Siteground vs Cloudways Hosting Review (2023)

Without further ado, let’s proceed

Don’t want to read the full review, here is a short explanation:

Siteground vs Cloudways hosting review

SiteGround:

1. Shared hosting

The server provided to you will be shared by many users.

2. Minimum price

During the offer period, you can get hosting as low as $3.99/mon for 1 year.

3. Renewal price

After the offer ends, the renewal price is $14.99/mon. (after 1 year)

4. Locking system

After purchasing you are locked for 1 year. If you leave after 1 month, there are no refunds.

5. No scaling 

You can’t upgrade your plan in between.

You have to wait for your current plan to expire or you have to purchase a new plan and forgot your previous plan charges.

6. No free trial

You can’t get a free trial, you have to purchase it for trying. However, you can get 30 days money-back guarantee.

Cloudways:

1. Cloud hosting

A cloud server will be provided to you. You are the only user to use this server. No sharing.

However, you can create users to share your space.

For example, if you have 2 websites – you can manage both of them on a single server.

2. Minimum price

You can get cloud hosting for as low as $10/mon.

3. Renewal price

No renewal price. You have to pay $10 every month.

4. No locking system

Cloudways supports pay as you go system. Bill will be generated after every month. No advance yearly charges.

This means you are free to leave the host at any time. No extra charges.

For example, if you leave after 15 days then you have to pay only half i.e $5 only.

5. Scaling is available

You can upgrade your server size at any time with no extra charges. 

For example,

Suppose your traffic suddenly increases after 15 days then you can increase your server size from 1Gb to 2Gb with just a single click. 

Now the next month’s bill will be generated as “15 days 1Gb + 15 days 2Gb”. 

6. Free trial is available

Cloudways offers 3 days free trial without purchasing or adding your credit card details.

No other hosting offer this kind of free trial. 

Short Conclusion:

Siteground is good and better than other shared hosting providers available in the market.

But Cloudways is much better than Siteground.

And in long term, Cloudways is cheaper than Siteground.

I switched from Siteground to Cloudways in 2020 and my website loading speed changed drastically from 5 sec to under 1 sec.

So, in short, I recommend Cloudways.

I have coupon codes for Siteground as well as Cloudways but my affiliate laws are different.

‘Don’t share affiliate links of the products you are not using’

I use affiliate links for the best products that I personally use on my website.

If you are my regular reader, then you already know that.

You can use AJMER20 and get 20% off on Cloudways Hosting.

Now let’s proceed to the detailed comparison,

Factors to consider between Siteground & Cloudways

There are certain things to put into consideration when choosing the web hosting provider for your site and they include:

1. Speed

How will you feel if you try loading a site and it takes seconds or minutes to load, you get agitated right and leave the site immediately?

This is exactly what happens when visitors visit a website that has a slow loading speed.

In your choice of a web hosting service, ensure that your host provider offers a fast page loading speed before you subscribe to them.

2. Scalability

Every site owners want the experience of huge traffic on their site, but if this happens, will your host be able to handle it?

Do they have enough storage space for your content and files?

3. Security

What if an update occurs that affects your site, does your host back up your site automatically?

What are the necessary measures taken by your host to ensure your site isn’t hijacked by hackers?

4. Customer service

How often and fast do they respond and provide the necessary help needed to customers?

Having said this, I will like to look into the difference between Siteground and Cloudways hosting review

Having used Siteground for years, I will say your choice of which is better depends on your needs.

Considering the fact that Siteground has a Cpanel I am familiar with, efficient in managing my webspace, etc.

However a good hosting service may seem to appear, there are always areas where one hosting service outranks the other.

For the sake of my viewers and visitors, I have highlighted areas that will guide you in your choice of web hosting service.

Siteground Web Hosting

Siteground is one of the best hosting services that has been in existence since 2004.

It is a shared hosting provider that offers myriad varieties of hosting options.

With her headquarters situated in Sofia, Bulgaria, and offices in six different locations within Bulgaria.

Siteground expands its network across three continents and has more than 500 employees.

She also hosts more than 2,000,000 domains.

Their customer support system is top-notch and they also offer a budget-friendly hosting plan which makes them the perfect hosting of choice.

WordPress.org recommends them due to the excellent services they offer.

SiteGround Web Hosting Review

Siteground Hosting Plans

As I said earlier in this article, Siteground offers three shared hosting options that can be used to host websites.

Their web hosting plan includes:

Startup plan

Growbig plan

Gogeek plan

Startup Plan

This costs a sum of $3.99 per month and is limited to only one website.

It is the best choice for beginners as it has a web space of 10 GB that can handle a minimum monthly visit of 10,000 visitors.

This plan comes with essential WordPress features such as,

• Unlimited MySQL
• Free SSL
• Free email account
• 24/7 customer support
• Free daily backups
• Unmetered traffic
• Free site builder
• 30 days refund guarantee
• Free Cloudflare CDN

Growbig Plan

This costs a sum of $6.69 per month and can host an unlimited website.

