Searching for SiteGround alternatives to host your website?
| Alternative hosting | Starting Price | Data centre | |
| Bluehost | $2.65/month | USA, India | |
| A2Hosting | $2.99/month | USA, Europe, Asia | |
| WPX | $20.83/month | Chicago, London and Sydney | |
| Cloudways | $10/month | Multiple (Cloud server) | |
| HostGator | $3/month | USA, India |
In June 2020, SiteGround increased its prices…again.
SiteGround had already had a big price increase in 2018, so these back-to-back price increases mean that SiteGround is no longer one of the cheapest web hosts like it was in the past. These price increases, combined with SiteGround’s strict CPU limitations, might have you searching for the best alternatives to SiteGround.
Don’t get me wrong – even with the price increase and CPU limitations, SiteGround is still one of the best shared hosts. The SiteGround team recently moved all their infrastructure to Google Cloud and also launched their own custom hosting dashboard, so they are working hard to justify the price increases.
If your site can fit within the CPU limitations and you can afford the price, SiteGround is still an excellent option:
With that being said, SiteGround is not the only good host. You can find plenty of SiteGround alternatives that are cheaper and/or have less strict limitations. Here are five of the best…
5 Best SiteGround Alternatives
1. Bluehost
Bluehost is an excellent affordable alternative to SiteGround for two reasons:
- Bluehost’s prices are lower than SiteGround, especially after SiteGround’s recent price increase. You also get a free domain name for your first year, which SiteGround doesn’t offer.
- Bluehost gives you unlimited resources, whereas SiteGround applies limits to your storage and CPU seconds.
Bluehost also offers many of the same features as SiteGround including:
- Beginner-friendly WordPress installer tool
- Free SSL certificates
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Staging sites
Best of all, Bluehost’s plans start at just $3.95. However, most people will benefit more from the $5.95 per month Plus plan because it adds support for unlimited websites and storage.
Pros
- Bluehost is significantly cheaper than SiteGround after SiteGround’s recent price increase. You’ll also get a free domain name.
- Bluehost offers unlimited resources (except for the Basic plan).
Cons
- Bluehost doesn’t offer free website migration, so you’ll need to manually migrate WordPress. Or, you can pay Bluehost $150 to have them migrate up to five websites.
- Bluehost doesn’t offer automatic off-site backups like SiteGround does.
2. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is another popular independent shared host, just like SiteGround.
For being cheap shared hosting, A2 Hosting offers excellent performance, especially on the Turbo plans which offer LiteSpeed server and caching along with other performance tweaks. A2hosting offers SSD storage, and offers unlimited storage and bandwidth.
Despite that, A2 Hosting is still significantly more affordable than SiteGround, especially after SiteGround’s most recent price increase. You also get unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans except for the cheapest one.
Other key features include:
- Free SSL certificates
- Data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia (Singapore)
- Staging sites
A2 Hosting’s plans start at just $2.99 for a single website. However, if fast load times are important to you, you should consider the $9.99 Turbo Boost plan. In addition to letting you host unlimited websites, it also offers much better performance thanks to LiteSpeed server and some other enhancements.
Pros
- A2 Hosting is a lot cheaper than SiteGround.
- Like SiteGround, A2 Hosting is one of the fastest-loading shared hosts.
- A2 Hosting offers free migrations, which makes it easy to move your site(s) from SiteGround.
Cons
- A2 Hosting’s plans have hard-capped physical memory, which is one of the ways in which they limit you.
- A2 Hosting doesn’t offer automatic off-site backups like SiteGround (there is a server rewind backup tool, but you shouldn’t rely on this by itself).
3. WPX Hosting
WPX Hosting is a good SiteGround alternative if you’re willing to pay a bit more for a premium service.
WPX Hosting is not cheaper than SiteGround, but it is in the same price range and lets you avoid SiteGround’s CPU limits.
If you can handle the price, WPX Hosting offers excellent performance (even better than SiteGround). Part of what makes this possible is the integrated content delivery network (CDN), which serves your site’s static content from a network of servers all around the world.
WPX Hosting also secures your site with firewalls, daily malware scans, and DDoS protection. If your site still gets infected with malware somehow, WPX Hosting will fix it for you for free. If you are hooked to fast customer support of SiteGround, WPX will spoil you with their blazing fast, and quality customer support. Live chat is one of the highlight of WPX features.
Other key features include:
- Staging sites
- Free SSL certificates
- Automatic daily backups
- Data centers in USA, UK, and Australia
Plans start at $24.99 per month with monthly billing or $20.83 per month with annual billing for:
- 5 websites
- 10 GB storage
- 100 GB bandwidth
Pros
- WPX Hosting offers premium managed WordPress hosting for cheaper than competitors like WP Engine and Kinsta.
- WPX Hosting offers excellent performance, especially for its price. In terms of load times, it’s even faster than SiteGround and can compete with hosts like WP Engine and Flywheel.
- WPX Hosting offers unlimited free white-glove migrations, which makes it really easy to move your sites from SiteGround.
- WPX Hosting has excellent support that will go above and beyond to fix any issue.
