SiteGround India Reviews 2022: Real Uptime Records + India Website Speed Test

SiteGround has become one of the most prominent names on the web hosting industry. However, it didn’t happen overnight. They are in the scene since 2004.

Nowadays, we see that it is being recommended everywhere. But, is it really that good?

So in this post, we will scrutinize SiteGround, especially for our Indian readers. After reading this, we believe that you won’t go back and forth on your decision about SiteGround. We will share some interesting data and reports about SiteGround. So, if you couldn’t make up your mind about using SiteGround in India yet.

Hop on and start reading this post.

SiteGround India Hosting Review & Using SiteGround in the India

Before we kick-start this, let’s talk about the Data Centers of SiteGround.

SiteGround Data Centers:

The effect of the Data Centers on your website:

There are a lot of factors which can affect the performance of your website. But, do you know that the data center where your site is hosted has a big impact on the performance of your website?

Your site’s performance depends on the quality and the location of the Data Centers.

The effect of the location of the Data Centers:

To simply put, you have to choose a web hosting provider to host your site which has data centers closer to the majority of the visitors to your website. If the distance between the data center and the visitors increases the loading speed of your site decreases.

As a result, the visitors will have an unpleasant experience browsing your website. So, for our readers from India, it is possible that you would receive the majority of the visitors from within your country or from your neighbor countries.

Whatever the case, you should host your website closer to your country. That way, you will be able to serve your visitors with an excellent service.

The effect of the quality of the Data Centers:

The quality of the data centers is as important as the location. So, you need to check the quality of your to-be web host provider before getting an account with them.

It is recommended that your web host provider should have all the latest technology and hardware on their data centers. Using the latest hardware can be very beneficial for your website. It would help your website to load faster.

Another crucial subject about data centers are the power sources. Every data center should have quality power sources. And, they should also be equipped with enough power backup. So, in case of an emergency, there won’t be any problem at all. Good quality power sources will help keep your website up all the time.

Location of the Data Centers of SiteGround:

The best thing about SiteGround is that they have taken all of the necessary steps to serve their customers the best. They have 4 data centers all around the globe which are located on 3 continents.

The data centers are located in Singapore, London (UK), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Chicago (US) respectively. You might have already guessed that the Singapore data center is the perfect solution for you if you are from India. SiteGround also officially recommend it to their Asian customers. As it is the nearest data center to India.

In contrast, if your website receives visitors from other parts of the world then you can use any one of the other data centers from the list.

Quality of the Data Centers of SiteGround:

The quality of the data centers of SiteGround is top-notch. All the hardware on each of their data centers is up to date. Besides, they update them in a regular interval if needed.

For instance, SiteGround offers SSD (Solid State Drive) hosting on all their hosting plans. They don’t even charge you extra for SSD hosting. Whereas most of other popular web hosting providers don’t even have SSD hosting option on their shared hosting plans. Even if they have, they charge extra money for SSD hosting.

You would be amazed to know that the loading speed of a website can increase 20 times if you use SSD hosting instead of HDD (Hard Disk Drive) hosting.

You don’t have to worry about your website’s uptime. As SiteGround has multiple power sources for their data centers. They barely go out. Fortunately, Siteground has taken precautions for this type of situations. They have their own generators and UPS as the backup power sources.

At this point, we will start experimenting with SiteGround. We will run 3 tests regarding the performance of SiteGround. So here we go.

Experiment 1: Website Speed Test:

The first test will be to check the loading speed of a website hosted on SiteGround. We will use ReviewPlan.com to conduct this test. Because we also use SiteGround to host our site. However, our website is hosted in the Chicago, US data center. We will discuss this test a little bit below.

How does the speed test work?

To conduct this test, we will use ‘Pingdom’s speed test tool. Pingdom has 4 servers which can be used to run this test. If you want the best result then you should use a server which is closer to your visitors.

Now, Pingdom has servers in Stockholm (Sweden), New York City (USA), California (USA), and Melbourne (Australia) respectively. As this post is written for our readers from India, we will is the Melbourne (Australia) server of Pingdom. As it is the closest of them all to India.

What to expect from the test result?

The result will be consist of some important data related to our website. Those data are actually directly related to the performance of SiteGround’s server. We will get ‘Performance Grade, Load Time, Page Size, Requests etc. about ReviewPlan.com.

Here, our focus will be on the ‘Load Time’. It represents the time to load this website on our visitors’ browsers from Australia (Pingdom’s closest server from India). We will want our website to load as fast as possible.

