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GreenGeeks Hosting Reviews

Overall Score
★★★★★
★★★★★

Review Summary

Updated: January 7, 2023

GreenGeeks provides a suite of hosting products tailored to most hosting requirements. With affordable shared hosting plans for a private website or blog to resource-intensive dedicated servers for hosting large business or enterprise applications. The best part is that they put 300% of the energy they use back into the grid in the form of renewable energy credits, meaning the environmentally conscious can host their website with a clear conscience.

Pros

Cons

Shared Hosting Review

Best for Portfolio and Basic websites

Hosting Plans

    • Product
    • Multiple Sites Whether you can host multiple domains on this hosting plan.
    • Disk Storage
    • Bandwidth Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 10GB
      – eCommerce sites: 15GB+
    • Email Accounts Plans with email accounts included save you the hassle of having to setup your own email hosting.
    • Free Migration Transfer If you’re migrating your website from another company or plan, you might need support migrating your website to the new servers.
    • Price The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
    • View Product

GreenGeeks provides a straightforward range of shared hosting plans, making it easy to pick the right package for your price range and requirements. GreenGeek’s entry-level shared hosting plan is perfect for those looking to get a basic website up fast, providing enough resources to run a blog or local business website adequately. Higher-level plans, Pro and Premium, both include unlimited hosted websites and are best utilized by sites already seeing growth and traffic, or even professionals looking to host a few business sites for clients.

Unlimited Storage and Data Transfer

Generously, all GreenGeeks plans also come with unlimited storage and data transfer. Which is an excellent addition for those wanting to upload a lot of media or data to their website. That being said, as your site is one of many being hosted across the server, your usage will still be monitored and can be capped if you over-utilize resources.

GreenGeeks describes this in their Terms and Conditions under Excessive Resource user Policy:

A hosting account is considered using “Excessive amounts of resources” when it consumes 100% of the allocated resources on the subscribed hosting plan. GreenGeeks will automatically slow down your website if you happen to cross this threshold. If you continue to exceed the allocated resources, you may be forced to upgrade your package.

Most hosts that offer “unlimited” resources have this kind of policy in place and isn’t anything to worry about for new users. If you regularly use up your resources, it’s probably a sign your website will benefit from an upgraded plan. It might even be worth it to look into plans with dedicated resources like VPS or dedicated servers.

CloudFlare CDN

All plans come with free 1-click integration of CloudFlare CDN. A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, caches your website on servers all over the world so that users can access your pages faster no matter where they are. To make things even better, GreenGeeks also allows shared hosting customers to pick which data center they want to host their website on. Most hosts only provide this privilege to VPS or dedicated server customers.

Free SSL Certificate & Domain

GreenGeeks offers a free domain name for the first year; a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and unlimited personalized emails with all plans. After the first year, you’ll need to pay a yearly fee to keep your domain, but the price is relatively standard.

The Premium plan comes with a Premium AlphaSSL SSL certificate. With secure 256-bit encryption and a warranty, this certificate is recommended if you want to process transactions or run an e-commerce store. While it’s free with the Premium plan, it will set you back $99.95 with the other plans, which is what you’d expect to pay for a Premium SSL Certificate. As an extra benefit, you also get one free dedicated IP.

cPanel Hosting Panel

Like most hosts, GreenGeeks makes use of the cPanel hosting panel for all plans. While having a small learning curve, cPanel is one of the most popular and reliable types of hosting panels.

Free Migration Support

If you already host a website somewhere else, there’s good news if you’re looking to switch. GreenGeeks provide free migration services with all of their plans. It’s completely hands-off, and the only thing you need to do is provide their technicians with some of your old website’s info. Although they don’t guarantee a specific timeframe, most migrations take anywhere from 1 to 48 hours.

Pricing Comparison

While GreenGeeks’ first-term 3-year pricing is almost unbeatable, the renewal rates are slightly higher than its competitors. Paying a bit extra may be worth it if you consider that few other hosts offer unlimited storage and traffic across the board. Just beware of the renewal prices which can be more than double what you initially paid. Like most hosts, you’ll have to pay the entire term’s total price upfront.

