Ok, so you made the great decision to join the club and host your site with SiteGround. You’re on the right track! Not only is SiteGround where I host the site you’re ready right now, but SiteGround also gets rave reviews in all the WordPress hosting groups that I’m a part of:
But now, you might be struggling to pick a plan. When it comes to SiteGround StartUp vs GrowBig vs GoGeek, which is the right plan for you?
Well – this might blow your mind – but there’s a reason SiteGround offers three different plans – each fits a different need. My goal with this article is to find the one that best fits what you need.
I’ll start with my overall recommendation for most users. Then, I’ll dig into some of the specific differences between the three plans. Sound good?
SiteGround GrowBig Is The Best Plan For Most Users
If you’re just looking for a quick recommendation, my overall pick for most users is the SiteGround GrowBig plan.
This plan offers everything most webmasters need:
- Unlimited websites
- Enough monthly visitors for most websites
- Priority support
All for just $2 more per month than the cheapest StartUp plan.
I’m not just blowing smoke here, either. SiteGround’s GrowBig plan is where I host all of my own sites. Look at the proof:
Read my full SiteGround GrowBig review to learn all the reasons why I use it to host my own sites.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s a bit more info about each plan to help you out:
A Deeper Look: SiteGround StartUp vs GrowBig vs GoGeek
Let’s go a little more in-depth now – here are some specific reasons that might push you to choose one plan over the others.
GrowBig And GoGeek Offer Unlimited Websites
SiteGround’s StartUp plan only lets you host one website, whereas both the GrowBig and GoGeek plans allow for unlimited websites.
If you think there’s any chance you’ll want to host more than one website, that should instantly eliminate the cheapest StartUp plan.
You Get More Visitors For Less Money On Higher Tier Plans
While SiteGround doesn’t impose a hard traffic limit cap on its plans like many other managed WordPress hosts, it does put estimated traffic limits on its pricing page.
Here’s the thing about SiteGround’s “Suitable for…” limits:
They’re not linear.
By that, I mean that you can handle more visitors for less money (per visitor) on the higher tier plans.
Here’s how that works:
- StartUp: ~10,000 monthly visits for $3.95 = ~2,500 visitors for each dollar you spend
- GrowBig: – ~25,000 monthly visits for $5.95 = ~4,200 visitors for each dollar you spend
- GoGeek: ~100,000 monthly visits for $11.95 = ~8,300 visitors for each dollar you spend
So on GoGeek, you can handle almost 3x as many visitors for each dollar that you spend, which is significantly better value.
If you think that you’ll be flirting with visitor limits at any point, then the higher tier plans offer better value when it comes to monthly visits.
GrowBig And GoGeek Offer Priority Support
Another benefit of the GrowBig and GoGeek plans is that both of them offer priority support. While SiteGround’s support is top-notch for all plans, it’s called priority for a reason.
You’ll usually get faster responses and have to wait a little less. Unless you’re super budget conscious, I think that’s worth an extra $2 per month.
Let’s look at some more specific comparisons between two plans at a time:
SiteGround StartUp vs GrowBig: Consider Website Limits And Support
For most users, there aren’t any major features differences between StartUp vs GrowBig that would push you towards one of the plans by themselves.
GrowBig does get some extra server-side caching, but I actually prefer using my own caching solution so this has personally never swayed me because I always disable SiteGround’s caching anyway.
The biggest reason to choose GrowBig over StartUp is the unlimited websites. For just an extra $2 per month, you get unlimited sites vs the one website in StartUp, which is a pretty big difference.
Additionally, as I laid out above, you also get a bigger bang for your buck when it comes to visits per month, which might be enticing if you get more than 10,000 monthly visits. For each dollar that you spend, GrowBig gets you ~68% more monthly visitors in comparison to the StartUp plan.
Remember – StartUp gives you 2,500 visits per dollar, while GrowBig gets you 4,200 visitors per dollar.
Finally, you also get Priority Support. This one is a biggie.
While SiteGround’s support on all of their plans is pretty good, the priority support is awesome because it ensures that you’ll almost never have to wait for help.
I routinely get support with zero wait times. And that’s definitely worth an extra $2 per month by itself.
Because you get unlimited websites, more visitors, and priority support for just an extra $2 per month, I think the GrowBig plan is a much better value than the StartUp plan.
SiteGround GrowBig vs GoGeek: Consider Staging Sites And Performance
The difference in price between GrowBig ($5.95) and GoGeek ($11.95) is bigger than the difference between StartUp and GrowBig, but there’s actually a pretty good reason for that.
See, when you go with the most expensive GoGeek plan, you get access to built-in staging sites.
Staging sites are an awesome feature that let you easily create a clone of your website to test changes on. Essentially, it’s like a sandbox where you can safely try out new things. Then, when you’re happy with the changes, you can make them live with the push of a button.
If you make a lot of changes to your website, paying extra for a more convenient and safe way of making those changes might be worth it.
Second, if you’re performance-conscious, SiteGround’s GoGeek plan will offer a bit better performance because there are fewer hosting accounts on each server, which means the server can dedicate more resources to your website.
Overall, I think those features only apply to a small subset of users.
Most of the time, I would recommend going with GrowBig over GoGeek because most users won’t get enough benefit from those extra features to make it worth the cost.
Give SiteGround GrowBig A Try Today
Overall, I think SiteGround GrowBig definitely offers the best bang for your bucket for the reasons that I’ve stated above.
In case you forget those reasons, here’s the high-level look one more time…
SiteGround’s GrowBig plan is only a little bit more expensive than the StartUp plan and gets you access to:
- Unlimited websites
- More visits per month (at a cheaper rate per visit)
- Priority support
Click below to get started with SiteGround GrowBig today and enjoy a 60% discount on your first billing cycle:
Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer for hire with a background in SEO and affiliate marketing. He helps clients grow their web visibility by writing primarily about digital marketing, WordPress, and B2B topics.
Nice write up. Helpful for evaluating the tiers.
Which one would you suggest for an author?
Another point worth considering is that StartUp appears to NOT provide a free domain email address. For me, at least, that is a BIGGIE. Hostgator’s lowest shared plan (which I’m on) provides a free domain email—so much more professional-looking than a Gmail address. Were I to jump over to a StartUp plan with SiteGround, which I was considering, I would lose the domain email address. That, ladies and gentlemen, sucks. So I stuck with the devil I knew.
Hey Robin, SiteGround actually does offer email hosting even on the StartUp plan 🙂 They offer email hosting on all their tiers, so you can use your own custom domain email address on all plans.
Why you don’t use the cache of Siteground? They always say that with their hosting you will not need a Cache plugin and a CDN.
Currently, I am in bluehost hosting with CDN BUNNY but I am looking for something more powerful and faster. Also I am using WP ROCKET cache plugin.
What do you advice me?
Thanks a lot for your post!