If you're looking for a hosting company to host your website, you must do your homework first. With numerous providers from which to choose, you should be aware that some hosting providers outperform and give higher-quality services than their competition.
Hence, to make the best-educated decision possible, you must first understand what services and quality each provide. Here, we give you a rundown of HostPapa and Siteground with comparisons.
An Introduction to HostPapa
HostPapa is a Canadian hosting firm with a significant, albeit remote, fan following in Australia and New Zealand. The company caters only to small enterprises, highlighting the advantages of launching a website on a data center in Toronto, Los Angeles, or Amsterdam.
To test the waters, go sign up for WP Starter, the most basic WordPress hosting package. This plan includes 100GB of SSD storage, which is a substantial amount. It's a lot more than the typical 10-15GB offered by most hosts on their basic plans. However, more expensive subscriptions include unlimited storage.
There's Everything You Need. But What Else Is There?
Because we focus a lot of our hosting reviews on WordPress, it's worth noting that HostPapa offers a few WordPress-related hosting options. But, as with many other companies, that doesn't signify much. It's the same shared hosting options as before, but now with WordPress preinstalled.
All the plans include free site migration and unlimited bandwidth if you already have a website. You can use as much bandwidth as you need as long as you're just running a conventional website and not hosting your personal music collection.
Every plan comes with a free site builder, although the Starter and Business plan only allows you to create two pages. If all your site need is a one-page portfolio, that's good, and it'll suffice for a temporary site. Otherwise, there just aren't enough pages.
Every plan comes with a free SSL certificate that is installed instantly. This protects your site against hackers, which is especially important if you have forms where people enter personal information.
Now we get to the distinguishing characteristics:
WordPress is pre-installed: It is, after all, a WordPress plan, right? As a result, WordPress is preinstalled, along with a free version of the Jetpack performance optimization plugin. While we can't complain because it saves you a few minutes of clicking and no money, we can't say it's wonderful either.
To be honest, you could just as easily use the integrated cPanel to install WordPress. If you're a beginner, however, having it preinstalled is significantly more convenient.
Backup systems: Unfortunately, at least for the Starter plan, there are no automated backups. Although HostPapa appears to offer a separate backup service, it will cost you extra. However, you can download backups from cPanel whenever you want, which is... convenient. It's not quite as excellent as SiteGround's automatic backups, but it's something.
The Advanced Plan has true premium features: With the most advanced plan, the situation becomes a little more fascinating. It includes premium Jetpack licenses as well as a premium Wildcard SSL certificate. The user interface is a simple, not-so-modern design that appears to have been created by HostPapa. It's simple to use and offers all of the standard domain, service, billing, and support administration features. cPanel is cPanel, and as long as you can navigate between the 70% of choices you'll never need, it's very simple to use.
Configuring a domain might be a difficult task: Your domain is included in your hosting package. However, if you need to link a domain that is registered somewhere else, you will be unable to do so since the essential data is not available, which is inconvenient. However, the pre-installed WordPress is a wonderful touch.
Performance metric: As previously stated, the standard test website is built on WordPress and is, in other words, rather basic. It's also customary to inquire with each host's technical assistance. Unfortunately, HostPapa's tech support only offers the option of upgrading to a more costly plan.
The site's uptime averaged 99.973 percent, with a complete page loading time of 2.08 seconds on average. Average global loading speeds were 3.223 seconds, while the site's uptime averaged 2.08 seconds. These aren't the worst outcomes I've had, but they're certainly not the finest.
UptimeRobot: For four months 99.973 %. It's decent – not exceptional – but it's certainly something to trust. The strange part is that HostPapa offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, yet the Service Level Agreement does not mention it.
Support: First and foremost, there is a knowledge base with tutorials to educate you on how to use your hosting and develop your website. If you have any questions, you should start here. Chat, email, tickets, and phone assistance are all available around the clock.
Pricing: Well, it's clear at this time that HostPapa can provide better value. In terms of features, performance, and support, it's a below-average to average experience. Only a low and competitive price can save it. However, the rate is only affordable if you sign up for three years. You could pay up to twice as much if you join up for a shorter time. With all plans, you get a free domain. Credit cards and PayPal are accepted as payment methods, and all purchases are covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, at the very least, you can get out if necessary.
An Introduction to SiteGround
It hogged all the buzz a few years ago, with the consensus being that SiteGround was the best and most developer-friendly hosting provider available. Now we're in the year 2022. SiteGround has undergone numerous transformations. We found some nice things, as well as a few not-so-wonderful things. Continue reading to see if SiteGround is the correct fit for you.
Features: Let's start with the fundamentals. There are three options available, the most basic of which, StartUp, allows for only one website, while the other two allow for infinite websites. The StartUp offers 10GB of SSD storage space and enough bandwidth to accommodate about 10,000 monthly visitors when you sign up.
