Hosting Package Comparison

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Through a number of hosting packages, SiteGround provides web site hosting for:

• Joomla
• WordPress
• Magento
• Drupal
• WooCommerce
• Prestashop

• Shared Server Hosting
  • StartUp
  • GrowBig
  • GoGeek

• Cloud Hosting
  • Jump Start
  • Business
  • Business Plus
  • Super Power

In this article we go through features offered at SiteGround - and the ways some of those benefits can be utilised.

Shared hosting versus Cloud hosting:

Shared hosting

Is widely used and is an affordable type of hosting service.

In shared hosting, many websites and user accounts share a physical server along with the server's resources.

Cloud hosting

If your website needs a more powerful hosting solution, compared to shared hosting, cloud hosting is a great option.

By providing you with an autoscaling option, which adds more resources to the server, cloud hosting is very powerful and flexible.

Cloud hosting is much more powerful as you get a full server on your own and you do not share your resources with anyone else.

You have the freedom to create and manage hosting accounts on the server and perform other server configurations.

Cloud hosting tends to be more expensive than shared hosting.

Shared Server Hosting

The preferred Joomla!^® hosting provider of usingjoomla.com provides three shared server hosting package options:

• StartUp
• GrowBig
• GoGeek

Which package you select depends on your website hosting requirements.

Each hosting package in-a-nutshell:

StartUp - This hosting package option gives you all the hosting essentials you would require for a "getting started" website or an average sized blog or personal website.

GrowBig - This hosting package would be suitable if you require more resources than a StartUp package, or a greater degree of features.GrowBig package would be suitable for a single more heavily visited website or multiple average sized websites. Ideal for people who want to host multiple sites in one hosting account.

GoGeek - If you have a resource-intensive or heavily-visited website GoGeek would be a good choice. GoGeek customers are hosted on a server with fewer customers - therefore fewer customers share the available resources - meaning each customer is able to utilise a greater proportion of those resources.

Below we show you a more detailed comparison table of SiteGround's shared server packages.

Essential Features

Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Suitable number of monthly site visits	10 000	25 000	100 000
Web Space	10GB	20GB	40GB
Hosted websites	One 1	Unlimited ∞	Unlimited ∞
Data transfer	Unlimited ∞	Unlimited ∞	Unlimited ∞
Free drag and drop builder	Yes	Yes	Yes
100% Renewable energy match	Yes	Yes	Yes
Automated daily backup	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced on-demand backup	No	Yes	Yes
Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
30 days money back guarantee	Yes	Yes	Yes
Power redundancy	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hardware redundancy	Yes	Yes	Yes
Friendly Site Tools	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pre-Installed Git	Yes	Yes	Yes
ionCube	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zend Optimizer	Yes	Yes	Yes
php.ini	Yes	Yes	Yes
Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
.htaccess	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mod_rewrite	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zlib	Yes	Yes	Yes
CURL	Yes	Yes	Yes
ImageMagick	Yes	Yes	Yes
GD Library	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Content Management System (CMS) Install	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free email accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Unlimited MySQL Databases	Yes	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL Databases	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Secure Shell (SSH) Access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) Access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Unlimited Sub-domains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Unlimited Parked Domains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ship site to client	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add collaborators	Yes	Yes	Yes
Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
White label hosting & client management	No	No	Yes
Free Let's Encrypt Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificates	Yes	Yes	Yes
24 / 7 Server Monitoring	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free private DNS	No	No	Yes

Secure Shell - SSH

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network by using a client-server architecture.

Free SSL Certificates

Free Let's Encrypt Standard and Wildcard Certificates.

The Standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate is pre-installed for your website.

Performance Boosters

Servers on 4 continents

United States of America	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Council Bluffs Iowa Dallas Texas Ashburn Virginia Los Angeles California	Yes	Yes	Yes
Europe	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
London United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Frankfurt Germany Eemshaven Nederland Madrid Spain	Yes	Yes	Yes
Oceania	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Sydney Australia	Yes	Yes	Yes
Asia	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Singapore Singapore	Yes	Yes	Yes

SiteGround CDN locations

United States of America	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Ashburn Virginia Council Bluffs Iowa Dallas Texas Los Angeles California Moncks Corner South Carolina The Dalles Oregon	Yes	Yes	Yes
Europe	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
London United kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Madrid Spain Eemshaven Netherlands Frankfurt Germany Hamina Finland Warsaw Poland	Yes	Yes	Yes
Asia	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Tokyo Japan Singapore Singapore	Yes	Yes	Yes
Oceania	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Sydney Australia	Yes	Yes	Yes
South America	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Sao Paulo Brazil	Yes	Yes	Yes

Faster Loading Of Sites	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Solid State Drive (SSD) Storage	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom server setup	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Content Delivery Network (CDN)	Yes	Yes	Yes
HTTP/2 Enabled servers	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supercacher Options	Yes	Yes	Yes

Support

Support	Startup	GrowBig	GoGeek
24/7	Yes	Yes	Yes
Telephone	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chat	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ticket	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced priority	No	No	Yes
Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes	Yes

eCommerce

eCommerce	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Free shopping cart install	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free Let's Encrypt Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificates	Yes	Yes	Yes

Free SSL Certificates

Free Let's Encrypt Standard and Wildcard Certificates.

The Standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate is pre-installed for your website.

Advanced Features

Caching

Level	Caching Type
1	NGINX Direct Delivery
2	Dynamic Data Cache NGINX
3	Database Queries Results Cache Memcached

1) NGINX Direct Delivery

With NGINX Direct Delivery SiteGround will serve most of the static resources of your website (for example: images, javascript, Cascading Style Sheets) directly through NGINX to achieve the fastest possible loading time.

NGINX Direct Delivery works for all kind of applications without additional customisation.

2) Dynamic Data Cache

Dynamic Cache is a full-page caching mechanism for non-static resources.

Dynamic Cache prevents unnecessary database queries, processing of each page visit, and more tasks - highly improving your website loading speed and so the time-to-first-byte (TTFB) of your pages.

3) Memcached Caching

Memcached caching is an object caching mechanism designed to improve the connection between your application and its database.

Memcached caching greatly improves the load speed of dynamic content that cannot be served by the Dynamic Caching ( for example: checkout pages, dashboards, and backends ).

Email Resources

Web-based email client: RoundCube

Email spam protection provided by: SolarWinds Spam Experts

Server Resources

Resource	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
CPU Seconds / Program and Script Executions	1000 / hour 10 000 / day 300 000 / month	2000 / hour 20 000 / day 600 000 / month	4000 / hour 40 000 / day 800 000 / month
Server memory per process	768 MB	768 MB	768 MB
Maximum number of inodes	200 000	400 000	600 000
Minimum CRON job interval time	30 minutes	30 minutes	30 minutes
Maximum database size	1000 MB	1000 MB	1000 MB

Inodes

An inode is a record in a disk table.

This record contains information about a file or folder - such as:

• file / folder size
• file / folder Owner
• file type
• access permissions (for example: read, write, execute)

Each folder, and each file, will have an inode.

The inode record does not contain the file-name or file / folder data content.

Therefore, the number of inodes on your account equals the number of files and folders you have on it.

SiteGround friendly Site Tools Features

Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Install new sites	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit existing sites	Yes	Yes	Yes
Remove existing sites	Yes	Yes	Yes
Install applications	Yes	Yes	Yes
Remove applications	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create new email accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create email forwarders	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create email autoresponders	Yes	Yes	Yes
Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Create email filters	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create File Transfer Protocol (FTP) accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit File Transfer Protocol (FTP) accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Block IP addresses	Yes	Yes	Yes
Install Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates	Yes	Yes	Yes
Activate caching	Yes	Yes	Yes
Configure Content Delivery Network (CDN)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Create subdomains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage subdomains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create Parked Domains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage Parked Domains	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage Pre-Hypertext Processing (PHP) versions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Configure Pre-Hypertext Processing (PHP) variables	Yes	Yes	Yes
Monitor site traffic statistics	Yes	Yes	Yes
File Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Manage CRON tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
MySQL Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) Enforce	Yes	Yes	Yes
Protected Universal Resource Links (URLs) management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create and manage Domain Redirects	Yes	Yes	Yes
Domain Name System (DNS) Zone Editor	Yes	Yes	Yes
email Authentication management	Yes	Yes	Yes
Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
Error Log	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access Log	Yes	Yes	Yes
See disk usage by website	Yes	Yes	Yes
See total disk usage for account	Yes	Yes	Yes
See total disk space remaining for account	Yes	Yes	Yes
See total number of inodes used for account	Yes	Yes	Yes
See number of inodes used per website	Yes	Yes	Yes
See total number of inodes remaining for account	Yes	Yes	Yes
Site Tools Feature	StartUp	GrowBig	GoGeek
SiteScanner Malware detection and early warning system	Yes	Yes	Yes
Secure Shell (SSH) Keys Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
Domain registration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Domain transfer	Yes	Yes	Yes
See number of Central Processing Unit (CPU) seconds used per hour	Yes	Yes	Yes
See number of Cental processing Unit (CPU) seconds used per day	Yes	Yes	Yes
See number of program executions per hour	Yes	Yes	Yes
See number of program executions per day	Yes	Yes	Yes

DNS Zone Editor

The Domain Name System (DNS), sometimes called Domain Name Service, is a system (service) that converts human-readable domain names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

To achieve this convertion, the DNS reads from the DNS zone file which consists of a number of zone records.

