Comparison Review: SiteGround or Hostinger?
It’s so important to choose a hosting provider with care. SiteGround vs Hostinger are two of the heavyweights when it comes to hosting, offering plenty of great features and incentives, as well as affordable pricing. So, I understand that it can be difficult to choose between them both!
The good news is that I have used both providers for many years now. I’ve been a premium member for both SiteGround vs Hostinger for quite some time, and so I’ve put together this comparison piece to help you figure out which solution is right for you.
As they both have a prime place within the market, you’re going to see that their service can be comparable in a lot of ways. However, there are subtle differences that may cause you to lean to one over the other. That’s what this piece is all about, helping you to figure out which platform is more suited to your specific requirements. After all, we all have different needs, right?
About SiteGround
Let’s start with a bit of background information! SiteGround was founded back in 2004. The company hosts approximately 2,000,000 domains across the globe. It is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, yet also has offices in Plovdiv, Madrid, and Stara Zagora.
The company employs roughly 500 people. It offers email hosting, enterprise solutions, domain registration, cloud hosting, and shared hosting. Since 2015, it has been providing free sites, which are hosted on Joomla.com.
The most recent information coming out of SiteGround indicates that it has six different data centres, which are spread across six countries; Singapore, Australia, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States.
If you’re searching for the best SiteGround deal on the web, check out my SiteGround coupons, which are updated and verified on a regular basis.
About Hostinger
Next, we have Hostinger. The company was also founded in 2004, so neither can claim to have a headstart in the industry! It was known as Hosting Media back then, but it rebranded in 2011 to Hostinger.
The company is headquartered in Kaunas, Lithuania, yet has a number of offices around the world. This includes an office in Florianopolis, Brazil, as well as Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and another office in Lithuania in the Vilnius area.
Last year, the company was named as one of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses. They have made a number of significant moves in recent times, including partnering with Google Cloud platform in 2023 and switching their Apache servers to LiteSpeed (LSWS) in 2019 to boost performance.
SiteGround vs Hostinger: Overview
- SiteGround is officially recommended by WordPress as a hosting provider, whereas Hostinger is not.
- Hostinger does not offer phone provide while SiteGround gives paying customers 24/7 phone support.
- SiteGround operates via the use of a standard cPanel, whereas Hostinger delivers a custom cPanel.
- SiteGround hosting is a lot more expensive when compared to Hostinger hosting plans.
- SiteGround provides daily back-ups with all plans.
- Hostinger provides unlimited disk space. SiteGround does not offer this with any of its plans.
SiteGround vs Hostinger Feature Comparison
So, I’m going to start by revealing my thoughts on the features you will receive from these service providers. Of course, the features are dictated by the plan you choose, so it is always important to keep that in mind. So, the SiteGround Business Plan should be compared with the Hostinger Business Plan, and so on, so that they’re fairly matched.
What are some of the main Hostinger features?
- Drag-and-drop website builder
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited disk storage
- WordPress Acceleration (LSCWP)
- Automated backups
- 99.9% uptime
What are some of the main SiteGround features?
- Unlimited MySQL DB
- Free email accounts
- Free CMS installation
- Free drag-and-drop Weebly site builder
- Anti-hack systems
- Automated daily backups
I’ll start by giving my thoughts on the most basic plan, which is the Single Shared Web Hosting Plan on Hostinger, costing $0.99 per month, and the StartUp plan on SiteGround, which is $6.99 per month. Clearly, the latter is more expensive, but is it worth it?
You can host one website with both plans, however, Hostinger has recently increased their SSD storage on their shared and cloud hosting plans. With Hostinger’s Single Shared Hosting plan, you’ll get 30GB SSD storage, whereas you’ll only get 10GB storage with SiteGround. SiteGround offers unlimited databases, whereas Hostinger provides two MySQL databases. Both offer a free SSL certificate.
However, there are a few key differences, which can help you to understand why the SiteGround solution is a bit more costly. The main difference relates to back-ups; they’re provided daily on SiteGround’s basic offering, but only weekly on Hostinger.
Another difference is that there is unmetered traffic on SiteGround, yet the Hostinger plan has a bandwidth limit of 100 GB.
More premium offerings include the Business Plan from Hostinger and the GoGeek Plan from SiteGround. Again, the GoGeek Plan is more expensive, costing $14.99 per month, whereas the Hostinger plan is $3.99.
There are many similarities between the plans, including Cloudfare CDN, daily backups, a custom control panel, and unlimited websites. However, while the Hostinger plan offers 200GB SSD disk space, the SiteGround plan has a 30 GB limit.