Upgrading: Upgrading to one of the two advanced plans will provide you extra storage and bandwidth, as well as access to a variety of premium features. Most of the features that make SiteGround amazing are not available in the basic package. The advanced plans are significantly superior, but they are also significantly more expensive.
Advanced: All plans use NGINX, one of the most sophisticated and powerful web server technologies available today. SiteGround recently decided to create its control panel, Site Tools. What impact does this have on you? You get SiteGround's App Manager, which supports 18 CMS installations. If your preferred program isn't on the list, you'll have to manually install it. Popular platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are all supported.
Security: By default, all plans contain some basic security capabilities, such as a web application firewall and a proprietary monitoring system. You'll have to pay more if you want the peace of mind that modern security can deliver.
Backups: Every day, SiteGround backs up your complete system and preserves each backup for at least 30 days.
Caching: SuperCacher Performance Booster is the finest. This solution is available from SiteGround, however, it is limited in its capabilities in the basic plan. You'll receive some basic caching, but you'll need to upgrade to one of the higher plans to get the real deal.
Website Migration: If you already have a website hosted somewhere else, you can use the panel's automated migration feature. This will work for simple websites, but if your website is sophisticated (several plugins, custom features, special fields, etc.), you're likely to run into issues.
Control Panel: Site Tools from SiteGround are streamlined, smooth, appealing, and modern in appearance. Everything is organized in a sidebar, with the most popular activities immediately accessible.
Installing WordPress and Connecting Your Domain: If you buy a domain from SiteGround, it will be linked to your hosting account right away. This same wonderful interface can handle the rest of your hosting, from installing SSL certificates to recovering backups.
Another useful tool for newbies is SiteGround's WordPress Starter plugin, which can guide you through the process of selecting a theme and setting up your site. Yoast SEO, Jetpack, WPForms, and other well-known WordPress plugins are among those included.
Performance: SiteGround just began using Google Cloud Platform, and it now has data centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Asia, and Australia. SiteGround, on the other hand, is unexpectedly slow, given its premium cost. It's not painfully slow, but it's constantly slower than the other hosts. Uptime is fantastic, but it isn't sufficient on its own.
UptimeRobot: SiteGround performs exceptionally well in this area, with a three-month average of 99.997 percent. This is excellent material, well exceeding the 99.9% it guarantees in its terms of usage.
Customer Service: Finally, SiteGround's customer service is wonderful. They're friendly, professional, and knowledgeable, and they're always willing to assist. The customer assistance is touted as being available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by live chat and phone.
Pricing: SiteGround's pricing has always been a stumbling block. Long-term contracts are not only more expensive, but renewal prices are three times greater. As a result, SiteGround is one of the priciest hosting alternatives. Even at the basic level, you'll have to break a trust fund or two to get to the advanced levels.
SiteGround accepts credit cards and PayPal, but you must request PayPal payment from support. You'll have to manually generate a PayPal payment request every month if you do this.
Comparisons between SiteGround and HostPapa
Web hosting prices and plans
SiteGround can't compete with HostPapa's low prices. Shared, reseller, and managed WordPress hosting are available from SiteGround and HostPapa. HostPapa offers VPS hosting, while SiteGround offers WooCommerce hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers.
The shared and managed WordPress hosting packages are the same pricing for both services. However, HostPapa offers somewhat better deals and package renewal rates. With all of HostPapa's plans, you get a free domain name – something SiteGround doesn't offer. HostPapa also offers free website migration, only available with SiteGround's more expensive plans. You also get a 30-day money-back guarantee offered by both hosts.
Even though both SiteGround and HostPapa offer economical hosting, HostPapa is somewhat less expensive, which is why it wins this round.
Special Features
With its WordPress hosting plans, SiteGround offers more features.
Individual users and small to medium-sized enterprises can choose from three managed WordPress hosting packages offered by SiteGround and HostPapa.
SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free Cloudflare CDN, and free SSL certificates are all things that these two hosts have in common. HostPapa provides storage ranging from 100 GB to infinite, email accounts ranging from 100 to unlimited, MySQL databases ranging from 25 to unlimited, and the ability to host 2 to limitless websites.
SiteGround, on the other hand, offers 10 to 40 GB of storage space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited MySQL databases, and the ability to host one to unlimited websites. Daily backups get included in all SiteGround plans, but HostPapa only offers this service with its most expensive plan, WP Business Pro.
cPanel and the Softaculous one-click installer are used by HostPapa. SiteGround also created its control panel, SiteTools, and an application process for installing popular CMS programs. Compared to cPanel, SiteTools is far more polished and user-friendly.
With all SiteGround packages, you'll also get a free website builder (Weebly), but not with HostPapa.
In the following checklist, you can see more differences between SiteGround and HostPapa:
Special Features List for SiteGround and HostPapa
In this section, who came up on top? SiteGround's packages include essential features, whereas HostPapa's best features are only available on its most expensive plan.
