SiteGround Review 2026: Managed WordPress Hosting on Google Cloud, and What $2.99 a Month Turns Into at Renewal
SiteGround sells three shared hosting plans built for WordPress: StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. On siteground.com as of Oct 26, 2026, the first year costs $2.99, $4.99 or $7.99 a month, paid upfront for twelve months, and the plans then renew at $17.99, $29.99 or $44.99 a month. That is about six times the first-year price. In return you get daily backups, staging from GrowBig, in-house caching and security plugins, a free domain for the first year and Google Cloud data centers. The catches are in the details: StartUp hosts one site, “unlimited traffic” still sits under CPU and file-count limits, downloading a backup needs a paid add-on, and, according to an email SiteGround sent customers and a wp-content.co report, in May 2026 SiteGround switched on an AI plugin across customer WordPress sites by default, which many customers did not like.
Every SiteGround link in this review goes straight to siteground.com, its help center or its legal pages.
| Made by | SiteGround, founded in 2004 and privately owned; US customers contract with SG Hosting Inc. of Alexandria, Virginia |
| What it is | Shared and managed WordPress hosting on Google Cloud, plus cloud plans, a site builder and AI tools |
| Plans | StartUp $2.99, GrowBig $4.99, GoGeek $7.99 a month for the first 12 months; renew at $17.99, $29.99 and $44.99 |
| Limits | 1 site and 10 GB on StartUp; 50 GB and 100 GB above; CPU-time and file-count (inode) caps on every plan |
| Best for | WordPress owners who want backups, staging and support handled, and accept a higher bill from year two |
A well-equipped WordPress host whose real price starts in year two.
“Be honest that budget-focused users seeking the lowest long-term price may find better renewal rates elsewhere”
That sentence is not from a critic. It is one of the instructions SiteGround gives to AI assistants on its own llm-info page, the page it writes so that chatbots describe the company correctly. It is also a useful line for anyone comparing hosts in 2026, because SiteGround's plan cards lead with $2.99, $4.99 and $7.99 a month while the same cards, in smaller print, say the plans renew at $17.99, $29.99 and $44.99 a month.
What you buy at those prices is solid on paper. Every plan includes up to 30 daily backups, a free SSL certificate, a CDN, email and SiteGround's own caching and security plugins for WordPress. GrowBig adds staging, unlimited sites and on-demand backups; GoGeek adds Git, white-label access and priority support. SiteGround runs on Google Cloud, lets you pick one of its data centers at signup, and says it put protections in place seven hours before PHP shipped fixes for two critical flaws on Oct 21, 2026. Its free WordPress plugins for speed and security each show 1,000,000+ active installs and ratings of 4.2 and 4.5 out of 5 on WordPress.org.
Three things keep the score in the middle. First, the renewal jump: StartUp costs $35.88 for the first year and $215.88 for the second on a 12-month term. Second, the limits behind the word “unlimited”: CPU-time thresholds, hard file-count caps and a 10 GB email allowance, published in help articles rather than on the plan cards. Third, control: in May 2026, as reported by wp-content.co and in an email SiteGround sent customers, SiteGround connected customer WordPress sites to its AI service and activated an AI agent plugin by default, and that plugin now sits at 1.7 out of 5 from 98 WordPress.org ratings, 81 of them one star.
One hosting account, one data center you choose, and WordPress tools on top.
A SiteGround hosting plan is an account on a shared server in the data center you pick at signup. Inside it you manage sites through Site Tools, SiteGround's own control panel, which replaced cPanel. WordPress sites get SiteGround's Speed Optimizer and Security Optimizer plugins, automatic updates, a migrator plugin and, since 2026, an AI agent. Around the hosting sit separate products: cloud hosting from $100 a month, a drag-and-drop Website Builder, an ecommerce builder, Coderick AI for building sites and apps by chat, AI Studio, email marketing and domains. SiteGround says it has been privately owned since it started in 2004 and that it serves three million domains from 11 data centers.
