See the new support limitations at SiteGround and why you may want to rethink your hosting there.
Incremental Support Changes
For all of 2020 I’ve been seeing changes to SiteGround’s support.
That includes changes to their site’s interface that actually make it hard to find where to get support.
There’s nothing even in their top-level menu for it on their new interface.
While working with clients on their European servers, there was only chat available for support – no call-in number at all.
And now I’m not seeing a call-in number on the U.S. servers either.
Drop of WordPress Support
SiteGround built their business into what it is by advertising that it was great for WordPress users.
Not only did they advertise servers that were tweaked for the best WordPress speed, they also finally got super call-in support that could handle most host and WordPress questions.
In fact, that WP support is why their name was so often mentioned in blogger groups when someone asked for the best host to use.
Well, that’s changed.
While working with a recent client, I needed to contact support for something and saw this new page on the newer interface, which described the limit of what they now covered in support.
The Scope of Our Support
We would like to remind you that SiteGround supports you with service issues regarding the availability of our hosting services and the proper functioning of our tools. Inquiries related to application setup, problematic code and database queries, among others are not within our scope of support.
We have streamlined the support process to increase the problem resolution efficiency and give priority to the following:
Service unavailability
If your site, email or domain name is not working.
Malfunctioning of our tools and interfaces
Bugs in our tools that prevent you from using our hosting as intended.
If you believe that you have an issue that falls in one of these categories, click here to proceed.
For all other issues, we recommend the following:
If your site is having a problem after a change you have made, please use backup recovery.
If you need information on how to use our tools, please start by checking our extensive Knowledge base. We have step by step tutorials that will help effectively.
If you have a problem with your WordPress site, such as plugin incompatibility, application settings, slow performance (usually due to slow queries or too many plugins), or similar, it is best if you contact a professional developer.
Please note that if the reported issue is not a result of a malfunction in our systems, we may not be able to help with it.
Conflict with being a pseudo managed host provider
Back in May 2019, I wrote an article about SiteGround becoming a pseudo managed host provider.
They’ve always had a goofy setup.
And they began inserting themselves between the site owner and WordPress more and more to the point that site owners literally did not have full control over updates, Site Health Checks, HTTPS, and more.
SiteGround finally realized the high liability of those auto updates just prior to WP 5.0 rolling out with the new Gutenberg editor.
On the other hand, lack of updates is the number one way sites get hacked. And that puts the server and all other sites on the server at risk.
So, they have maintained their auto update service for that reason alone.
Hard limits and entanglement
Plus, SiteGround has super hard resource use ceilings yet they no longer give you access to full reports on resource usage.
And their caching/optimization revamp was a direct rip off of WP Rocket shortly after they worked directly with the WP Rocket folks to help that plugin work on their goofy setup without jumping through so many extra hoops.
This is exactly why I started offering migration services, to help clients detangle from all of that SiteGround goofery so that they can more easily move to better hosting. And then I clean up the 30 pieces of SiteGround junk that comes over in the migration too.
Who is responsible for support, and on what?
But, some WordPress site owners enjoyed the fact that SiteGround was doing so much for them, or at least giving them an easy to use interface for doing it themselves.
And this is where the problem lies.
SiteGround set themselves up as the place for non-techie WordPress site owners to host.
They were fine with site owners calling support for anything, including WP issues.
And now they have cut that support off.
And I have to wonder what kind of gray area they have placed their clients in with this, considering so many WP related services are reliant on their interface to work.
I think existing clients are in for a super rude awakening the next time they contact the host for help and can’t get it.
This is where a DIY site ownership education pays
My site audit clients rarely to never need to call the host for anything.
And when they do, it is for a hosting issue, not a WordPress issue.
None of them are techies, and all of them can handle their site, including any issues that crop up.
Plus, if they do run into an odd issue, they have a private Facebook group to ask questions that is full of folks who’ve been through the same education they have.
You can’t get that in other blogger Facebook groups when who knows who is replying and giving super bad advice.