This is the perfect idea for people seeking to grow their businesses.

It has a web space of 20GB and can handle a minimum monthly visit of 100,000.

It comes with the same essential WordPress features as the start-up plan, the difference is that this comes with additional unique features such as:

• Free site transfer
• High-level on-demand backup
• WordPress plan
• Super cacher for super speed

Gogeek Plan

This plan is specifically designed for web geeks and it starts at $10.69 per month after which you pay a whooping sum of $39.99 per month.

This plan hosts unlimited sites with a web space of  40GB and can handle a minimum monthly visit of 400,000.

It also comes with the essential WordPress features as the other plans.

The distinction is that this has additional special geeky features that distinguish it from the other plans.

One striking quality that distinguishes Siteground from Cloudways is that,

Siteground offers a 30days refunding fee guarantee if you don’t like their services while Cloudways offers a 3-day free trial.

Siteground Loading Time

It’s no longer news that Siteground has a fast loading speed.

Their server is incorporated with the latest technology to increase site performance.

It loads at an average of 3 seconds.

They make use of all the latest and trending software and hardware available to increase the page loading speed that enhances site performance.

Siteground Customer Support

Like I said earlier, Siteground provides top-notch customer service support at a rate of 99.7%.

Their customer service support team are people that have undergone training on the products, software, and services they offer.

An average customer support team is capable of handling and providing solutions to any problems you are faced with.

Their support team is available for 24hours, 7 days a week, via phone calls, live chat, help desk tickets, etc.

I prefer the live chat because I have the opportunity to send screenshots and explain the challenges I faced with zero charges and it’s the fastest.

Phone calls cant work for me, due to the cost of making an international call.

Apart from that, It will take an average of 2 minutes before you can speak to someone on the team.

For more complex issues, you can make use of their help desk ticket, but be patient enough, because this takes up to 15minutes to respond.

Their customers are always happy about the services they receive, they have thousands of customer reviews and a 4.9 out of 5 stars satisfaction rating.

Siteground Security

This Webhosting service has a lot of security features that allow it to manage hosting for its WordPress users.

With the Sitegrounds automatic WordPress software and plugin, WordPress application updates are done automatically.

It gives you the platform to schedule how often you want your site to be updated once a new update is out.

Custom firewalls are used to prevent your site’s vulnerability to malicious attacks.

It also runs a health check on its server every 0.5 seconds, so every malicious activity is automatically detected and dealt with, hence hosted sites are protected.

Also, provide daily backups automatically to the site hosted on their servers.

They provide free SSL certificates to WordPress users.

Migrating to Siteground

If you intend to move your blog from your previous hosting provider to Siteground.

It is a very easy process that is performed between 24-48 hours if you have purchased either their Gogeek or Growbig plan.

They recently incorporated a new feature called the Siteground Migrator that helps transfer the WordPress site from another hosting provider to Siteground.

Pros of using Siteground

-Siteground provides free migration for site owners that wants to move from their previous hosting provider to site ground.

-this hosting provider also provides a free SSL certificate and Cloudflare CDN for the new site.

-Siteground adopts the use of the best technology, hardware, and software to increase and improve its server response time.

-they provide daily backup to their hosting site to ensure client’s information is safe and readily available.

-their customer service is top-notch and available for live chat, telephone calls, and help desk tickets 24/7 days a week.

-they have their server locations in five countries.

-Siteground provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee for clients searching for the best hosting provider.

-Siteground is a company that has established its feat globally.

Cons of using Siteground

-Each plan you subscribe to on Siteground has a storage limit.

-Siteground does not provide the free domain name to clients just as most hosting companies do to attract a client.

-Each plan you subscribe at Siteground has a monthly resource limit.

-Siteground does not offer a free trial for their services rather they offer a 30-days refunding guarantee.

Cloudways Web Hosting

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider network that takes away the complexities of setting up a website.

And allows you to create and set up a website within minutes.

It was established in 2012 in Malta and has data centres all around the world.

Their customer support service is top-notch providing support 24/7 days a week via live chat, telephone calls, and help desk tickets.

Cloudways also provides iron-clad security, fast performance for your website.

Cloudways Web Hosting Review

Cloudways Pricing

They offer a ‘pay as you go’ billing for their hosting plan with a minimum of 3days free trial without requesting your bank details.

No contract, you pay for what you use.

They have a total of 5 different hosting servers to choose from and they include:

1. Digital Ocean (Standard & Premium)
2. Vultr (Standard & High Frequency)
3. Linode
4. AWS
5. Google Cloud

And every server has 4 different pricing structures.