Two key features do make a compelling case for SiteGround, though, and this is the ability to add site collaborators, as well as having the staging server. The latter means you can work on your website without the live version being disrupted. These sort of features aren’t possible on Hostinger.
I do find the GoGeek plan to be expensive, though, and so it is probably only suitable for hosting resellers, agencies, and big businesses. After all, the collaboration tools and staging servers are great, but not everyone is going to need them. I would never advise paying a premium for features that aren’t a necessity for your business.
So, SiteGround definitely has extra features, but value-for-money lies with Hostinger, making it a close call! Of course, I am judging features, though, so I have to go with SiteGround on this one.
Overall Features Winner
SiteGround offers a more extensive selection of tools and customisation features
Testing SiteGround vs Hostinger – Who is Best?
Uptime – SLA Guarantee
SiteGround: SiteGround has a 99.99% uptime guarantee with their shared hosting, and they’re committed to their promise. After digging through the fine print, I noticed that the company guarantees 99.9% uptime as part of their Service Level Agreement. Users will be compensated with free months of hosting should they ever dip below the threshold. There are a few things to bear in mind here. Firstly, should you do anything to cause the downtime, for example, violate the terms or exceed resources, SiteGround will not take responsibility, which is fair enough! Also, any emergency or scheduled maintenance is exempt. While the refund is a good thing, it does work out to be very small, and it is calculated over the full year, so do keep this in mind.
Hostinger: Hostinger has a similar policy in place, guaranteeing 99.9% uptime. Should they fail to deliver on this promise, they will provide a credit of five per cent of your hosting fee for the month in question. It’s good that they are committed to the high uptime. They also have stipulations when it comes to this, including causes they deem to be out of their control, which I guess could be open to interpretation, right? Overall, both platforms are pretty similar in this regard. However, one thing that I really do appreciate when it comes to Hostinger is that they post the server uptime on their website, and it is this sort of transparency that I look for when choosing a web host, so that’s big plus points from me!
SLA Guarantee Winner
Both SiteGround and Hostinger offer 99.9% uptime, which is excellent. Hostinger just edges it for me because of the transparency they provide.
SiteGround vs Hostinger – Which delivers better security?
Now, let’s move onto security, which is imperative when choosing a hosting provider! Now, let’s get the big elephant out of the room; Hostinger suffered a data breach in 2019! The data breach saw the personal data and customer passwords of 14 million customers at risk. Hostinger has improved its security since the breach, implementing eight key changes. This included the following:
- They are implementing Bastion servers to lower direct links to servers and reducing the number of systems that have access to internal systems.
- They have rotated all system credentials and lowered the access rights for their workforce.
- They have gotten rid of a lot of deprecated code and logic, lowering any attack vendors.
- They are moving any data that is client sensitive to a separate database, which is strictly audited.
- Two-Factor Authentication is being rolled out for clients.
- Auto-rotatable system passwords are being implemented.
- A dedicated cybersecurity team has been put together.
- A considerable amount of the backend system code at Hostinger has also been rewritten.
It is certainly great to see that Hostinger has put steps in place to correct their security errors. However, it is always worrying when any sort of business has had a data breach.
Before I move onto SiteGround’s security offering, it is only right that I tell you a little bit more about Hostinger. After all, it’s not fair to purely focus on the breach. Hostinger utilises seven data centres, which are spread across three continents. The servers protect against DDoS attacks by having custom firewall rules in place. Multiple backups are taken to stop data loss.
The frequency of the backups taken will depend on the plan you choose. Daily backups are available on the more comprehensive (and, therefore, expensive) plans.
SiteGround, on the other hand, is known for delivering great levels of security. The company has six data centres, which are spread across four continents. To protect against targeted hacking attempts and bots, there are intrusion detection systems in place. The company also writes its own firewall patches and rules for protection against hackers.
There are plenty of other positives when it comes to SiteGround’s approach to security. The company also runs the latest PHP version, with the application of all security patches. The company has stated that all of the server applications are kept updated to make certain that no insecure, older applications are running. ModSecurity and other add-on modules are installed onto the web servers to improve security.
If you’re looking for a web host for WordPress, SiteGround will update this automatically for you. Updates will be applied to both your plugins and core code. This is something that is not offered by a lot of hosts today, so I was very happy to learn that SiteGround provides this. It is a massive time-saver and security boost if you manage your own site on WordPress! Plus, daily backups are provided no matter the plan you’re on, which is, again, something that I have not seen with a lot of hosts out there today.
Security Winner
In the battle of Siteground Vs Hostinger, who wins the security crown? It probably does not come as a surprise to learn that SiteGround wins on the security front. With Hostinger recently suffering a data breach, it is a no-brainer.
