About GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is an American hosting company founded in 2008, primarily aimed at providing hosting services for small to medium-sized business websites, with a focus on high-performance shared hosting.
Since its establishment, GreenGeeks has adopted an innovative strategy in the field of sustainable energy by neutralizing three times its energy consumption by purchasing wind-generated power, making it one of the leaders in environmental sustainability.
Data Centers and Advanced Technologies
GreenGeeks owns five data centers spread across North America and Europe, which enhances website loading speeds for clients and provides stable global performance. All data centers rely on dual power grids, in addition to backup batteries and automatic diesel generators to ensure continuous service availability.
The company relies on the latest advanced technologies in web hosting, such as RAID-10 storage arrays that ensure surplus storage space using only modern SSD drives. It also uses advanced firewalls, software, and hardware optimizations to enhance database performance, content management systems, and other features that contribute to overall performance enhancement.
Technical Support and Reliable Performance
GreenGeeks strives to provide an optimal user experience for its customers, reflected in the high quality of the technical support it offers. The company also adheres to a high assurance policy, guaranteeing a minimum uptime of 99.9%, with compensation for customers in case of any hosting issues, reflecting its commitment to providing a stable and secure experience.
GreenGeeks Hosting Services
Although GreenGeeks focuses on shared hosting, it also offers higher-performance, more customized hosting solutions to meet the needs of different customer segments.
The main services offered by GreenGeeks include:
- Shared Hosting
- Managed Virtual Servers
- Dedicated Servers
GreenGeeks also provides specialized services for specific applications such as WordPress and Joomla, in addition to eCommerce platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, and WooCommerce. The company also offers domain registration services and reseller hosting, allowing customers to manage their own hosting businesses.
Through the reseller hosting service, customers can customize the cPanel control panel and DNS server name to support their brand. GreenGeeks also provides WHMCS licenses for easy customer billing and management.
In conclusion, GreenGeeks offers a variety of high-performance, reliable solutions with a strong commitment to environmental sustainability and high-quality technical support, making it an ideal choice for many small and medium-sized businesses and projects.
Features of GreenGeeks Hosting
GreenGeeks is a distinguished hosting company that adopts an environmental sustainability policy and is considered one of the leaders in providing “green hosting.” However, its advantages are not limited to supporting environmental initiatives; they also include offering stable and high-performance hosting, making it one of the best paid web hosting services.
In this article, we will highlight the most important features of GreenGeeks hosting, and analyze its performance based on our ongoing tests over the past months. We will also provide you with regular updates based on the test results to offer accurate and useful information.
Green and Environmentally Friendly Hosting
Green hosting services rely on using a portion of company profits to support environmental initiatives or purchase clean energy. These services aim to reduce their carbon footprint and increase energy efficiency, contributing to long-term environmental protection.It’s important to note that 90% of servers run on energy generated from fossil fuels, leading to massive carbon emissions. For instance, a website with 10,000 monthly visitors produces carbon emissions equivalent to driving a car more than 8,000 kilometers each month.GreenGeeks goes beyond simply using clean energy; it neutralizes three times its energy consumption by relying on renewable energy sources. Additionally, its facilities are designed with high energy efficiency, and the company chooses cool-climate locations to build its data centers, reducing the need for industrial cooling systems.While environmental sustainability is part of the company’s commitment, the most important factor for users is the speed and stability of servers, which GreenGeeks provides efficiently.
Unlimited Computing Resources
GreenGeeks offers a range of hosting packages that provide unlimited computing resources, meaning customers receive:
- Unlimited storage for website filesUnlimited bandwidthUnlimited subdomainsUnlimited databasesUnlimited email accounts
Resource Usage Monitoring
Despite offering unlimited resources, GreenGeeks imposes certain limitations on how these resources are used to ensure that the performance of the shared server is not affected. Servers hosting many websites need to monitor resource usage to ensure service stability for all customers. For example, if one website consumes excessive resources, it can impact other websites on the same server. Therefore, GreenGeeks employs measures to avoid such issues.
Excellent Technical Support
One of the standout features of GreenGeeks is its excellent technical support. The company provides a support team available 24/7 to resolve any issues customers may encounter. This reflects the company’s commitment to providing a reliable and supportive service, helping ensure a trouble-free hosting experience.
Fast Hosting Servers
GreenGeeks places a strong emphasis on optimizing the performance of its servers and is considered one of the leading companies in providing fast hosting. Performance optimization is achieved through the use of modern technologies like RAID-10 storage arrays, which utilize high-speed SSDs. This contributes to enhanced response times and overall performance.
Additionally, GreenGeeks customizes its servers specifically to enhance read and write performance from and to databases. This optimization helps reduce page loading times significantly, with improvements reaching up to 50 times for websites with large databases. As a result, GreenGeeks has topped the list of the best WordPress hosting services due to this technology.
Excellent Performance Tests
Response Time Test:
Our tests showed that GreenGeeks achieves a response time of less than 120 milliseconds when using data centers in the United States, ensuring fast page load speeds.
Page Load Time Test:
GreenGeeks managed to record an average page load time of 700 milliseconds using a test WordPress site. This result is among the highest in the web hosting industry.
Stress Test:
GreenGeeks demonstrated its ability to handle peak traffic loads. Tests showed that server performance remains stable even with a sudden surge in visitor traffic.
Excellent Technical Support
One of GreenGeeks’ standout features is its excellent technical support, which is known for its quick response times and high-quality customer service. Compared to many other hosting companies, GreenGeeks provides a satisfying support experience for users.
Knowledge Base:
Customers can benefit from a comprehensive and well-organized knowledge base available on the GreenGeeks website. This knowledge base provides detailed guides to help resolve issues quickly, along with a search bar that makes it easy to find information.
