SiteGround GoGeek Review 2022: Data-Backed Approach

This is my new review on the SiteGround GoGeek plan. I bought an account long back to test the GoGeek plan and publish a review with authentic data.

So,I hosted a site bloggingio-sg3.com in my GoGeek account and here are the uptime, response time and other essential factors, you need to know.

Since I hold an account, do put your questions about SiteGround GoGeek in comments, I will 100% provide you actionable insights.

SiteGround GoGeek Review

To test SiteGround GoGeek, I hosted this site bloggingio-sg3.com in SiteGround US data center, Lowa.

Pros of Using SiteGround GoGeek

1. Extremely Reliable Performance

Being the topmost plan, SiteGround put utmost emphasis to make this package better, so the uptime is 100% throughout our testing period.

You can see the site loads below 500ms is most locations which is quite good among other SiteGround plans of Growbig and Startup.

Since Google Lowa data center is located in Central America, the site can loads evenly better on all USA states. I found this to be good because most of the hosting companies either use San Francisco, Dallas in South location, and Chicago, New York in North which is not a strategic position to cover entire nation.

Apart from Uptime and Response time, TTFB is an important factor to improve server response time. I run this SiteGround GoGeek TTFB test on my site and here are the results. The site loads less than 400ms in US locations as the physical data center is present there.

Google recommends less than 200ms TTFB is good but that's not possible without using a CDN and my test doesn't include CDN. You can check my site produces less than 50ms TTFB on a global location with CDN which is hosted on Liquid Web.

The below performance test will load the website for 1st and 2nd times and helps to analyze the loading time. The average load time for the first visit is 887.5ms while the second visit is 512.1ms. You can see the site takes more than 1 seconds to load from Dallas, thus a CDN is mandatory to use at SiteGround plans.

A website's performance is made out of its uptime and loading time. Using SiteGround GoGeek, a user's site will certainly have good uptime and speed backed by Google Cloud's ultra-fast network, SSD persistent storage, NGINX Direct Delivery, Free CDN, Multiple server-level software solutions such as HTTP/2, Memcached, and PHP optimization.

On top of that, GoGeek, being the highest tier plan consists of high server resources and one can feel the difference with simultaneous connections and processes, more CPU seconds, and higher process execution time.

2. Speed Boosting Caching

The GoGeek Nginx Direct Delivery Caching will deliver the static resources of the site (CSS, JS, Images) through Nginx instead of static caching which they used before.

The Dynamic cache is nothing but the full page caching for your sites which is achieved using the free SG optimizer plugin which is similar to WP Rocket but not fully comparable but aggressively growing with new features.

MemCached is the object caching mechanism to fasten up the databases. It's good to enabled this since we all work on dynamic WordPress sites mostly.

SiteGround uses NGINX Direct Delivery to get your WordPress site blazing fast by allowing certain items like images to load from the server's memory. Besides, the provider uses SuperCacher in conjunction with NGINX based dynamic cache and Memcache service that helps your website load even faster.

3. Unlimited Sites

There are times when you may need to host more sites but your plan may not support it. This is kinda frustrating, isn't it? This is the reason that you have to be very careful while choosing a plan. 

GoGeek allows users to host unlimited websites within 40GB Space which is a reasonably big space. You get comparatively double the space offered in the GrowBig plan even though GrowBig allows users to host unlimited sites either. I solely host bloggingio-sg3.com to test their GoGeek Plan.

4. White Label Clients

White Label Reselling & Client Management is an amazing feature that SiteGround offers, using which you can give your clients access to the Site Tools belonging to the sites you are developing for them. 

However, your clients won't be able to see any SiteGround logo anywhere as they log in to the Site Tools. At first, choose the option as the client and enter the details.

Now, SiteGround will generate the client URL & login details

5. Priority Support

Even though SiteGround has done a brilliant job in assisting its customers in the best possible ways through live chat, phone, and tickets over the years, users can have a completely new level of experience with SiteGround's Priority Support which is available on the GoGeek plan.

I have nothing bad to say about the SiteGround support team as you might need to know they're providing support to WordPress sites since 2004 and their team has a vast knowledge of server management than most new-age companies.

This means your technical issues or queries will be addressed and resolved by the experts much faster through 24×7 live chat and tickets. 

This is a pretty handy option for anyone that does not want to waste one's time waiting for resolution every time one runs into some sort of technical difficulty.

6. Staging Sites

SiteGround offers you a handy staging tool on the GoGeek plan to generate a copy of one's site to experiment on and make various changes to it before going live with the actual site.

You just need to select the production site and then a name to staging site. You will get new staging account within seconds and SiteGround also takes daily backups on staging sites which makes them superior to most other staging tools in the market.

GoGeek offers seamless integration with Git for creating repositories for one's site created and edit on multiple branches. Besides, it offers you a unique interface to create the repos of applications such as WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.

7. Free Unlimited Migration

SiteGround allows customers to transfer their website data and email accounts from old hosting accounts without any hurdles with the assistance of professional migration experts. 

https://wordpress.org/plugins/siteground-migrator/

Besides, customers can transfer unlimited sites to SiteGround using the SiteGround's WordPress Migrator plugin.  Using the plugin is unimaginably simple and it takes only about 5 minutes to get familiar with it.

I don't remember the number of sites I transferred from other host to SiteGround, but the process is smooth as silk.

8. On-Demand Backup Copies

How would it be if every change you make to your website is backed up instantly and can be easily restored as well in just a single click? However, this may not be possible with a plan that includes a single backup.

GoGeek gives you the freedom to have up to 5 On-Demand Backups Copies at a time. 

9. Free SSL Certificate, CDN & Email Hosting

SiteGround GoGeek plan also includes a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate to help you encrypt your traffic using an HTTPS connection. 

Besides, it comes with Free Cloudflare CDN which helps you deliver your content to your target audience from the closest server location. This means greater content delivery speed for sure. Further, Cloudflare also protects sites from malicious traffic.

GoGeek also offers your free Email accounts and users can create unlimited email accounts and forwarders. Besides, customers can access their email accounts using the RoundCube Webmail for free. I really love the new user interface which is onpar with GSuite and probably I will ditch my monthly Subscription there.

Cons of SiteGround

1. GoGeek Renewal Rates are High

Honestly, the high renewal charge is the only con I could find about SiteGround. However, there are ways to go about it wisely and in the very beginning itself. The GoGeek special pricing is $14.99/mo, and the renewal price is $39.99/mo. 

That's where a lot of people get pretty discouraged about the service. However, you can avoid it by buying the plan for the special price and maximum months.

Wrapping up

On a whole, SiteGround scaled up the game with new control panel and performance improvements by moving their sites to Google Data centers.

Right now, I can't name any other hosting that can be comparable to GoGeeks features and performance. Just close your eyes and choose SiteGround for a head-ache free hosting partner.

Some of the frequently asked questions from clients.

Will SiteGround GoGeek can handle high traffic spikes? Yes and Now. Since we can't say a random number as high traffic, it varies based on the viral post on your site. Since GoGeek is the highest plan, it can handle the maximum traffic more than Growbig and Startup plan. Remember, GoGeek is not auto-scalable. You can choose Liquid Web for a scalable host that is priced similarly.

Can I get separate control panel in GoGeek? Yes. the plan comes with White label solution, you can easily separate control panel in seconds.

Does SiteGround GoGeek come with Cloudflare DDOS? Yes, but it's limited DDOS protection that can available even without SiteGround.

Can I add individual SSL certificates in GoGeek? Yes, Check our SSL content above and there is an option “Import Certificates”