Siteground vs Hostgator: What is the best web hosting in 2021? Find out below. This article will change your life as it changed mine, I moved from Hostgator to Siteground in 2018, and throughout 2018 I used Siteground hosting, and I must say it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I will give you success stories or reasons why it was a fantastic and life-changing decision.

My Adsense income increased by 103%.
I started receiving sponsored posts and product reviews.
My organic search traffic increased significantly. My highest peek was about 207,000 page views in 2018.
My website speed went from 30 seconds to 1.17 seconds. (Google loves fast loading websites and its good for SEO).

How did all these growths occur? Late 2017, around December I decided to rebrand Nairatips which included a whole of work, research, and implementation.

My 2017 – 2018 Blog Project & Decision

Around December 2017, I made a decision which changed my blog forever. I decided to invest more money into my blog and start treating it as a business. This was my first step of turning Nairatips to a profitable blog, and it worked.

I decided to leave Hostgator and pay for one of the best web hosting services I knew at that time which was Siteground.

I purchased a 1-year GoGeek Siteground web hosting plan at a 70% discount on December 24, 2017, for about $143.40, which is an excellent deal not to buy. You can purchase the same plan or something smaller for your site using this link. The best way to grow your blog is to purchase good hosting, I can assure you of that.

I also purchased one the best WordPress theme on January 5, 2018 – GeneratePress which is a lightweight theme which increases your site’s load times has cool extensions to work with and is just beautiful to behold. My homepage went from like 5MB to 454.1 KB. This theme costs about $50.

I spent hours customizing my GeneratePress WordPress theme using Brian Jackson’s guide. I recommend you follow his guide if you plan on using GeneratePress WordPress theme.

A total of over $200 was spent, and that was my 2018 blogging investment which was the most I’ve spent ever since I started blogging in 2015. The expense shook me, but I knew it was a good investment. Sometimes, I thought I was mad to invest $200 in a business that wasn’t bringing in much money, but I ignored the present and focused on what I wanted Nairatips to become by the end of 2018.

My Brief Best Web Hosting History

I started Nairatips around June 2015, and at that time I heard a lot of talk about Hostgator, and I decided to give them a try. I was excited to try out Hostgator because I was coming from FatCow. I ended up using FatCow in 2015, but I initially applied to Hostgator, but I wasn’t accepted then, so that’s why I ended up with FatCow.

My time with FatCow wasn’t great, I was new to WordPress and blogging so I made a lot of mistakes as a young blogger and my host wasn’t any better. FatCow hosting didn’t just work for me because they had one of the slowest website loading times, lousy support, poor optimization and I was advised to move to Hostgator.

Siteground Website Transfer Process

Moving your website to Siteground is free and is done within hours with no downtime. I have moved my site twice, and I didn’t suffer any downtime.

To transfer your website from your old host to siteground, you don’t need to contact your soon to be the old host, all you need to do is follow these easy steps.

Go to Siteground and pay for your desired hosting plan – 1-year plans are the best because they are cheaper if you look at it.
Input your primary domain name
Log into your account
Begin WordPress installation
Request for site transfer because you already have an existing website.
There are two options – Use a technician or do it yourself. I recommend letting a technician do it for you.
Put in your CPANEL details like login URL, username and password, etc.
Submit the request and wait for a reply to the email address you registered with.
You will receive an email that your support ticket has been updated.
All you have to do now is go to your domain name registrar and point the DNS in nameservers to the new Siteground’s DNS nameservers,
Wait few minutes for DNS to propagate fully.
That’s it. Say goodbye to your old slow, annoying host.

My time with Hostgator

My time with Hostgator was good, but it was for a short time. I was excited to finally be using Hostgator as my web host in my first few months when things were not looking too good, so I started looking for a better host with the aim of increasing website speed, traffic, and income.

I think it would be better to list all that Hostgator did wrong which ultimately drove me away from hosting with them.

Fake “unmetered bandwidth” feature
Slow website speed
Slow support team
Bad website technical support
High renewal fees

Fake “Unmetered Bandwidth” Feature

I was on Hostgator’s Baby Plan which clearly states that it has “unmetered bandwidth,” but that is all part of marketing because most of the time, I got “server or connection timeout” errors which drove me crazy. I couldn’t even perform a full website backup with plugins like BackupBuddy without tons of server errors.

Slow Website Speed

While using Hostgator web host, I felt my blog was heavy, chunky and fat maybe because I whenever I ran a website speed test, I would always get like 30 seconds load time and partly can be blamed on my WordPress theme then but most of it depends on how fast your web hosting is. That’s a significant factor when aiming at getting a good website speed; you need a quick web host.

Website speed is also essential for SEO, traffic, and business. Google loves fast loading websites. People or potential customers also love fast loading websites, they want to click and get a response in milliseconds but if the page doesn’t open up when it should you just losing money at that point.

Average Support

The support was not outstanding; it was average support. They have a LIVE CHAT feature which allows you the customer to chat with a member of Hostgator’s support team LIVE, in real time and they can help you solve your problems right there.

Bad Website Technical Support

This was especially bad because most of the technical problems I got on my website, I had to fix myself after hours of research.

High Renewal Fees

The hook most people fall prey to is the second yearly plans with 60% off, but most web hosting companies have a strategy of charging the real price after your initial discounted purchase.

My time with Siteground so far

Siteground web hosting has been good to me so far, 2018 has been my best blogging year since 2015. I guess what they say is true; your blog only gets better with time if you put in the right work and effort into it.

I would try and list all the milestones achieved so far in 2018 and Siteground made a significant contribution to every one of them.

