New contender for best UK WordPress host – SiteGround
After searching for a few months to find the most reliable and fastest host for WordPress I think I have the perfect host. SiteGround offer a starter package (on offer at the moment) which is quite generous for £2.75pm. You get 10gb space, SSD storage, free Cloudflare CDN, free SSL and all sorts of other bits and bobs. I took a trial account and I can tell you without hesitation, my Amazon affiliate site has never run faster! They give you a cpanel account which is a little customised, one missing feature was the site backup and restore, you can raise a ticket for that. Their support from the little I have used is it very very quick.
SiteGround Reseller Package Pricing
I intend to buy a reseller package, this has a very different pricing plan where you buy credits (no expiry) and you can then allocate the credits to 1 year of hosting per credit or keep them for renewing hosting. The minimum is 5 but the best value is 11+ where the price comes down.
The pricing for the credits is as follows:
- 1-4 Credits £32/Credit
- 5-10 Credits 29/Credit
- 11+ Credits £27/Credit
The minimum starter of 5 credits will cost £145+vat, I would go for the 11 credits option for £297+vat as they don’t expire and you can use them to renew packages rather than add new ones.
This sites’ WordPress installation is running on HostPresto who are my second favourite host (again) after I dumped SmartHost for being to slow. HostPresto are inbetween, they are faster than SmartHost but not as fast as SiteGround. As I have a reseller plan with HostPresto (£270 inc VAT 1 year) I will use it to work on sites and when they become complex and demanding I will switch them to SiteGround. My stores, current and future, will all be on SiteGround.
Why have 2 reseller accounts? I usually start several sites and leave them on the back burner then get back to them With HostPresto it doesn’t matter as I have unlimited domains as part of my reseller package so I can work on them without having to allocate more money towards them – plus I can create landing pages and use e-mail forwarding for my websites.
SiteGround Extras
I was looking around the SiteGround site for pricing on any extras or addons, I couldn’t find any information. I had to login to my control panel and find the addons which are paid for separately:
- HackAlert Malware Monitoring £0.67pm
- Basic Backup Service £1.67pm
- Wildcard SSL £48pm
- goMobi Website Builder £6.95pm
- Dedicated IP £1.67pm
- Premium Support £2.95pm
- Cloudflare Plus £7.96pm
All are excluding GB VAT @ 20%
The top two are recommended, you can get a free SSL but if you are going to create a store a full SSL is recommended. Also I have read that a dedicated IP is recommended and is good for SEO. If the reseller prices are different, I will update the list accordingly.
Conclusion
If you have the cash opt for SiteGround, the extra addons will push the price up a little but the site speed alone is worth it in my opinion. The reseller package does not provide a Cpanel WHM but you will have their custom backend and from there you can add accounts with a separate white label cpanel if you plan to resell. Siteground also have 4 data centres in various locations which is handy to target you site visitors, they have North America (Chicago), Europe (London and Amsterdam) and Asia-Pacific (Singapore). You can choose the data centre when you setup the package.
HostPresto, as I have said, are also very good and fast, for wordpress I would avoid their starter package. Their reseller is priced at £270 inc VAT and you will access to a WHM to create new cpanel accounts for each domain. Their UK technical support is amazing, very attentive and very quick.
SmartHost were good for me to begin with, the standard reseller was £99 inc VAT for 1 year and it was good to setup multiple sites for testing. They have a Master Reseller plan which costs £265 inc VAT which they said was on a premium platform but I had already signed up with HostPresto so I didn’t get a chance to test it. If you are just starting out and have multiple domains you want to create sites for, SmartHost offer excellent value with their reseller package. Again, their UK technical support is amazing, very quick.
Finally, I would recommend signing up for a trial with the package you intend to use, as long as the host has a Cpanel option, transferring sites is usually free and is usually just a backup and restore option.
All of the hosts offer 30 days money back guarantee. Siteground do not refund the reseller credits purchased if they are allocated to a package, you can sign up and not allocate credits if you want to have a look at the control panel.
