Even though NameHero is smaller than SiteGround, they’re actually better/faster (I left SiteGround in 2019 after they went completely downhill).
NameHero uses LiteSpeed servers which means you can use the LiteSpeed Cache plugin + QUIC.cloud CDN (this combination is far superior than Nginx, SG Optimizer, and SiteGround’s CDN which lack features and do a poor job with core web vitals which you can see in the tables below). Since LiteSpeed Cache is faster than SG Optimizer (and more stable), and QUIC.cloud has 5X as many PoPs as SiteGround’s CDN (with better image optimization than SG Optimizer), you’re already on your way to a faster site. Plus, NameHero’s higher plans like Turbo Cloud use NVMe SSDs which outperform the SATA SSDs on SiteGround. NameHero also has cPanel, a free migration, with arguably better support. And since LiteSpeed is more efficient, you’re less likely to get CPU issues which are common on SiteGround. If you watch Ryan’s YouTube videos, you’ll see he’s a genuinely helpful guy which shows in support/reviews. What all that, NameHero wins.
SiteGround is “hyped up” because they control several Facebook Groups, remove negative posts about their brand, and threaten to sue people who write bad reviews. They’ve made a mess since going downhill in 2019 with a slow TTFB, CPU limits which force you to upgrade, declined support, and other issues. The SiteGround Optimizer plugin does an awful job with core web vitals, their CDN is inferior to Cloudflare (and QUIC), and they use slower SATA SSDs. SiteGround also had issues with their DNS getting blocked by Google for 4 days which caused sites to completely drop from Google (which they denied responsibility for). SiteGround was good before 2019, but now they’re mainly interested in profits with price increases, attempting to limit the number of websites on each plan, and other actions that clearly don’t benefit their customers. IMO, they’ve gotten greedy and are more interested in money than helping people.
| NameHero | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Facebook Reviews | Excellent | Censored |
| Server | LiteSpeed | Nginx |
| Cache Plugin | LiteSpeed Cache | SiteGround Optimizer |
| CDN | QUIC.cloud | SiteGround CDN |
| Storage | NVMe on higher plans | SATA SSDs |
| CPU + RAM | Better Value | Worse value |
| CPU Limits | Less likely on LiteSpeed | Common |
| Data Centers | 4 (US + Netherlands) | 6 |
| Incidents | 2 day outage | 4 day Googlebot DNS issue |
| Dashboard | cPanel | Site Tools |
| Migrations | Free | $30/site |
| Support | Excellent | Declining |
| Price | Cheap intros for 1-3 years then 2.5x renewals | Cheap intros for 1 year then 3x renewals |
| Ethics | Ethical | Unethical |
| TrustPilot Rating | 4.7/5 | 4.7/5 |
| Winner | Yes | No |
1. Facebook Reviews – What Unbiased People Say
The WP Speed Matters Facebook Group is a good place to get unbiased feedback since SiteGround’s community manager and affiliates are admins for several groups and use this to promote their company, remove negative posts, and ban people who speak out about them. Here are a few conversations comparing SiteGround vs. NameHero. In general, SiteGround’s feedback has gotten much worse (since 2019) while more people are switching to NameHero.
2. Server – LiteSpeed (NameHero) vs. Nginx (SiteGround)
NameHero uses LiteSpeed which is a new, faster type of server compared to Apache and even Nginx (what SiteGround uses). Not only does this make your site faster, but LiteSpeed is much more efficient and you’re less likely to run into CPU overload issues which results in 503 errors.
SiteGround was the worst performer in Backlinko’s PageSpeed Test. Since they moved to Google Cloud servers, there have been countless complaints about their slow TTFB in FB Groups. They will defend this but I encourage you to search the WP Speed Matters Group.
3. Cache Plugin – LiteSpeed Cache vs. SiteGround Optimizer
LiteSpeed Cache is literally so much better than SiteGround’s Optimizer plugin.
SiteGround Optimizer doesn’t even have settings for critical CSS, delaying JavaScript, or removing unused CSS. This is why so many SiteGround customers use plugins like WP Rocket or FlyingPress (because even though SG Optimizer is good for caching, it sucks for core web vitals).
LiteSpeed Cache is free, has server-level caching, and is better for core web vitals. It’s also maintained by reliable developers while SiteGround Optimizer frequently has compatibility issues which Hristo likes to blame on third-party themes/plugins if you check support threads.