Zone records instruct your domain name where to look for your site and email, set up domain aliases, add rules or additional information to your domain.

The following DNS Zone records can be edited / created through the SiteGround Site Tools "DNS Zone Editor"

• A
• AAAA
• CNAME
• MX
• SRV
• TXT

Manage CRON Tasks

A 'cron job' or 'cron task' is a service that schedules script execution at specific dates and times, usually used to schedule recurring / repetitive tasks.

The cron command-line utility, also known as cron job or cron task, is a task scheduler on Unix-like operating systems typically automating system maintenance or administration.

The general-purpose nature makes it is useful for things like carrying out backups (such as triggering an Akeeba Backup).

Cron tasks can be set up to run on days and times outside of your core working hours or monthly / weekly / yearly at a specified date / time of the month.

A cron task can do tasks which means that you do not forget to do the task manually.

CDN - Content Delivery Network

SiteGround CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a tool that speeds up your website when you have geographically dispersed traffic across multiple countries and continents.

SiteGround CDN will cache your website content and distribute it over multiple data centers around the world.

When someone visits your website the content will be delivered from the server closest to the visitor rather than, potentially, several thousand miles away.

PostGre SQL

PostgreSQL is an open-source object-relational database system that uses and extends the Structured Query Language language (SQL) combined with many features that safely store and scale the most complicated data workloads.

PostgreSQL allows custom functions developed using different programming languages such as C/C++, C#, Python, Ruby, Perl and Java.

PostgreSQL is known for its stability, reliability, integrity and scalability.

MySQL

MySQL is a database management system based on Structured Query Language (SQL).

A popular language for adding, accessing and managing content in a database, MySQL is known for quick processing, proven reliability, flexibility as well as ease of use.

MySQL is an essential part of PHP applications, for example, Joomla!.

Parked Domains

Parked domains are additional domains that can be used to reach your site.

Parked Domains can be used in the cases where you want to have different spellings of your domain opening the same site, or you want to make sure that you do not lose any misguided visitors by having all TLDs of your primary domain name (e.g. yoursite.com, yoursite.net, yoursite.org).

Domain Redirects

Domain redirects are used for forwarding one URL to another.

This can be useful in several cases, such as:

• Redirecting the URL of a page that no longer exists to a new URL
• Temporararily redirecting traffic from one page, or category, to another page or category
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes

e-mail Forwarders

You can set up and use e-mail forwarders to easily redirect e-mails from one mailbox (e-mail address) to another.

You can also set up discard rules.

Discard rules can be used in preventing e-mails from reaching a specific e-mail box or setting up automatic reply messages for unattended e-mail addresses.

E-mail Autoresponders

You can set up e-mail autoresponders to notify senders that you are:

• Unavailable
• Out of the office
• Need some time to reply

Auto-responders can be permanent or can be scheduled for a specific period of time.

e-mail Filters

You can automate e-mail management by setting up e-mail filters.

e-mail filtering enables you to quickly set up different rules for e-mail processing both on domain level (all emails under one domain) and user level.

You can create custom e-mail filters for

• Automatic e-mail forwarding
• e-mail sorting
• Discarding e-mails
• plus other tasks

E-mail Authentication

e-mail Authentication enables you to set up rules preventing e-mail spoofing.

The options below are used to equip e-mail messages with verifiable information so that servers can automatically detect the origin of incoming and outgoing messages and make sure that e-mails are sent and received from authorized sources.

Authentication methods: SPF

Sender Policy Framework - (SPF) - is an e-mail validation protocol used to prevent e-mail spoofing by telling the e-mail receiving mail exchanges if a certain e-mail is coming from an IP or host authorised to send e-mail for the sending domain.

Having an SPF record can be essential to prevent e-mail phishing and spam.

You can:

• Approve Hosts
• Approve MX (mail exchange) Records
• Approve / Block IPs

Authentication methods: DKIM

Domain Keys Identified Mail - (DKIM) - is an e-mail authentication method used to prevent e-mail spoofing by allowing the receiver to check if an incoming e-mail claimed to have come from a specific domain, was indeed authorised by the owner of the domain.

Spam Protection

Spam Protection by SolarWinds Spam Experts, filters your incoming and outgoing e-mails and helps to eliminate spam.

The system can be taught to recognise suspicious messages, based on user settings and previous behavior, helping to give a spam-free inbox.

SiteScanner

The SiteScanner is a malware detection and early warning system.

