Building a website in Australia can be challenging, especially for beginners. The country’s limited internet connectivity can significantly affect your website’s visibility and loading speed.
This SiteGround review for Australia discusses everything you need to know about the web hosting provider’s offerings to help you build your website seamlessly.
SiteGround Review Australia (A Comprehensive Overview)
About SiteGround
Founded in 2004 by Tenko Nikolov, SiteGround is a web hosting provider that offers packages for both beginners and seasoned professionals. With over 400 employees across 13 countries, they currently host more than 2 million domains. SiteGround specializes in providing localized websites to clients in the UK, Europe, Spain, the US, Australia, and many other regions.
Reneta Tsankova and Nikolay Todorov, both part of the founding team, contribute significantly to the company’s success. Reneta, the non-technical member of the team, focuses on enhancing user experience, ensuring top-notch customer service, and establishing a strong company presence. Meanwhile, Nikolay Todorov, the “Tech Magician,” is highly skilled in complex technology and technical support. He can set up and explain all in-house hardware and software in simple terms.
SiteGround is an official partner of WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, all of which highly recommend the web hosting provider. With data centers on three continents, SiteGround can cater to clients worldwide. Furthermore, every package includes a free CPN through CloudFare to ensure that foreign visitors can access your site without any problems.
SiteGround values its employees and provides them with a positive work environment. The company recognizes its “Top Customer Service Rep” each month and publishes a blog post about them on the website. SiteGround also offers Fun Fridays with reduced hours and complimentary breakfasts for its employees on Monday mornings.
SiteGround offers inexpensive plans for beginners to get started, as well as Reseller, Enterprise, and Dedicated hosting for clients with more advanced needs.
SiteGround Speeds for Australian Websites
As a website owner, you want to ensure that your website loads quickly, regardless of the type of website or the location of your audience. Slow loading speeds can cause visitors to lose interest and leave your site. Furthermore, it can negatively impact your website’s search engine rankings, even if your content matches the user’s search terms. Therefore, finding a web hosting provider that can deliver the necessary speeds is crucial.
To learn more about SiteGround’s speeds and uptime, as well as other web hosting providers, you can check out my top web hosts guide.
The best way to ensure that your target audience, whether they reside in Australia or other parts of the world, experiences fast loading speeds is to have them located near an available server. The closer they are to a SiteGround server, the faster your website will load for them.
With data centers located across three different continents, namely America, Europe, and Asia, and a free CloudFare CPN included with every package, slow website speeds are not a concern. A reviewer tested a SiteGround-hosted website from Melbourne, Australia, which received a B grade and had a load time of 2.56 seconds. This is excellent for Australia, given its limited connectivity compared to the rest of the world.
The same website was tested from the US and received an A grade with a load time of 951 milliseconds. The reviewer deemed both grades to be exceptional, given the testing locations.
However, one client reported receiving frequent emails about CPU loads, which could suggest that the server they were using was oversold.
In addition to localized servers and a free CPN, SiteGround offers free SSDs with each package. SSDs are much faster than classic HDDs, which makes displaying website data much easier on browsers, ultimately resulting in faster loading speeds.
SiteGround Uptime Results
While fast website loading speeds are important, excellent uptime is what truly sets a web hosting provider apart. Frequent downtime means your website won’t load, making uptime a crucial factor when choosing a hosting company.
Web hosting companies like SiteGround are obligated to monitor and measure server uptime over a 30-day period. Although many hosting providers claim a 99% uptime ratio for Australian websites, SiteGround delivers results.
In fact, SiteGround outperforms the competition when it comes to uptime. In the last ten months, their uptime was at 100% for six of those months, with the lowest month being 99.82%. Over a ten-month period, their average uptime was 99.97%, which is outstanding. This means that their servers are unavailable for a maximum of 8.6 seconds a day, well above the industry standard.
SiteGround Server Location
When it comes to load speeds, the rule is simple: hosting your site as close to your viewers as possible ensures fast loading times. This is not an issue when hosting with SiteGround.
As mentioned earlier, SiteGround has four data centres housing servers on three continents to ensure fast loading times regardless of where their clients’ websites are viewed from.
Their first data centre was established in Chicago, IL, in July 2011, housing approximately 30,000 servers and providing optimal speeds for North America, South America, and Africa.
SiteGround expanded to their first global data centre in Singapore in 2012, due to its excellent connectivity to other countries. This enables SiteGround to serve viewers in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and the South Pacific.
