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Our studies cover a range of trending topics and deliver original, reliable data you can't get anywhere else on the web.
By: Alexandra Anderson
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
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★★★★★
With an impressive breadth of overall hosting services offered, SiteGround is a leading innovator in the hosting space — from custom software solutions to premier customer support. The company offers the full range of web hosting features, including a free in-house SiteGround CDN, Site Tools with SSH access, and unlimited MySQL databases and bandwidth — not to mention prize-worthy customer support. CEO Tenko Nikolov and CTO Ivo Tzenov, SiteGround Co-Founders, gave us the inside scoop on SiteGround's features and took us through the solutions they've engineered to enhance the user experience. Customer service has long been the company's claim to fame, behind custom solutions built to make the hosting experience as stress-free as possible. SiteGround engineered an in-house chat software that allows users to select and rate thoroughly vetted customer service agents with whom they've worked previously. The company wrote its own ticketing system, as well, which comprises an algorithm designed to select appropriate technical support representatives for specific tasks. The end result is instant replies to phone calls and chats, and 10-minute responses to email tickets, all of which contributes to a 99.7% customer satisfaction rate. For shared hosting, SiteGround conceived a one-of-a-kind server isolation system that prevents vulnerable servers from taking down entire networks. In place of VPS hosting, the company built its own cloud container platform, featuring thousands of containers and top-notch scalability and security. All SiteGround hosting service users benefit from a unique downtime prevention mechanism, which has helped SiteGround develop a reputation for stellar uptime rates: 99.996% annually and 99.999% monthly.
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★★★★★
As tech-savvy teenagers in the days of dial-up internet, Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri started InterServer to show their former hosting providers how it should be done. Fed up with their hosting options, Mike and John created InterServer on a strong foundation of technical expertise and customer support. Now, InterServer is a refreshing, independent hosting option built on modern infrastructure that is assembled, deployed, and supported at the datacenter housed in company headquarters in New Jersey. InterServer's robust shared plans come with the features you'd expect from higher-tier providers: unlimited storage, bandwidth, email, and SSL certificates, along with power-packed SSDs, free migrations, and affordable domains. Rookie site owners might be intimidated by InterServer's long list of features, but each will help customers large and small succeed in their hosting ventures. InterServer can't match the low prices of some of the mass-market competitors out there when it comes to shared hosting, but they become exponentially more affordable as your website or application grows to VPS or dedicated plans — especially when you consider the perks of 24/7 on-site support and IT-minded Co-Founders who still manage the datacenter and respond to support tickets. No matter which level of hosting you need, InterServer offers a price-lock guarantee. Whatever price you sign up for, that's what you'll pay as long as you have the account (unless you add or upgrade services). You'll never be surprised with a rate increase or be locked into lengthy contracts. We're struggling to come up with another hosting provider who can make that promise.
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★★★★★
#4 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews Providing hosting with the perfect balance of technological innovation and superior customer support, SiteGround offers a range of affordable hosting services to meet your needs. In addition to the expected cheap web hosting perks — a free website builder and unlimited bandwidth — the company specializes in custom-built tools to deliver strong and positive user experiences. Although SiteGround prices itself on the high-end of the shared hosting spectrum, the upgraded SSD-powered infrastructure and additional perks make its service well worth the investment. In addition to included SSL certificate, daily backups, and a content delivery network, SiteGround delivers a top-notch blend of speed and security. SiteGround developed its own ticketing system and custom chat software, allowing you to chat with trusted and capable representatives with whom you've had success in the past. The software takes in about 1,500 chats on any given day. The website itself receives about 1 million visitors per month, with users coming for both tutorials and knowledgebase articles written and updated by the tech support team. Once a month, SiteGround tests competitors' and its own support levels with dummy accounts, measuring response times, attitude, and effectiveness. If a competitor is doing something well, SiteGround's team takes note and tries to improve its own services.
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★★★★★
It's hard to argue with a shared hosting plan that includes unlimited storage, bandwidth, websites, and email — but shared hosting is a crowded industry that turns on name recognition, reputation, and bargain-basement prices. InterServer outperforms some of our higher-rated hosts, but we understand that many first-time site owners are laser-focused on finding the lowest costs. InterServer's shared options are best for the more experienced user who will appreciate SSD caching servers and RAID-10 storage, along with included perks such as Cloudflare CDN and free SSL certificates. Free migrations and automatic weekly backups add to the list of advantages included under InterServer's premium price. On the flip side, however, novice customers will enjoy a free website builder when designing and launching their site. Although InterServer's 400-plus installation scripts cover a number of content management systems and eCommerce tools, other hosts take a more hands-on approach to empowering these customers to start an online store. InterServer may make up for its somewhat higher rates with a price-lock guarantee — the price when you sign up is what you can expect to pay for the life of your account. What's more, InterServer won't lock you up with lengthy contracts. Customers can get discounted rates by paying up front for services; otherwise, your hosting plan runs month-to-month. Users will appreciate knowing what bills to expect and not having to deal with annual rate hikes.