This system enables you to perform on-demand scans of your website and performs comprehensive daily scans to detect domain blacklisting and malware.

The malware database is constantly updated enabling the SiteScanner to detect even the latest threats.

The SiteScanner helps you protect your website by constantly crawling and analysing your files, pages and domain.

SiteScanner can identify the latest Malware threats, and when it does, it notifies you immediately so that you can take actions and clean your website.

SiteScanner scans your files, URL and domain names on a daily basis and detects the latest malware and potential threats.

For your peace of mind you can receive daily reports - informing you about your website status so that you can take actions and avoid downtime, data breach or other potential issues.

Application Installer

Using the SiteGround Site Tools Application (app) Installer you can install the following Applications

Forums
phpBB
SMF
Wiki Education
MediaWiki
Moodle
Other
LimeSurvey
phpList
Piwigo
Customer Relationship Management ( CRM )
vTiger

Shopping Carts
PrestaShop
OpenCart
ZenCart
WordPress WooCommerce
Blogs Content Management Systems ( CMS )
Joomla
WordPress
Drupal
Weebly
HelpDesk
osTicket

Site Tools Interface

Site Tools Interface.

Commonly used tools can be "pinned" into this area for ease of access.

Viewable Site Visitor / Traffic Statistics

The SiteGround Site Tools extracts visitor information from your server logs and visualises it in easy-to-read graphics.

You can get valuable information about unique visitors, pageviews, visitors browsers and preferred search engines, as well as keywords that have been used to bring traffic to your website.

Traffic Summary - Chart View

Traffic summary.

Chart view.

Traffic Summary - Table View

Traffic summary.

Table view.

Unique Visitors - Chart View

Unique visitors.

Chart view.

Pageviews - Chart View

Pageviews.

Chart view.

Average Number Of Pages Per Visit - Chart View

Average number of pages per visit.

Chart view.

Site Bandwidth - Chart View

Site bandwidth.

Chart view.

Audience (Countries) - Chart view

Audience (countries).

Chart view.

Audience ( Countries ) - Table view

Audience (countries).

Table view.

Technology - Chart View

Technology.

Operating Systems and Browsers used by site visitors.

Chart view.

Technology - Table View

Technology.

Operating Systems and Browsers used by site visitors.

Table view.

Traffic Sources - Search Engines

Traffic sources.

Search Engines.

Chart view.

Traffic sources.

Search Engines.

Table view.

Account Resource Statistics

Hosting Account Resource Overview.

Web Space Statistics

Hosting web-space used per website, and web-space used in total, hosted under the account.

Web-sites hosted within the account are listed to the right.

Inode Use

Inode usage by site and account.

Program Executions

Viewable / selectable by hour or by day for the chosen date.

Program executions.

Selectable to view by the hour or the day for the chosen date.

CPU Seconds

Viewable / selectable by hour or by day for the chosen date.

CPU seconds used.

Selectable to view by the hour or the day for the chosen date.

Visitor Behaviour

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Cloud Hosting Server

There are four pre-configured Cloud hosting packages:

• Jump Start
• Business
• Business Plus
• Super Power

Below are two feature comparison tables showing the difference between each of those four pre-configured packages.

Not see what you want in the above Cloud packages ?

You can also build your own custom cloud by choosing between the minimum and maximum CPU Cores, Memory (RAM), and SSD (Solid State Drive) size - the cost per month / year will depend on how much you need / choose of each feature.

What is more important to you ? CPU cores ? Memory (RAM) ? or perhaps Solid State Drive (SSD) size ? Or a combination of any of those ?

Below we show 4 examples of what you can achieve through custom cloud - the number of possibilities are enormous.

Cloud Autoscaling.

The cloud server autostaling can be ustilised to meet an event such as increases in traffic.

From your User area you can set your cloud’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) (cores) or memory (RAM) to autoscale when the CPU (cores) or RAM (Memory) consumption reaches certain levels.

This is an excellent way to avoid downtime or website slowness at times of increased traffic.

By default the option to utilise autoscaling is NOT turned on.

The creation of an event which requires autoscaling - setting the levels when the autoscaling occurs - is easy.

SiteGround will only bill you for the additional CPU (Cores), RAM (Memory), and / or Disk space when and if the scaling actually happens.

When you add more RAM (memory), CPU (cores), or disk space, any two, or all three together the extra resources are added immediately and without downtime associated with the procedure or rebooting - this is applicable to both the autoscaling event or when you scale your server manually.

When an autoscaling event is triggered, the additional resources RAM (memory)and / or CPU (cores) are added for a period of one calendar month. If you want to keep the extra resources for longer, you can set them to auto-renew.

Pricing note

Pricing shown in the image above may not reflect current prices, discounts and promotions.

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