And asking in that group first saves them asking a host that is not qualified to resolve a WordPress issue, or something in their security outside the site, like Cloudflare.
I make a pretty good living cleaning up after unqualified folks taking a whack at such things.
High priced boutique hosting or monthly maintenance
If you are not an educated site audit client and you do want to pick up the phone and have someone answer every little question and/or just take care of it for you, then you need to put a dollar value on that and pony up for paying for higher priced boutique hosting that does have qualified WP staff on hand, or paying for monthly site maintenance.
My site audit clients chose to save that money and learn how to do what they can easily do themselves as a non-tech.
Their sites are clean, fast, and secure and they know how to keep it that way. So they don’t need to hire a tech to fix stuff all the time either.
My opinion of SiteGround just dropped even more
I have never been a big fan of SiteGround.
For years their first tier support was horrible.
Their second tier support was good, but only after you had 4-5 touches on the ticket to help them understand what you were trying to do.
Their goofy setup has just kept getting goofier.
They have dropped cPanel in favor of a new custom control panel that they built. And honestly, I rather poke forks in my eyes than work in it. I do work in it, but I hate it. And I can no longer do HTTPS conversions on it.
Their new custom control panel makes it impossible for clients to follow common cPanel tutorials for how to add new things or integrations to their site from other vendors. You know, things like switching to GSuites for emails, or even uploading a verification file for Google or Pinterest.
And they still have clients on cPanel, but with a custom interface, so now they have to support 2 versions of all how-to documentation.
Some folks have been moved to cloud servers while others are still on the old servers.
And all of the servers are only medium speed, which is precisely why they have to keep coming up with more goofy, custom ways to make it faster that just tangle a site owner even further and make it hard to leave.
But I guess that is the point.
Bottom line
I think this latest support limitation is going to start filtering through the blogger community and SiteGround will no longer be a common name given when folks are looking for good hosting.
At least, not a good host for site owners who want to call in for help with anything.
Move to better hosting
There is no best host.
There is a best host for your needs.
READ: What is Managed Hosting? to see the radical difference in hosting providers and their setups to help you choose the best one for your site ownership needs.
READ: Migration Checklist to see what is involved in moving to a new host.
Then contact me for help when you get ready to come off SiteGround. You’ll need the help.
So many better hosts . So many options. I go with the ones that answer me in 24 hours or less .
In 24 hours or less? I go with hosts that answer me right that moment!!
But what do you pay? I have one hosting companys at 10 websites for $9 a month and I have another hosting company that gives me unlimited websites under a shared plan for $3 a month at those prices I don’t expect nor need technical support in 5 minutes or less. So what do you pay?
Both are SSD AND FREE SSL FAST HOSTS
Honestly, that sounds like a junk host to me.
Multiple sites under one cPanel is super bad for both security and performance – has been for the last 5 years.
Best to get a reseller account and have each one isolated in its own cPanel.
top rated – ALL my own websites.
Doesn’t matter if they are all your own sites or not. They are all a security and performance risk to each other being under the same cPanel.
I just added another plan to my Site ground account and I totally regret it. AWS Lightsail for me from now on.
That’s a pretty big difference in hosting to go from something managed like SG to you totally managing and AWS host!!!
This is disturbing information.
Yes, it is. And for them to do it quietly is not good either.
I’ve rarely had issues with Siteground or their support. I just checked and I can see WordPress support as well as a phone number to call. They do make you work for it, but I get why. You have to funnel through the support channels and start by stating the issue, then it gives options for you to go forward (chat, ticket, phone), but they’re not all always available. I think it depends on the issue you’re having.
They also have a Facebook group that’s been really helpful. Perhaps you can bring your concerns there and get some answers.
What is it about Site Tools that you don’t like? I’ve only got it on one of my sites currently, as the others haven’t been migrated yet, but I like it. I honestly thought I’d hate it (usually not a big a fan of change, lol), but I think it’s streamlined and things are much easier to find.
