Searching for an HONEST SiteGround speed test?
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just going to lay it on you; SiteGround performance is absolute rubbish. Yup, you read that correctly. SiteGround is complete junk.
Anyone that says otherwise is just fishing for easy commissions. Here's a quote from a very popular WordPress blog:
“SiteGround ranks near the top of all web hosting companies for both uptime and speed.” Ha! What a load of crap. To be fair, the uptime is potentially accurate, but the claim about speed is certainly misleading.
So because I'm still tired of seeing big-name websites posting this misleading bull-shit, I'm writing this post for you all today.
SiteGround Speed Test
Based on thousands of speed tests using only the most advanced benchmarking tools, SiteGround emerged with disappointing results. Out of 19, SiteGround finished in 18th place.
Pingdom (SiteGround: 14th Place)
This test shows the average of ~336 tests split between Pingdom's western and eastern test locations. According to Pingdom, the Page Load Time metric “shows the time it took for the page to be fully-loaded, including external resources such as scripts and images. In technical terms, it is the window.onload event.”
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
GTmetrix (SiteGround: 16th Place)
This test shows the average of 280 tests split between GTmetrix's San Fransisco, Dallas, Chicago, and Wyoming test locations. The average score (across all metrics) from each test location (70 each) is shown.
The lower the Average, the better!
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
Sematext (SiteGround: 14th Place)
This test shows the average of ~720 tests split between Sematexts' California and Virginia test locations. The average response time, according to Sematext, is the average time taken for each server to run the script.
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
Loader.io (SiteGround: 15th Place)
In this test, the clients per second were measured at 750 over 30 seconds, and the maintained client load is an average of 100 clients over 1 minute.
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
LoadFocus (SiteGround: 18th Place)
Each host was tested with 75 virtual users over the course of 2 minutes with a 1-minute ramp-up time.
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
WebPageTest (SiteGround: 17th place)
This test compares each test site's visual load time using WebPageTest's new visual comparison tool.
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
WP Benchmarking Plugin (SiteGround: 5th Place)
This compares each host using the WP Benchmarking Tool plugin on each host's test website.
The lower, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
Final Scores (SiteGround: 18th Place)
Each host was awarded a maximum of 19 points per test, depending on their performance. First place earned 19 points, 18 for 2nd, 17 for 3rd, and so forth.
The higher, the better.
Want More? Get the complete research data here.
What Does This Mean?
After all of my research and tests, here's what I've gleaned:
Cloudways – The overall “winner” based on all tests.
HostArmada – 2nd in terms of performance, cPanel, LiteSpeed servers, free domain; what more could you want?
Pressable – Oustading performance with premium support.
Templ – Awesome performance and one of my favorite hosts. Extremely intuitive and beginner-friendly with rock-solid server stability.
MDDHosting – A solid cPanel alternative. Very affordable and scalable cloud SSD hosting.
FastComet – Solid performance. A decent cPanel choice.
A2Hosting – Solid performance across the board. A bit lousy considering the price.
WPMUDEV – Their performance was phenomenal despite the slightly confusing control panel. Lots of value here.
ScalaHosting VPS – Performed really well. Not as fast as Cloudways, but is a great managed VPS alternative.
WPX – Mediocre performance but has the best one-click CDN compared to its counterparts.
WP Engine – Very solid performance. I Would use it over Kinsta, but expensive for what you get.
ChemiCloud – Mediocre performance with good support. Nothing
ScalaHosting – Decent performance for shared hosting. A great alternative to HostGator and Bluehost.
Stromonic – Bottom-tier performance, but okay for a shared host. Nothing special.
HostRound – Bottom-tier performance, but okay for the price.
NameHero – Bottom-tier performance. Nothing special at all, considering the price point.
Kinsta – Had higher hopes here. Not great. Quite poor for the price.
Verpex – North American data centers were poor. Probably best suited for European clients.
SiteGround – Let's just say that I'm glad to be moving on!
Best SiteGround Alternative
If you're searching for an alternative to SiteGround, I wholeheartedly recommend HostArmada. Not only did HostArmada place 2nd, but they're also much cheaper than SiteGround. Why pay more for less?
SiteGround Speed Review
I have to be honest here; it's incredibly difficult to rank web hosting providers objectively because everyone has different requirements and needs. Not only that, but each host brings something unique to the table.
With that said, I can say that according to my SiteGround speed tests, SiteGround ranks very low in terms of speed and performance. In fact, they only just barely outperformed a host using European servers. Oof.
Take it for what you will, but I'd stay away from SiteGround. But hey, that's just my suggestion. You can do whatever you want.
Do you agree with my assessment or think I'm wrong? Let me hear it in the comments section below.
