Negative Review of SiteGround Hosting! Problems & Issues

Instead of just adding more to the flood of positive reviews; I will share the problems and issues with SiteGround hosting based on real experience in 2024.

Here’s my negative take on the hugely popular hosting provider.

SiteGround Negative Review

Index of SiteGround Problems

Please be advised

When reading online reviews and comments about how terrible SiteGround is (yes; they exist for every single hosting company on this planet).

Many of these bad experiences are actually a fault of the customer not the hosting company; being displeased (a) without consideration of how hosting works or what they actually signed up for (b) being unable to see their own mistakes.

Understanding this; I can still tell you the negative side of SiteGround.

Yes. This is not a rant.

Careless Support

Quoting their own website; SiteGround takes “pride” in their “amazing technical support” and it’s one of the things it’s being most praised for on their reviews.

While I respect their genuine approach to offer high quality support which it still is in most cases — they have problems that are typical for big companies.

Conveyor belt effect

If your issue is general in nature and resolved on first attempt, you will probably join in with the rest of the praise on how good support is. All of the staff speaks good English, they are courteous and they are smart guys.

But when your issue is not resolved immediately; obviously you can’t have the same guy sitting down all day tackling on your problems. So you will be bounced from one customer representative to the next.

This conveyor belt style support is prone to mistakes just when you need support the most with more specific problems; the root of the problem.

A good example is when I was having problems with installing the free SSL certificate for my website. Because my problem was more specific in nature, they forwarded my issue to a specialized representative.

But my issue was not given the individual attention it needed, although I had taken time and care to try and explain the specifics related to the case. Instead the issue was just categories as “this customer wants X” and forwarded on.

To make the story short; support were just thrown at the problem, being bounced from one customer rep to another. So everyone just went and blindly tried to enable the SSL certificate until the feature was locked down for a week.

Worst of all I was simply informed that my website will have to do without an SSL certificate for a week — initially without an apology as no one really could see the big picture of what had happened. Not surprising when things get messy.

Moral of the story

From experience of running a small business focused on customer service; I know that customers want to be heard and feel significant more than anything else.

But every time you contact SiteGround you get in touch with a new member of support staff. Which can make you feel insignificant lost in the hurdles of a system that is prioritized to serve collective solutions. Also this problem could have been avoided if they would have taken the time to try and understand and communicate amongst each other what my problem really was.

But still SiteGround has more than above average support and I guess they are doing pretty well in comparison for the large size they are dealing with.

Poor Uptime Policy

Few uptime policies are super customer friendly and neither SiteGround has been willing to shine in this area. While on their front page they boast with 99.99% uptimes; I would suggest reading their uptime policy terms for a closer look.

  • It’s actually 99.9% NOT 99.99%
  • Uptime is counted from yearly NOT monthly uptime (easier to abide)
  • You get 1 month free hosting for every 3.65days of downtime in a year
  • If emergency maintenance is resolved in less than an hour it’s not counted as downtime and other non-abiding scenarios
  • Only their own internal records serve as proof of downtime

Do I even need to continue…? Needless to say their TOS is not something that would make me excited or rely on their uptimes.

But in comparison SiteGround is still far from the worst; as the hosting industry is loaded with poor uptime policies that shift away nearly all responsibility.

One area that SiteGround does shine in.. is the server architecture itself and they do a pretty good job at explaining the perks. In my year-long experience I’ve had two downtimes, one lasted 1 minutes 41 seconds and the other was 13 minutes 42 seconds. Without cloud hosting architecture; there will always a little downtime.

Renewal Upcharges

Hosting at 3.95/month for three years is more than generous, obviously they consider you as a long time investment. This comes with the cost of a big upcharge on renewals; more than double the initial cost of hosting.

Trying to enter the market of cheap hosting is part of business I guess; but SiteGround is far from a low-cost host. While this could potentially be misleading — I don’t consider this a problem if you are looking for quality hosting services.

They are pretty open about the pricing policy for increased transparency.

Resource Limits

Ever wondered why even the cheapest shared hosting plan is so damn fast? Which btw. is pretty rare for a hosting company and for most customers there’s even no need to upgrade to their expensive cloud hosting solution because of it.

It’s because each shared hosting plan is limited in resources; making sure that each and every website gets it’s fair share of the pie with optimum performance.

Inode Usage Issue

So there’s something called Inodes; which is a way to measure the use of server resources by each hosting account. Counted from things like how heavy your website load is, how many visitors and how long and what they do on your site, etc.

If you cross a designated daily resource limit; support will ask you to upgrade to a higher hosting plan or they could disable your website for that day.

The point is that when ordinary hosting would simply slow down your & everyone elses site on the server; all SiteGround knows is how to host websites fast.