Alternatively, you can also choose a monthly option with any plan if you’d like the flexibility to opt-out at any time. However, you will have to pay a one-off site setup fee and won’t get the included free domain. The best part is that you get a 30-day money-back guarantee with all plans. It’s completely risk-free, so you can try them out without worrying about wasting your money. However, the one caveat is that your domain isn’t covered by this guarantee. If you cancel your account within 30 days, you can keep your domain, but the cost will be deducted from the refund amount.

WordPress Hosting Review

Best for: Blogs and eCommerce sites

Hosting Plans

    • Product
    • Multiple Sites Whether you can host multiple domains on this hosting plan.
    • Disk Storage
    • Bandwidth Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 10GB
      – eCommerce sites: 15GB+
    • Email Accounts Plans with email accounts included save you the hassle of having to setup your own email hosting.
    • Free Migration Transfer If you’re migrating your website from another company or plan, you might need support migrating your website to the new servers.
    • Price The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
    • View Product

What’s Included

Just like their shared hosting plans, all of GreenGeeks WordPress plans include unlimited storage and bandwidth, and all the same features you’d want as well. Such as a free domain for the first year, a free Wildcard Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, CloudFlare CDN, One-click app installer, and automated site backups. On top of that, automatic updates of your WordPress install also ensures your site is up to date and kept secure from intrusion.

Unlike other WordPress specialized hosting packages, GreenGeeks doesn’t cap your bandwidth by how many visitors you can receive a month. With no traffic limits, you’ll have a higher roof for scalability and won’t have to worry about computing resources until your website’s visitors start to overload the server (which you’ll be forewarned about).

Performance Optimization for WordPress

For WordPress sites, free access to a CDN can work for you by increasing page and site performance across the board. Usually a paid plugin or feature with other hosts, CloudFlare’s delivery network is used and trusted by millions of websites.

What’s more, when matched with the included GreenGeeks PowerCacher add-on, you’re given all the tools needed to get your WordPress site running optimally at any scale. PowerCacher is an exclusive set of proprietary tools provided by GreenGeeks to accelerate your page loading speeds and is paired with LiteSpeed Cache.

Free WordPress Migration

For those looking to move their website from another registrar, GreenGeeks support you in this process providing free migration and even providing a temporary URL for testing. Even if after testing you’re not happy with the performance, GreenGeeks also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.

Pricing Comparison

Compared to other WordPress hosting plans offered on the market, GreenGeek’s offering is on the lower end of the price and resource spectrum. This is because it’s not a fully managed solution. Where GreenGeeks WordPress plans do shine are through their room for growth and scalability. Built-upon their quality shared hosting servers and plans, ensuring you’ll have all the tools and resources necessary to grow your WordPress website and traffic optimally.

VPS Hosting Review

Best for: High Traffic and Fast Growing sites

Hosting Plans

    • Product
    • Managed Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
    • CPU (Cores)
    • Disk Storage
    • Bandwidth Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 10GB
      – eCommerce sites: 15GB+
    • RAM Minimum Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 4GB
      – eCommerce sites: 4GB-6GB of RAM
    • Price The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
    • View Product
    • 2GB
    • 50 GB SSD
    • 10 TB
    • 2 GB
    • $39.95/mo
    • View
    • 4GB
    • 75 GB SSD
    • 10 TB
    • 4 GB
    • $59.95/mo
    • View
    • 8GB
    • 6 vCPU
    • 150 GB SSD
    • 10 TB
    • 8 GB
    • $109.95/mo
    • View

Plans

GreenGeeks VPS packages are different to most, blending aspects of managed and self-managed servers to provide an optimal solution for any customer skill level. To start, you’ll have full root access and can configure the server exactly how you want. That means experienced administrators or developers can also access their server and run commands via SSH.

In your server dashboard, you can stop, start, reboot, re-install, and re-configure your VPS at any time. You’ll get a clean, sandbox Linux environment, which you’ll have to mostly set up and manage yourself—for example, installing a firewall, backup software, management software, and other applications.

