There’s a lot to consider when choosing a web hosting provider. You need to find one that’s reliable, offers excellent performance, fits into your budget, and much more. However, what if you’re also concerned about the impact of your site on the environment? In our GreenGeeks review for WordPress, we’ll analyze this eco-friendly service so that you can make an informed decision about whether to sign up with them.
We’ll first give you a top-level overview of what you can expect from GreenGeeks, and then we’ll dive into the heavier details right after (skip the overview and go to the full analysis).
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks specializes in providing eco-friendly web hosting solutions for individuals and businesses. With their commitment to renewable energy and friendly 24/7 customer support, GreenGeeks is a great option for those looking for sustainable hosting that is environmentally conscious.
Pros
Eco-friendly
Well optimized for WordPress
Reasonable price
Cons
Inconsistent performance
Not ideal for sites outside of North America, Europe, or Asia
An overview of GreenGeeks hosting for WordPress
Load times | 1.68s (US) | 0.62s (EU) | 1.5s (Asia) … |
Uptime | 100% (avg. over 3 months) |
Support | 24/7/365 support for all WordPress plans via chat, ticket or phone. Also tutorial articles and webinars. |
Key features | Free email, free WordPress install with auto updates, free WordPress migration, free SSL certificate, free domain name for 1st year, free backup, and free CDN included in all WordPress hosting plans. |
Eco-friendly initiatives | GreenGeeks is an official Green Power Partner of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. They plant 1 tree for every hosting account opened, and they offer a 300% green energy match via the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. |
Developer features | SSH access, Git, WP-CLI, SFTP, phpMyAdmin, a staging environment, and option for multiple PHP versions. |
Price | The cheapest WordPress plan is $2.95 per month for the first 12 months. It lets you host 1 website and includes 50 GB of storage. |
Best for | Environmentally conscious individuals and small to medium-sized businesses seeking secure, eco-friendly web hosting solutions, with a strong commitment to sustainability. |
GreenGeeks versus its main competitors
While many companies are trying to “go green” nowadays, there are two hosting providers that have made impressive strides in their commitment to be eco-friendly in a similar fashion to GreenGeeks. The first is SiteGround, which has outlined a series of initiatives they’ve taken to minimize their carbon footprint and reduce their overall negative impact on the environment. The second is DreamHost, which has made a similar pledge. Here is how the three compare:
GreenGeeks | DreamHost | SiteGround | |
---|---|---|---|
Rating | 3.8 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | 4.7 / 5 |
Load time avg. | 1.3s | 2.07s | 1.09s |
Uptime avg. | 100% | 99.78% | 99.97% |
Price from | $2.95 | $2.59 | $2.99 |
Free domain | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Free email hosting | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Free SSL | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Hosting panel | cPanel | Custom panel | SiteGround’s own Site Tools |
Eco-Friendly Certification | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Renewable Energy Match | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Visit | GreenGeeks | DreamHost | SiteGround |
GreenGeeks | Market average | |
---|---|---|
Load times US | 1.68s | 1.13s |
Load times EU | 0.62s | 1.03s |
Load times Asia | 1.5s | 2.04s |
Uptime | 100% | 99.98% |
GreenGeeks review for WordPress
GreenGeeks offers both standard and WordPress-specific hosting options. As its name suggests, GreenGeeks’ key selling point is that it aims to provide an eco-friendly service. It achieves this both by designing its platform to be extremely energy efficient and by investing heavily in renewable energy.
This is great news for the eco-conscious. However, it’s also important that the hosting itself is top-notch. To gauge its effectiveness, we’ve conducted a thorough GreenGeeks review for WordPress and we’ve shared our findings with you here.
Table of contents 📚
Specific features ⚙️
GreenGeeks includes a number of useful features for WordPress users, including:
- A one-click install option, to get your site set up quickly.
- Automatic updates, so your site remains secure and stable over time.
- Security features, such as Immunify360 and DDoS Protection.
- Fast loading times, due to using LiteSpeed WebServer.
- Beginner-friendly but also developer-friendly, with access to SSH, Git, WP-CLI, SFTP, phpMyAdmin, a staging environment, and more.
Overall, GreenGeeks has covered all the necessary bases when it comes to general and WordPress-specific features.
Support options 👨💻
GreenGeeks offers three primary support channels:
- Support ticket 📧
- Phone 📱
- Live chat 💬
Phone support is available throughout the week and on weekends, and email tickets boast a fast resolution time. As for the live chat, it’s available every day of the year, 24/7.
We tested out the live chat personally:
The support staff were friendly and helpful and seemed able to answer our WordPress questions easily. Even better, we got a response within a few seconds each time.
If you prefer to figure things out on your own, GreenGeeks also offers a variety of support documentation. There’s a tutorial base with some helpful articles:
There are also webinars you can check out with both informative and instructional content:
Performance 💡
Now, we come to perhaps the most important section in our GreenGeeks review for WordPress. Excellent performance is essential if you want to provide a quality user experience on your site. Your hosting provider has a huge impact in this area, so let’s see how GreenGeeks stacks up.