I’m glad you’ve had a good stay at SiteGround. Keep in mind that I delve super deep into the back end of things on behalf of my site audit clients. You may not have to go that deep, that frequently with them. And maybe your site is fairly clean. The ones I deal with aren’t, so I see way more issues, and have to fix more issues using those host tools. The File Manager setup alone is enough to make me want to run screaming.
I still have WordPress support which was my biggest concern when I read the headline. Maybe their services are going to be more limited but that’s not the same as dropping WordPress support.
Dropping WordPress support as in answering questions about WP site issues, not dropping WP support for the hosting setup.
And if you still got support for a WP site issue question, then that is outside of what they posted they would do.
Haha – I complained to Siteground about a lot of these kind of issues, got constantly stonewalled, and so CC’d their CEO, Tenko. I flagged up just how many issues I’d had, and the sort of technically incompetent replies I’d get. He replied giving me seven days termination notice for thirty sites – a really lovely company! :)
Must do something with the shiteground.co.uk and .com domains that I picked up some day. They’re one of the most unpleasant companies I’ve ever dealt with…
You must probably been a pain to deal with, and you seem like the kind of person who won’t take responsibility, so good riddance !
Way off base with that assessment, Martin. And good luck in your site journey!
Hahaha! I mean, I can be a pain to deal with, MaAnna, but only when I’m being taken advantage of. I’m an extremely experienced and fairly savvy tech, so when some of the provably false things that I have documented in my Siteground account were said I wasn’t afraid to call them out on the inaccuracy (and I really feel for the less technical people who are led on frequent wild goose chases by their lies).
What’s more amusing about this response than anything is that it’s more than likely (from the tone and language used) Mr Martin Velikov, Siteground’s technical support manager, who was also involved in the email chain with Tenko and I where they decided to terminate my account rather than address any of the quite valid issues.
I have an absolute archive of information on Siteground’s utter incompetence that I really have intended to compile somewhere (admittedly slightly out of spite due to the amount of billable hours I wasted dealing with them, though also to help others avoid falling into business with them). At the end of the day I don’t really have the time/capacity for that sort of stress in my life, but I’m very, very glad to see them both being exposed a little by your blog post, and exposing themselves further by sending their technical support manager to write this kind of comment in reply to my original! Haha.
Not to let them off the hook for what happened with you, but to be fair, things like that can happen at any host.
I have yet to deal with a host where everyone knew everything and always ran into some incompetence somewhere along the tech chain over something. And I’ve been lied to by hosts too. And had server admins goof things pretty bad. So, not sure that’s unique to just SG.
This is also why there are so many mixed reviews on all hosts. That’s because there is a mix of issues, and a mix of site owner competence too.
But, working on the backside on behalf of a mix of site owners, I’ve seen more than my fair share of goofy at SG.
No support department worth its salt thinks like that – if a customer keeps coming back with issues, it’s either the product or the support at fault. The responsibility to be taken lies with those doing the invoicing, not the other way around. If you are actually Siteground’s support head, you should be ashamed of yourself for choosing to take the time to embarrass yourself and your company in public in such a puerile manner.
Disclosure: I’m the Director and CTO of a media and PR company which (among other things) builds and hosts complex WordPress sites for the public and charity sectors (including the UK’s largest Public Sector employer). I’ve been dealing with web hosts and building hosting platforms for 20 years, and I built the stack we currently use.
Siteground has shown – without a shadow of a doubt – the consistently lowest ‘delivery to promise’ ratio of any host I’ve ever dealt with. Lots of marketing effort; utterly woeful service delivery and support, on top of a stack probably ten years behind industry standard (except for the small percentage of customers on their ‘premium’ tiers who get used as unwilling guinea-pigs when they repeatedly push untested code to production). I’ve rescued a number of Siteground ‘refugees’ and their WordPress installations, and I do not know a single technically competent business owner or contractor who has had a good experience with them – the ‘Shiteground’ moniker is in common use in my circles – for very good reason, in my opinion.
Chris’ experience is, in my experience – absolutely par for the course (as is the childish attempt to blame the customer, if that is indeed Mr. Velikov petulantly mashing his keyboard in the comment above).