That said, GreenGeeks won’t leave you entirely to fend for yourself. On top of the usual 24/7 live chat, ticket, and phone support, they also provide extra managed support services to VPS customers. Some of the issues their server administrators can help you with are:

  • Network related issues
  • Performance issues
  • Installing packages via the package installer
  • Most cPanel and basic website issues

However, any custom server or third-party software you install will be your responsibility to manage. This is usually the case when it comes to managed support services. You also get a solo cPanel license for free, a powerful tool for managing your hosting solution, and is upgradeable to a multi-account or WHM license. Though, you’ll have to contact support to have it configured for you. From a management perspective, you should know that the responsibility of backing up your site will be your own, as GreenGeeks doesn’t provide this service.

What’s more, unlike some other providers, GreenGeeks doesn’t allow upgrading resources individually. So, you’ll have to stick to the predetermined resources for each of the three plans.
However, you are allowed to upgrade or downgrade your VPS plan at any time, while some VPS hosts only allow upgrades anytime. All you need to do is contact support from within your dashboard, and they’ll take it from there.

You will, however, have the flexibility to pick which GreenGeeks data center you want to be hosted from. With two options in the U.S., one in Canada, and one in Amsterdam.

Pricing Comparison

VPS plans are billed every month with GreenGeeks, so you aren’t locked into any long-term contracts, and there are no upfront setup fees either. Although GreenGeeks VPS plans are slightly more expensive than the average, four vCPU cores are more than you’ll typically get with other providers on a starter plan.

You also get a no-strings-attached 30-day money-back guarantee as well as free website migration. Most hosts charge a fee for VPS website transfer.

Dedicated Hosting Review

Best for: High traffic sites, maximum resources & security

Hosting Plans

    • Product
    • Managed Managed servers are generally recommended if you are looking for specialised or advanced server hosting and have little to low technical skills
    • CPU (Cores)
    • Disk Storage
    • Bandwidth Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 10GB
      – eCommerce sites: 15GB+
    • RAM Minimum Recommendations:
      – Basic sites: Upto 4GB
      – eCommerce sites: 4GB-6GB of RAM
    • Price The monthly cost for this plan, including discounts
    • View Product

What’s Included

GreenGeeks’ servers run on the latest energy-efficient Intel Xeon processors, DDR3 ECC-registered memory, RAID-10 redundant hard drives, and gigabit connections to multiple Tier-1 Backbones. You’ll also have four dedicated server configurations to choose from. The ‘Entry Server’ plan starts with an Intel Atom 330 Dual Core processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, and a 500GB SATA hard drive. This scales up to a Xeon E5-2620 2.0Ghz w/HT processor, 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and two 500 GB SATA hard drives. All servers also come with five dedicated IP addresses (not included by all providers) and 10,000 GB of data transfer.

Pricing Comparison

Compared to the rest of the market, GreenGeeks’ offering would fall into the low-to-mid-range end of dedicated server packages. You can probably find other options with more RAM and storage. Most other hosts also offer some DDR4 memory and SSD storage options. However, the Intel Xeon processors and 10,000 GB of monthly data transfer are standard offerings.

Top Features

Expert 24/7 Support

GreenGeeks provides one of the best customer support services on the market.

Scalability & Performance

GreenGeeks offer high-performance web hosting solutions no matter the business case.

Inclusive Plans

GreenGeeks have some of the most feature inclusive plans for your money.

Eco-Friendly Hosting

GreenGeeks is the World’s Most Environmentally Responsible website hosting service.

GreenGeeks Server Performance

Average Review Score
★★★★★
★★★★★

To test GreenGeeks’ hosting performance we used a few Pingdom reports. Over the span of a year, Pingdom’s probes (located across North America) performed daily checks, on a basic website (less than 100KBs) hosted on GreenGeeks’ shared server environment. Additionally, there was no throttling added to these checks, so slower response times can be expected for 3G or 4G connections. 

Yearly Server Performance:

  • Average Uptime

    100.00%

  • Average Response Time

    0.00ms

  • Monthly Downtime

    No Downtime

Data shown as monthly Uptime averages for a basic Godaady website

Server performance can affect all aspects of your site. Case studies have consistently found that customer wait times (page load and response times) directly affect everything from SEM, revenue, and traffic growth. By a lot too, here’s just one example: 

For Mobify, every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000.