Right off the bat, it offers a number of features designed to keep your site fast. For example:
- GreenGeeks servers use Solid State Drives (SSDs), which have a positive impact on loading speeds.
- They also utilize LiteSpeed and pre-install the LS Cache Plugin, so pages can be served more quickly.
- All of their plans include a free content delivery network (CDN).
Beyond the above, GreenGeeks offers several server locations and lets you choose which one you’d like to use during the checkout process:
As you can see, GreenGeeks has a decent global representation. However, if your primary audience falls outside of North America, Europe, or Asia, then you might experience some slower loading times. Put another way, the farther away your audience is from the server location, the larger the delay in load time they will experience.
With that said, we never settle for merely hypothesizing. Advertised performance is nice in theory, but it doesn’t always translate to reality. So, we decided to test GreenGeeks ourselves a while back and we’ve been testing it every month since then. More on that next.
Page speed tests with Pingdom
A few years ago we signed up for the GreenGeeks entry-level WordPress plan and then we set up a basic website on it. Afterwards we ran a series of Pingdom tests to see how fast the site would load from different locations around the world.
We’ve been running those same tests on a monthly basis, updating the results you see below each time via a shortcode mechanism. Here are the most recent results from the previous month:
East Coast USA: 2.12s | West Coast USA: 1.47s |
Central USA: 1.46s | London, UK: 0.57s ⭐ |
Paris, France: 0.66s ⭐ | Mumbai, India: 1.50s |
Since the results are a “living dataset” that changes every month, we can’t write some definitive conclusion here, but we can say this from having done them for quite a long time now:
GreenGeeks is typically a mixed bag. We often see load times that are under one second in some locations, while being over a second – sometimes even over two seconds – in other locations. The fastest times (under a second) typically show up in the Europe testing locations so it wouldn’t surprise us if that’s what you’re seeing now.
Page speed tests with Load Impact
In addition to loading times, to get a closer look at our GreenGeeks site’s performance, we also tested it using Load Impact. This tool puts more stress on the site, simulating the impact of many concurrent users. Unlike the Pingdom tests, we do not run these monthly, but periodically. Our most recent results were as follows:
- Load Generator: Frankfurt, DE
- Test Server: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Minimum Response Time: 0.16 seconds
- Maximum Response Time: 111 seconds
Overall, the response times were very inconsistent, and in some cases very high. Ideally, you want the green line to remain flat (and low) as the number of visitors (the blue line) increases. As you can see, this wasn’t the case in our most recent test.
However, keep in mind that this test is a simulation, meaning that while it does attempt to replicate a real use case scenario, it’s not entirely accurate. The huge times reported by Load Impact might be a result of GreenGeeks’ mechanisms for spam protection or other such measures.
Still, if performance is your primary concern, then based on what we’ve seen, we can’t fully throw our support behind GreenGeeks as the best choice for that purpose.
Pricing 💸
GreenGeeks offers three WordPress hosting plans – Lite, Pro, and Premium.
- Lite plan costs $2.95 per month.
- Pro plan is $4.95 per month.
- Premium plan is $8.95 per month.
The prices above reflect annual billing. Notably, GreenGeeks is one of the relatively small number of hosting companies out there that also gives you the option of paying month-to-month, and even the option of paying up front for two years or three years. However, the best deal on all three plans is undoubtedly the one-year option.
If we consider all of the features that the Lite plan comes with, $2.95 per month is quite a bargain actually.
You get up to 50 free email accounts, access to a free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, a free domain name for the first year, free backups, a free CDN, and quite a bit more.
If you have some web development experience and you’re looking to tinker under the hood, GreenGeeks also sets you up with SSH access, Git, WP-CLI, SFTP, phpMyAdmin, a staging environment, and the option to choose from multiple PHP versions.
Higher-level plans unlock additional features like on-demand backups, a WordPress repair tool, a free dedicated IP, free AlphaSSL, and object caching (Memcached and Redis).
Overall, GreenGeeks WordPress plans provide you with everything you need to get started and offer more than enough resources for small to medium-sized sites.
Overall pros and cons 👍👎
At this point, let’s take a moment to sum up the most important advantages and drawbacks of GreenGeeks WordPress hosting:
Pros
Offers an eco-friendly service that offsets your website’s footprint by investing in renewable energy.
Includes plenty of WordPress-specific features.
Provides a lot of features and resources for a very reasonable price.
Cons
Performance appears to be inconsistent.
Not ideal for sites who’s primary audience is outside of North America, Europe, or Asia.
Conclusion 🏁
Overall, GreenGeeks is an intriguing option if you’re looking for a hosting provider offering something unique. Its WordPress plans are fairly cheap, provide plenty of resources and features, and come with lots of helpful support.
Your mileage may vary when it comes to performance. However, the option is still very affordable, which is worth keeping in mind.
👉 If you want to check out some other eco-friendly hosting services in comparison, here is our roundup of the best green web hosting services on the market in 2018.
Do you concur with the results of our GreenGeeks review for WordPress? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
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