NameHero vs SiteGround: A Difficult Choice

Table of Contents:

NameHero vs SiteGround: Pricing

The biggest difference between SiteGround and NameHero pricing is that SiteGround costs a lot more, whereas NameHero has similar features at a lower price. It used to be a closer race, but then SiteGround updated their prices with a 50% hike, and now it’s no contest at all.

Here’s the complete NameHero coupon page.

Best NameHero Coupon at 85% off:

The table below shows the discounted prices of NameHero and SiteGround:

Hosting Tier	NameHero	SiteGround
Basic Hosting	$1.34/m	$2.99/m
Advanced Hosting	$2.59/m	$4.99/m
Premium Hosting	$3.99/m	$7.99/m

The recent increases in SiteGround’s prices have caused a lot of disputes in the web hosting community. Particularly when customers experience sticker shock when given a SiteGround bill. GrowBig customers now have to pay $300 on a renewal!

NameHero on the other hand, not only has lower prices, their holiday discounts are pretty amazing!

Free Domain with NameHero

To make matters even clearer, NameHero provides a free domain with Turbo and business plans for two years or more, whereas SiteGround does not. This, coupled with the lower prices, makes NameHero a much more attractive option if the price is your primary concern between the two.

NameHero vs SiteGround Pricing Ratings:

NameHero Pricing Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★
SiteGround Pricing Rating: 1/5 ★☆☆☆☆

Winner: NameHero by a long shot

NameHero vs SiteGround: Features

SiteGround and NameHero have similar features, but the most significant difference is that NameHero uses the LiteSpeed web server, and SiteGround uses an NGINX reverse-proxy setup. This allows both to offer dynamic and static caching. NameHero has free security, but SiteGround has better backups.

Feature	NameHero	SiteGround
Free Backups	✅	✅
Free Security	✅	❌
Dynamic Caching	✅	✅
Free Domain Name	✅	❌
CDN	QUIC.cloud	In-house CDN
cPanel	✅	❌
Storage	Unlimited	10 GB – 40 GB
Asia Data Centers	❌	✅

NO cPanel with SiteGround

Ever since SiteGround announced their new interface, they no longer support cPanel on their hosting plans. To me, this is a huge disadvantage and is one of the reasons why I no longer recommend SiteGround. Their prices are high enough that they can afford to keep cPanel for their users, and yet they chose to abandon it.

NameHero on the other hand retains cPanel even after the licensing changes. For VPS users, it also offers the free InterWorx – a cPanel competitor. But users at least have the option to use cPanel.

NameHero has steadily built up its advantage in terms of features compared to SiteGround. At this point, my opinion is that they’re about equal.

SiteGround Doesn’t Have a VPS

For a long time, SiteGround marketed the GoGeek plan as a replacement VPS. However, SiteGround doesn’t have a real VPS, in the sense that you don’t get root access, and can’t manage the packages on your site. This is neither good nor bad. After all, lots of people don’t want the hassle that comes with a VPS. By contrast, NameHero has a genuine VPS line called “Managed Cloud” with full root access and WHM, or InterWorx depending on what you choose. So if you’re looking for a full-fledged VPS, then NameHero is the obvious choice.

NameHero vs SiteGround Features Ratings:

NameHero Features Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★
SiteGround Features Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★

Winner: Used to be SiteGround, but now a tie.

NameHero JetBackup vs SiteGround Backups

The basic NameHero plan “Starter Cloud” has better backup functionality than the SiteGround StartUp plan. This is because NameHero allows all its users to take “snapshots” of their entire website on demand, whereas SiteGround restricts this functionality to only their GrowBig and GoGeek plans.

Ryan Gray recently upgraded NameHero’s backups with JetBackup. This means that the whole process is now automatic. You don’t have to manually request backups. This, along with offsite backups is why NameHero’s backups are so awesome. The only disadvantage compared to SiteGround, is that on higher-tier plans, you can access the last 30 SiteGround daily backups. NameHero only has daily and weekly restores.

NameHero Has Offsite Backups

One massive benefit of NameHero is that their backups are stored offsite. This isn’t mentioned on their site, but I contacted the CEO Ryan Gray, and he assured me that they’re maintained on a separate network in a different data center. This means that what happened in 2019 with A2 Hosting can’t happen to NameHero. SiteGround used to promote a separate service called “VaultPress” for offsite backups, but now they provide offsite backups by default. VaultPress has since then been integrated into the WordPress JetPack plugin.

NameHero also has a tie-up with DropMySite, which allows you to get cheap backup services from a 3rd party if you need them. Here’s why I think DropMySite is superior to CodeGuard and Jetpack. SiteGround’s VaultPress integration is super expensive by comparison.

NameHero vs SiteGround Backup Ratings:

NameHero Backup Ratings: 4/5 ★★★★☆
SiteGround Backup Ratings: 5/5 ★★★★★

Winner: SiteGround comes out a little bit on top because it keeps 30-days of automatic backups, whereas NameHero only has 7. SiteGround now also stores its backups offsite, so NameHero no longer has that advantage.

