SiteGround.com is The Worst Hosting Company Ever

When choosing a hosting service, you must research that company thoroughly. I had a terrible experience with SiteGround.com. They claim to be the “preferred choice for hosting small business websites and to have “high quality service” with “fast and reliable servers”.  All these are far from the truth.

Not too long ago, I decided to give them a try. What a nightmare it was. I had a Joomla site which at the time, being new, didn’t have any subscribers yet; but I got constantly SQL errors. Every time I was editing an article and click save, I got that familiar “can’t connect to SQL server” error message.

After contacting them through their only way of communication: a very cumbersome Help Desk system, they told me that I must upgrade to a dedicated server! Come on! A site without any member needing a dedicated server? That’s ridiculous! I was also getting ‘time out’ error messages when navigating the site. Again, they blamed my internet connection.

To prove them they were wrong, I went ahead and contacted my internet provider (by the way, I have high speed internet connection) and they tested the system and it was fine. They even visited my office to be sure that there were nothing wrong with my connection. I even go a new modem! But still this terrible hosting company: SiteGround.com kept blaming me for their issues and continue telling me I must upgrade to a dedicated server.

In addition to their faulty system and service, their Help Desk system is so cumbersome that to create a ticket you always have to go through a bunch of prompts and testing scripts before you can write a word to tell them what you need. Ridiculous!

After many, many month of wasted time, money, and effort, I decided to move my joomla website to a reliable and efficient hosting service. I contacted SiteGround.com to cancel and to request a refund of my pre-paid one and a half years I had left. Guess what? They refused to issue a refund because supposedly they have a 30 day money back waranty and my 30 days were over. First, their policy only mentiones that the 30 money back is for a full refund but nowhere in their policy they address what happens when you cancel your account and you have pre-paid 2 years in advance.  They still kept my money regardless of their misleading policy, poor quality service and slooooow servers. So be aware they will still your money! They don’t care about customer satisfaction. They even told me… and I quote: “take your business elsewhere” and ignored my emails!

After I moved my website to a reliable and efficient hosting service, and before erasing the site at SiteGround.com, I opened both sites side by side to compare speed and efficiency. Well, it proved how terrible SiteGround.com’s servers are. I would click to open a document in the site at SiteGround.com and them click the same article hosted at the new hosting company, edit it, close it…. and my article at SiteGround.com was still trying to load!!  Now we are taking about a terrible server!

So, my friends and all who are reading this article, be careful where you host your websites. You might end up wasting valuable time and considerable amount of money. Do you homework and research the company first and find reliable testimonials, not the ones they place in their website. Of course, those will always be positive.