Cons
- It can be a little more expensive than SiteGround, especially if you were on SiteGround’s StartUp plan. Or, if you need to host 5+ sites.
- WPX Hosting counts staging sites as a website for billing purposes. For example, if you have one live site and also a staging site for that site, WPX Hosting counts that as two sites (which is different from how most other hosts do things).
- Your choices in data centers are limited. There’s no option in Asia.
4. Cloudways
Cloudways is an excellent SiteGround alternative for more advanced users.
It uses a different approach from all these other alternatives. In fact, Cloudways is not a traditional “host”. Instead, it’s a managed control panel that lets you choose your own cloud hosting from providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Google Cloud, or AWS. Since your website will be hosted on cloud server, you can expect 100% uptime. The customer support of Cloudways is excellent and responsive.
The end result is quite similar to regular hosting, but this approach of going directly to the big cloud hosting providers lets you get surprisingly good performance at a very low cost. There are also no arbitrary limits – as long as you choose a cloud VPS with enough power, you’ll never get cut off because you “exceeded your CPU seconds” or something.
Cloudways also still gives you a lot of useful tools and features like:
- Automatic backups to off-site storage
- Easy staging sites
- Free SSL certificates
- Server-level caching via Varnish and the integrated Breeze cache plugin
- Integrated CDN (for an extra fee)
If you’re on a budget, the cheapest DigitalOcean plan is a good place to start. For just $10 per month, you can get excellent performance. If you use smart caching, you should also be able to host multiple low-to-medium traffic sites.
Or, if you’re willing to pay a little more for better performance, consider the Vultr High Frequency plans, which start at $13 per month.
No matter which cloud provider you choose, the plans are entirely pay-as-you-go – you’re never locked into yearly contracts. You can even pay hourly if you want. Since you have option to select from multiple data-centre, the server response time is blazing fast.
Pros
- You can get very fast load times for a very low price. I’ve had simple WordPress websites on the cheapest DigitalOcean plan that load in under one second.
- There are no arbitrary CPU limits like with SiteGround – as long as your CPU/RAM is high enough for your traffic, you’ll never get cut off.
- You get useful features like automatic backups, staging sites, and more.
- It’s very easy to “scale” your hosting. This means that as your website grows, you can easily add more resources to handle increased traffic.
- You can choose the data centre nearest to your server location to serve your website faster.
Cons
- It’s a little more complicated than SiteGround (and other alternatives on this list). You don’t need to be a developer, but it might feel a little overwhelming for total newbies.
- Cloudways doesn’t support sending emails from your server by default (e.g. password reset emails). They do include an SMTP add-on that makes it pretty easy to set up (for free), but it’s another thing that makes Cloudways a little more complicated.
- Cloudways doesn’t offer email hosting, so it doesn’t let you create a [email protected] email account by default. However, it does integrate with Rackspace email hosting to help you set this up (for a small fee).
5. HostGator
HostGator is another alternative to SiteGround from the same parent company as Bluehost.
HostGator also offers similar value to Bluehost – you get cheaper prices than SiteGround along with unlimited resources. You’ll also get a free domain name, which adds even more value.
Other key features include:
- Free SSL certificates
- Free email hosting
- One-click WordPress installer
- Free migrations
- Data centers around the world in the USA (North America), India (Asia), Brazil (South America), Netherlands (Europe), and Hong Kong (Asia).
HostGator’s shared plans are the cheapest on this list, starting at just $2.75 per month. However, most people will do best with the $3.95 per month Baby plan because it adds support for unlimited websites.
If you want more of a managed experience, HostGator also offers affordable managed WordPress plans, though these plans have more limitations than the cheaper shared plans. These plans use cloud architecture and offer 2.5X the performance of HostGator’s shared plans. However, they start at $5.95 for a single site.
Pros
- HostGator has the cheapest prices of any alternative on this list. You’ll also get a free domain name.
- HostGator has physical data centers on four different continents, including a data center in Mumbai.
- You get free migrations, which makes it easy to move your sites from SiteGround.
- HostGator’s managed WordPress plans are still cheaper than SiteGround (though they don’t support unlimited resources).
Cons
- HostGator doesn’t have more advanced features like staging sites or automatic off-site backups.
- HostGator’s performance isn’t as good as other options like A2 Hosting or Cloudways.
Which Is the Best SiteGround Alternative?
The best SiteGround alternative for you depends on your needs and budget.
If you’re just getting started with your website, Bluehost is a great option because it offers a free domain name, an easy WordPress installer tool, and unlimited resources.
On the other hand, if speed performance and service quality are most important to you, you might want to choose:
- A2 Hosting if you’re a newbie on a tight budget.
- WPX Hosting if you’re a newbie and willing to pay a little more for top quality.
- Cloudways if you’re an advanced user because it offers the best performance at the lowest price (but it might feel confusing if you’re a newbie).
Do you have questions about these alternatives to SiteGround? Ask in the comments section!
Keep reading the article at ShoutMeLoud. The article was originally written by Harsh Agrawal on 2020-09-18 08:10:25.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.