is encrypted), it will run regular backups of your site, protect it from spam attacks and login attempts, and keep an eye on your server and nameservers to make sure that everything is as it should be.

Scalability

As your website grows, your hosting needs will too.

The basic plans are great when you’re just starting out, but over time, you will likely need to upgrade to a more robust plan with extra memory, and you want to be sure that your hosting provider not only has a plan suitable for your future needs, but that you can afford the higher costs that come with it.

Support

When it comes to your website, time is money, and unfortunately websites don’t just malfunction in standard business hours. This is why it’s so important to have access to a dedicated support team 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to get your issues resolved as quickly as possible.

You don’t want to be waiting hours, or even days to hear back from your hosting provider if an issue arises (which it will, trust me!).

Hostinger vs SiteGround

Hostinger vs SiteGround on Speed

When it comes to speed, both Hostinger and SiteGround perform well.

SiteGround is well-known for its fast site speeds, and its use of Google Cloud make it one of the fastest out there. It also uses a SuperCacher which is enabled by default, and comes with a free WordPress plugin called SG Optimizer, which can do everything from compressing and Lazy Loading images to minifying CSS files, combining JavaScript files and much more.

As if all that wasn’t enough, SiteGround also has faster MySQL setup, Brotli Compression and Ultrafast PHP, which make your website load 30% faster on average.

Hostinger use Litespeed Web Servers which are known for their incredible performance, and a Litespeed Cache plugin for WordPress that helps reduce page load time is also available.

Overall, both Hostinger and SiteGround perform well when it comes to speed, with SiteGround having a slight edge thanks to Google Cloud.

It’s also worth pointing out that both providers have a guarantee of 99.9% uptime, which is essential as time equals money, and you don’t ever want your site being out of action!

Hostinger vs SiteGround on Security

When it comes to having a safe and secure website, both companies nail it.

Here are some (but not all) of the security features that you will get with Hostinger:

• Daily or weekly backups (without the need of a plugin which will slow down your site)
• Cloudflare protected nameservers
• Free SSL certificate
• Internal server security (the servers are monitored 24/7)
• SSH access
• Spam and threat detection
• Wanguard anti-DDoS traffic analyser and DDoS protection
• Two-factor authentication to protect people with your password from accessing your account
• Bitninja or Imunify360 WAF (web application firewall) on each server
• RAID-10 protection
• Access Manager
• LVE containers for Account Isolation

When it comes to SiteGround, they have a Security-First approach and use incredible technology to keep your website protected.

Here are some of the SiteGround security features:

• The ability to securely backup your site without a plugin
• Free SSL certificate
• 24/7 server monitoring
• Spam and threat detection
• Real-time scanning software for DDoS protection
• Strong WAF to protect you from hacks
• Sophisticated IDS/IPS systems which block malicious bots and attackers
• WordPress Security plugin for additional protection
• Cloudflare CDN for security and site speed

Hostinger vs SiteGround on Scalability (and Pricing!)

Scalable hosting is essential for bloggers, because the longer you blog for, the more your traffic will increase (if you’re doing it right, anyway!), and your hosting needs to be able to accommodate that growth.

Scalable hosting will enable you to can easily add extra storage, bandwidth and CPUs.

Now, while both Hostinger and SiteGround have a variety of different plans available, SiteGround’s services are very expensive compared to Hostinger once you get past the basic plan.

Hostinger’s mid-range plan, which is its Premium Plan, costs just 2.27 EUR (2.59 USD) per month for the first 12 months and then 7.88 EUR a month (8.99 USD) after that.

SiteGround’s mid-range plan, which is its GrowBig plan, starts off at 6.99 EUR (7.98 USD) a month for the first 12 months and then skyrockets to 22.99 EUR a month (26.24 USD).

Both of these plans offer unlimited websites and unmetered bandwidth, but Hostinger offer 5 TIMES more SSD storage, and are almost 3 times cheaper than SiteGround when it comes to long-term contracts.

Sitenote: I personally use SiteGround to host my 3 websites, and while I absolutely love them, the SSD storage has been an issue for me. I have had to upgrade to the most expensive plan, GoGeek, due to my storage requirements. I would likely be saving a lot of money if I’d gone with Hostinger instead, but when I initially started this blog, I didn’t consider scalability costs!