For the first few years I had to deal with SiteGround on behalf of my site audit clients, I warned them that it would take 4-5 touches on the support ticket to even get them to understand what we were trying to accomplish. SG finally outsourced support and first tier was then STELLAR!!! Only when it had to be sent to 2nd tier did we run back into the multiple ticket touches.
Agreed about the server setup being behind the times too. Even with the move to the new cloud setup, that was more for their scalability, and to get out of the corner they had backed themselves into with the original setup, more than a real benefit to the site owners.
I feel the same about all of their middle-man services, like auto updates and such. More for their benefit than the client.
I just can’t continue to recommend them in good conscious anymore.
I think there is a language issue too, that leads to a lot of misunderstandings with their higher up support and other folks.
I’m super sorry that they gave you such short notice to make other arrangements, and hope you were able to find a better host in that time.
The information here is presented in a very biased way, and is not totally accurate. Sounds more like self-promotion on the expense of SG.
SG has made the right move, cutting off some of the support as clients were going crazy with their support requests, to the point of asking the support to build the website for them.
Their servers are still good and for the tech-savvy users offer great performance.
You’re damn right it’s biased. I have never been a fan of SG’s goofy ways of doing things.
As I said in the post, hosts should focus on hosting. And if folks want WP support, then they need to pony up the money to move to a boutique host that has qualified WP staff on hand.
But, the more they began inserting themselves in the middle, especially without telling site owners, that’s when I really started disliking them. I have to work on the backside and provide tutorials for my followers. My folks have all been leaving SG once they get an audit and see what’s really going on. And they are thrilled with the speed and simplicity of the setup at the new host too.
Sorry to say but your blog is bias and absolute fake news garbage. I work with Siteground on a daily basis and their support is top notch. I also see and feel the difference between SG and other hosting companies, as I work with almost all hosters every month. With most hosting companies, you’d be happy to even get a response, period! When I look at your blog, I see a lot of anti-Siteground posts, which makes me wonder how your relationship with SG became a sour one, but you are obviously on an emotional crusade to defame them or want to get people to migrate to your affiliated hosting partners. When it comes to support, I have never ever waited longer then a day to get a response from them and it was always very helpful!!!!
Each to their own, Walter. You speak of your experiences with SiteGround, and I speak of mine and my clients for years.
It hasn’t been all bad. In fact, I’ve cut off working with those junk hosts.
I’ll still work for my clients on SiteGround, but I will still encourage them to move, as I have since the first time I had to work there.
But, they are now off my recommended list, as I just can’t endorse them anymore as being a viable host to move to.
There are just too many other better choices.
Im a simple Site Ground user. I mean , I just know a bit about SEO, them I needed some information and after a while got a chat with Siteground, BUT , recently , the company that is making my WordPress website asked me about temporary domains , and I never got contact with Siteground by chat, or even phone to be sure about some details. Im still looking for where I get access to chat or phone. This just my experience on last month.
Miguel, the way their support is set up is that they want to help you solve your own problem before contacting them. Most support centers operate this way, so I’m not sure why people get so wound up about it.
Here’s how you can find help:
Click the question mark in the top right corner and type your question or issue (in this case, type “temporary domain”). If the knowledgebase articles offered do not help, click on “View Help Center”. You will be directed to tutorials and their extensive knowledge base. If you still can’t find the info you need, then click “Contact us.” Choose which type of assistance you need. In your case, Domain Assistance.
Sidenote: Contrary to the title of this blog post WordPress Assistance is one of the options under Technical Assistance.
You will again be asked to describe your question, then you will get options to either Chat or Phone (occasionally submit a ticket is an option).
Once you know how to find help, it’s not difficult and they offer great support. The Facebook group is also very helpful.
Yeah, I’ve jumped through all of those hoops to find an answer to the issue, none of which helped, just to get to the buried support options to ask the question with a real person who might actually be able to address it. This setup is as bad as automated phone responses that make you click 14 buttons just to talk to a person.
