GreenGeeks Review

Laura Bernheim

By: Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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OVERALL RATING 4.8 / 5.0
★★★★★
Features4.8 / 5.0
Ease of Use4.7 / 5.0
Pricing4.6 / 5.0
Reliability & Support4.8 / 5.0
Discount for Our Users See Deals

A full-service host with an eco-friendly twist, GreenGeeks provides high-performance SSD storage with bonus features to help customers thrive. GreenGeeks returns three times the energy used by servers and datacenters back into the environment, proving that environmentally sound hosting is more than just hot air.

Category Ratings

We had one of our resident hosting experts, Laura Bernheim, sign up for a GreenGeeks account and take it for a spin. Below are Laura’s ratings of the GreenGeeks experience, broken down by the types of hosting GreenGeeks offers.

If you decide to go with GreenGeeks, you may get a discount by using our link to sign up. While we often make commissions on purchases made through our links, this had no bearing on Laura’s review.

Here’s what Laura found in reviewing GreenGeeks:

Disclosure: When you sign up through links on our site, we often earn referral fees from partners. For more information, see our ad disclosure and review policy.

GreenGeeks's Overall Rating (4.8 / 5.0)

Best Overall Rating

4.8
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

It's hard to imagine something intangible, like a website, contributing to climate change. In fact, with millions of servers and thousands of datacenters drawing massive amounts of electricity, the web hosting industry is on pace to surpass air travel as one of the world's worst polluters.

With that in mind, CEO Trey Gardner — an avid surfer, hiker, and skier, in addition to helping build seven other hosting companies — established GreenGeeks in 2008 to leave a positive energy footprint.

The company purchases wind energy credits to restore more than three times the energy that the company consumes. The honorable quest is impressive enough, but GreenGeeks provides superb hosting packages that stand on their own.

Powered by modern SSD storage and name-brand hardware, the company has grown to serve more than 55,000 customers and host more than 600,000 websites in 15 years of business.

After putting the company's shared, VPS, and dedicated services through the wringer, in addition to testing the managed WordPress and site builder options, we were impressed by the multitude of tech-savvy features that ensure hosting happiness for both first-time site owners and experienced developers.

We're suckers for SSD storage, and GreenGeeks up the ante with RAID-10 configurations and nightly backups. Around-the-clock knowledgeable support, coupled with free migrations and rapid provisioning, makes growing through the VPS and dedicated hosting ranks a breeze.

  • 300% powered by renewable energy
  • Unlimited SSD storage and bandwidth
  • FREE SEO and marketing tools
  • FREE drag-and-drop website builder
  • FREE Cloudflare CDN and automatic nightly backups
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes
GreenGeeks's Cheap Hosting (4.0 / 5.0)

Cheap Rating

4.0
★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Perfect for small business owners, bloggers, or web developers, GreenGeeks offers an impressive blend of features that appeal to all types of site owners.

More experienced customers will appreciate the unlimited domain names, SSD RAID-10 storage, and unmetered data transfers, along with nightly backups and built-in caching programs.

First-timers, however, will enjoy the free website builder, marketing and SEO tools, and hands-free migration service.

Additionally, GreenGeeks offers an array of components at prices very competitive with other top hosts relying on SSD-powered infrastructure. Plans powered by newer, more-performant solid-state drives tend to be a few dollars per month more expensive than the most affordable hosting plans that utilize traditional hard-disk drives.

Instead of simply touting the SSD upgrade, however, GreenGeeks includes a comprehensive suite of services that combine cutting-edge technology with sheer usability.

Customers can manage their GreenGeeks hosting account using the company's intuitive and recently updated online interface, which provides simple paths to requesting domain or site transfers, registering a domain, or changing billing information.

From there, users can access hosting resources using the most recent version of cPanel, the industry's leading control panel. Backed by the industry's standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 responsive support, and 30-day money-back guarantee, GreenGeeks hosting plans are a worthwhile hosting investment long before the environmental benefits kick in.

  • Unlimited and scalable computing resources with RAID-10 storage
  • Proactive server monitoring and real-time security
  • 1-click installations of 150+ apps
  • Unlimited domains & email accounts
  • 24/7 support via phone, chat, and email
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes
GreenGeeks's Dedicated Hosting (4.5 / 5.0)

Dedicated Rating

4.5
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

The free site migrations offered by GreenGeeks makes sticking with the company a worthwhile venture as your website or application grows to new levels of hosting. The company's elastic platform allows for easy resource upgrades to make sure your growth is supported.