Broke the Adsense 0 income in a month milestone
Surpassed the $1,000 total revenue in a month milestone
Got over 50,000 page views in a month
Gained over 100,000 page views in a month
Got over 150,000 page views in a month
Got over 200,000 page views in a month
Increased search engine rankings due to fast website speed.
Received more sponsored post offers
Got Media.net approval

Currently, with Siteground, you get one of the best web hosting in 2019, and it’s so easy to move your site over to Siteground. They offer a free WordPress site migration from your current web hosting service which is so easy and fast; nobody would know that you changed web hosts.

What Siteground Web Hosting Does Right

With Siteground which is one of the best web hosting around in 2019, you need to know the reasons why they are one of the best.

Free website transfer
Fast Website Speed
Fast Support response times
Good Technical Support
Daily/Hourly full free website backup
Good web server locations
Robust web server and disk space

Free Website Transfer

One of the biggest concern for most people, when they want to switch web hosting platforms, is how will I transfer my entire website from one web host to another. Is it free? Would there be downtime? How long would it take? And is it easy to do?

All these questions are enough to discourage a person from making that necessary web hosting switch, and that’s why Siteground offers one free website migration from another web hosting service to Siteground.

I was coming from Hostgator; I brought a lot of files with me. My site was a little over 3GB back then on December 24th, 2017. I purchased a 1-year Siteground web hosting plan at 70% off which is a good deal even today – You can buy that Siteground 70% off plan using this link, I would encourage you to purchase yearly plans, so your site stays stable, fast and ready to grow year in year out.

I bought the 1-year Siteground best web hosting plan, and it was time to move from Hostgator to Siteground. I contacted Siteground Support about the move, sent them the required information and they replied in less than 16 minutes which is not wrong response time.

siteground support website request transfer

We started the process around 14:00 CST and by 17:40 CST the website transfer was complete, that’s a 3 hour, 40 minutes time frame.

So to transfer your website from one web host to Siteground is secure, fast, downtime-free and free to 1 site.

Fast Website Loading Speed

This was a big concern of mine because as I said earlier, I felt like my website was fat, chunky and heavy because of the slow load times I was getting during my website speed tests using different sites like Pingdom, GTMetrix and Google Website Speed Insights.

If your website isn’t loading in less than 1-4 seconds, there are three problems wrong with your site which I suggest you should fix immediately if you want to grow and make more money from it.

Bad or Poor Web Hosting: The best to solve this problem is to migrate to one of the best Web Hosting in 2019 – I recommend Siteground.
Heavy bloated and non-responsive WordPress theme: This is when your WordPress theme contains more CSS, HTML and other files and add-ons that you don’t need but you feel you need, but you need up not using them. I recommend you look for a lightweight WordPress Theme like GeneratePress.
You haven’t optimized your website: You need to put in the time to optimize your site by adding a caching plugin, leverage CSS files, optimize your images, defer JSS files, use Google fonts and a lot more. The key is facing one problem at a time, do the easy ones first and work your way up from there.

Fast Support Response Time

I can boldly say that Siteground support is fast because in my 2017-2018 time spent using Siteground. All my support tickets were replied on the average time of 10-15 minutes, and it’s not an automated reply, it’s a real-life technician already giving me solutions to my problems.

You can contact their support via phone, chat or ticket and they are available 24/7.

Good Technical Support

Siteground support is also good at solving technical website problems. I usually fix most WordPress related issues, but there was one problem that got me stuck. So I just had to contact support, and they told me the exact problem wrong with my website, the location of the question even the line.

I was impressed by this, so I just went there and fixed the problem myself, but I would never have fixed that technical problem without the help of Siteground technical support.

Daily Full Free Website Backup

You will get daily full website backup when you use any of Siteground’s Web Hosting Plans. It’s one of the primary perks you get from one of the best Web Hosting in 2019. With this, you can quickly restore your website to the previous state or download your backup. It’s a handy thing to have available for you.

Best Web Hosting Server Locations

Siteground has excellent web hosting server locations. They have server locations in 3 continents which means you can select the server location that’s closest to your audience or the audience you want to acquire.

Server Locations:

Chicago (USA)
London (United Kingdom)
Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Singapore (SG)

Robust Web Servers and Disk Space

Siteground GoGeek WordPress hosting plan was more than enough for my site, and it performed very well. I had more than enough resources.

I never used up to half at any time. This was what I didn’t get with Hostgator, but I got it in abundance using Siteground.

Siteground vs. Hostgator: Best Web Hosting 2019?

Siteground	Hostgator
Fast Website Loading Speed	Slow Website Loading Speed
Fast Support	Slow Support
Daily full Website Backup	–
Robust Website Resources	Limited Website Resources
Good for multiple websites	Bad for multiple websites
As low as $3.95/month	As low as $2.95/month
Get Siteground Deal	Get Hostgator Deal

My 2019 Blogging Projects

SSD Flash Drives – This is a blog where I talk about my SSD flash drive experience, teach how to build SSD flash drives and recommend products needed for the entire process.
Tech ReviewsUS – This is another tech blog aimed at being better than Nairatips in content, SEO and branding. I would be using the knowledge I gained while running Nairatips to make TechReviewsUS a better tech blog.

Conclusion

Siteground remains one of the best web hosting in 2019 because they are fast, affordable, technical, great for single or multiple websites, a perfect fit for your WordPress site and getting one of the best web hosting in 2019 would make your blog more successful because you have set the perfect stage for growth.

If you want to make more money blogging or make more money for your business, get a fast web hosting service – I recommend Siteground.