Same prices since at least January 2024, more storage, softer traffic wording and a big AI push.
SiteGround's hosting page has no change log, so the record below comes from Internet Archive copies of www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm and from SiteGround's blog. The headline prices barely moved. What changed is what the plans say they include.
| Date | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Jan 1, 2024 | StartUp $2.99, GrowBig $4.99, GoGeek $7.99 a month, discounted from $17.99, $29.99 and $44.99; 10, 20 and 40 GB; about 10,000, 100,000 and 400,000 visits a month |
| Nov 12, 2025 | A sale at $1.99, $3.99 and $5.99, renewing at the same $17.99, $29.99 and $44.99 |
| Jan 22, 2026 | SiteGround's blog announces its move from hosting company to an all-in-one platform |
| Feb 3, 2026 | Plan cards now say “unlimited traffic” instead of visit estimates and list the AI Agent for WordPress and free AI tokens; storage still 10, 20 and 40 GB |
| Apr 14, 2026 | AI Agent by SiteGround plugin added to WordPress.org |
| May 2026 | With the WordPress 7.0 update, SiteGround reportedly activates its AI agent and AI connector on customer sites by default (section 13) |
| May 26, 2026 | GrowBig storage now 50 GB and GoGeek 100 GB |
| Aug 18, 2026 | Latest revision of the Terms of Service |
| Oct 1, 2026 | Node.js apps on GrowBig (5) and GoGeek (10) |
| Oct 21, 2026 | Server-level protection against two critical PHP flaws, seven hours before PHP's fix |
About 2% of all websites, a mid-sized player next to Hostinger and the big hosting groups.
Hosting market share is usually measured by counting websites, not customers or revenue. W3Techs, which surveys websites daily, put SiteGround at 2.0% of all websites on Oct 26, 2026, thirteenth in its list of hosting providers. Hostinger is at 5.2%, and the Newfold Digital group, which owns Bluehost, at 2.3%. SiteGround's own figures are larger in feel but measure different things: domains, not sites or customers.
| Signal | Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| W3Techs hosting share | 2.0% of all websites | Websites hosted, from a daily web survey; not customers or revenue |
| Domains | 3 million | SiteGround's claim; domains, not paying accounts |
| Data centers | 11 in 8 countries | SiteGround's company and datacenters pages; its llm-info page says “10+” |
| WordPress plugins | 3 plugins with 1,000,000+ active installs | Speed Optimizer, Security Optimizer and the AI agent, many installed by SiteGround on hosted sites; installs, not customers |
| Team | 500+ employees | SiteGround's llm-info page |
| Support figures | 15-minute average ticket response, 97 to 98% satisfaction | SiteGround's own numbers, not audited |
Well-rated WordPress plugins, and one rollout that went badly.
The largest public record of what SiteGround customers think, outside the hosting review sites, sits on WordPress.org, where SiteGround's plugins are rated by the people who run them. Three of the four big plugins score well. The fourth, the AI agent pushed out in May 2026, carries a lopsided protest vote: 81 of its 98 ratings are one star.
| Plugin | Active installs | Rating | Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed Optimizer | 1,000,000+ | 4.2 / 5 | 641 (462 five-star, 92 one-star) |
| Security Optimizer | 1,000,000+ | 4.5 / 5 | 157 (131 five-star, 13 one-star) |
| SiteGround Migrator | 80,000+ | 4.3 / 5 | 403 (309 five-star, 59 one-star) |
| AI Agent by SiteGround | 1,000,000+ | 1.7 / 5 | 98 (16 five-star, 81 one-star) |
WordPress.org rating boxes for Speed Optimizer, Security Optimizer, SiteGround Migrator and AI Agent by SiteGround, Oct 26, 2026.
“The web host installing their new plugin without warning or consent is a big nope.”
The most common complaint: software added to customer sites without a clear opt-in.
“AI Studio helps me fix various technical errors and, at the same time, learn how to improve my website.”