SiteGround vs NameHero: Security

Thanks to Imunify360 integration, NameHero has better security features compared to SiteGround. While with SiteGround you have to pay extra to obtain these features, NameHero customers get them for free on all plans, including:

• Free malware scanning and removal
• Intrusion detection
• Blacklist scanning
• Firewall protection

Here’s a complete breakdown of all NameHero security features and what they mean. SiteGround has its own firewall and a system for preventing bad bots from hitting your site. But the really good stuff is locked behind an additional fee. Combined with SiteGround’s high rates, this extra cost hurts a lot.

And for many people, offsite backups are an integral part of security. As mentioned above, SiteGround charges yet another fee for this, while NameHero gives it out for free.

NameHero vs SiteGround Security Ratings:

NameHero Security Ratings: 5/5 ★★★★★
SiteGround Security Ratings: 3/5 ★★★☆☆

Winner: NameHero

SiteGround vs NameHero: Architecture Comparison

Both SiteGround and NameHero have customized architectures instead of just the raw LAMP stack found on most web hosts. SiteGround uses a tuned CentOS installation with an NGINX reverse proxy and Linux containers.

NameHero on the other hand differs more dramatically. It uses the LiteSpeed webserver instead of Apache, which really shakes things up. LiteSpeed outperforms Apache in several ways and provides features out of the box that Apache does not – like server-level caching.

Here’s a more thorough explanation of LiteSpeed, and what makes it special.

NameHero vs SiteGround Architecture Ratings:

NameHero Architecture Ratings: 5/5 ★★★★★
SiteGround Architecture Ratings: 4/5 ★★★★☆

Winner: NameHero. SiteGround’s architecture is pretty good, but LiteSpeed outperforms NGINX.

NameHero vs SiteGround: Server Caching

This feature is so important, that I’ve dedicated a separate section to it. Both NameHero and SiteGround offer server-level caching of pages which drastically improves performance. SitGround’s caching service is called “SuperCacher”, and NameHero offers it out of the box because of LiteSpeed.

For a long time, SiteGround’s SuperCacher was only available for GrowBig and GoGeek plans. But since the recent price increase, they’ve expanded its availability to the StartUp plan as well. Both hosts require you to install a plugin on something like WordPress, but the heavy lifting is done by the server.

Without server caching, you’ll need to install a plugin like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, or WP Rocket Cache, which slows down your site since it’s not a native solution. You can read more in my detailed article on server caching.

Integration with QUIC.cloud

A very exciting development on NameHero is their integration with QUIC.cloud. It’s kind of like Cloudflare, but also caches your entire site including static HTML! It’s a very big deal. Personally, my prediction is that these CDNs will make shared hosting even stronger. Full site caching is the future for most small to medium sites that don’t have a lot of e-commerce requirements.

SiteGround offers nothing of the sort. So NameHero clearly comes out on top.

NameHero vs SiteGround Server Caching Ratings:

NameHero Caching Ratings: 5/5 ★★★★★
SiteGround Caching Ratings: 4/5 ★★★★☆

Winner: NameHero wins because of QUIC.cloud integration.

NameHero and SiteGround Data Center Locations

SiteGround wins this round easily due to the presence of its Singapore data center. There are currently seven:

• Iowa, US
• Madrid, Spain
• London, UK
• Frankfurt, Germany
• Eemshaven, Netherlands
• Singapore
• Sydney, Australia

NameHero has the following data centers on two continents:

1. Lansing, Michigan
2. Phoenix, Arizona
3. Amsterdam, EU

NameHero only recently opened a new data center in Europe, which means they’re growing fast. Here’s hoping they add a new one in Asia soon. Here’s a complete article on the list of SiteGround data centers, and how they double up as CDNs.

SiteGround vs NameHero Data Center Ratings:

SiteGround Data Centre Ratings: 5/5 ★★★★★
NameHero Centre Ratings: 4/5: ★★★★☆

Winner: SiteGround, thanks to its Asia location.

NameHero vs SiteGround: Customer Service

This one is tough. SiteGround puts a lot of effort into its customer service and trains its reps thoroughly. Whenever I’ve contacted them, I’ve always received excellent service. It gets even better on the GoGeek plan where you receive the highest level of service and access to Tier IV technicians.

NameHero’s approach to customer service is different. As a smaller web host, they don’t have to deal with the volumes that SiteGround contends with. As a result, their interactions are a lot more personal. The CEO Ryan Gray often responds to blog post comments and Youtube videos. You’ll see that NameHero’s customer service is a lot more intimate.

If you read forum reviews, a lot of customers say they stick with NameHero because of the customer service. This results in them having a lot of long-term customers who are almost like family. As NameHero grows in size, I don’t know how much longer this can last, but right now, that’s what it’s like!

Winner: Tie

Final Thoughts on NameHero and SiteGround

Both NameHero and SiteGround are amazing web hosts that approach their services differently. NameHero is cheaper and focuses on its unique LiteSpeed architecture and personalized customer service. SiteGround is the “Apple” of the web hosting world and has an array of features that “just work” – albeit at a price.