I have guides for both LiteSpeed Cache settings and SiteGround Optimizer settings.
| SG Optimizer | Breeze | WP Rocket | FlyingPress | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delay JavaScript | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Remove unused CSS | x | x | Inline | Separate file |
| Critical CSS | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Host fonts locally | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Font-display:swap | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Preload links | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Preload images | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Fetchpriority resource hint | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Lazy render HTML elements | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Lazy load background images | x | x | Inline | Helper class |
| Exclude images from lazy load | x | By class | By URL | By number |
| Preview image for YouTube iframe | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-host YouTube placeholder | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Add missing image dimensions | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduled database cleanups | x | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Documented APO compatibility | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
4. CDN – QUIC.cloud Is Better Than SiteGround’s CDN
QUIC.cloud’s CDN was built specifically for LiteSpeed with 70+ PoPs (on their standard plan) with HTTP/3, DDoS protection, firewall, and extensive image optimization settings, along with several other settings that can both improve speed and reduce CPU usage. QUIC is a solid CDN.
SiteGround’s CDN only has 14 PoPs with limited image optimizations and lacks many features which are included with QUIC. Once again, SiteGround’s CDN is basic. QUIC and SiteGround’s CDN both cache HTML (which improves TTFB in multiple global locations), but you need to pay for SiteGround’s paid plan to get the dynamic caching. Overall, QUIC is definitely a better CDN.
| SiteGround CDN | QUIC.cloud (Standard Plan) | |
|---|---|---|
| PoPs | 176 | 73 |
| Full page caching | Paid plan only | ✓ |
| HTTP/3 | x | ✓ |
| Critical CSS | x | ✓ |
| Unique CSS | x | ✓ |
| Image optimization | Limited | ✓ |
| Low quality image placeholders | x | ✓ |
| Exclude viewport images | x | ✓ |
| DDoS protection | x | Paid |
| reCAPTCHA | x | ✓ |
| Restrict XML-RPC requests | x | ✓ |
| Price | $7.49/mo | $.01 – .04/GB |
5. Storage – NameHero (NVMe) Is Faster Than SiteGround (SATA)
Almost all NameHero plans use NVMe storage – with the exception of their cheapest plans (Starter Cloud and Plus Cloud). All SiteGround plans, including cloud hosting, use SATA SSDs.
6. CPU + RAM – NameHero Gives You More Resources For Cheaper
NameHero gives you more server resources for cheaper compared to SiteGround. Their Turbo Cloud plan has 3 CPU cores, 3GB RAM, and NVMe storage with LiteSpeed for about $8/month.
Even when comparing SiteGround’s cloud hosting to NameHero’s managed cloud VPS plans, SiteGround starts at $100/month for 4 CPU cores + 8GB RAM. NameHero’s similar Hero 8GB Cloud plan has 8 CPU cores + 8GB RAM for just $52 (and it comes with faster NVMe storage instead of SATA SSDs). So you’re paying roughly $50/month less and getting 4 more CPU cores.
7. CPU Limits – SiteGround’s Inode Limits And Taking Down Sites
CPU limits are a huge issue with SiteGround.
If you exceed them, they will take down your site until you upgrade. You can try to lower CPU usage, but in my case (and many others) there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. I wrote the #1 ranked tutorial on reducing CPU in WordPress and still wasn’t able to solve it. Like many others, I came to the conclusion that no matter what is done, you will likely have to upgrade your plan.
Because LiteSpeed is more efficient than Nginx (what SiteGround uses), you’re already less likely to get CPU issues on NameHero. And assuming you use LiteSpeed Cache on NameHero, you can use Redis which is more efficient with memory usage than SiteGround’s Memcached.
8. Data Centers – Does Location Really Matter?
While SiteGround has more data centers, this shouldn’t matter as much if you’re using QUIC which has HTML caching and improves global TTFB. If you need a closer data center, check out ChemiCloud and Scala Hosting which also use LiteSpeed and have 4.9/5 star TrustPilot rating.
| NameHero Data Centers | SiteGround Data Centers |
|---|---|
| Lansing, Michigan (USA) (3x) | Council Bluff, Iowa (US) |
| Phoenix, Arizona (USA) | London (UK) |
| Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | Eemshaven (NL) |
| Amsterdam (Netherlands) | Frankfurt (DE) |
| – | Singapore (SG) |
| – | Sydney (AU) |
| View NamHero’s Data Centers | View SiteGround’s Data Centers |
9. Incidents – SiteGround’s DNS Issue Was Much Worse
NameHero and SiteGround both had an incident.
In December, 2021, one of NameHero’s nodes had an outage for around 2 days. Ryan (NameHero CEO) responded on their blog taking full responsibility. NameHero also publicly shows an uptime status page with their scheduled maintenance and expected downtimes (which isn’t bad when compared with similar hosts). SiteGround doesn’t have a public uptime status page. NameHero is more transparent and actually took responsibility for their outage.
In 2021, Googlebot blocked SiteGround’s DNS for 4 days, resulting in major drops in Google rankings and customer websites disappearing from Google completely. Lots of money was lost and SiteGround was threatened with lawsuits as customers lost their money/rankings. Instead of advising them to switch to an external DNS, SiteGround claimed there is no blocking on their end, but came out with a fix just a couple days later. No accountability was taken by SiteGround.
