It's "Green", But Does It Mean It's Good?
Trey Gardner launched GreenGeeks in 2008, and they have since grown to serve over 300,000 websites (with data centres in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands).
Trey’s experience with eight different web hosting companies, including iPowerweb, iPage, StartLogic, Dot5Hosting, Globat, Lunarpages, HostPapa, and now GreenGeeks, is valuable.
GreenGeeks goes on to make two bold assertions on their website:
- There is a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Complete client satisfaction
So, what’s the final word? Is their uptime and support great when fueled by wind? Or are their promotional promises just a bunch of baloney?
To find out for ourselves, we purchased GreenGeeks’ ‘Shared Plan’ and put up a basic WordPress test website to run speed testing for over a year.
Continue reading to find out if GreenGeeks heeded our advice.
Overview of General Information and Hosting
- 4.5 stars from us
- 503 ms SPEED (January 2021 to December 2021)
- 99.96 percent UPTIME (January 2021 to December 2021)
- SUPPORT: Live Chat is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, and WHMCS are examples of applications.
- FEATURES INCLUDE: Unlimited Bandwidth, 50 GB Storage, and Email Accounts, a Free Domain for the First Year, Backups, Free SSL, Unlimited Databases, a Free CDN, a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee, and more.
- SHARED, WORDPRESS, AND RESELLER HOSTING PLANS
- SITE TRANSFER: There is a single free site transfer.
- PRICING: Starting at $2.95 per month (renews at $10.95 per month)
Advantages of Using GreenGeeks Hosting
GreenGeeks has a number of positive attributes. This includes consistent uptime, support, and critical mission-driven service. Here are the specifics:
1. Consistent uptime performance
When selecting a web server, one of the most important considerations is uptime. Solid uptime not only demonstrates a web host’s dependability, but it also has a direct impact on your site’s user experience and bounce rate (which can potentially mean lost profit for your business).
GreenGeeks didn’t let us down in this department. During the 12-month testing period, they achieved an average uptime of 99.96 percent. Throughout the year, they experienced two months with lower-than-average uptime (January and August).
GreenGeeks' uptime and speed data over the previous 12 months
- Last year’s average uptime:
- 99.99 percent in December 2021
- 99.99 percent in November 2021
- 99.99 percent in October 2021
- 99.97 percent in September 2021
- 99.85 percent in August 2021
- 99.98 percent in July 2021
- 99.82 percent in June 2021
- 99.97 percent in May 2021
- 99.99 percent in April 2021
- 99.99 percent in March 2021
- 99.99 percent in February 2021
- 81.26 percent in January 2021
2. Quick page load time (503 ms)
Another key consideration when selecting a host is server speed.
Why?
If a website takes one to three seconds to load, there is a 32% chance that the bounce rate will increase. In simply, the longer it takes for your page to load, the more probable it is that visitors will depart. That is just one example of how speed might damage your website.
GreenGeeks didn’t let us down again again.
Their performance is faster than the industry average, coming in at roughly 503 milliseconds.
GreenGeeks’ most recent 12-month average speed data
GreenGeeks’ most recent 12-month average speed (monitored since 2017) | View statistics
Overall, GreenGeeks’ loading times have been consistently good all year, leading us to conclude that they are a dependable host.
3. Excellent customer service with prompt responses
Another “significant component” of the evaluation is customer service.
We tried GreenGeeks’ live chat and were connected to a customer care contact within a minute, who then answered queries swiftly and succinctly.
GreenGeeks also offers a large knowledge library where users may look for solutions to their questions.
That’s a terrific benefit if you prefer self-help over contacting a customer support agent.
GreenGeeks offers a wide range of article categories and subcategories, including sales questions, general hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, billing issues, video tutorials, and much more.
If you can’t find your answer in the above-mentioned categories, you may use the search box.
As a result, even if GreenGeeks’ live chat option is unavailable for whatever reason, you will always have access to the assistance you require.
GreenGeeks offers phone help in addition to live chat and a knowledge base.
4. No-Cost Domain Name and Website Migration
GreenGeeks provides free domain registration and transfer services. If you purchase your domain name from them, they will keep it free for as long as you utilise their services – kind of. Details may be found under the Cons section.
However, it’s worth noting that the domain name is only free for the first year. After that, you’d have to pay the renewal fee, which starts at $13.95 per year for.com,.net, and.org names.
Furthermore, if your website is already hosted elsewhere, they will assist you in transferring it to their servers for free.
5. Environmentally Friendly
GreenGeeks declares themselves to be – well – green. What precisely does that mean?
Here’s how they put it:
GreenGeeks will acquire three times the amount of wind energy credits to compensate for the energy needed to power your website by their services.
They replace almost 615,000 kWh every year. To put it in context, the average American uses 12,000 kWh of power every year.