However, as our website is hosted in the USA, it is possible that the load speed from Australia wouldn’t be that great. You know that is because of the distance between the data center of SiteGround and the Pingdom’s server. However, let’s run the test.

Running the Experiment 1:

Test Running from Melbourne, Australia:

Test Result from Melbourne, Australia:

Here is the result:

Performance Grade:

The ‘Performance Grade’ was ‘B’.

Load Time:

The ‘Load Time’ from the Australian server is 2.63 s. To be frank, this is fairly good if you consider the distance between the USA and Australia. It is suggested that the average website load time should be around 2 seconds.

As our website is hosted in the USA. Now, we are going to use the ‘Pingdom’s USA server to run this test. That way we will be able to judge the authentic performance of SiteGround.

The test is running from the USA:

The test is running from San Jose, California (USA).

The test result:

Here is the result:

Performance Grade:

This time, we achieved ‘A’ on the ‘Performance Grade’. This is the best grade available be on this test.

Load Time:

Now, let’s take a look at the ‘Load Time’ from the USA. Now, our site took just 829 ms to load. Wow. Previously, you saw that the load time was above 2 seconds. But, now, it is lower than 1 second.

This is an indication of the quality and service of the SiteGround’s data center. From this experiment, it’s clear that if you host your site closer to your visitors then they will get faster-loading speed.

Experiment 2: Server Speed Checker:

This test will be performed from ‘Bitcatcha’. It is a website which has 8 servers from where you can run the tests. Let’s know more about this test.

How does this ‘Server Speed Check’ test work?

From this test, we can actually check the speed of the servers of any hosting provider. As we want to check the server speed of Siteground, we will conduct this test using ReviewPlan.com.

At first, all of the test servers will send requests to the server where our site is hosted. Then the server of our website will respond to the requests. The time it takes to respond to the requests is known as ‘Response Time’.

What to expect from the result?

In this test, we will get to know the ‘Response Time’ of the SiteGround data centers. The faster the SiteGround server response to the request of the Bitcatcha server is the better. As there are 8 different test servers. Not all of them are significant to us.

We will look for the response time from the Bangalore, Singapore, and Sydney servers. Because these are the closet servers to India.

What is a good Server response time?

There is no accurate answer to this question. However, Google recommends that your website should have a response time below 200 ms. So, we will aim for that for now.

The Test Result:

Here you can see our result:

Performance Grade:

Straight away, we got ‘A+’ on the ‘Performance Grade’. To be noted, this is the highest grade available for this test.

Response time from Bangalore, Singapore and Sydney servers:

First of all, we can see that the response time for Bangalore is 153 ms, which is below Google’s recommendation. Next, we can see that the response time from Singapore and Sydney is 73 ms and 189 ms respectively. Fortunately, all of the response rates are below the recommendation of Google. That implies that the quality of SiteGround servers is astounding.

Experiment 3: Ping Test:

Now, we will run the last test. This is known as the ‘Ping Test’.

How does the ping test work?

This test will be done using the ‘Ping Tool’ form Keycdn. They have 16 servers all over the world. Whenever we initiate this test, all of the servers send packets of data to our website’s server. Then our website will receive those data and return them back. The amount of time needs to transfer the data back and forth is known as the ‘Ping Time’.

It is better if the ‘Ping Time’ is lower, that means your website will load faster. Even for this test, we will use ReviewPlan.com.

What to expect from the result?

As always, we will receive 16 results from 16 different servers. But, all are not important to us. In this case, we will be checking the result from the Bangalore, Singapore and Sydney servers of Keycdn.

Again, there is a debate about the best ‘Ping Time’. So, we would recommend that your website should have ‘Ping Time’ below 300 ms.

Running the 3rd Test:

The test is running on this website.

The Test Result:

Here is the result:

Average Ping Time:

Among all of the data from this test, we will need the ‘Average Ping Time’. So, the ‘Average Ping Time’ of the Bangalore server is 219.348 ms.

And, along with that, we also notice that the Singapore and the Sydney servers have the ‘Average Ping Time’ of 68.500 ms and 113.449 ms respectively. Here, all the results are well below the recommended ‘Ping Time’. That shows the quality of the servers of SiteGround.

The Packet Loss:

With no exception, SiteGround has done amazingly well in this test too. Our website has 0% ‘Packet Loss’. That’s impressive.