All of the GreenGeeks dedicated server hosting plans come with five IP addresses, up to 10TB of data transfer, and server-grade Intel processors.

DDR3 memory ranges from 2GB to 16GB across the four dedicated hosting options. Disk space ranges from 500GB to 1TB, which is pretty standard for the industry.

Interestingly, however, dedicated servers are the only GreenGeeks hosting plans that don't include SSDs. The strange decision, coupled with the lack of upfront information about features, add-ons, and support, gives us pause when considering GreenGeeks for dedicated hosting.

The company's prices outpace many mainstream competitors, placing them among luxury boutique hosts, without clear justification.

The company's excellent offerings in the shared and VPS tiers give us confidence in the dedicated servers, but we'd recommend some more research instead of blindly signing up for service.

GreenGeeks connects hosting infrastructure with Gigabit speeds, using Juniper and Cisco for network switching and routing. Customers can choose in which of the company's four datacenters their data is provisioned: Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, or Amsterdam.

In addition to the name-brand and energy-efficient hardware, GreenGeeks houses its equipment in datacenters designed to be environmentally friendly.

  • Server-grade Intel hardware
  • Up to 10TB of data transfers
  • 24/7/365 support and 99.9% uptime
  • Choice of 4 datacenters
  • 300% offset by wind energy credits
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
500 GB - 1 TB
Domain Name
New or Transfer
Setup Time
6 minutes
GreenGeeks's VPS Hosting (4.5 / 5.0)

VPS Rating

4.5
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Geared for rapidly growing businesses and enterprise-level companies, GreenGeeks VPS plans provide the computing resources and scalability required to support and adapt to your growing traffic.

Virtual servers are deployed in less than 60 seconds, and we appreciate the included cPanel and WHM licenses, root access, and site migration.

The GreenGeeks storage capacity range of 50GB to 150GB is on the lower end of the spectrum, especially given the company's relatively high prices, but GreenGeeks goes above and beyond with the combination of super-speedy SSDs and RAID-10 configurations that provide added redundancy and performance boosts.

GreenGeeks VPS containers come with ConfigServer Security and Firewall, along with Login Failure Daemon and added protection from ModSecurity and well-tailored Apache configurations. The company backs up customers' files every night and stores backups for 48 hours.

Unlike many hosts that tout free backups, GreenGeeks will restore a site for free once a month. Additional restorations, if needed, are very reasonably priced.

Reseller plans are fully loaded with the impressive GreenGeeks features, including site transfers and a free website builder, that you can pass along to your customers. The 100% white-label platform allows for a custom logo and private nameservers.

VPS and reseller customers will receive a free eNom domain reseller account, and resellers enjoy unlimited cPanel accounts along with a free ClientExec license to automate customer invoicing, support, and provisioning.

  • FREE cPanel/WHM plus eNom domain reseller account
  • Full root access or custom management portal
  • Provisions in less than 60 seconds
  • Up to 3TB of Tier-1 bandwidth
  • Built-in firewall and security
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - 150 GB SSD
Domain Name
New or Transfer
Setup Time
6 minutes
GreenGeeks's WordPress Hosting (4.8 / 5.0)

WordPress Rating

4.8
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

The GreenGeeks comprehensive suite of added features resonates particularly well with the company's managed WordPress hosting plan. Modeled after the GreenGeeks shared hosting package, the managed WordPress services will resonate with a wide cross-section of the ultra-popular content management system's enthusiasts.

Effectively hosting WordPress can be challenging for lower-tier hosting providers, but GreenGeeks has both the technical know-how and high-powered infrastructure to optimize the experience for both customers and their site visitors.

In addition to the unlimited storage and data transfers, the company's SSD RAID-10 storage configurations are perfect for hosting the resource-heavy CMS.

GreenGeeks utilizes the one-click Softaculous installer for WordPress, but plans come pre-installed with Git and WP-CLI. Customers have SSH access to their hosting account and can select which version of PHP to use.

On the security front, GreenGeeks isolates each managed WordPress hosting account and automatically updates WordPress core files. The company actively scans for vulnerabilities and blocks attacks, even including built-in DDoS protection.

GreenGeeks maximizes WordPress performance with server-grade, name-brand hardware, and optimized HTTP and MySQL. Customers can add the Cloudflare CDN with just one click while they sit back and enjoy server-side software and hardware caching to accelerate page loads.