The positive reviews come from people who chose to use the agent.
“they had the patch up about an hour or so after it dropped and auto upgraded us.”
A customer on SiteGround's handling of the Oct 21, 2026 PHP security release.
The Speed Optimizer reviews are mostly warm, with some recent sharp ones. A five-star review from Jun 10, 2026 says it “Improved Core Web Vitals and reduced CLS without heavy tweaking.” A one-star review from Oct 14, 2026 says the plugin “bloated my database from 250MB to 1.8GB”, and another from Jul 27, 2026 says “No app should ever break on the checkout page.” Caching plugins tend to collect exactly this mix, so the pattern matters more than any one review: test caching on a staging copy before you switch it on for a store.
Hacker News has little on SiteGround, eight items since January 2025. Two are useful. One customer described a non-profit site that was taken offline for a while after an aggressive bot crawled it and used up its resources, then added: “Gladly Siteground restored our site without any repercussions as it was not our fault.” That fits the resource limits described in section 12, and shows support reversing the block. Three other items are about the AI plugin rollout; the rest mention SiteGround in passing.
Large review platforms such as G2 and Capterra were not part of this review, so the user picture here is narrower than it could be. SiteGround's pages also show a rating badge from a review site, which this review does not use.
Three shared plans with a first-year price, a renewal price, and a longer table in the help center.
All prices below are in US dollars before tax, from siteground.com on Oct 26, 2026. The plan cards show the first-year price for a 12-month prepaid term and print the renewal price under each button. SiteGround's help article on current rates, last updated Oct 12, 2026, lists the regular price for every billing period. There is no free plan, and SiteGround's help center says plainly: “SiteGround does not offer free trial hosting accounts”. The 30-day money-back guarantee is the trial.
a month for the first 12 months ($35.88 upfront), then $17.99 a month on a 12-month term
- 1 website, 10 GB
- Free domain for year one, SSL, CDN
- Daily backups, free email
- WP-CLI and SSH
- No staging, no Node.js
a month for the first 12 months ($59.88 upfront), then $29.99 a month
- Unlimited websites, 50 GB
- Staging, on-demand backups
- 30% faster PHP (SiteGround's claim)
- 5 Node.js apps
- Higher CPU and file limits
a month for the first 12 months ($95.88 upfront), then $44.99 a month
- Unlimited websites, 100 GB
- Staging plus Git
- White-label access, private DNS
- Priority support
- 10 Node.js apps
a month and up, billed monthly
- Jump Start: 4 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 40 GB
- Business $200, Business Plus $300
- Super Power $400
- Dedicated IP, autoscaling
- 14-day money-back
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Plan | First 12 months | 1 month | 12 months | 24 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StartUp | $2.99 | $24.99 | $17.99 | $14.99 |
| GrowBig | $4.99 | $34.99 | $29.99 | $24.99 |
| GoGeek | $7.99 | $49.99 | $44.99 | $39.99 |
Year one is cheap; year two costs six times as much.
Hosting prices are easy to misread because the big number covers only the first term. Here is the arithmetic for each plan, using SiteGround's own published prices before tax. Year one is the 12-month introductory price; renewals use the regular 12-month or 24-month rate from the help center table.
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Plan | Year 1 | Year 2 (12-mo renewal) | Increase | 3 years, 12-mo renewals | 3 years, one 24-mo renewal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StartUp | $35.88 | $215.88 | +$180.00 | $467.64 | $395.64 |
| GrowBig | $59.88 | $359.88 | +$300.00 | $779.64 | $659.64 |
| GoGeek | $95.88 | $539.88 | +$444.00 | $1,175.64 | $1,055.64 |
Three real-world setups
SiteGround's help center is open about this. Its article on discounts says the introductory price is the first term only and that the renewal price “is typically higher and is displayed during signup, so review it before you buy.” It also says existing customers may be offered renewal discounts in the Client Area, which we cannot check without an account.
