Are you in the process of shopping for the best web hosting services? If yes, it may get to a point where you have to choose between BigScoots and SiteGround. In that case, you would most likely have to undertake a BigScoots vs SiteGround comparison.
That is something you would be doing with the ultimate objective of settling on the best possible web hosting service provider between the two. In this article, we provide you with the information that you need to have while undertaking the BigScoots vs SiteGround comparison. Then, by the end of it all, we tell you who – between BigScoots and SiteGround – is the better web host.
Introduction to BigScoots
BigScoots is one of the fastest-growing web hosting companies globally. It has been in existence since the year 2010, giving it a track record of serving clients continuously for more than 13 years now. The company is based in Illinois Chicago (USA).
Introduction to SiteGround
SiteGround is one of the best-known web hosting companies all over the world. It is also one of the most popular, going by the customer base it boasts of — more than 2.8 million domains. SiteGround has an almost 2-decade track record now, having been founded in the year 2004. This particular company is based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
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BigScoots Services
BigScoots’ main flagship service is WordPress hosting, which it offers under the fully-managed model. Clients get to choose between shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, depending on their needs. BigScoots also offers CloudFlare services, besides being a domain registrar too. Additionally, BigScoots has reseller hosting services.
SiteGround Services
SiteGround’s main flagship service is WordPress hosting – which, as they put it, “has it all”. Websites built with other CMSs can also be hosted at SiteGround. SiteGround also has WooCommerce and cloud hosting. And just like BigScoots, SiteGround vends reseller hosting as well.
BigScoots Pricing Plans
For shared hosting, BigScoots has 3 plans, namely ‘105cc’ (which goes for $6.95 per month), ‘155cc’ (going for $9.95 per month), and ‘Turbo Diesel+’ (which is priced at $18.95 per month). For VPS, BigScoots offers 4 plans, with prices ranging from $50 per month to $131.90 per month. For dedicated hosting, BigScoots’ plans’ prices range from $220.85 per month to $639.15 monthly.
Turning to CloudFlare services, we find BigScoots offering them for amounts between $17 per month (Tier 1) and $250 per month (Tier 3). For Reseller hosting, BigScoots charges between $19.95 per month and $40.95 monthly. Very important to note is that the fees charged by BigScoots are not ‘introductory/special promotional offers’ that are bound to be jerked up at the second-year renewal time.
On the contrary, the amounts BigScoots charges tend to remain the same, even at second-year renewal time. We may also mention that what BigScoots sells in most cases are truly fully managed services. So having paid the aforementioned amounts, BigScoots does handle all technical challenges that arise at any point, in line with its Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
SiteGround Pricing Plans
For website hosting services (including WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting), SiteGround has 3 service plans. Those are named ‘StartUp’ (available at $3.99 per month), ‘GrowBig’ (6.69 per month), and ‘GoGeek’ ($10.69 per month).
For cloud hosting, SiteGround’s charges are $100 per month (‘Jump Start’ plan), $200 per month (‘Business’ plan), $300 per month (‘Business Plus’ plan), and $400 per month (‘Super Power’ plan). As for Reseller hosting, SiteGround charges $6.69 per month (‘GrowBig’ plan), $10.69 per month (‘GoGeek’ plan), and $100 per month (‘Cloud’ plan).
BigScoots vs SiteGround – Our Indepth Comparison
In making an objective BigScoots vs SiteGround comparison, we use some 5 parameters. Those are hosted website speed, pricing, customer support, interface, and available website resources. Let’s get going with it.
Hosted website Speed
Regarding the hosted website speed, BigScoots seems to be considerably better than SiteGround. SiteGround does offer its customers a plugin (SG Optimizer) to help in improving their websites’ speeds. But really, there is only so much that a plugin can do in the bigger scheme of things.
Ultimately, it would seem that BigScoots’ infrastructure is not as strained as SiteGround’s. Therefore the websites hosted on BigScoots end up having better performance in terms of speed. Then again, we do need to mention that SiteGround’s speed performance is not intolerably poor either.
