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You have a choice when it comes to the website hosting provider to consider. But how do you categorize a worthwhile one? What factors or aspects will you look for?
Making such a decision might be challenging, especially if you don’t have appropriate answers to the mentioned questions. If you are confused, don’t worry because you have landed on the right page.
Here, we shall compare two of the best web hosting companies – SiteGround and Hostinger. We shall consider some of the most critical aspects that provide a host with a competitive advantage and see how each performs.
You might also be interested in reading: Siteground And Bluehost, How They Compare, And Which One Is Better?
1- Plans and Pricing
The cost of hiring or using a web hosting platform is probably a primary consideration for most users. In this regard, SiteGround cannot match Hostinger’s affordability as the latter is known for its budget-friendly hosting services.
SiteGround’s pricing is never its perfect selling point. However, its GrowBig hosting plan is equivalent to Hostinger’s mid-range one, the Premium, the most popular shared plan.
Both the plans (Premium and GrowBig) offer unlimited websites and unmetered bandwidth. However, the one for Hostinger provides five times more SSD storage and is approximately three times cheaper than SiteGround’s for longer contracts.
When you renew the plans, you’ll have to pay the full rate with both – for Hostinger will be just a few dollars more monthly, while SiteGround will be almost triple the initial cost.
Hostinger’s cloud plans are far cheaper yet offer twice as much storage than SiteGround. The host provides 100GB of SSD storage while SiteGround’s is only 10-30GB.
See also: Top 8 Easy Niches For Blogging With Low Competition.
2- Features
Both hosts have abundant features which are essential for managing a website. For instance, they both make it possible to collaborate with others on a website via their collaboration tools to set up an account and give permission to the entire team.
Even so, SiteGround provides numerous great features for developers, including staging, managed WordPress services, plugin updates, and advanced tools.
Hostinger offers a free domain name for one full year in all plans except the single. Below is a detailed list of all features provided by both:
Hostinger’s features:
- Free SSL certificate
- 100GB to limitless bandwidth
- Free domains on all plans except the single tier
- Daily backups on Premium plans and weekly ones on Business plans
- Free CDN on Business plans
- Limitless email accounts
- Brand hPanel control panel
- 30GB to 200GB disk space on shared plans
- Linux, WordPress, Shared, Windows, and Cloud hosting are available
- Free site migration by experts
- One website on the Single plan and 100 on the Premium and Business plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee
SiteGround’s features:
- Free CDN
- Automatic daily backups
- Limitless email accounts
- Free SSL certificate
- Limitless bandwidth
- Site Tools control panel
- 10GB to 40GB disk space on shared plans
- Offers Reseller, Shared, Cloud dedicated servers, WordPress, and custom enterprise hosting
- Free site migration for WordPress websites
- One website on the Startup plan and unlimited on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee
3- Usage
We all appreciate dealing with an easy-to-use website. Thankfully, both SiteGround and Hostinger offer an easy setup and usage – they use a Linux-based control panel, Site Tools, and an hPanel, respectively. As a result, they enable users to complete their web setup relatively faster.
The functionalities of the hPanel and cPanel are similar. The cPanel for SiteGround is accessible from the dashboard once you’re logged in, while for the hPanel, you need to manage the website’s settings from the menu. However, both control panels are aesthetically pleasing.
4- Performance
How a web hosting provider performs in terms of technicality is vital – a site’s performance stems from its uptime, speed, percentage, and server location. Speed and page load time are critical and can affect a user’s experience or search engine rankings.
- All the features of Hostinger aim at enhancing page loading times. For example, the LiteSpeed web server (recent upgrade) performs exceptionally.
- In addition, SiteGround utilizes Apache with NGINX, which does some things better than Apache, meaning your website will load faster.
Both web hosts offer SSD storage on their shared plans, and the Cloudflare CDN is incorporated into the dashboard so that you can expect decent performance worldwide.