And they may still have a WordPress support option at the end of all those hoops, at least for now, but that is in stark contradiction to the statement on the first support page that clearly states that if the problem is not with their product, and is a site issue, you need to contact a qualified developer for help.
Part of this confusion about how to access help is also caused by the sheer variety of the interfaces they present. If you’re on the original interface, you get a different set of hoops to jump through than on the new interface. And if you try to access support on the European servers, it’s different than on the U.S. servers.
So, even the instructions you gave for how to find the path to the support is not the same for everyone on SiteGround. Nor do the tutorials cover both types of ways of finding the things to click on to carry out the fix. Just more of their goofiness.
OMG NO. Cant believe website owners will have to starty looking after themselves for a change.
Hahaha, exactly. They either learn about it, pay someone who does know about it, or use something other than WP
I randomly visited this page because someone pointed me to your article, I work with 7-8 clients around the globe who have websites on SiteGround.
Although we as a web development company host our own websites and have around 25-26 servers spread around Europe and US and most of them are self managed so our tech personnel know there stuff, there hasn’t been a SINGLE time when we had to ask a client to leave SiteGround.
We’ve worked with subdomains, SSLs, all sorts of dns stuff like Microsoft and Google email setups, SPF records, everything. As for hosting, unless you’re a high traffic website OR have special needs for your web app, I really can’t understand why you’ve faced all this trouble, I really can’t.
The settings and options are all there, care to elaborate on what EXACTLY you need support for and you didn’t get a solution from their support dept? We’re talking WP here. Once you get that thing installed and give it the requirements that it needs like max execution time, php memory etc, I really struggle to find why you need to contact someone for support.
Unless of course the site is crashing. In that case if that’s the server’s fault just leave and find another host.
I work with several thousand site owners, Nikos. And I have many more thousands of followers. All of them are at different skill levels.
Plus I’m in blogger groups with tens of thousands of members.
One of the reasons that SiteGround has been so popular with bloggers is because they answered every type of support question put to them, including those that were strictly WordPress.
For myself, I never had a WP question when working on a client’s site, just hosting type things.
So, this SG change does not impact what I need to do for clients, but it certainly impacts the non-techie site owners on SG who counted on this level of support.
What I’m saying is, I understand people are not happy with X Y Z host, and they obviously have their reasons. Those reasons can either be legitimate, or just a misunderstanding from the client side, basically what I want from a host is to make my web app work without downtime (WP, Magento, custom PHP, doesn’t matter), be fast (if I’m paying for it to be fast) and not have technical issues which can’t be resolved.
As an example, if you’re dealing with big data uploads from a csv or web API, perhaps the default memory or script execution time won’t be enough. Most hosts allow me to change these values myself. I support supposed to actually do it for me, or am I paying just for a “Sir this value can be changed from that setting”?
People can’t expect to pay 60 per year and have 24/7 support in doing the simplest of things, especially if its just a google search away.
In any case, just to get things straight here. Your reply clarifies that the SOLE reason for you to bash SG is that they are dropping extensive support for WP, without even letting people know, right? That’s one thing, and I can understand your frustration.
I insist however that for someone who knows half the stuff we (as developers) SHOULD know, SG is a fine choice to host websites. I’m not saying its a good choice or a very good, I’m just saying that it’s a fine choice to host and I honestly can’t find a single reason to tell my client to move away from them.
My clients are not developers. They are bloggers. All of what you listed as an example of what you need in a host is RADICALLY different from what my clients need.
And this is exactly why hosting recommendations are all over the place. Folks throw out names without ever asking what the client’s needs are.
SiteGround is no longer a good fit for my blogger followers.
The issue here I think is more complex than what we can discuss, most people who run a website (lets call them bloggers) are uneducated about the needs of their website, very few actually know what is going on under the hood.
They are certainly better off hosting their website on another host, but they should also be expected to pay the premium.
Having said that, of course SG removing support out of the blue without previous warning is extremely bad practice.
It’s not that complex. Perhaps you have not been following me long. DIY site owner education and services is my main business.