Setup & Ease of Use
No one wants to choose a platform that is challenging to use, do they? Luckily, you have nothing to worry about in this department when it comes to SiteGround and Hostinger.
SiteGround uses cPanel, which is a popular Linux-based control panel. Hostinger uses hPanel, which is its own take on a control panel.
I found both dashboards to be quite similar. They are intuitive and operate in a similar manner, making them very easy to adapt to.
Setup & Ease of Use Winner
Tie. I find it impossible to split SiteGround and Hostinger when it comes to ease of use. They have both delivered intuitive platforms that are a pleasure to use.
Who has the Best Support? SiteGround or Hostinger?
Never underestimate the importance of customer support when you are choosing a web host! There is nothing worse than running into an issue and feeling like you simply cannot get a response. I always test out the customer service offered by a company before choosing any sort of service.
So, what sort of support do SiteGround and Hostinger provide? SiteGround prides itself on exceptional support, offering live chat, a support ticket system, and phone support to logged-in customers. I am always happy when a company offers phone support! For instant answers, there is a chatbot system.
However, I do hope you noticed my reference to logged-in customers. If you have not purchased a plan and you have a query, the customer support options are very limited, which is disappointing! The only option here is to sign-up so you can use the email form. You won’t be able to access live chat for a quick answer.
With Hosting, the contact options are more limited, with the email contact form and live being the only options. There is no phone support available. Live chat seems to be only available when you’re logged in as well.
The key difference between the two platforms, though, is that SiteGround makes you jump through a few hoops. You need to sign-in, choose a topic, and navigate through a few steps before you can get the help you need. Hostinger makes it a lot more seamless and straightforward.
In terms of response times, both are on the same sort of level. I find that my queries are always answered quickly, whether via email or live chat.
Setup & Ease of Use Winner
Tie. I find it impossible to split SiteGround and Hostinger when it comes to ease of use. They have both delivered intuitive platforms that are a pleasure to use.
Pricing - Does SiteGround or Hostinger offer better value?
Both Hostinger and SiteGround have a number of different hosting plans available, targeting both business and personal users. SiteGround’s are separated into StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. Hostinger’s are simply known as Single, Premium, and Business. With both options, you will find that savings can be made if you lock-in to a longer plan.
Shedding further light on this, with Hostinger, you have the option of paying monthly, or you can sign up for a one-year plan, a two-year plan, or a four-year plan. With SiteGround, your options are monthly, one-year, two-year, or three-year. The maximum plans do give you considerable savings with both companies.
It is not hard to see that Hostinger delivers better value, though. SiteGround is considerably more expensive in comparison. The most expensive plan that Hostinger offers is only a little bit more costly than the mid-level plan at SiteGround. Despite this, it has some better features! For example, you will get 200GB SSD storage. However, SiteGround limits you to 30GB of disk space, even if you opt for the most expensive plan.
As I touched upon a bit earlier, there are some features SiteGround provides that Hostinger simply does not. This is the ability to add site collaborators, as well as having the staging server. If you need these features, SiteGround will clearly be the option for you.
One thing you always need to be aware of is how much you will pay once your initial term runs out! At Hostinger, you will pay double the introductory rate. At SiteGround, you will pay almost triple! I recommend setting an alarm on your phone before your end-date is due so you can determine what is going to be best for you.
Aside from the shared hosting solutions, both Hostinger and SiteGround offer cloud hosting and managed WordPress hosting. Both really differ, though, when it comes to their extra hosting packages. WooCommerce is a huge area of focus for SiteGround, whereas Minecraft hosting is a specialty at Hostinger. Furthermore, Windows VPS hosting is offered at Hostinger, yet Linux is the only operating system that SiteGround provides.
SiteGround and Hostinger also both provide domain name registration and email hosting as standalone services or in-built into the hosting packages.
Best Price Winner
Hostinger is the clear winner when it comes to pricing! The value for money is undeniable. SiteGround is more expensive, but may be required for specialist features.
Conclusion: SiteGround vs Hostinger
As you can see, both SiteGround vs Hostinger have a lot to offer! I am a big fan of both hosting providers, and your selection is going to depend on what you’re looking for. If you are searching for an affordable host with a good set of features, I would point you in the direction of Hostinger. If you’re a developer and you need specialist features, I’d say that SiteGround is more up your street.
Overall Winner
Hostinger is my selection if you're looking for an affordable host that has all of the features you'd expect. Of course, for more comprehensive features, SiteGround is your choice. My opinion, though, is that most of you will find Hostinger more than sufficient and better for your bank balance too!
Other Hosting Comparisons
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