Security

GreenGeeks uses redundant hardware and power, container-based technology, and host account isolation to limit the damage of any incidents. Whether it’s a physical threat to one of their data centers or digital threats in the form of malware or hackers, this technology will contain the threat and keep it from affecting all customers. GreenGeeks also proactively monitor all servers, running real-time scans for any signs of malicious attacks. Apps can also be set to auto-update aswell, which helps to maintain plugin integrity and functionality.

‘Let’s Encrypt SSL’ certificates support is also available across all plans. Plus, as a ‘Premium’ shared hosting customer, you can also get an advanced AlphaSSL certificate. This level of SSL is best for eCommerce sites or ones that tend to handle personal customer information.

If you want to allow financial transactions on your site, but you don’t want a ‘Premium’ plan, you can also add it to any other plan (VPS included) for $99.95 per year.

In case something does go wrong, GreenGeeks makes free nightly backups of your website with all of their shared hosting plans. That means you can sleep sound knowing that you won’t lose too much crucial work or data should you make a mistake or fall victim to a cyberattack.

You get one free backup restore a month to wipe away any issues. After that, you’ll need to pay a fee for each additional backup restore. You can also pay $5 per backup to make extra backups throughout the day from cPanel. Unfortunately, VPS and dedicated server customers will have to make their backups, although this is free using the cPanel backup tool.

While GreenGeeks is on par when it comes to shared hosting backups, most other hosts do provide some VPS and dedicated server backup services, even if it is at extra cost.

Customer Support Review

There are few things as frustrating as facing problems with your website, and there’s no one there to help you. Luckily, that shouldn’t be a problem if you’re a GreenGeeks customer. They offer tickets, live chat, and phone support so you can get in touch any way you prefer.

Both their ticket and live chat support is 24/7. Phone support is also available seven days a week, although it’s only between the hours of 9 AM to 12 AM EST (Monday to Friday) and 9 AM to 8 PM EST (Saturday and Sunday). Still, that’s better than most hosts.

From our own experience and real customer reviews, there isn’t much to complain about when it comes to quality of customer support. Especially via live chat, they usually respond within 5 minutes and keep replying to you quickly. I also find them to be polite and patient if you have a problem that takes a while to solve.

In most cases, the support rep also knew what they were doing and could quickly respond with the right information or steps to take. Some of their support staff may be outsourced as their English isn’t always perfect, but I never had trouble understanding them.

VPS and dedicated server customers can expect extra server management support via a server administrator. Admins can help resolve hardware and network issues as well as help with installing packages or any software added through cPanel.

If you’re someone that likes to solve issues themselves or learn more about hosting, you won’t be disappointed either. The knowledge base covers all the most essential topics like ‘Sales Questions’, ‘General Hosting Questions’, and ‘Getting Started’ with shared, VPS, or dedicated server hosting’. You can also search for a topic if you’re looking for something specific. They also provide other helpful resources like tutorials in using popular hosting and website building tools like WordPress, Elementor, cPanel, and more.

Support Tickets

GreenGeeks offer ticketed support, which can be accessed via the Client area.

Live Chat

GreenGeeks offers live chat support 24/7/365

Tutorials & Guides

GreenGeeks has a rich knowledge base and blog full of information.

Website Migration

GreenGeeks offers a free website migration service with most plans.

Phone Support

GreenGeeks offers phone from 9AM to 12AM EST, 7 days a week.

Community Forums

GreenGeeks does not have a dedicated community forum for customer support and troubleshooting.

Multilingual Support

GreenGeeks does not mention offering customer support across multiple languages.

Premium Support

GreenGeeks does offer a premium technical support service.

Coupons

10 Years Celebration Offer! 70%OFF Hosting

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Just use the Coupon Code at checkout!

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Get 43%OFF Reseller Hosting Plans

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Specially engineered hosting to perform while being environmentally friendly. Experience the best speed technology, better security, and down-to-earth technical support.

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