The battle between SiteGround by DreamHost has been raging online for some time now. In recent months, their prices have risen substantially and some users have stopped using them altogether. So, is there really a clear winner? What are the pros and cons of both hosting companies before deciding which one to use?
In general, SiteGround tend to be the clear winner when it came to providing the best free hosting service. They have consistently made your WordPress website load quicker, and they have generally had a better track record when it came to technical support. But, the most complicating issue is that SiteGround often charge more than DreamHost when it come to domain registration and other features.
From an overview, you can tell that SiteGround has a few advantages over DreamHost when it came to pricing and features. For one thing, they have simpler setup. You don’t need to sign up for a yearly or lifetime subscription to use the site. Instead, you just pay for the domain name and the web hosting every month. You don’t have to worry about any complicated hosting management and maintenance, and the in-house cpanel (with all its benefits) is fairly easy to set up and use.
Their in-house dashboard proves to be somewhat less attractive than DreamHost’s. While you can customize the in-house dashboard with some plug-ins, it’s not as customizable as what you’d get with a premium hosting service. Also, most of the available plug-ins are not free, so it’s unlikely that you’ll find any really useful ones here.
In addition, you won’t find any advanced options in case you want an in-house shopping cart option or if you want to install any third party add-ons. Neither will you find any free credits to add on any features that are currently available on the site. On the plus side, SiteGround also offers unlimited domains and sub-domains for the one-year paid plan, which is actually a very good deal considering the fact that you can easily get a few extra domains out of the whole thing. They do not offer any unlimited space plans.
SiteGround also has another major disadvantage in comparison to DreamHost: its in-house email system. The in-house system is very basic and lacks any of the advanced features that would allow you to build a more customizable data centers. If you only have a few domains, then the monthly billing may be adequate, but if you have many domains, you will spend a lot of time trying to keep up with all the automatic email updates. It doesn’t help that their free domain parking offers are limited as well. On the other hand, with DreamHost’s comprehensive service, you can choose anything from a free domain parking plan to a full-fledge customized solution for your web site needs.
For the webmasters who prefer to operate their websites without the help of web hosts or virtual assistants, SiteGround serves as a decent alternative. It’s free to sign up, which gives you instant access to their advanced features such as the website builder, the advanced dashboard, and the chapel development platform. The channel development platform offers useful tools such as the advanced widgets, which can be used to design a site in just a few clicks. It’s also great for testing out different web designs and functionalities, before you publish them to the live server. The in-house panel software allows you to create and manage different accounts such as your “master” account, “standard” account, “add-on” accounts, “customer” accounts, and more. Although the panel itself isn’t very user friendly at first, it does have a “How-To” section that will walk you through the entire process.
As you investigate these two hosting companies, analyze the differences between their hosting plans as well as their plans and the services offered by them. You’ll also want to compare the different types of monthly billing cycles available with each provider. In short, when you’re comparison shopping, make sure that you get enough information to make a sound decision about which is best for you. Consider the amount of space provided, the level of customer support, the ease of using their tools, the price, the number of domains that you’ll be allowed to host with them, and other features such as unlimited billing cycles and special promo prices.