SiteGround does still have decent speed. It is just that BigScoots is better in this regard. Besides the underlying hardware infrastructure, another factor that often affects speed is CloudFlare integration. Now both SiteGround and BigScoots do offer the said CloudFlare integration. However, the process of integrating with CloudFlare from SiteGround is easier than is the case with BigScoots.
That is because it is something you can do right from the dashboard. However, BigScoots tech support does directly help their customers with these more complex issues upon being requested to do so. The bottom line? BigScoots offers somehow better speeds than SiteGround.
Pricing
Concerning pricing, SiteGround generally seems to be cheaper than BigScoots. For instance, while the least-priced hosting plan at SiteGround starts at $3.99 per month, BigScoot’s cheapest plan starts at $6.95. But there are two important things to keep in mind here. First is the fact that what SiteGround offers are mostly introductory promotional prices.
These tend to be suddenly jerked up when you get to a point where you have to undertake renewal. With BigScoots though, the quoted prices are ‘real’ – not introductory/promotional.
When SiteGround’s prices are jerked up at renewal time, they tend to get closer to BigScoots. The other key thing to understand is that BigScoots offers ‘fully managed’ services. Thus when you pay the slightly higher amounts charged by BigScoots, you are not only paying for the service but also for full technical support. That is unlike the case with SiteGround, where most of the services are more or less unmanaged – meaning that you often find yourself having to tackle some challenging technical issues on your own.
Customer support
Both BigScoots and SiteGround have ‘real human’ customer support. Their customer care reps are generally polite and helpful. On the whole, though, BigScoots’ customer service seems to be a bit better than SiteGround’s. But SiteGround does have the advantage of having an (instant) chat-based customer support arrangement, while at BigScoots, customer support is via the good old tickets.
However, the tech support people at BigScoots seem to be somewhat more knowledgeable. They also don’t just explain to you how you ought to go about fixing issues. They fix them for you: under their fully managed services model. This can make a very huge difference, especially for website owners who are not a techie.
On another note, should issues that require your urgent attention come up (like if your website is approaching its resource limits), BigScoots tends to make you aware of the issue and help you in resolving it in a much better and friendlier way than SiteGround.
One easily gets the impression that SiteGround is one of those big companies where the customer support people sometimes get almost overwhelmed. On the other hand, BigScoots comes across as something akin to the ‘corner shop’ that is in a position to give truly personalized support to all its customers.
Interface
SiteGround’s user interface is considerably easier to use than BigScoots’. So you find that there are more things you can do from SiteGround’s dashboard, in comparison to what you can do from BigScoots’ dashboard. This can be a major issue for website owners who are not techies.
But we do also have to recall that even when you are unable to do something by yourself on BigScoots’ system, the company’s tech support people are always more than willing to do it for you. This is possible because they offer ‘fully managed’ services: which come with an obligation to handle technical issues on behalf of the clients.
Available Resources
Generally, for any given service level, SiteGround’s clients seem to get severer resource limits than BigScoots’ customers. Therefore the need to keep on upgrading to higher (and hence costlier) service plans is something that SiteGround’s customers have to grapple more with.
This can be a major issue, especially if your website is one of those that experience traffic fluctuations, especially concerning occasional spikes. So we find that BigScoots is not only more generous with resources but also way more flexible. They don’t start threatening to take your website down the moment you hit a bandwidth limit for instance.
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Conclusion – So Which One is Better: BigScoots or SiteGround?
The whole point of undertaking a BigScoots vs SiteGround comparison is to find out which one is better. Now if better site speed/performance, access to higher resource limits, and good customer support are what you care most about, BigScoots is clearly better. It is superior to SiteGround on those parameters.
Conversely, if your main considerations are pricing and access to a friendlier user interface, SiteGround is the web hosting company to go for. In general objective overall terms, BigScoots seems to be a slightly better web host, for those who are in a position to afford its pricing rates.