Communication with Technical Support:
You can contact technical support via phone or live chat. If you’re a beginner setting up your site, the support team can assist you with setting up and launching your website, guiding you step by step.When testing technical support, we observed that the GreenGeeks team doesn’t just guide customers to solutions but also implements the changes themselves, providing a detailed explanation of each step. This showcases their dedication to delivering comprehensive support.
High Service Stability
Uptime is an important aspect when choosing a new hosting service, as it indicates how often the site is available and ready to receive visitors. While it’s difficult for any hosting company to offer 100% uptime all the time, GreenGeeks has achieved impressive results.
Test Results:
In the uptime test conducted from April 30 to June 23, GreenGeeks showed a stability rate of 99.991%, meaning the site was available for most of this period. This is among the best uptime rates in hosting services, translating to less than 4 minutes of downtime per month.
GreenGeeks also commits in its service terms to providing an uptime rate of no less than 99.9% monthly, reflecting its serious commitment to providing stable and reliable hosting service.
Free Website Migration
If you’re planning to transfer your website from another hosting provider, GreenGeeks offers an exceptional feature with free website migration. Many hosting companies charge extra fees for migration services, which can reach up to $150 with some providers like Bluehost. However, with GreenGeeks, customers can request to migrate their websites through free technical support by creating a support ticket and providing details about their previous server. The specialized team will migrate and restart the website without any downtime.
Multiple Data Centers
GreenGeeks owns several data centers distributed across the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. This allows customers to choose the data center geographically closest to their target audience, enhancing website load speeds and improving accessibility. Additionally, GreenGeeks offers a free Cloudflare CDN network, which includes over 115 servers worldwide, further boosting the speed of accessing site data and files from various geographic locations.
Free Wildcard SSL Certificate
GreenGeeks provides all its customers with a free Wildcard SSL certificate with every hosting package. This certificate offers greater security for your website by securing all the subdomains of your site, making it ideal for business websites and online stores. In addition to improving security, the SSL certificate helps improve your site’s ranking on search engines like Google, as Google favors websites using HTTPS.
cPanel Control Panel
GreenGeeks provides its customers with the cPanel control panel, one of the most popular and user-friendly control panels for website management. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced website manager, cPanel offers easy-to-use interfaces and a variety of tools to help customize your site and improve its performance. The tools provided by cPanel include:
- Domain management
- SEO optimization tools
- E-commerce tools
- The Softaculous library containing many scripts that can be easily installed
- Detailed statistics about your site and account resources.
Free Daily Backups
One of the great features offered by GreenGeeks is automatic daily backups. While many hosting companies charge additional fees for this service, GreenGeeks provides it for free to all its customers. This feature protects your website from data loss, as backups are created periodically without any action needed on your part.
- Free Data Restoration: You can restore your site’s data for free once per month.
- Additional Restoration Fees: After the free restoration, GreenGeeks charges a $25 fee for each additional restoration.
SitePad Website Builder
If you’re a beginner and lack programming or design experience, GreenGeeks offers the SitePad website builder, a built-in tool that allows you to create your website quickly and easily. SitePad features a drag-and-drop interface that lets you add and customize elements like text, images, and input fields.
GreenGeeks is an ideal choice for users who want to manage their websites effectively and easily. The free daily backup feature and the SitePad website builder ensure that users keep their site data safe while offering a quick and easy way to create websites, even without technical expertise.
Disadvantages of GreenGeeks Hosting
Despite the many advantages offered by GreenGeeks hosting, there are some drawbacks that may influence your decision to switch to their service. Here are the key disadvantages you should consider:
Limits on Computing Resources
While GreenGeeks provides abundant computing resources, there are some usage restrictions in place to avoid affecting server performance. These limitations include:
Number of Files (inodes):
There is a limit on the number of files you can host, which is 75,000 files. This limit is considered high compared to most other hosting companies, but if your site contains a large number of files or uses complex content management systems, you may approach this limit.
Concurrent Connections:
There is a limit to the number of simultaneous connections the server can handle.
CPU and RAM Usage:
GreenGeeks imposes limits on the amount of CPU processing power and RAM that a site can use.Overall, these limitations are not concerning for average or small sites, but they could pose a problem if you have a large site or one that requires high computational resources.
High Renewal Prices
Like many other hosting companies, GreenGeeks offers a low promotional price for the first subscription period but raises the prices upon renewal. For example:You can purchase the Lite plan for $2.95 per month during the promotional period. After this period, the price increases to $9.95 per month.As a result, some users may find the new renewal prices high compared to the initial discounted rate.
No Windows Servers
GreenGeeks runs all its servers using the Linux operating system. If your site relies on Microsoft technologies such as ASP.NET, SQL Server, or other applications that require Windows OS, then GreenGeeks might not be the right choice for you.
Alternatives:
f you need Windows-based hosting, you can look into other hosting services like HostGator or InterServer, which offer Windows hosting.
GreenGeeks offers three types of plans to suit different needs:
| Plan | Lite | Pro | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of Sites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of Databases | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Daily Backups | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free CDN and SSL | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Additional Features | – | 2x Performance | 4x Performance + Dedicated IP |
| Price without discount | $9.95/month | $14.95/month | $24.95/month |
| Price after discount | $2.95/month | $5.95/month | $11.95/month |
Summary
- Resource Limits: The limits on files and resources could be an issue in certain cases.
- Price Increases on Renewal: Higher renewal prices may be frustrating for some users.
- No Windows Servers: If you need Windows hosting, you will need to look for alternatives.
GreenGeeks hosting remains an excellent choice if you are looking for good performance, speed, and excellent technical support, but you should be aware of these drawbacks that could influence your decision.
