My story isn’t long but should be heard. I’m going to tell you exactly why I switched to SiteGround From Bluehost. There’s deceit, lies, and terrible performance so grab a bucket of popcorn and cozy up.
. . .
Back in 2016, I was using HostGator. Everything had been fine since 2009 so I figured, “why switch to another hosting company?” It’s a pain to transfer sites from one hosting company to another so I left everything alone.
2 months after thinking I’d be a HostGator customer for life, they did the unthinkable.
HostGator reached out to me saying all 7 of my websites were “infected with malware and needed to be cleaned immediately.”
I contacted HostGator to figure out how much it would cost to clean each of my sites.
They quoted me $2,000 PER site!
I thought, “what on my site is infected? I maintain my sites very well and never install plugins or themes that would damage my business. Why is HostGator ALL OF A SUDDEN telling me my sites contain malware. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Imagine the stress of having 7 sites that may need to be cleaned… for a total of $14,000. Like getting ripped off? Try HostGator. They won’t disappoint.
HostGator mentioned that if my sites weren’t cleaned within 30 days, they would be removed from their hosting platform.
After doing some research, it seemed HostGator had recently partnered with a WEBSITE CLEANING COMPANY and there were doing some shady sh*t. I immediately downloaded all my site’s content, images, database, themes… everything.
And then I found Bluehost.
How Long Did I Stick With Bluehost?
Turns out, after uploading my websites to Bluehost, there was no issue with them, they didn’t contain malware, and HostGator and Bluehost are flagship brands and are both owned by Endurance International Group (EIG). One would think that they’d be on the same page with their huge scam, but no, they weren’t. That was a relief.
Bluehost was my dedicated hosting company and everything was going very well. They only charge $2.75/mo (which is a crazy good price) and they were easy to work with. Transferring my sites was as easy as it could be.
At this moment in time I felt I’d be a Bluehost customer for life… remember when I said that about HostGator??
I used Bluehost for 4 years. Everything was great.
One morning I woke up and needed to make a change to one of my sites. I logged in, started editing the post, and clicked update… 20 seconds passed… 30… 45… I thought, “what is taking this SOOOO long?? It has never been this slow!”
Now, you’re probably thinking, “You were probably using their shared hosting service, weren’t you?” Yes, I was using their shared hosting plan. However, it shouldn’t ever go from taking 10 seconds per save to 2 MINUTES per save. It was getting very frustrating making changes (small, text changes) that would take 2 minutes before the page would save.
So… that’s when I started investigating other hosting companies. The problem with Bluehost wasn’t their customer service or lack of trying. The problem was that their website loading speeds changed overnight.
If you aren’t making a lot of changes to your website and want a reliable, yet kinda slow hosting company, feel free to check out Bluehost.
But if you’re like me and don’t mind spending a little more per month on high-quality hosting (and I should say the fastest website hosting company around), you shouldn’t even consider HostGator or Bluehost. You should immediately sign up with SiteGround. Let me tell you why…
I did some research on the fastest website hosting companies and who do you think appeared at the top? SiteGround. It’s claimed that their sites load, on a global average, in 136.9 ms. That’s FAST. With Bluehost, the quickest I was getting was 7 seconds.
Yesterday, I moved my main site, mikejohnsondesign.com to SiteGround. After transferring the database, theme files, and doing initial set up, my site loads instantly.
What I Love About SiteGround So Far
I had to reach out to SiteGround a few times because I mistakenly added the wrong nameservers to my domains. Find out here how to update nameservers in GoDaddy.
After adding the correct nameservers, my site was up!
I did a few page speed tests using Google PageSpeed and Pingdom Tools and I’m very, very happy with how quickly my site loads.
SiteGround Doesn’t Use cPanel
I am really starting to prefer the way SiteGround displays their website settings. Instead of that old, boring cPanel design, SiteGround takes it to another level.
I’ll admit, at first (yesterday) when setting up my site it was a little confusing where everything was located. However, it only took me an hour before I started getting comfortable with their layout.
Here’s what their control panel looks like:
To view your files, click on the Site Tools button. It will take you to a page like this:
From here, you have control over your entire site. Look at how clean their file structure is:
The other thing I’m really loving about SiteGround is that they provide their own customized speed optimization WordPress plugin. It caches, cleans, backs up, etc. It does it all. Oh, and it’s completely FREE.
So if you like what you’re hearing and are interested in taking SiteGround for a spin, click this link to receive my exclusive discount. I’d even be so kind as to install WordPress for you if you ended up choosing SiteGround. Just send me the details here.
Hopefully my experience has given you some insight on which website hosting company to use. Please let me know if you have any questions!