  • Automatic WordPress core updates
  • Built-in PHP caching
  • FREE DDoS protection
  • Git, WP-CLI, and SSH access
  • Optimized HTTP and MySQL
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes
GreenGeeks's Website Builder (4.4 / 5.0)

Website Builder Rating

4.4
★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Shared hosting customers can easily request access to the GreenGeeks website builder through the account management portal. Our site builder installation was ready to go within 40 minutes, and we appreciated the clear instructions on how to get started.

Users can choose from among 16 responsive templates or hundreds of free and premium options. We have a soft spot for site builders that let users switch to a different template without losing content, like the GreenGeeks platform does, but we wish the themes were easier to sift through when looking for a particular feature or design conducive to a particular industry or project.

The drag-and-drop interface will seem very familiar and comfortable to customers. While intuitive enough for the earliest of beginners, the GreenGeeks site builder also enables more experienced developers to adjust and tweak the HTML and CSS code.

In addition to the standard color adjustments, image uploads, and navigation settings that come with most website builders, customers can add functionality through the use of widgets that cover a variety of tasks, such as embedding forms, YouTube videos, and maps.

Adding an ecommerce component seems easy, until clicking on the button to upgrade redirects you to the GreenGeeks homepage.

When you're ready to go live, the site builder will let you preview your designs on desktop and mobile. All in all, GreenGeeks offers a solid, if not exciting, site builder option — great for beginners, perhaps a little clunky for developers.

  • Hundreds of customizable templates
  • Mobile-friendly responsive themes
  • FREE marketing and SEO tools
  • 24/7 support via phone, chat, & email
  • Easy shopping cart integrations
  • Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
5 minutes

Features

(4.8 / 5.0)

Going Green With Wind Power

  • Since the company's launch in 2008, GreenGeeks has put three times the amount of energy used back into the grid. The company purchases wind energy credits to offset the 1,390 pounds of carbon dioxides that each web server generates.
  • As a recognized EPA Green Power Partner, GreenGeeks is the world's most environmentally friendly hosting provider. In addition to wind energy credits, the company uses energy-efficient hardware housed in datacenters designed to be eco-friendly.
  • GreenGeeks promotes environmentally conscious behaviors and seeks to spread awareness by encouraging customers to include one (or more) of 26 green hosting accreditation badges on their website.

Premium Perks Included for Free

  • GreenGeeks conducts disaster recovery backups each night for shared, reseller, WordPress, and VPS hosting customers. The backups, in addition to RAID-10 storage, are stored for 48 hours. Customers are allowed one free restoration per month.
  • Many hosts offer free site migrations or transfers as a welcoming present for new customers, and GreenGeeks is no exception. Shared hosting customers receive one free migration, while reseller, VPS, and dedicated customers can take advantage of up to 30 cPanel transfers.
  • GreenGeeks rolled out an all-SSD infrastructure in 2014, dramatically improving page loads by 50% to 100%. Combined with RAID-10 storage arrays and default PHP 7, GreenGeeks hosting environments are both speedy and secure.

Superb Support and Reliable Resources

  • Issues are resolved in an average of 15 to 20 minutes, with the fastest and most accurate support requests coming through the online account manager. Alternatively, the company holds extensive phone support hours and live chat is available 24/7/365.
  • Hundreds of how-to guides and tutorials walk customers through various aspects of website management, including for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and email configuration.
  • GreenGeeks boasts an extensive knowledgebase, covering everything from general hosting questions to articles explaining how to use and configure add-on services such as CloudFlare, SiteLock, and OneClickSSL.

Robust White-Label Reseller Plans

  • GreenGeeks provides a free ClientExec license to resellers looking to automate client management. Combined with cPanel and WHM, resellers can enjoy efficient invoicing, technical support, provisioning, and payment processing.
  • Customers transferring their website to GreenGeeks from another provider — including those who purchase hosting services through a reseller — can enjoy a free migration. The free service covers up to 30 cPanel accounts.
  • An included eNom domain reseller account enables aspiring hosts to register domains for their customers. Resellers can integrate the eNom account into ClientExec to automate billing and provisioning.

Ease of Use

(4.7 / 5.0)
Efficient Account Management
GreenGeeks Review
Free cPanel Access and Licenses
GreenGeeks Review
Straightforward Site Builder
GreenGeeks Review

The GreenGeeks account manager portal carries a refreshingly light and streamlined design but doesn't scrimp on functionality. Users can quickly register a new domain name, request a site migration, or adjust billing information. We also appreciate that the company gives customers an easy option to contact support agents through live chat, instead of automatically routing them to the ticket system. In addition to a seamless shared hosting cPanel integration, the familiar interface is included for free with VPS plans, as well. Resellers will appreciate the ability to offer unlimited cPanel accounts to their customers. Customers looking to use the free site builder won't be disappointed. The straightforward platform features movable content blocks that snap to a grid, ensuring nothing gets out of place. After choosing a template, we appreciate how the website builder will auto-fill your contact information and offer previews of your site on both mobile and desktop.