Digital Ocean’s standard pricing are as follows,

• $10 per month

This offer gives a total of 1GB RAM, A core processor, 1TB bandwidth, and 25GB of storage

• $22 per month

This offer gives you a total of 2GB ram, a core processor, 2TB bandwidth, and a 50GB storage

• $42 per month

This hosting plan gives a total of 4GB RAM, 2 core processor, 4TB bandwidth, and 80GB storage

• $80 per month

This package comes with a total of 8GB RAM, 4 core processor, 5TB bandwidth, and 160GB of storage

All plans come with essential WordPress features such as:

• Free SSL certificate for all plans
• Dedicated firewalls
• Automated backups
• 24/7 customer support
• SSH and SFTP access
• Excellent uptime
• Dedicated firewalls
• Cloud-based dedicated servers
• Free Migration
• Build-in custom CDN
• VPS
• 3 days of a free trial

I am using Cloudways Digital Ocean premium which costs $12/month. It is much better than a standard digital ocean server. Check the pricing table here.

Cloudways Loading Time

Cloudways have utilized so much energy to ensure that your page loading speed is very fast.

They have taken several measures to ensure the great performance and running of your site.

It takes under 1 sec to load.

Some of the measures taken include;

• Providing dedicated cloud servers resources for all servers
• HTTP/2 supported servers
• Cloudways CDN

The reason why these measures are taken is to increase your site loading time.

Cloudways Customer Support

Cloudways provides one of the best customer support services to their client.

They provide 24/7 customer service so you will be able to contact customer service around the clock.

You can chat with their customer support via phone calls on skype after you must have filled out a request form.

You can also reach their customer services via web chat, you tend to get immediate replies via web chat.

Their team is knowledgeable and has undergone several pieces of training as regards cloud hosting and the likes.

Once you chat them up, be rest assured that they will offer solutions to your case.

Cloudways Security

Cloudways offer iron-clad security to all sites hosted with them.

Ranging from automated backups, two-factor authentication, free Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate that protects your data.

If you need help with something simple, navigate to their FAQs where you can find answers to common problems without contacting support.

Migrating to Cloudways

Moving from a previous hosting provider to Cloudways is quite easy, especially for WordPress users.

Cloudways have a free WP migrator plugin that helps to easily move your WordPress site from your previous hosting provider to WordPress.

They also offer a free manual migration which is carried out by one of their expert for your website.

This method is quite safe because an expert does the job of moving your site to Cloudways without breaking your live site on the old web host.

Everything will be taken care of for you.

Pros of using Cloudways

-it is very easy to set up.

-they offer a pay as you go pricing.

-offer a free SSL certificate for a new site that can be configured with just a click.

-excellent uptime.

-offers 3 days free trial at no cost, no request for credit accounts or bank details.

-automated backups or on-demand backups for your site.

-fast page loading speed.

-user-friendly control panel.

-5 different cloud hosting to choose from.

Cons of using Cloudways

-Cloudways does not offer a domain name as other hosting provider does to attract customers, you have to purchase a domain name from another provider.

-Cloudways does not include email hosting, you have to spend extra cash on this.

Best Web Hosting Provider (Winner)- Cloudways

Cloudways is a cloud hosting provider that offers the best in the market web hosting services.

It’s recommended for both personal and business use.

Cloudways provides a 99.999% uptime guarantee, cloud-based server management, instant provisioning and an excellent customer service team.

That ensures your cloud hosting experience is always smooth.

10 Reasons to Choose Cloudways for Your Website:

1. The dashboard provides complete control over your servers and applications from the moment you log in to your account.

You can perform all common tasks such as start, stop or reboot the server, monitor the cloud server’s performance, enable additional features for your cloud server and manage data backups.

2. Cloudways provides you with an array of cloud infrastructure options to choose from.

You have the flexibility of choosing one or more cloud infrastructures that best suits your needs.

You can choose cloud servers that run on Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon web services or Google cloud.

3. Every cloud hosting plan comes with a free SSL certificate so you don’t have to spend extra money for the same security features offered by Cloudways.

You can even install any one of your favourite apps using simple clicks and manage it all from the dashboard.

4. Cloudways cloud hosting enables you to choose the data centre location for your cloud servers.

You can select a data centre best suited for your web traffic and ensure better search engine rankings as well as high-speed content delivery.

5. With Cloudways, there is no need to worry about server security or any other technical issues because they provide 24/07 managed cloud hosting servers.

You don’t have to hire a separate cloud administrator as you get complete control over your cloud server from the cloudways dashboard.

6. You can use Cloudways Promo code “AJMER20” and avail 20% discount on every web hosting plan that is offered by them.

7. Pay as you go service – This means pay only for what you use. Want more space & ram, Scale-up at any time.

8. Speed: one of the reasons people change their hosting providers.

9. Free migration from other hosting providers and 3 days free trial without inserting your credit card details.

That’s the confidence they have that others don’t.

10. It’s easy, simple and secure with Cloudways cloud hosting platform. So, don’t wait and check out cloud hosting plans from Cloudways today!