The takeaways from the experiments:

So, at this point in the post, we have already conducted 3 tests on SiteGround. Honestly, SiteGround has passed on all of them without a hitch. First of all, we have seen that SiteGround has very fast loading speed.

Besides that, we have also been able to experiment with the ‘Ping Time’ and the ‘Server Response Time’. On both occasions, SiteGround has done exceptionally. All in all, we can conclude by saying that SiteGround is not a fluke in any way.

What more you can do to increase the speed of your website?

Thus far, we have talked about the majority of the visitors to your site. Unquestionably, you should focus on them. However, in some cases, the situation might not be the same.

For instance, you might have an international website. So, it is typical that you will receive visitors from all around the world. Thus, it would be difficult for you to focus on only a single country. As the international visitors will be coming from random countries at a time.

So, what can you do to serve all of your visitors alike?

There is an answer to that question. And that is to use a CDN service. ‘CDN’ is the short form of Content Delivery Network. Here’s a non-technical explanation about CDN.

The companies which offer this service, they own several servers/data centers which are connected to the same network. Those data centers are located in different countries of the world.

Whenever you use their service, they will store and cache your website’s data/contents on all of their data centers at once. So, whenever a visitor will come to your website then he will be delivered with the contents of your website from the nearest data centers to that particular visitor. That will dramatically decrease the loading speed of your website for that particular visitor.

Sucuri CDN:

Normally, ReviewPlan.com is an international website where visitors come from all over the world. So, to serve all of our visitors equally we use CDN on our site. We think this is the time we let the cat out of the bag. You will be glad to know that we use Sucuri CDN.

Sciurid CDN is a popular CDN service. They have a lot of reputation in the industry. However, we use them for other reasons. Such as, they have 11 data centers which are enough to cover the entire world. Plus, they have some additional features. Let’s know a little bit about a couple of those features.

Sucuri Backup:

Do you need a tool which can do all of the tasks related to taking backup of your website? Then ‘Sucuri Backup’ is for you. Using this tool, you will be able to take backup of your websites effortlessly.

Sucuri Firewall:

If you want to secure your website. Then you should use a security tool for your website. As a result, you can use ‘Sucuri Firewall’. This is one of the simple but effective methods to secure your website. It is another automatic tool which doesn’t need any type of coding skill or experience.

Website Uptime:

Do not go easy on ‘Website Uptime’. If you see a web host provider advertises by saying that they have a 99%+ uptime record. Do not believe them straight away. Although this is the industry-standard uptime record. It is not that easy to achieve. To achieve 99%+ uptime record, the provider needs to have powerful enough power sources and backup for their data centers.

So, you need to know about the uptime record of a hosting company from any of their user in the first place. As this post is about SiteGround, we have got your back. As we use SiteGround hosting on this website here, we regularly monitor the uptime record of our website. In the followings section, we will reveal the uptime stats of our website for you. So that you can actually gauge the performance of Siteground.

Here is the uptime stat of ReviewPlan.com.

We need to admit it, we are so satisfied with the uptime of our website. Most of the months our website was up 100%. And, on other months the uptime record was at 99%+ all the time. Fun fact, they don’t even brag about their uptime record on their website.

SiteGround Support:

Another thing which is surprisingly good about SiteGround is their customer support. You can contact them 24/7. They have 3 methods to communicate with them.

They are as follows:

• Live Chat: For instant messaging
• By Tickets: Get a reply within 10 minutes
• By direct Phone: Instant chat

If we are in any trouble, we always knock on their door. They always help us. Most of the time, we solve the problems using the ‘Live Chat’ option. However, in an emergency case, you can always directly call them.

Although we never needed that. We should disclose that we are very happy with the customer support team of SiteGround.

Conclusion: Should you go with SiteGround if you are from India?

No question about it. You should go for SiteGround. There are a lot of reasons behind our answer.

First of all, SiteGround is officially recommended by WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla etc. This is a great indication of the quality of their service. Next, you can check out the results of the tests we ran. On all of the tests, SiteGround performed beyond compare.

We also saw the effect of the location and the quality of the data centers on a website. For that reason, we recommend using the Singapore data center to host your site if you are from India and your visitors are as well.

You can select your preferred data center while setting up your web hosting account with SiteGround. This is another reason we recommend SiteGround. Because most of the other popular hosting providers don’t allow you to choose your preferred data center.

Above all, we have our first-hand experience with them. So, from that point of view, we are going to recommend SiteGround to all of our readers from India without any hesitation.