In 2013, they set up their first Europe-based data centre in Amsterdam, and in 2015, they established their London centre. Amsterdam is owned and managed by SingleHop, just like Chicago, while London and Singapore are operated by SoftLayer. Both Amsterdam and London serve viewers throughout Europe and Russia, with UK clients being able to view SiteGround’s .co.uk version of the website.
As an Australian client, you do not need to purchase any add-ons to access worldwide servers. SiteGround already has one nearby for you and your visitors.
The quality of their data centres and their maintenance is crucial to the fast speeds and excellent uptime that SiteGround offers its clients. They provide SSD web-based hosting and tackle any downtime 24/7 to keep servers running efficiently. They are equipped with UPS backup technology, ready in case of a power feed failure.
Effortless WordPress Installation with SiteGround
WordPress aims to create software that is accessible to everyone, whether you’re a blogger or a multinational corporation. Their software is user-friendly and requires minimal setup, making it easy to share your story or sell your products and services.
Although WordPress is compatible with many web hosting companies, they recommend only a select few on their website. Every year, WordPress invites web hosting companies to apply for inclusion on their recommended list. SiteGround has consistently been a prominent mention for many years and not just because they offer free WordPress installation.
For small and medium-sized businesses, WordPress is the most popular way to build a professional-looking website. Regardless of your experience with websites and WordPress, SiteGround makes the process seamless and easy. You can publish your website within minutes if you wish.
SiteGround’s plans come with free custom-built WordPress Starter and Migrator plugins, allowing you to create or migrate (if you already have a WordPress site) without hassle. They also provide automatic security and software updates, so you don’t have to worry about them.
With just a click, WordPress is installed on your site, and you gain instant access to hundreds of themes and plugins to simplify website management. You can spend more time creating new content for your site and less time building the site itself.
I appreciate how easy it is to install WordPress through SiteGround, and the fact that WordPress highly recommends SiteGround only adds to the credibility of both platforms. If you’re new to websites and trying to set up your first one, this is an excellent way to do it.
SiteGround’s Customer Service and Support
SiteGround offers outstanding service and support to their clients, which is especially important for clients worldwide. Any number of issues with speed, pricing, or content can arise, and it’s helpful if speaking to a support representative doesn’t add to those problems.
Exceptional customer service can make a client stay, while poor customer service can make them look elsewhere. SiteGround boasts a customer satisfaction rate of 99.7% and proudly displays raw, unedited customer reviews on their website.
SiteGround’s customer service representatives are available 24/7/365 to answer any and all of your questions. They are ready and willing to help you resolve any issues you may be experiencing with your website or hosting package. You can reach them through support tickets, live chat, or by phone.
Australia is known for its connectivity challenges, making it difficult to contact customer service. Even with an Australian-based company, they are typically unavailable 24/7. However, with employees spread across 13 different countries, SiteGround always has someone available to answer your call, chat, or ticket. They process over 1500 tickets, 1000 phone calls, and well over 3000 chat requests per day.
In addition to live support, they offer an extensive knowledge base and various e-books and tutorials to help you with the website applications they offer.
SiteGround’s Affordable Shared Web Hosting Plans and Pricing
SiteGround’s hosting packages are among the most cost-effective I’ve come across, and each one provides all the necessary features for even the simplest website. Each package includes a Free SiteBuilder, SSL & HTTPS, email accounts, CloudFare CDN, daily backups, 24/7 support, 30-Day Moneyback Guarantee, unlimited traffic, unlimited MySQL, and cPanel.
The free website builder enables you to set up WordPress or Weebly with ease. Unmetered Bandwidth means that you are not charged for the amount of disk space or bandwidth your site consumes. SiteGround also offers free security and updates to ensure that all of your site’s applications are current and your information is secure.
The free SSL Certificate encrypts data between the server and your visitors, providing security for your website. This is particularly important if you accept credit card payments for your products or services.
The StartUp plan, which costs $3.95 per month for 12 months (AUD $5.58), offers you one website. The GrowBig plan, which costs $5.95 per month for 12 months (AUD $8.40), allows you to have unlimited websites. Finally, the GoGeek plan, which costs $11.95 per month for 12 months (AUD $8.40), includes everything in the previous plans, as well as free site transfers, additional server power, and more.
For those just starting out, the StartUp plan is likely the best option, particularly if you only require a personal blog. The default subscription is for 12 months, but if you are unsure about committing to that length of time, you can sign up for just one month at a cost of $3.95 per month (AUD $5.58), plus an additional setup fee of $14.95 (AUD $21.11). Upgrading or cancelling after the first month is equally simple, and any of our exceptional customer service representatives will be happy to assist you.