My site audit clients have zero need of a host that supports WordPress questions. They save the money and are educated and rarely to never call the host for anything.
All of that was mentioned in the post too.
Do you have any links to that statement, I can’t find anything on the siteground website.
I even copied your text from that blue box into google, but couldn’t find it…
You have to be logged into your SiteGround account to see any of their support statements or options, or get access to the actual support area.
I don’t think there is any public link or access to any of it now, on either interface.
You’ll see another comment here lamenting the same. Used to be easy to find.
I must say that for a long time I was very happy with SG and recommended SEO clients and friends to use them. Recently I was really frustrated in finding a way to the ‘chat’ service that used to be right there on the home page. When I eventually arrived at chat after jumping thru endless hoops the service was fine.
Pity really, they used to be good.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that SG has done a good job of hiding all support options over the past year, especially on their new interface
I have been building WordPress websites for over 10 years. About 5 years ago I got fed up with just about every host out there, so I started working on my own hosting platform. A year later I moved a few hundred of my existing clients into it and currently host and support several hundred WordPress sites for myself and a handful of other developers.
I believe that’s how every boutique host we have now got started.
What I look for is a company that is small enough to care but big enough to serve. I’m not comfortable taking clients to a host that only has a few folks on staff.
I’m not sure if they are scaling down or not, but they still do support WP. Once you click okay for the “The Scope of Our Support” pop up, you can continue to the advanced support(which includes wp) and technical support.
I thought the Advanced Support was a paid option, meaning they billed you for it. Been a while since I clicked on that, maybe it has changed
Yes its part of the GoGeek Package. But what wp hosting service gives free support? Even bluehost you have to pay for a separate support (blue sky).
I’m curious how this will affect their overall support demands. For a host to blanket say no WordPress support, period, I’m sure they must have had some large influx of non hosting related support requests to back this move.
A host should atleast look at any anything tossed their way in my opinion. It doesn’t take much for example to troubleshoot the issue down to a specific plugin so that the customer can be advised who to contact next.
I’m hearing from all manner of folks that you can still get WP support if you dig down into the support options enough. But where to find those things is different on each of their interfaces, and also depends on the country the server is in.
Agreed that some issues don’t take a lot of deep troubleshooting. But, time is money, and maybe they just can’t afford the volume of WP support they’ve been taking. Hard to say.
Hey, I get it. I’m at the tail end of a 3 year run with SiteGround on shared hosting. Gotta say they’ve never been big on WordPress Support in those 3. Sure someone would try something or the other but if it was anything but superficial php version or memory change, forget it they just advised I get a developer. They’re definitely trying to crack down on the idiot support questions to let you know they’re not going to develop your site for you if it isn’t a problem they caused. But since I paid next to nothing on the 3 year contract I can’t complain.
But some of your support points otherwise seem harsh. I’m guessing that as they’ve grown, the ridiculous support calls have gone through the roof. They likely had to make it a little more difficult to find the chat or phone number.
But the support link is right there on the home page. A big “?” with a circle around it, and the pulldown will take you direct to the support site. Where yes, they make you go through a bit of a click tree before you enter your support ticket info, but after entering that info you are immediately given the option to submit or contact. And when you click contact you can chat or call. So yeah, you’ve got to click through a few things, but it’s not much different than before. You CAN call, and the support link IS on their home page.
While I’m probably going to to move to a dedicated host after my 3 year contract is up, I can’t complain much for what I’ve gotten. $270 for 3 years. Along the way they’ve added staging to my plan, and moved to google cloud. Since the move to google cloud I’ve stopped getting these bizarre timeout errors that they swore weren’t their fault. I haven’t noticed any changes to cpanel of any consequence. Might not be standard, but seems fine.
Everybody is going to have a different experience with support depending on what type of help they need.
I’m not being in the least bit harsh considering what I’ve had to ask them to do, and still am going through 2 weeks of hoohaa right this minute just to get emails working for a client with 5 touches on the ticket and counting.
Jumping through hoops to get help is not okay when my clients are paying for my time.