GreenGeeks is also a Green Power Partner with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
6. Money-Back Guarantee for 30 Days
If you are dissatisfied with GreenGeeks, they provide a complete 30-day, ‘no-questions-asked’ money-back guarantee on most hosting services.
However, there are a few outliers. More information may be found under the Cons section.
7. Backups every night
Unfortunately, horrible things do happen. And by terrible, we mean that your site occasionally crashes.
It might be self-inflicted, or it could be the result of someone with evil intent attempting to hack their way in. GreenGeeks, on the other hand, offers free nightly backups (in addition to SSH access). This way, you can rest easy knowing that even if something goes wrong, your data is frequently backed up.
They also include real-time security scanning, automated brute force detection, Spam Assassin protection, an SSL secure server, and the option to password-protect your directories as extra security features.
8. A number of high-quality server locations
GreenGeeks has data centres in three different locations:
- Chicago, Illinois
- Montreal, Canada
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
Choosing the proper server location may have a significant influence on the SEO of your website. Furthermore, choosing a server that is closest to you will result in better speeds.
GreenGeeks additionally guarantees that its servers will be kept up to date with the following specifications:
- -Never ever oversell
- -Gigabit Networking
- -Intel Xeon CPUs of the latest generation, which are energy-efficient.
- -At least 128 GB DDR3 ECC-Registered Memory
- -There is no desktop hardware whatsoever.
- -BGP4 Gigabit access to a number of Tier 1 Fiber GigE backbones
- -Server components from well-known manufacturers
- -RAID-10 SSD Storage Arrays for optimal performance and redundancy
- -Acceleration of Solid State Drives (SSD)
With GreenGeeks, you can be confident that your data is being saved on high-quality, cutting-edge servers.
9. No-cost CDN
- Everyone who browses the web on a daily basis interacts with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), whether they are looking at news sites, social networking websites, or purchasing online.
- GreenGeeks provides a CDN to users that utilise Cloudflare. That’s fantastic news for your site SEO, especially if you have a worldwide audience.
- What’s the best part? It is completely free.
- Cloudflare enables users to cache material and deliver it using servers nearest to website visitors. As a consequence, visitors to your website will experience considerably quicker online browsing.
The Drawbacks of Using GreenGeeks Hosting
Unfortunately, not everything that glitters is gold.
Despite all of the benefits of GreenGeeks, there are a few things to consider before making a final selection.
1. Pricing that is Industry-Standard (Higher Renewals)
GreenGeeks follows the tried-and-true industry approach of claiming a very cheap monthly fee of $2.95 on their website, only to have you discover that you must sign up for three years in advance to obtain it.
Furthermore, the prices rise as the registration period shortens:
- $3.95 Biennially
- $4.95 per year
- $10.95 per month
2. Uncertain Refund Policy
- Many web servers will include a free domain name when you open a new account with them.
- GreenGeeks also provides you with a free domain name.
- However, read the tiny print:
- If you seek the aforementioned money-back guarantee and accept the ‘free’ domain name offer, your refund will be reduced by the amount you paid for domain name registration.
- This implies that the domain name is not truly free, and their money-back promise comes with certain conditions.
- This strategy, however, is used by many other hosts.
Pricing, Hosting Plans, and Quick Facts for GreenGeeks
Here is a brief rundown of GreenGeeks’ shared hosting plans:
Pricing for the Lite Plan
- $2.95/month
Renews for $10.95 each month - $5.95/month for the Pro Plan
Renews for $15.95 each month - $10.95/month for the Premium Plan
Renews for $25.95 each month
WordPress Hosting: Their WordPress hosting is similar to their shared hosting package, however it appears to be optimised for WordPress. We haven’t tried it yet, but we plan to do so shortly.
Fast Facts
- Is your domain free? Yes.
- Signup Procedure: The signup process is simple.
- Money-back guarantee: 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Payment options include credit card and PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: Your account must not consume more than 100 percent of one CPU core and/or one gigabyte of memory, or 20 continuous connections, or 75,0000 files, or it will be suspended. If an invoice is not paid within four days, your account will be suspended, and you will be required to pay a $15 reactivation charge to have your account restored.
- Upsells: There are no upsells.
- Account Activation: Activate your account quickly.
- cPanel is the control panel and dashboard experience.
- App and CMS Installation (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): A one-click install solution that allows you to effortlessly install popular apps and CMSs.
Do We Advise GreenGeeks?
- We do, indeed.
- GreenGeeks has a larger aim than just offering web hosting, which we appreciate.
- They aren’t the finest we’ve seen, but they do give reliable speed, uptime, and customer service.
- For these reasons, you should have a look at them.
- Just keep in mind that if you want their lowest cost, you must sign up for the long term. And so if you decide to request a refund, your ‘free domain’ and’money-back guarantee’ may not be so ironclad.
