Review
SiteGround review
The best support and by far the best backups, attached to the steepest renewal pricing in the category. Worth it if the site earns enough that downtime costs real money; hard to justify for a hobby project.
This review sticks to things you can check: published prices, contract terms, and what the refund, backup and migration policies say in writing. We do not publish speed benchmarks, because a single test on shared hosting measures which neighbour was busy that afternoon. Our full methodology is here.
Plans and what they really cost
| Host & plan | Intro price | Renews at | Promo term | 4-year true cost | Resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGroundStartUp | $2.99/mo | $17.99/mo+502% | 12 mo | $684 | 10 GB1 site |
| SiteGroundGrowBig | $4.99/mo | $29.99/mo+501% | 12 mo | $1,140 | 50 GBUnlimited sites |
Intro prices require paying the full promo term upfront. “4-year true cost” is the promo term at the intro rate plus the remaining months at the renewal rate — the number the pricing page does not show you. Verified September 2026. See the screenshots these figures were read from.
The cheapest SiteGround plan to own for four years is StartUp at about $684 — intro rate for the promotional term, renewal rate thereafter.
Check current SiteGround pricing
Verdict
- Free daily backups with 30-day retention on every plan
- In-house 24/7 support including phone, widely regarded as the best of the three
- Eleven datacenter regions, chosen at signup
- Runs on Google Cloud infrastructure
- StartUp renews at $17.99 — a six-fold increase, and the steepest here
- StartUp holds exactly one website
- Site Tools instead of cPanel means relearning the interface
- Datacenter cannot be changed after signup
- Cloud plans drop to a 14-day refund window
The fine print
This is the part that decides whether you are happy in year two.
| Owner | SiteGround Hosting Ltd., privately held, headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. Independent. |
| Control panel | Site Tools (proprietary). SiteGround dropped cPanel entirely. |
| Support | 24/7 live chat, 24/7 phone with regional numbers, and tickets. Entirely in-house, no outsourcing. Priority support is a GoGeek-only feature. |
| Backups | Daily, free, with 30 days of history on every plan. The best backup offering of the three by a clear margin. On-demand backups on GrowBig and GoGeek. |
| Migration | Free, via SiteGround’s own WordPress Migrator plugin — automated and self-service rather than staff-performed. |
| Refund window | 30 days on shared hosting, but only 14 days on cloud. Domain fees may be charged on cancellation even where they were waived as part of a promotion. |
| Free domain | Free for one year. Renewal is billed separately from hosting, at roughly $22.99/yr for a .com based on SiteGround’s stated regular price. |
| Datacenters | Eleven locations: Ashburn, Council Bluffs, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Eemshaven, Frankfurt, Paris, Sydney and Singapore. Chosen at signup and fixed thereafter. |
What the AI features actually include
All three SiteGround plans advertise “Free AI tokens” with a NEW badge. The number of tokens is not on the pricing page, and we could not find it in SiteGround’s knowledge base either.
SiteGround does define the unit: a token is “the digital unit that measures the amount of data processed and provided by the AI models”, consumed by both your request and the reply, and deducted from a monthly limit. On timing, the documentation is clear: free-plan tokens “reset each month, on the date you have made your first paid SiteGround service order”, while “one-time AI Tokens top-ups do not reset”.
So the allowance refreshes rather than expiring outright — better than a one-off grant. But without a published figure you cannot tell before buying whether the monthly allowance covers an afternoon’s work or a year’s.
Providers advertise these inclusions without publishing the limits. Specifically: whether Hostinger’s 5 and 15 hosting-plan credits are monthly or one-time; how many free AI tokens each SiteGround plan includes; and what Bluehost’s “AI Site Creation Tools” contains or caps. We have left these unconfirmed rather than guessing. AI terms change faster than prices — this section was checked against provider documentation on 20 September 2026.
Who should buy it
The best support and by far the best backups, attached to the steepest renewal pricing in the category. Worth it if the site earns enough that downtime costs real money; hard to justify for a hobby project.
Compare it directly
SiteGround vs Hostinger
Side by side on four-year cost, backups, support and the fine print.
Read the comparison →SiteGround vs Bluehost
Side by side on four-year cost, backups, support and the fine print.
Read the comparison →SiteGround StartUp vs GrowBig vs GoGeek
Which tier of SiteGround to buy: cost after renewal, and the features that actually differ.
Read the guide →Related questions
- Do SiteGround AI tokens reset every month?
- How long is SiteGround's refund window?
- Is 10 GB of hosting storage enough for a WordPress site?
- How do I avoid the hosting renewal price increase?
All hosting questions, answered →
Sources
Every factual claim on this page is checkable on the provider’s own site. Prices and policies were verified September 2026 and change without notice.