Choosing the right web hosting is a crucial decision for your online journey. But with dozens of web hosting companies available in the market, it might be difficult to choose the right one. Well, today, I am here with another hosting solution that might be of interest to you.
GreenGeeks is one of the most recommended hosting providers out there but does it performs to that level? We’ll find out in this article. So, after testing out GreenGeeks hosting for more than 250 days, I’m here with the detailed GreenGeeks Review for 2024.
In this article, we are going to discuss all the details on GreenGeeks hosting including detailed test results of uptime, website speeds, server capabilities, analysis on the backups, customer support and other features. We will also check the prices of their plans and the refund policy.
Their Backup management really came as a surprise to me! Want to know more about it? Let’s get straight into the review.
GreenGeeks Review
Summary
GreenGeeks provide good speed with Litespeed servers but apart from that it doesn’t impresses a lot.
- About
- GreenGeeks Features Overview
- GreenGeeks User Interface Overview
- cPanel
- Testing Parameters
- GreenGeeks Server Response Time
- GreenGeeks Speeds
- GreenGeeks Uptime
- GreenGeeks Load Test
- GreenGeeks Cache Plugins
- GreenGeeks Data Centers
- Free Domain offered by GreenGeeks
- GreenGeeks Backups
- GreenGeeks Customer Support
- GreenGeeks Inode Count
- GreenGeeks Hosting Plans and Prices
- GreenGeeks Payment Options
- GreenGeeks Refund Policy
- Website Migrations
- GreenGeeks Sitebuilder
- GreenGeeks CDN
- SSL
- Technology used in GreenGeeks
- Pros
- Cons
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Disclaimer : I strongly believe in transparency. If you buy using the links on our site, we may earn a small commission without any extra cost to you. This helps me to keep producing honest reviews. Read More >>
About
GreenGeeks is a US-based company founded by Terry Gardner in 2008. With the company being almost 13+ years old, GreenGeeks boasts about its reliability and experience in web hosting.
Another important aspect is that GreenGeeks focuses on renewable energy. Over 615,000 kWh amounts of energy are replaced with green energy every year by GreenGeeks.
GreenGeeks is also United States Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Green Power Partner since 2009. The company now hosts over 600k websites and has become one of the top hosting companies in the US.
GreenGeeks offers Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, WordPress Hosting, WooCommerce Hosting and Reseller Hosting. With a wide range of features and reliable services, this hosting provider can be a good option to consider for web hosting.
Let’s dive right into this GreenGeeks review and know more about GreenGeeks.
GreenGeeks Features Overview
⭐ Rating | 3.4 |
💲 Price | Starts From $2.95/mo |
⚡ Speed | 1.33 sec |
🕒 Uptime | 99.84% |
🔗 Free Domain | ✅ Yes |
🌎 Data Centers | US, Asia, Europe |
➡️ Migrations | 1 |
👨💻 Support | Live Chat, Phone, Email |
🛡️ Security | Free SSL, Malware Protection, DDoS Protection, 2FA, Firewall |
🔄 Backups | 2 days |
💰 Money back guarantee | 30 days |
🔥 Coupon Code | Get extra discount with my link |
GreenGeeks Review Video
For those interested in video walkthrough can watch this review video of GreenGeeks.
GreenGeeks User Interface Overview
The interface is easy to use and hassle-free. After you log in to your hosting account, in the dashboard you get Your Accounts section which lists all the hosting plans you have purchased and the support tickets section for customer support through the ticketing system.
For each of your plans, you can manage them using the Manage button. Here, you can access the cPanel account, control the emails and databases, install WordPress and manage your domains.
cPanel
Similar to HostArmada, GreenGeeks, and A2 Hosting, GreenGeeks uses cPanel and doesn’t have its own custom interface like Hostinger.
A standard control panel, many web hosting providers use cPanel to manage and edit websites. With cPanel you can manage the security, email accounts, databases, files and domains.
You can also install additional software like WordPress and manage the installed software and security tools here. You can also check how much servers resources are used by your website. It is an all in one control panel for your website.
Testing Parameters
This review is based on the shared hosting Lite plan. I had purchased this GreenGeeks hosting plan a year ago and monitored uptime throughout this period.
If you are interested to purchase this web hosting plan after reading this hosting review, then watch my video on the step-by-step process to buy hosting from GreenGeeks.
I have created an Elementor based website, used the OceanWP theme with a Gym template.
My plan is hosted on the Litespeed server which has a built-in Litespeed Cache Plugin. I have used the same cache plugin on the default settings for this review.