Status Update: We are glad to inform you that we have implemented a fix for the Google bot crawling issue experienced by some sites. Websites are already being crawled successfully. Please allow a few hours for the DNS changes to take effect. Thank you for your patience!
— SiteGround (@SiteGround) November 12, 2021
The lack of responsibility you are taking here is incredible. If this was simply Google’s fault, surely other hosts would be facing issues? Clearly something has changed on your set-up that has caused an issue. Are you aware just how damaging this is to many of your customers?
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) November 10, 2021
You should be advising people to move to an external DNS to resolve the issues if it is causing them massive losses in business. I have just sorted our connectivity issue in around 25 minutes by moving to googles DNS. If you had let us know 4 days ago, we wouldnt be £20k+ down!
— Jon Bunce (@thejonbunce) November 11, 2021
If you move to your Google Search Console > SETTINGS > CRAWL STATS you will, if unlucky like me, see something like this :-( pic.twitter.com/ocBEkWKsaw
— Tristan Haskins (@trishaskins) November 12, 2021
10. Dashboard – NameHero cPanel vs. SiteGround Site Tools
I prefer NameHero with cPanel over SiteGround’s Site Tools.
SiteGround seemed to be in a rush to replace cPanel with Site Tools considering they released it just weeks after cPanel increased prices, but it had a lot of bugs to sort out. You really need to see for yourself on which one you prefer and may be able to request a demo from each of them.
Only higher SiteGround plans include staging + on-demand backups while these are included on all NameHero plans (check SiteGround’s features comparison/specs page).
11. Migrations – NameHero Is Free, SiteGround Is $30/Site
All NameHero plans include a free migration. SiteGround previously offered a free migration, but now migrations cost $30/site. They changed it the same time they were cutting other costs.
12. Support – NameHero Is Better (SiteGround’s Declined)
NameHero’s support is also better than SiteGround’s.
Over the years, SiteGround reduced their support costs by moving priority support from GrowBig to GoGeek, hiding the support button in their dashboard, and cutting people off completely. They even wrote a disclaimer which limits the scope of SiteGround’s support.
NameHero has some of the best support for cheap hosting.
They keep a log of all support feedback and publish it on their website. You can reach them by phone, live chat, or support tickets in the dashboard. Obviously you have to experience support yourself to make a judgment, so I suggest reaching out to both hosts and trying them yourself.
13. Price – SiteGround Is Only Cheap For 1 Year + Higher Renewals
SiteGround is more expensive than NameHero because:
- Intro price is only for 1 year (up to 3 years on NameHero)
- Renewal prices are higher (about 3x intros)
- They don’t offer a free domain or migration
- You’d need a premium cache plugin/CDN for best results
With NameHero, you get a free cache plugin and cheaper CDN (both perform better), free domain for 1 year, and a free migration. Everything is built-in, so there’s no need for extra costs.
14. Ethics – SiteGround Is Unethical And Controls Facebook Groups
Why SiteGround is unethical:
- Threatened people who wrote bad reviews.
- Banned accounts that don’t bring enough money.
- Makes unwanted changes to their service and calls them “improvements.”
- Hristo (SiteGround community manager) is an admin of the WordPress Speed Up Facebook Group and any negative things said about SiteGround are moderated by them.
I stopped endorsing SiteGround in 2019 once they made all these negative changes, which resulted in them banning my affiliate account and threatening me if I didn’t delete the content:
15. TrustPilot – Both Have About A 4.7/5 Star Rating
16. Winner – NameHero Is Better Than SiteGround
NameHero wins in terms of speed, LiteSpeed, support, dashboard, and ethics.
SiteGround has grown too big and seems to be less focused on improving their service than profiting from customers. Please don’t support a company who makes unethical decisions. There are better, faster, and more ethical hosts out there. And NameHero is just one of them.
Is NameHero better than SiteGround?
NameHero's speed, servers, support, and pricing are arguably better than SiteGround. Even though SiteGround is more popular, that doesn't mean they're the better choice.
Which is faster - NameHero or SiteGround?
NameHero uses LiteSpeed which is faster than Nginx (what SiteGround uses). LiteSpeed Cache is also faster than SiteGround Optimizer, and QUIC.cloud is faster than SiteGround's CDN with more PoPs and full page caching. NameHero uses NVMe SSDs on higher plans while SiteGround doesn't. Just based on specs alone, NameHero is faster than SiteGround.
Is NameHero or SiteGround better for WordPress?
NameHero is a good choice if you want cPanel, cheaper prices, and the option to use LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud CDN. SiteGround says they've crafted their service and Site Tools dashboard for WordPress, but that doesn't mean they're better.
Cheers,
Tom
