SiteGround Growbig Review 2022: Thoughts after 3 Years

This is my upated review of SiteGround Growbig.

In this review, I shared about the Growbig pros and cons backed by data.

SiteGround Growbig Overview

To test the Growbig plan, I hosted an demo site bloggingio-sg2.com on my account and starter monitoring for long time to write an data backed review.

Pros of using SiteGround GrowBig

1. Good Performance

Being an customer of SiteGround since 2015, one thing I can bet a big on them is uptime. Their servers are so reliable and the downtime rarely occurs.

The site loads around 400-500ms average across US location which is great considering the site doesn't use CDN. By using CDN, one can lower the response time to less than 200ms which is recommended by Google.

Apart from response time and uptime, TTFB is the major factor to satisfy Google new Core Web Vitals. So, here is the TTFB results from 14 global locations. To my surprise, the TTFB of Growbig is similar to the GoGeek plan and only differs from Startup due to the more number of sites hosted on a single server.

You can further improve the TTFB by adding an CDN just like my site and get an TTFB below 50ms

Later I made this load time test from all US locations and the results are super impressive with sites loading less than one second in half of the locations.

You just need to add CDN to load your sites below one second in all locations.

SiteGround GrowBig plan offers brilliant speed and uptime. My SiteGround website has maintained a reliable performance over the years with 100% uptime and an average loading time of 874ms. 

This is because of Google's ultra-fast data centers alongside SSD persistent storage. Further, SiteGround has its own server with multiple custom speed optimizations to keep websites unimaginably fast.

2. Unlimited websites 

While most low tier and mid-tier plans come with just one website or a limited number of websites of up to 5 at the max, GrowBig has a leading-edge since the plan offers you to host unlimited websites. This is the reason that the plan is comparatively a bit pricey. 

However, getting to host unlimited sites for a price of just $9.99/mo is certainly worth it. If you consider the space the plan offers which is 20GB, it is good enough to host multiple websites without any performance issue.

Considering the price, it would not be wrong to say that GrowBig is the cheapest unlimited site hosting plan among WordPress. 

2. Speed Caching 

Your site will not be able to create a mark of difference unless it has a fast loading speed and SiteGround GrowBig includes advanced speed boosting caching to get websites blazing fast. This comprises NGINX Content Delivery technology wherein certain items such as images would be loaded from the server memory. 

For further speed optimization, SiteGround uses its SuperCacher at higher levels along with NGINX-based dynamic cache and Memcache.

The Memcached is the object caching mechanism to speed up your site databases on the go.

3. Staging Sites

SiteGround GrowBig comes with staging sites exclusively for WordPress websites. Using this feature, users can easily have a copy of their site created in a separate environment for testing new code and designs without having to go live with your website. 

Once you are done with the staging process, you can push the site from staging to live in just a single click and at once, a backup of your live site would be created automatically. 

4. Collaborators 

SiteGround GoGeek also allows you to add collaborators with their own SiteGround accounts to your website as well as individual login to the Site Tools. 

Collaborators can design, develop, and maintain your website on your behalf or assist you in one way or the other with your site. In case you ever need to contact the support, your collaborators can do it on your behalf right from their accounts. 

5. Free SSL/CDN 

SiteGround GrowBig also includes a free SSL Certificate by Let's Encrypt to encrypt your traffic. This is an important feature from the perspective of web security. 

Besides, GrowBig offers a free Cloudflare CDN which helps you deliver your content to your target audience at the best speeds from the closest server location. Cloudflare integration also means that your site is being constantly protected against malicious attacks.

6. Free Email Hosting

While most of the hosting companies have stopped free email hosting and charge separately for this service, SiteGround still provides users with Free Email Hosting. 

Users can create unlimited email accounts and forwarders. Further, users can use SiteGround's RoundCube webmail to access their email accounts.

7. Free Unlimited Migration

Transferring a site from your old hosting account to the SiteGround platform is ridiculously simple with the WordPress Migrator plugin. The WordPress plugin is available free of any charge and users can transfer unlimited sites using this plugin. 

Besides, you also have the SiteGround Migration experts 24×7 to assist you in case you run into any technical difficulty.

Cons of using SiteGround GrowBig

1. No Priority Support 

We are no stranger to how much smoother hosting is with Priority Support. With priority support, you don't have to be locked away by your technical difficulty for too long as you can always expect a much faster response with a Priority Support through live chat and tickets.

Even though GrowBig comes with 24×7 support via chat, tickets, and phone, the plan does not come with Priority Support. For Priority Support, you will have to opt for the GoGeek plan only.

2. High Renewal Charges 

High Renewal charge is certainly a big downside for SiteGround Hosting but it can be dealt with pretty wisely by choosing a long term billing on the special price when you buy a plan. What it means is you can buy a plan for 24 to 36 months at a special price. That way, you don't have to renew it for a high charge anytime soon.

Besides, you can also try buying a plan during the Black Friday deals to enjoy high discounts.

Wrapping up

Do I recommend the Growbig plan? Definitely.

I suggest anyone choose Growbig even instead of a higher GoGeek plan. Choose GoGeek only if you need white label & priority support but apart from it, SiteGround Growbig is more than to host decent affiliate sites and blogs. Here is my Amazon niche site hosted on Growbig since 2017.

The site receives around 20k traffic per month and doesn't faced any performance issues int he last three years.

Some of the frequently asked questions are

How many websites can be run on the Growbig package? You can add unlimited websites. However, based on the sites that receive traffic and disk space, the number of sites will be limited.

What is SiteGround browbig plan 25000 visit limits. The numbers are just assumption. The Growbig plan can handle more than 25000 visitors if optimized properly.