GoDaddy or Siteground?
When I started using GoDaddy for one of our recipe blogs, I was unaware about what kind of a server to pick. I got a windows server and had ample problems using wordpress on it. Upon taking this up with GoDaddy, they promptly helped to migrate to a Linux server and the problems were solved. Initially due to lack of enough knowledge, I didn’t realise that the service I was using lacked the speed. WordPress interface took almost 30-40 seconds to completely load. Due to this blogging became so tideous, my wife and I almost gave up untill I thought of researching a bit more about it. I Googled through many articles and realized that there were actually a few problems that GoDaddy users were facing when using WordPress on their shared servers. Slow browsing through wordpress sections to at time not loading at all. I did speak to GoDaddy about this but didn’t quite get a solution. They asked me to go for an upgrade as my plan was restricted. This was actually very much needed after our users increased. The frequency of downtime increased and some of the users promptly wrote to us about the site not being available. So instead of thinking too much into it, we opted form the server upgrade to ensure the server can handle multiple requests at a time.
This worked OK for a few days but browsing through the WordPress interface never got better. It remained on the slower side. With an increase in my knowledge of using WordPress and upon completion of an SEO with Digital Marketing course I realized a lot many things require improvement. Not only the content, but also the site speed, mattered when it came to SEO. I started using caching plugins, configured cloudflare’s CDN service and saw some improvement but GTMETRIX, and Google Page Insights told me that the TTFB was high. Meaning the time to first byte is high it should load much faster. Well this was new to me. I tried searching for solutions but only came up with articles that pointed towards the issue being with GoDaddy’s shared servers. They were actually slow to respond. I took this matter up with GoDaddy and they could only tell me that I need to minify my javascripts, HTML and CSS, and even optimize the images and the problem would be solved. I had to give them back stating all these proceedures were already done and that, the issue was the GoDaddy’s service. Well, they didn’t agree. So I decided to move on and stop using GoDaddy.
How Good is Siteground?
I had made up my mind to go with Siteground by then and this was not actually a one day decision. I read up a lot of reviews. Most of them were positive about Siteground’s speed and services. I also analysed our recipe blog comeptitors and most of them were already on Siteground. While you’ll have to purchase SSL separately on GoDaddy, here on Siteground you get a small business SSL for free. You can pay and upgrade if you’re a bigger website. The TTFB improved from 3.2 seconds to 1.2 seconds. GTMETRIX gave me good numbers which were better compared to some of our competitors. This was not the only thing. You get a great purchase offer when you buy hosting service with Siteground.
First up you get some of the premium services which also includes CloudFlare CDN service. If your website is already hosted with some other hosting service, their GrowBig plan will also include a professional transfer your old host to Siteground without any hassles. Even though I had the knowledge to migrate, I used their service to be doubly sure everything goes well. This also gave me an opportunity to know how professional their services are. I can say my mind is at peace at the moment.
What I also like about Siteground is that unlike GoDaddy, they are open about the technology they use. This also gives their users a lot of confidence. So if you ask me, for now I’d not recommend GoDaddy until they get their speeds in place and also show some transparency as to what technology they are using. Go with Siteground for better website performance.
[wp-review id=”2886″]