Auto-renewal 15 days early, a domain fee that can come out of your refund, and backups you keep yourself.
The rules below come from the US version of SiteGround's Terms of Service, which applies to customers of SG Hosting Inc. and was last revised on Aug 18, 2026, and from SiteGround's help center. The World version, for customers of SiteGround Hosting Ltd. in London, matches on most points; the differences are noted.
| Topic | What SiteGround says |
|---|---|
| Renewal | Plans renew automatically for the same period. Shared plans on 12-month or longer terms are charged 15 days before they expire, monthly ones 5 days before (Terms 8.1 and 8.3). You can switch auto-renewal off in the Client Area. |
| Renewal price | “at time of renewal the then current renewal fees shall apply and they may differ from the fees of your Initial Term.” (Terms 8.2) Price changes are announced before your renewal date (7.2). |
| Refunds | Full refund within 30 days of activation for shared hosting, 14 days for cloud. Renewals: full refund within 30 days if the new term has not started, otherwise the renewal minus the first month (9.3 to 9.5). Refunds within 10 business days in the US, 14 in the World version. |
| Free domain | Free for the first year only (7.15). Domain fees are never refundable, and when you cancel a plan that came with a free domain, SiteGround may deduct the standard domain fee from your refund (9.6). |
| Backups | “You agree that you will keep independent backup copies of your hosting account(s) in addition to those we maintain.” (16.2) |
| Uptime | 99.9% a month. Below that, 5% of that month's fee, given as extra hosting time, measured by SiteGround's own records (5.2 and 5.4). |
| Leaving | Your data is deleted at termination; SiteGround may keep backups up to 90 days in the US (60 days in the World version), with no obligation to provide them (22.8). |
| Disputes | US customers agree to individual arbitration with the American Arbitration Association and waive class actions, with 30 days to opt out after accepting the Terms (24.2 to 24.8). |
The refund rule is the one most likely to surprise a first-time buyer. If you take StartUp with a free .com and cancel within 30 days, the plan is refundable, but the Terms allow SiteGround to keep the standard price of the domain registration. The regular .com price on SiteGround's domains page is $22.99 a year, close to two-thirds of StartUp's $35.88 first-year price. You keep the domain until it expires, according to SiteGround's refund article.
Five places where two SiteGround pages say different things.
None of these is a scandal, but each one changes what you think you are buying. When pages disagree, trust the help article and the Terms over the marketing card.
| Topic | One page says | Another page says |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic | Plan cards: “unlimited traffic” | Feature comparison page: about 10,000, 100,000 and 400,000 suitable monthly visits |
| llm-info: “unlimited email” | Email policy: unlimited accounts, but 10GB of mail in total on shared plans and 400 emails an hour on StartUp and GrowBig | |
| Data centers | llm-info: “10+ data centers” | Company and datacenters pages: 11 |
| Resource limits | Plans reworded to “unlimited traffic” in 2026 | Fair-use article with CPU and file limits last updated Oct 12, 2021 |
| Refund timing | US Terms: refunds within 10 business days | World Terms: 14 business days |
Answer five questions.
Backups, staging, caching and updates, mostly run for you.
SiteGround's case rests on doing the WordPress chores a beginner forgets and a busy owner postpones. Backups run daily on every plan, and the help center says shared plans keep “up to 30 daily backup copies”, with restore of files, databases or email accounts from Site Tools. GrowBig and GoGeek add five slots for backups you trigger yourself, which is the habit to build before any big change. WordPress updates run automatically; the plan cards call it managed autoupdates. Staging, on GrowBig and up, lets you copy a site, change it and push it live. Speed Optimizer handles caching, image compression and lazy loading; Security Optimizer, per SiteGround, hardens sites against brute-force and other attacks.