Pricing

(4.6 / 5.0)

Lite Plan

Pro Plan

Premium Plan

Ever-so-slightly more expensive than our most affordable recommended hosts, GreenGeeks is in fact priced very competitively with other hosts utilizing all-SSD infrastructure. We have no problem paying an extra dollar or two a month for the upgraded hardware, especially with all the other bonus features GreenGeeks includes in hosting packages. The excitement surrounding a high-quality hosting bargain, however, begins to wane at the more advanced levels. We have no qualms about GreenGeeks VPS service but have a hard time understanding a price tag that is twice as much as our other top VPS hosts. Dedicated servers are a slightly better bargain, but GreenGeeks remains one of the more expensive options in this space, as well.

Reliability & Support

(4.8 / 5.0)

GreenGeeks offers the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee — expected, if not exciting or extraordinary. How GreenGeeks makes up for it, though, is through RAID-10 storage configurations with speedy solid-state drives, along with free nightly backups and restorations. We'd love to see an extra nine at the end of the uptime guarantee but have every confidence in GreenGeeks to keep customers' content online and available. Although we prefer live chat support to sterile and distant email tickets, GreenGeeks posts remarkable response and issue resolution times. Live chat and email support is available all day, every day. For those customers who prefer to call technical support, GreenGeek technicians will answer from 9 a.m. to midnight on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends — stellar hours when 24/7 isn't possible.

GreenGeeks Includes:

Average 15- to 20-Minute Issue Resolution Through Always-Available Email Ticketing System, Plus 24/7/365 Live Chat and Extensive Phone Support Hours, Knowledgebase, How-To Tutorials, 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, and 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Other Hosts vs. GreenGeeks

Wondering how GreenGeeks stacks up againt other web hosting services? See our host-vs-host reviews below and compare them side by side.

GreenGeeks vs. HostGator

Earth-conscious hosting provider, GreenGeeks, takes center stage when it comes to quality hosting without the environmental impact of your traditional web service provider.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs HostGator

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs HostGator

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.5/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. Wix

This host battle has the looks of a David versus a Goliath.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. GoDaddy

If you need a domain name, the GoDaddy team has your back.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs GoDaddy

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs GoDaddy

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. HostPapa

GreenGeeks and HostPapa top our list for their dedication to eco-friendly hosting practices.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs HostPapa

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs HostPapa

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. DreamHost

Sandy beaches, warm sun, and the headquarters of two wildly popular web hosting companies.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs DreamHost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs DreamHost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. A2 Hosting

Both stars for high-performance shared hosting: A2 Hosting and GreenGeeks offer impressive SSDs and unlimited storage in their plans.

See full comparison »
A2 Hosting vs GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
A2 Hosting vs GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. Bluehost

Choosing between GreenGeeks and Bluehost ultimately comes down to your preference.

See full comparison »
GreenGeeks vs Bluehost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
GreenGeeks vs Bluehost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. iPage

Calling all eco-friendly website owners: GreenGeeks serves its web hosting in a carbon-conscious package.

See full comparison »
iPage vs GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
iPage vs GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

GreenGeeks vs. SiteGround

Hosting doesn’t get more eco-friendly than with GreenGeeks.

See full comparison »
SiteGround vs. GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
SiteGround vs. GreenGeeks

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 5.0/5.0

GreenGeeks is the winner
5 out of 9 times.

The Rundown

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Hosting Expert:

To recap, here's a rundown of what GreenGeeks has to offer

The GreenGeeks mission to make a positive environmental impact through energy-efficient web hosting is admirable and surprisingly lacking in the industry. Regardless of the feel-good vibes you get at signup, however, the company is a strong option for customers looking for all levels of services. GreenGeeks gets our highest recommendations at the shared hosting tier, which includes separate plans for managed WordPress and website builder configurations. The upscale GreenGeeks features, including unlimited RAID-10 storage, SSD performance, free migrations, and nightly backups, resonate the most strongly when combined with the shared hosting services' ultra-competitive pricing.

GreenGeeks review

Overall Rating

4.8 / 5.0
★★★★★

About The Author

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.
Laura Bernheim
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