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★★★★★
#7 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews You know a hosting company means business when it owns and operates its own datacenters. Because InterServer employees build and manage servers in the same building as company headquarters, dedicated hosting customers get the utmost in flexibility, support, and around-the-clock monitoring. Co-Founders Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri started InterServer in 1999 out of frustration with their own personal hosting providers and insist the company remain independent and customers are supported 24/7 through phone, chat, or tickets with InterServer's US-based team. In fact, chances are a Co-Founder will answer your ticket in fewer than 20 minutes. Servers are up and running within four hours and come with at least 1GB of RAM, 250GB of storage, 10TB of bandwidth, and five IP addresses. With the company's base Intel Dual-Core Atom configuration costing roughly $50 per month, InterServer brings surprising affordability to the high-end dedicated hosting products. At the other end of InterServer's spectrum of server setups, we were utterly blown away by the amount of storage you can configure — users can max out their servers with not one, but two, 6TB SATA hard drives. If you need SSD, you can install up to 2TB of the performant drives. Users can also configure up to 13 IP addresses and choose among several different flavors of Linux or Windows operating systems.
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★★★★★
When it comes to VPS hosting, SiteGround does things a little differently. Instead of managing a typical virtual private server network, the company created its very own cloud platform built from the ground up. Although the services are similar to a VPS, with shell access included, it's much more scalable. The hefty price tag certainly jumps out at potential customers, however, making SiteGround's cloud product a major investment. The company's top-tier infrastructure and customer support certainly back up the cost, but the platform may not be the right step for first-time VPS customers looking to take a small step beyond shared hosting. That said, SiteGround's managed cloud hosting includes thousands of containers and is much faster than most products you'll find on the market. A single cloud instance can be provisioned, up, and running in seconds. The container platform behind the cloud hosting isn't the only in-house technology the company has up its hosting sleeve. Instead of using third-party programs, SiteGround developers write almost all of the platform's software themselves. Among SiteGround's many custom solutions is a unique server isolation system that shields servers from falling victim to the vulnerability of single, corrupted accounts. SiteGround was the first to develop such a mechanism. The company also created its own backup system, which runs daily backups in about an hour; a downtime prevention mechanism that has yielded stellar uptime rates; and its proprietary SuperCacher, which offers four caching options for optimum load times. With each custom innovation that SiteGround has engineered, customers have reported being pleasantly surprised by how much the technology simplifies their hosting experience. SiteGround's cloud hosting service is no different. The company offers all the hit features they're known for, plus the added scalability and security that surpasses most VPS hosting providers. If you're ready to move beyond shared hosting, and want to do so with a king of customer service and tech solutions, look no further than SiteGround's cloud hosting.
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★★★★★
#6 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews InterServer's on-site datacenter and hands-on involvement with configuring and provisioning virtual private servers give customers a level of flexibility not seen with many other hosting providers. InterServer rations VPS and cloud resources through slices. Users can select just one CPU core or more than a dozen, with disk space ranging from sane to absurd amounts of high-powered SSDs. In addition to that speedy standard feature, we love that virtual servers are provisioned instantly and come with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, and Ruby pre-installed. Users can take further control through full root access and InterServer's web-based control panel. InterServer brings incredibly affordable options to the VPS and cloud space, with plans starting at $10 or less per month and a free migration service from shared hosting accounts. We're not wild about the rest of InterServer's managed VPS services but understand that many customers at this level are plenty capable of handling their virtual servers. The company will support issues related to the operating system or control panel if the account has at least four slices (four cores, 8GB memory, 120GB of storage). InterServer isn't being unreasonable by any stretch, but other hosts make management a simpler, smoother process. InterServer guarantees hardware, network, and infrastructure uptime of 99.9%, which has become pretty standard for the web hosting industry. We expected to see the in-house expertise bump that guaranteed rate a little higher, but we trust InterServer will overdeliver on their SLA promise.