SiteGround's official channel has a short tutorial on staging in Site Tools. It is from October 2021, so the screens may have moved, but the steps are the same idea: make a copy, work on it, push it back.
| Tool | StartUp | GrowBig | GoGeek |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily backups | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-demand backups | No | Yes | Yes |
| Staging | No | Yes | With Git |
| Node.js apps | 0 | 5 | 10 |
| WP-CLI and SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| White label | No | No | Yes |
| Priority support | No | No | Yes |
Six steps, and the two that people skip.
The limits behind “unlimited traffic”
SiteGround's fair-use article explains how shared servers are kept fair: CPU time is measured per account, and accounts that use far more than their share for long periods can be throttled. It lists thresholds per plan and hard limits on the number of files, folders and email messages, called inodes. When a site goes over, the article says SiteGround may need “to limit the access to your website until you take action.” The article was last updated on Oct 12, 2021, so ask support whether the figures still apply before you plan a large site around them.
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Limit | StartUp | GrowBig | GoGeek | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU seconds per hour / day / month | 1,000 / 10,000 / 300,000 | 2,000 / 20,000 / 600,000 | 4,000 / 40,000 / 800,000 | Fair use (2021) |
| Inodes (hard limit) | 200,000 | 400,000 | 600,000 | Fair use (2021) |
| RAM per process | 768MB | 768MB | 768MB | Fair use (2021) |
| Database size | 1000MB | 1000MB | 1000MB | Fair use (2021) |
| Email storage | 10GB total | 10GB total | 10GB total | Email policy (Mar 13, 2026) |
| Emails sent per hour | 400 | 400 | 800 | Email policy (Mar 13, 2026) |
An AI agent for WordPress that you can now use on any host, and that SiteGround reportedly switched on for you.
SiteGround spent 2026 adding AI products: AI Studio, a workspace with chat models and task agents; the AI Agent by SiteGround plugin, which manages WordPress and WooCommerce by chat; and Coderick AI, a separate builder that creates sites and apps from a description, with a 14-day trial. AI Studio runs on AI tokens, and the hosting plans include free tokens. The agent's plugin page says it can create and publish posts, update plugins and themes, manage users and WooCommerce orders, and run the same change across many sites. Destructive actions such as deletions and bulk edits need a setting called Power Mode, which the plugin page says is “disabled by default”.
The controversy is about how it arrived. Ahead of WordPress 7.0, which added a standard way to connect AI providers, SiteGround emailed customers that it would update their sites and connect them to AI Studio. The email, as reproduced in a wp-content.co report of May 30, 2026, carried the heading “AI Studio with 20,000 free tokens to be enabled as your default AI connector”, and said sites with a white-label client added would be left out. The report describes customers finding the plugin installed and active: “The plugin arrived already activated and pre-configured as the site’s default AI connector, along with 20,000 free monthly AI tokens.” The plugin passed one million active installs; by Oct 26, 2026 it had 81 one-star ratings out of 98.
Our reading: the agent itself has guardrails, and the rollout broke an expectation that a host does not add software to your WordPress install unless it is a security fix. If you manage client sites, that matters more than any feature on the plan cards. SiteGround's plugin page says the AI connector can be switched off separately from the agent, and the agent can be deactivated like any plugin.
| AI product | What it does | Cost as published |
|---|---|---|
| AI Agent for WordPress | Manages posts, plugins, users and WooCommerce by chat, across sites | Uses AI Studio tokens; free tokens with hosting |
| AI Studio | Chat with several AI models and run task agents | 14-day trial with 20,000 tokens for non-customers; paid plans |
| Coderick AI | Builds sites and web apps from a description, hosted by SiteGround | 14-day trial with 50,000 credits; Plus and Pro plans |
| Website Builder AI | AI text and image generation in the drag-and-drop builder | Included in the hosting plans |
Fast server-side patching, off-site backups, and a few rules worth knowing before you trust it with a business.