Both Hostinger and SiteGround have an excellent uptime (how often a site is available to visitors) that goes beyond 99.9%. However, regular server crashes can adversely affect this metric.
So, both hosts provide some form of compensation if your uptime is below 99.9%. But it’s unlikely that you’ll have to be compensated because the uptime always works perfectly for both.
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5- Site Migration and Website Building
How well do the two hosting providers perform in website transfer services? That’s a good question, especially if you already have your website hosted by another provider. With Hostinger, you can have it successfully migrated; all you need is to fill out a migration form after requesting the service and then follow through with the steps provided.
The migration process is simple and free; you can get help from a technical support member. However, for SiteGround, a $30 fee is charged per site for managed migration. There is also a WordPress migration plugin, meaning if your website is WordPress-based, you can install the plugin and create a token that initiates the website transfer.
Both SiteGround and Hostinger offer website building services. They have similar features, like site-building tools, but are also different from others.
- For example, for Hostinger, you use the Zyro Site Builder, an easy-to-use yet powerful website creator. It employs a drag-and-drop tool with no coding skills needed and comes as a free or paid option.
- For SiteGround, you can use the Weebly Site Builder for free. It’s also drag-and-drop requiring no technical skills. You are also given responsive themes, efficient eCommerce sites, and storefront themes.
6- Security
If you need a secure website, then choosing either of the hosts can guarantee you that. They offer free SSL certificates, spam filters, DDoS protection, and a robust web application firewall.
You will have to share a server with many other websites for shared hosting, but SiteGround and Hostinger protect your account through Linux containers. Your resources will be isolated so that even a DDoS attack on your neighbors won’t affect you.
Both web hosts have security teams that monitor network health throughout the day. Hostinger claims to employ next-generation website hosting techs. It boasts innovative network architecture, faster hardware, and security solutions.
Below are some of the tools it uses to secure your website against any threats:
- Access Manager
- Spam and threat detection
- Cloudflare protected nameservers
- Real-time reactive server monitoring
- DDoS protection
- SSL encryption
- RAID-10 protection
- Daily/weekly backups
- LVE containers for account isolation
SiteGround maintains a Security-First approach to keep its clients’ websites in complete security against any possible vulnerability. It also features proprietary real-time scanning software. Its main security tools include the following:
- Unlimited backups for safeguarding data
- 24/hour server monitoring and fraud prevention
- AI anti-bot against brute force attacks
- Free SSL encryption to safeguard sensitive information
- WordPress security plugin
- Smart WAF for high protection against hacks
7- Customer Support
The last thing a user would want is unresponsive and reliable customer support. And that’s why both hosts try in this matter to put in place 24/7 support options like live chat.
While you might have to wait for a while before an agent contact you on both platforms, SiteGround takes the lead in offering the best support. It features a phone channel and ticketing system.
Furthermore, Hostinger has a knowledge base where you can get personal help if the support team doesn’t get in touch promptly.
All queries on Hostinger are replied to via email, not live chats. It also has emails for media, affiliates programs, and “report abuse services.”
Moreover, SiteGround has a team of well-prepared and experienced professionals ready to deliver effective and fast solutions to any issues users might have.
Its strengths include the round-the-clock live chat, phone calls, and Helpdesk tickets for most complex issues. It also avails knowledge base articles that one can read to understand how a process works.
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Summary and Final Verdict
Which of the two website hosting providers would you consider? Well, there seems to be a clear indication that Hostinger is the overall winner as per the above comparisons on pricing, security, site migration, and performance. The pros of why Hostinger is better than SiteGround are more than those of vice versa.
However, it’s crucial to mention that both hosting services serve varying kinds of web admins. There are cases when SiteGround would be most appropriate, like when you need hosting for a large-scale or high-potential business because of its abundant, although costly, resources.
On the other hand, Hostinger will be your choicest option if you’re looking for something small, fast, and cost-effective. It is cheaper yet features everything needed to launch a website conveniently, including a free domain name.