With both companies, it is a lot cheaper to pay for 3 or 4 years upfront, as the renewal price will be much lower if you commit to a longer time period.

When it comes to highly scalable cloud hosting, the resources on SiteGround’s Business plan are pretty much on par with Hostinger’s Cloud Professional plan, with SiteGround’s plan offering slightly more RAM while Hostinger offer more than double the amount of storage space.

As with the regular plans, Hostinger’s cloud plans are almost 6 times cheaper than SiteGround’s (for the first year), and 3 times more affordable on renewal.

Hostinger vs SiteGround on Support

Okay, so Hostinger may have taken the prize when it comes to cost and scalability, but one thing that makes SiteGround really stand out is the quality of the support that they provide.

It is for this reason that I have stayed loyal to them for over 4 years, despite the cost of their plans.

SiteGround’s customer support can take the form of either live chat, a support ticket, or a phone call (you can choose which one you prefer).

They also have an AI-powered chatbot for the more basic queries you may have.

I always use the 24/7 chat system, and have never been disappointed with the service that I’ve received. The customer success team go out of their way to fix any issues that I might have, or they pass along my problem to someone who can fix it.

They have walked me through tonnes of things that I would never have been able to do by myself, and they always give thorough answers to all of my questions.

Unlike other companies, you never feel as though SiteGround are just trying to fob you off or get rid of you, and I have never encountered somebody that was clearly just reading from a script, unlike most other support teams I come across!

The fact that they also offer phone support is great, because some things are just easier to discuss over the phone. What’s more, SiteGround will call you if you require phone support, meaning no sneaky charges on your phone bill, and no hours wasted sitting on hold.

Hostinger, on the other hand, do not offer any phone support at all. They do offer a 24/7 chat support once you’ve signed up for a plan, but if you have any questions prior to signing up, you will have to ask them via an email ticket.

Because I have no personal experience with Hostinger’s support, I decided to speak to someone that did. Paul from Baked Bean Marketing told me that ‘Their live chat support is very quick and responsive and anytime we’ve needed to contact them for any reason they have been super helpful.’

So, while SiteGround certainly have the edge in terms of support, Hostinger are not too far behind, especially if you’re like me and hate speaking on the phone anyway!

Hostinger vs Siteground on Features and Freebies

While I have covered the 4 S’s of web hosting, I couldn’t write a review of SiteGround vs Hostinger without touching on the additional features and freebies that both companies offer.

Here are just some of the things that you will get with a Premium plan on Hostinger, which costs $2.59 per month:

• Free domain name for 1 year
• 100 websites
• 100 domain-based email accounts
• Free SSL certificate
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Managed WordPress
• Choice of shared hosting, cloud hosting, Linux or Windows VPS hosting (virtual private server hosting which mimics a dedicated server)
• Free website migration
• 24/7 support
• 100GB SSD storage
• Daily automatic backups
• GIT access
• SSH access
• DNS management
• 100 Subdomains
• Unlimited Cronjobs
• 30 day money back guarantee

Now, here are some of the things included on the SiteGround equivalent, GrowBig, which costs $7.98:

• Unlimited websites
• Officially recommended by WordPress
• Unlimited email accounts
• Free SSL certificate
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unmetered traffic
• Free WooCommerce installation
• Shared, WordPress, reseller or cloud hosting
• Managed WordPress (automated core and plugin updates, advanced WP tools and specialised WordPress support)
• $30 website migration or a free plugin that allows you to do it yourself
• 10GB – 40GB disk space on shared hosting plans
• Daily backups and backups on-demand
• Free CDN
• Ultrafast PHP
• Staging
• 100% renewable energy match
• 30 day money back guarantee

Hostinger vs SiteGround | Final Thoughts

Overall, both Hostinger and SiteGround are excellent choices when it comes to hosting your website.

Hostinger has everything you need to get online for rock bottom prices, making it a perfect choice for beginners or people concerned about budget. It is also the better choice if you specifically want VPS hosting, as SiteGround don’t offer that.

If you’re less concerned about money and want the technically superior option, with better support and slightly faster speeds, SiteGround is the provider for you. Plus, SiteGround is officially approved by both WordPress and WooCommerce.

I hope that I’ve managed to provide some useful information that will help you decide which provider to choose when it comes to Hostinger vs SiteGround. If you have any questions then please let me know in the comments section below and I will do my best to help!

Until next time,

XOXO

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