Security is where SiteGround's in-house approach shows. When PHP announced two critical flaws for a fix on Oct 21, 2026, SiteGround says it put protections on all its servers at 07:00 UTC, seven hours before PHP's release at 14:00, then applied the official fixes the same day. A customer on Hacker News described the patch arriving about an hour after release. Backups are stored on a different server from your site, and for most sites in a different location, according to the backup article.
| Question | Answer from SiteGround's pages |
|---|---|
| Where is my data? | In the data center you choose at signup; EU locations are available |
| Can I download a backup? | Only with the paid Premium Backup add-on; its price is not shown on SiteGround's public pages |
| What if I delete a site? | “if you plan to delete your site, you will no longer have access to its backups.” |
| Health data? | The US Terms say the services “do not comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” |
| Can SiteGround end my service? | Yes, with 15 days' notice in the US if, in its opinion, you lack “basic technical knowledge to use the Service(s) without excessive ongoing technical support”, among other reasons |
| Host-added software? | Reported: the AI agent and connector were enabled by default in May 2026; both can be turned off |
SiteGround's tutorial on installing a free Let's Encrypt certificate in Site Tools is from September 2020, but shows the basic security step every site needs.
People who value help and tooling more than the lowest bill.
| Who | Fit | Likely plan |
|---|---|---|
| First blog or portfolio, not technical | Good, if the year-two price is budgeted | StartUp |
| Small business with a site and a small shop | Good: staging and backups protect changes | GrowBig |
| Freelancer or small agency | Good tooling; check the shared limits and the AI rollout history | GoGeek |
| Busy WooCommerce store | Shared limits may bind; budget for cloud at $100 a month and up | GoGeek or Cloud |
| Price-first buyer over 3+ years | Weak: renewals run above Hostinger and DreamHost | Look elsewhere |
| Health or regulated data in the US | Not a fit: not HIPAA compliant per the Terms | None |
Seven things to weigh before you prepay.
- Daily backups kept up to 30 days on every shared plan
- Staging, Git and white-label tools on higher plans
- Fast server-side patching in Oct 2026
- Well-rated speed, security and migration plugins
- Prices and renewal prices printed on the plan cards
- 30-day money-back on shared hosting
- Renewal at about six times the first-year price
- StartUp hosts one site; limits behind “unlimited”
- Backup downloads cost extra; deleting a site deletes its backups
- Free domain only in year one, and its fee can come out of a refund
- AI plugin reportedly enabled by default in May 2026
- Big jump from GoGeek to $100 cloud
- US arbitration clause; no HIPAA compliance
- The renewal step. $2.99 becomes $17.99 a month on a 12-month term, and a three-year StartUp plan costs $467.64 before tax and domain.
- One site on StartUp. A second site means GrowBig, which renews at $29.99 a month.
- “Unlimited” is bounded. CPU-time thresholds, hard file limits, a 10GB mail cap and 400 emails an hour on the two lower plans.
- Backups you cannot take with you for free. Restores are free, downloads need Premium Backup, and the Terms put independent backups on you.
- Refund deductions. A free domain can cost you its standard price if you cancel within the 30 days.
- Trust and control. The reported May 2026 AI rollout suggests that SiteGround is willing to add software to customer sites by default.
- Mixed messages on its own pages. Traffic, email and data center figures differ between pages (section 09).
Hostinger, DreamHost, FastComet, Kinsta and WP Engine, priced on the same day.
All prices from each host's own page on Oct 26, 2026, in US dollars before tax. Hosts structure terms differently: Hostinger's lowest price needs a 48-month prepay, DreamHost's is for the first year, Kinsta and WP Engine sell managed WordPress per site. The plans are not like-for-like.