Monthly recommended website visitors

  • StartUp — Suitable for 10,000 monthly visitors
  • GrowBig — Suitable for 25,000 monthly visitors
  • GoGeek — Suitable for 100,000 monthly visitors

But good news is coming; I’ve tried but never have I managed to use even half of the inode limit with more than double the said limit on the cheapest StartUp plan.

Also besides upgrading your account; there’s a lot you can do to make your website lighter and reduce resource consumption. Which you should be doing anyway to optimize page load speeds. There’s also a whole knowledge base article dedicated to the subject which is recommended reading.

When you go to your hosting control panel (cPanel); there’s a Stats sidebar where you can see the Inode Usage data in a neat bar which you will likely stop checking once you start to gain confidence that your site will do just fine.

Have you had a negative experience with SiteGround hosting?
I will be glad to hear out your articulated & sensible comments below.

Notice: A portion of the links contained within the review are affiliated with third parties and may potentially result in monetary benefit to the owner of the blog.

I’ve done my best to stay sincere; thank you for reading and your support!

12 thoughts on “Negative Review of SiteGround Hosting! Problems & Issues”

  1. I have hosted my healthcare website with Siteground for about a year and wanted to switch to a different host for a number of reasons. It was at that point that my login stopped working and for 3 weeks now, I am unable to log in to retrieve my website files. I am paid in full until April 2020, so non-payment is not the issue. They sent me two links to re-set my password, and neither worked. They stopped sending me links and refuse to help. I have provided proof of ownership, answered all their questions, filled out their forms… all to “protect and secure” my privacy. Now they have deactivated my entire website and I am no longer found online. I am a doctor and I rely upon my website to help my patients. Siteground has prevented me from earning a living and doing business. They are holding my website hostage. I have had the worst service with Siteground and would not ever recommend them. I got better service from Blue Host!!

    Reply
    • Cameron. I have the similar experience. i’m going to share this with as much social media as I can. I too am a healer–acupuncturist and they ruined my relationships, site didn’t work, no help. became ruder and ruder and blocked me out. What’s wrong with the staff and the company. Maybe they are going to go out of business. Their attitude will bring them down. You sound very sane and kind and did not deserve the way they have treated you or me and ruined our business by being so non-helpful. WordPress.org represents another company and and shift everything over. Is it Blue Pearl? Any ways. I hear you Cameron.

      Reply
      • Every hosting company has it’s negatives.. and SiteGround is still popular and according to those who have had success with them, say they have good support and performance.

        But it’s not for everyone of course. If you’re looking for an awesome host, I’d personally go with ‘A2 Hosting“.

        If you are still willing to give SiteGround a go, I’d check out the reviews I linked to in the beginning of this post. Thanks!

        Reply
  2. SImilar to above. They refused to help me get a simple password and refused to help me and hung up on me a number of times. They are rude, not at all helpful, angry. They refuse to help. This hardened attitude is in nearly every single person who answers the phonbe. I have been through 2 website managers who left because we couldn’t get further. This is insane. I realize now it is 3 years and I have been unable to grow my businessw. They sent me numerous links to help all of which Did NOT WORK. Every time I called they would send the same link again and again and it nevewr worked. Tonight I made a real effort to reach the person and he hung up on me???? What? he could not help me get a new password. SITEGROUND HAS GONE ALL THE WAY DOWNHILL. I am letting my account expire. NOt good for healers. The negative energy they exhibit is useless and unkind. I would give them a 0 out of 10. I wasted soooooo much money in 3 years. One website guy had suggested them and then I got stuck with them. so frustrated with the lack of help and the rudeness is off the chart. NEVER USE SITEGROUND they are the rudest and worst. Save yourself the aggravation. Use the #1 with word press. I think it is Blue Pearl. Good bye forever Sitegroundless.

    Reply
  3. Same here, I’m moving my site right now. First they made me upgrade to GrowBig and then I was away and had to pay $200 to keep my site online because they shut it down. This was 10 days ago and it has been down 2 times since. Tech support is awful. They just don’t seem to be interested at all. I’m going to try and get this money back. I feel totally swindled.

    Reply
  4. My first experiences with SiteGround were great. Good response times. Helpful technical support. Then in the last weeks it has been just terrible. I have now been waiting for over 10 minutes just to log on. It is getting harder and harder to contact Tech Support, never mind get any help. It is almost as if they provide great support for the first weeks, and then move you to a ‘locked in – they will put up with anything” class of support.

    What is with companies like this? How come they keep getting great reviews? Are we the exception, or the rule? Can’t run a business with a web site if you cannot get to it during the day.

    Reply
  5. Next comment – maybe it is not that simple

    Firefox upgraded sometime last week
    and I started to have SiteGround Logon problems

    So I just tried MS Edge

    No problems at all ….

    Maybe this is all about something to do with the Web Browser itself

    I am so tired of having to ‘chase after’ problems caused by these service providers who do really do a good job of ‘testing’ their changes

    Reply

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