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★★★★★
#4 out of 9 in WordPress Hosting reviews Want a hassle-free, WordPress-optimized hosting service? SiteGround has thought of everything you need to get your site up and running. Starting with the essentials, users get free email accounts, site transfer, SiteGround CDN, and the Site Tools control panel. Then the company makes it simple for you to start rolling out content by offering an easy, automated WordPress installation and a unique and powerful WordPress Starter program that walks site owners through site setup. The custom tool helps customers choose from professionally designed themes and add key functionalities likee a contact form, online store, portfolio, or other content. Selections are automatically installed on the site, delivering a fully-functional website in minutes — without any tech expertise required. SiteGround's WordPress hosting also features automatic updates to the core and plugins, with built-in, multi-layer WordPress caching built-in, as well. Users can easily test and deploy changes to their site with single-click staging, and Git is available for version control. SiteGround's unique downtime prevention software monitors servers' statuses in real-time and resolves more than 90% of server issues instantly and automatically. Many competitors can take an average of five to 20 minutes to detect an issue, plus up to 20 minutes to react and resolve the exploit. From in-house solutions on the technical side to warm and unwavering support from a customer service angle, SiteGround has crafted a complete package for any hosting need. For WordPress-specific hosting, the company offers popular perks you wouldn't get with other shared hosting providers. Get started with all of the awesome freebies and prepare to be blown away by SiteGround's commitment to building hosting solutions intended to make your WordPress experience easier than ever.
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★★★★★
With managed WordPress hosting plans being all the rage lately, we occasionally get peeved at hosting providers that capitalize on the frenzy without optimizing its platform for the specific strengths and weaknesses of the world's most popular content management system. That being said, InterServer's standard shared and VPS infrastructure provides more than enough resources to run your WordPress site at peak performance. Perhaps most importantly, InterServer promises to clean up customers' compromised websites and get them back online if you get hacked — especially important for WordPress users, as the platform's popularity unfortunately makes it a prime target for attacks. Even the most experienced WordPress users can fall victim to an exploit, and InterServer's support team is available 24/7 to fix any issue when it arises. The company's proprietary InterShield security suite, however, does an impressive job at keeping attackers at bay. The company's in-house malware database drives a firewall powered by machine learning and collecting data from InterServer's thousands of servers. When it comes to speed, InterServer has you covered with five levels of content caching solutions, covering SSL certificates, packets, software, hardware, and RAID configurations. A partnership with Cloudflare garners users extra protections and global content delivery. Enjoy single-click installs for the WordPress software, easy-to-use cPanel control panel, and solid-state drives (SSDs) to get your site performance extra oomph. To the value-minded shoppers in the crowd, note that all InterServer customers are assured a price-lock guarantee and will never be asked to sign a control. That's a longer-term value in the shared hosting market that's tough to beat.
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★★★★★
#6 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews Do you know you need to build a website but don't know where to begin? Well, SiteGround will give you not one, but two extremely popular and user-friendly options to create the online presence of your dream. Plus, customers start off with unlimited email accounts, site traffic, and database storage options — all for free. Whether you're transferring a domain or want a relatively hands-off experience starting your very first site, you'll find helpful support at every turn. SiteGround hosting includes easy installations for your choice of content management system, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. The company's WordPress experts will even migrate your site for you — a seamless transition with zero downtime — or first-timers can benefit from their in-house setup wizard. Alternatively, SiteGround gives each customer access to the ultra-popular Weebly drag-and-drop site builder and hundreds of professional templates. Once you're up and running, custom ticketing and chat systems have been engineered and implemented to provide you with pleasant and tech-savvy customer support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. SiteGround also conducts daily site backups, using an in-house system that can run backups in about an hour, compared to rival technologies that can take up to half a day to operate. Whether you're a hosting newbie or a site-building savant, you can trust SiteGround to provide you with a hosting and website-building combo that is simple to manage and pleasant to troubleshoot.
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★★★★★
Although InterServer's unrivaled tech expertise and flexible VPS plans foster a brand reputation that serves experienced developers, the company's focus on affordability and customer satisfaction at the shared hosting level show that InterServer is highly tuned to serving everyone's needs. A partnership with the drag-and-drop SitePad website builder is proof that InterServer doesn't require users to code their sites into creation. Website design is simplified and consolidated into a matter of minutes with the what-you-see-is-what-you-get features found within SitePad. InterServer customers can install the website builder through cPanel or DirectAdmin integrations, and the builder comes with more than 300 professional themes, organized into categories such as business, travel, photography, real estate, health, and others. Site owners will be sure to find a template that works for their specific niche, and each design is already prepped and ready for mobile devices. We especially appreciate that SitePad and InterServer enable customers to establish multiple sites on one account, given the unlimited hosting resources and site builder flexibility. To further distinguish your online brands, SitePad provides more than 40 widgets to further customize themes with photo galleries, text boxes, buttons, videos, and other interactive elements. Coupled with unlimited SSD storage and hundreds of cloud-based applications (think WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, and others), InterServer is poised to provide all the tools site owners need to be successful. Add in the company's incredible first-month rate and guaranteed long-term pricing, and we're confident you'll find a hosting partner capable of ushering you through growth.
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