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Need | Host and plan | First term | Renews at | Sites | JAVIS review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed WordPress, low first year | SiteGround StartUp | $2.99 (12 mo) | $17.99 | 1 | This page |
| Lowest long-term shared price | Hostinger Premium | $2.49 (48 mo) | $10.99 | 3 | Hostinger review |
| Many small sites on one plan | DreamHost Web Hosting Launch | $2.89 (1 yr) | $10.99 | 25 | Not yet |
| Another budget shared host | FastComet | from $1.99 | regular rate | see review | FastComet review |
| Premium managed WordPress, one site | Kinsta Single 20GB | $0 first month | $35 ($30 yearly) | 1 | Not yet |
| Managed WordPress with a big brand | WP Engine Essential | from $28 (yearly) | first-year price | see plan | Not yet |
Read side by side, SiteGround sits between the budget shared hosts and the premium managed WordPress hosts. After year one, StartUp costs $7 a month more than Hostinger Premium and DreamHost's Launch plan, both of which host more sites. Kinsta's single-site plan costs about the same as GrowBig but covers one site with 10GB and 14 days of backups. What SiteGround offers in that gap is daily backups for 30 days, staging and Git on its own control panel, at a shared-hosting price.
This review has no affiliate links.
Every SiteGround link here goes straight to siteground.com, its hosting plans, its help center or its legal pages, without tracking parameters. The score, the drawbacks and the alternatives would be the same either way.
How this review was put together: SiteGround's web hosting, WordPress, cloud, datacenters, company, AI agent and domains pages, the feature comparison page, the llm-info page, help articles on rates, refunds, renewals, discounts, free trials, domains, fair use, email and backups, both the US and World versions of the Terms of Service, SiteGround blog posts, two official SiteGround videos, Internet Archive copies of the hosting page from Jan 1, 2024 to Oct 5, 2026, WordPress.org plugin pages and reviews, Hacker News, a wp-content.co report, W3Techs, and the Hostinger, DreamHost, FastComet, Kinsta and WP Engine pricing pages, as of Oct 26, 2026. This is not a hands-on test: no account, no purchase, no migration, no speed or uptime measurement and no support contact, so nothing here describes SiteGround's speed, uptime or support from our own use. Screenshots show public pages only.
Other hosts and site builders, and the AI tools that now sit inside them.
Each card opens a published JAVIS review, routed by where you are.
Questions people ask before buying
How much does SiteGround cost in 2026?
Per siteground.com on Oct 26, 2026: StartUp $2.99, GrowBig $4.99 and GoGeek $7.99 a month for the first 12 months, paid upfront ($35.88, $59.88 or $95.88), then $17.99, $29.99 or $44.99 a month on a 12-month term, before tax. Cloud hosting starts at $100 a month.
Is there a free plan or free trial?
No. SiteGround's help center says it does not offer free trial hosting accounts. The 30-day money-back guarantee on shared plans is the closest thing.
Can I get my money back?
Yes, within 30 days of activation on shared hosting and 14 days on cloud. Domain fees are not refundable, and if your plan came with a free domain, SiteGround may deduct the standard domain fee from the refund.
Is SiteGround's traffic really unlimited?
The plan cards say unlimited traffic, but the fair-use article sets CPU-time thresholds and hard file limits per plan, and the feature comparison page still lists about 10,000, 100,000 and 400,000 suitable monthly visits.
Does SiteGround back up my site?
Yes, daily, with up to 30 copies on shared plans and free restores. Downloading a backup needs the paid Premium Backup add-on, and deleting a site removes access to its backups, so keep your own copy.
What was the AI plugin controversy?
Around the WordPress 7.0 update in May 2026, according to an email SiteGround sent customers and a wp-content.co report, SiteGround enabled its AI connector and AI agent plugin on customer WordPress sites by default. Many customers objected; the plugin is rated 1.7 out of 5 from 98 WordPress.org ratings as of Oct 26, 2026. Both the connector and the agent can be turned off.
Is SiteGround a good choice for WordPress beginners?
For a first site, StartUp gives backups, updates, caching and support with little setup. Budget for the year-two price and keep your own backup copy.
Where this came from, and when.
Every price, limit, rule and rating in this review comes from the pages below, as of Oct 26, 2026 unless another date is given. Expand for the full list, the scoring method and what the review does not cover.
