Why I no longer recommend SiteGround

The above is a common sight if you have a moderately successful website on SiteGround. That’s the screen that SiteGround replaces your site with when you exceed your account’s resource usage. It’s something I’ve experienced regularly over the past 3+ years with dozens of customer sites.

Basically, all shared hosting accounts on SiteGround have a limit for the amount of CPU time and RAM that you can use. SiteGround will send you 1 warning when you are at 90% of that limit, and when you exceed the limit you will get another email notifying you that your site has been temporarily suspended.

This site is going to get suspended pretty soon…

Even if your site only has modest traffic, you’re not immune from getting suspended by SiteGround. Because bots. I’ll let SiteGround explain:

Now the thing is, the internet is crawling with bots. Google, Yahoo, Bing all crawl your site with bots so they can list your website in their search results. So basically, non-human traffic caused my client’s site to exceed the resource usage.

Well, I guess that’s something we just have to put up with right? Bots would affect any website on any web host.

Except it doesn’t. SiteGround is the only web host where bots are a “problem”. Even Google is a problem, and SiteGround has actually advised my client to block Google from her site before.

My customers on other web hosts never exceed their resource allocation because of bots. And it’s not just me either. Have a look at these posts from the WP Hosting Facebook group, many of them complaining about… bots.

And the kicker? SiteGround actually has an “anti-bot AI” that can filter out bots from accessing your site.

So why are they still getting through???!!

If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am. I used to be a fan of SiteGround and recommended them to everyone. I think that they offer amazing tech like SuperCacher that no other hosts offer, at a great price point. They contribute to and are active in the WordPress community. Independent SiteGround reviews and web hosting comparisons rank SiteGround highly.

I want to like SiteGround, but with the problems me, my customers and others have experience – I just can’t recommend SiteGround in good conscience. If you are expecting only expecting low traffic, then you might get by with SiteGround. But if you are looking to upgrade your web hosting, I hope this article helps you make a better decision.

I feel totally let down by SiteGround. I hope you don’t.

3 Comments on "Why I no longer recommend SiteGround"

  • inchenaim says

    Hello David,

    What hosting company recommend by you for malaysian readers? The fast and realiable one.

    I’m planning to move away from NetKL. After reading your review about SG, surely SG this not for me.

    • WPWebHost.com, Server Freak and IPServerOne are good Malaysian hosts. Otherwise try A2 Hosting with server in Singapore. Good luck

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