Speed and Performance
HostPapa's Website Loading Speeds Are Slightly Faster. SiteGround has servers across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Singapore, whereas HostPapa just has one server in Canada. As a result, SiteGround has a minor global presence advantage over HostPapa.
All plans on both hosts employ SSD storage, which is substantially faster than standard HDD storage when processing website data. We can see this performance in the loading speed and overall performance.
The best part is both hosting gets a free Content Delivery Network (CDN). It puts your website on a global cloud server network. This improves the loading speed of your website from various regions throughout the world, among other things.
While using Sucuri to test SiteGround's loading speeds from various regions, many of them exhibited slow times, much to our amazement. Even while certain places had quick loading times, it wasn't enough to increase the overall speed quality beyond an average.
Findings from HostPapa were good, with better loading times in more places. Overall, HostPapa received an A, just short of the perfect A+ score. Although both hosts have a broad set of performance elements and scored well in the assessments, HostPapa wins by a sharp margin due to its superior speed.
Protection and Security
SiteGround Provides More Security Options. All of SiteGround's plans have a comprehensive set of security features as standard. Web application firewall (WAF), own artificial intelligence (AI) anti-bot system (protection against malicious assaults such as DDoS and Brute-Force attacks), 24/7 server monitoring, and access to the Sucuri-developed SG Scanner are just a few of the features (anti-malware).
Server firewall, monitoring, intrusion detection, DDoS/Brute-Force protection, secured entrance/exit, network monitoring, and ModSecurity are all included in HostPapa.
With its Linux-based shared hosting services, HostPapa uses CloudLinux OS, whereas SiteGround uses a similar approach called Unique Account Isolation. Both of these technologies encrypt your account and separate it from other users on the same server, protecting it from external attacks. It also ensures that server resources are distributed fairly across customers.
SiteGround offers free daily backups with all of its plans, but HostPapa only offers higher-value services. Both hosts have SSL certificates that are available for free.
The security competition is close, but SiteGround emerges victorious since it offers slightly more security features.
Customer support
Both are excellent, but SiteGround has a better number of necessary resources. SiteGround and HostPapa both have well-designed and organized websites, but SiteGround's is even more elegant and dynamic.
On both websites, you'll discover large and easy-to-browse knowledge-based sections with articles and tutorials covering critical subjects. And not just that, but SiteGround also features a blog with an extensive and interactive community forum.
HostPapa, on the other hand, provides a free 30-minute one-on-one training session to all new customers.
SiteGround's customer service is reachable by phone, live chat, or a support ticket. All channels are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I chose the live chat option, and while it took some time to connect with a representative, the support personnel was quite knowledgeable and helpful.
HostPapa also offers customer service available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Live chat, phone, email, support ticket, and fax are amongst other available communication modes. When you call them on the live chat, you are readily connected, and the representative usually addresses all of your inquiries. This was corroborated by users and reviewers alike. Even though both providers offer many support options and good customer service teams, SiteGround edges out the competition by a thread, thanks to its user-friendly interface and busy community forum.
SiteGround is the winner
HostPapa put up a good fight against SiteGround, one of the greatest web hosting services. When you look at all the options, it offers more reasonable rates, a free domain, quicker page loading speeds, and free website migration.
SiteGround, on the other hand, won three of the five tasks, with better features, security, and support choices. The SiteGround pricing plans are listed below. Our experts also recommend SiteGround as one of the best-managed WordPress hosting options available today.
Let's look at the Comparison.
Web hosting prices and plans:
Special Features
Speed and Performance
Protection and Security
Customer Support
FAQs
SiteGround may seem a little more expensive than HostPapa, but all of its shared and WordPress hosting plans contain more critical features. For instance, daily backups, Weebly site builder, unlimited email accounts, etc. It also has improved security and customer service. So, it's no wonder that SiteGround ranks among the best web hosting services in the world.
It doesn't work that way. Because actually, HostPapa offers a variety of VPS plans. By default, HostPapa's VPS plans are unmanaged. You can acquire managed and fully managed VPSs for an additional charge. Do you want to improve your options? Look for the top cloud hosting and VPS service suggestions.
It certainly does. All of SiteGround's hosting services come standard with SSD discs. A minimum of 10 GB SSD storage is available. SiteGround is also regarded as one of the top low-cost, high-performance SSD hosting providers.
They provide a custom-built beginner-friendly dashboard and an easy onboarding procedure with exceptional customer service. Perhaps, this is why SiteGround is a little more expensive than Bluehost, but they make up for it with some of the best customer services in the business.
HostPapa is a small-business-focused independent hosting service that offers a few appealing features in its hosting options. Because of its modest initial expenses, most individuals can afford its most basic plans, albeit renewal charges can be rather high.
cPanel is without a doubt the most popular choice, and for good reason. It is designed for Linux, which is the most prevalent operating system for web servers, and it may make administering your web hosting environment lot easier than it would be otherwise. There are, however, a number of other excellent web hosting control panels.