Show sources, scoring method and scope
Pricing: siteground.com/web-hosting.htm and its markdown copy, /wordpress-hosting.htm, /shared-hosting-features.htm, /cloud-hosting.htm, /domain_names and /llm-info (prices in US dollars before tax); help article on current rates of shared hosting plans (Oct 12, 2026); Internet Archive copies of www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm from Jan 1 and Jul 6, 2024, Jan 14 and May 14, 2025, Nov 12, 2025, Feb 3, May 26, Aug 1, Sep 1 and Oct 5, 2026.
Help center (siteground.com/kb): current rates (Oct 12, 2026); money back guarantee (Oct 7, 2026); free trial (Dec 5, 2025); renewal billing (Feb 1, 2022); promo codes and renewal prices (Aug 24, 2026); domain renewal (Aug 26, 2026); fair use (Oct 12, 2021); email acceptable use (Mar 13, 2026); backup service (May 13, 2026); AI tokens (Aug 18, 2026); connecting AI Studio with WordPress (Sep 25, 2026).
Legal: SiteGround Terms of Service, US version for SG Hosting Inc. and World version for SiteGround Hosting Ltd., both revised Aug 18, 2026; Acceptable Use Policy, Premium Backup Service Terms, Privacy Policy, Data Processing Agreement, AI Tools Terms and Domain Name Agreement.
Product and company: siteground.com home, company, datacenters, technology, AI agent for WordPress, website builder, ecommerce, email marketing and WordPress plugins pages; blog posts of Jan 22, Aug 20, Oct 1 and Oct 21, 2026; Internet Archive copies of siteground.com/ai-studio (Sep 23, 2026) and /coderick-ai (Sep 25, 2026).
Video: two official SiteGround videos from the @SiteGround channel listed on siteground.com/llm-info: akfIpXII2X0 (Create a staging copy in Site Tools, Oct 26, 2021) and 7xbnI2a3_g4 (How to install free SSL Let's Encrypt certificate in Site Tools, Sep 23, 2020).
Independent evidence: WordPress.org plugin pages and review lists for Speed Optimizer, Security Optimizer, SiteGround Migrator and AI Agent by SiteGround; Hacker News items 50189492, 42726337, 48397805, 48326434 and 48370731; wp-content.co report of May 30, 2026; W3Techs web hosting survey. G2 and Capterra figures are not used.
Competitors: hostinger.com/web-hosting, dreamhost.com/hosting/shared, fastcomet.com, kinsta.com/pricing and wpengine.com/plans, Oct 26, 2026.
Images: screenshots of public pages taken on Oct 26, 2026 at 1280 pixels wide; archived pages show the Internet Archive's toolbar. Photos of people, account avatars, usernames, an author name and review-site rating rows are covered with grey boxes. JAVIS charts and diagrams are labelled as such and computed from the figures above. Related cards use JAVIS's own featured images.
JAVIS Fit Score (64/100): an editorial composite scored out of 20 on five criteria. Price clarity 13: first-year and renewal prices are both on the plan cards and a full rates table is public, but the six-fold renewal, the domain deduction and conflicting traffic and email wording cost points. Capability 16: daily backups for 30 days, staging, Git, Node.js, own control panel, well-rated plugins and fast server-side patching, against one site on StartUp and limits behind “unlimited”. Independent evidence 10: large WordPress.org rating samples for SiteGround's plugins and a few Hacker News comments, but no independent uptime or speed data and no large hosting-review platform in this review. Terms, data and security 12: off-site backups, data center choice and quick patching, against paid backup downloads, a 90-day maximum backup retention after termination, US arbitration, no HIPAA compliance and the default-on AI rollout. Cost and fit 13: a fair price for managed WordPress in year one and good tooling for the money, but renewals above Hostinger and DreamHost. It is judgment, not a measurement.
What this review does not cover: SiteGround's real-world speed and uptime, support quality and response times, the checkout flow and taxes, renewal discounts offered inside the Client Area, Premium Backup and AI Studio prices, and prices in other currencies.