GreenGeeks Server Response Time
Server response time refers to the time taken by the server to respond to the request for the website by a user.
The server response time for Europe is decent, as it is 9 ms in Germany and 17 ms in London. The same cannot be said for Asian users, as it gradually increases.
The server response time in Singapore is 182 ms and for Mumbai, it is 189 ms. It was highest in Japan, with a response time of 317 ms.
So, based on the results, the GreenGeeks server performed better in Europe and the US.
GreenGeeks Speeds
I did this test to check the time taken by the server to load the website for the user.
Because my servers are in Europe, I tested from Frankfurt first. The website speed was 1.33 sec, which is an excellent result. And for New York, the website speed was 1.5 sec, which is still a good speed.
But if tested from India (Bangalore), it loaded the website in 3.7 sec. The speed was too slow and hence, GreenGeeks is not suitable for the Indian audience.
But the speeds found across Europe and the US are recommended speeds. This web hosting platform is best suited for an international audience.
If you want fast speeds across all locations, you can check out Chemicloud and FastComet.
GreenGeeks Uptime
Website Uptime refers to the time duration for which the website is accessible by the users with no problem. We can also consider this as the time duration for which the website remains online.
We know good uptime results in increased visitors to your website and bad uptime often results in loss of users and affects your business.
GreenGeeks boldly claims to provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee. But the results tell a different story.
- October 2021 : 99.95%
- September 2021: 99.98%
- August 2021: 99.98%
- July 2021 : 99.68%
- June 2021 : 99.99%
- May 2021 : 99.99%
- April 2021 : 99.98%
- March 2021: 99.98%
- February 2021: 99.98%
- January 2021: 99.09%
The uptime for the last 361 days was 99.81% with 69 incidents. Considering the fact that this website has very little traffic, the uptime should have been much higher.
And most of the downtime incidents are because of the load test I performed on the servers. The results of the load test also are unsatisfactory.
Since I’m using the lite plan I think that the uptime can be better for Pro and Premium plans. But many hosting providers offer better uptime than GreenGeeks for the same price.
Read my reviews on Hostinger and HostArmada, both provide good uptime and have given decent results for all the tests.
GreenGeeks Load Test
I sent 50 virtual users from the USA to check how the servers manage the traffic spike. This test helps to know the efficiency and performance of the server.
Although there are no HTTP failures, you can notice that the servers response time increased to as high as 16 693 ms. Bad load handling by the GreenGeeks servers.
In case of a real-time traffic increase, the first few users will have a good server response time. As traffic increases, the response time will increase, eventually.
GreenGeeks servers cannot manage the load. During this test, my server crashed and showed a timeout error on my website. To put a number on the maximum load the server can take, I think it is around 20 users at a time.
HostArmada and Hostinger had good load test results. Read both the reviews to know how they performed in the load test.
GreenGeeks Cache Plugins
GreenGeeks provides a Litespeed cache plugin. As the servers are Litespeed servers, using this cache plugin in default settings will help your website.
GreenGeeks Data Centers
There are 3 data centres of GreenGeeks each in the US, Canada and Netherlands. There are no data centers in Asia.
Below is the list of the data centers:
- Chicago, USA.
- Montreal, Canada.
- Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Free Domain offered by GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks offers a free domain name for 1 year, included in all of its hosting plans. Normal renewal prices apply after this period. Unlike other hosting providers including Hostinger, Cloudways, or FastComet, there is no temporary domain/URL provided by GreenGeeks to test the servers or to preview your website.
GreenGeeks also works as a domain name registrar and offers new domain name registration in two ways. One way is while buying a hosting plan, it offers free domain for 1 st year. Another way is through your hosting account, you can register for a new domain.
If you are still in the process of deciding a domain name for your website, you might want to check out these domain name generators for some cool ideas!
GreenGeeks Backups
All the plans come with free nightly backups. But the drawback here is that you can’t control the backups manually, you cannot restore or backup by yourself. You need to contact customer support to restore the website or to access the backups.
And they did not do the backups daily. This web hosting provider did the backups randomly, as you can see in the image below.
I requested them to restore my website to the backup version of 7th July, and instead, the support sent me their T&Cs, stating it is my responsibility to manage the backups and they are just doing the backups for namesake.
I have used backup system of different web-hosting providers, and this is one of the worst backups management systems.
GreenGeeks Customer Support
The customer service of GreenGeeks is decent but not the best. Sometimes I got quick replies, sometimes I had to wait a long time to get replies from the support.
In one instance, I asked the support team to delete my card details with which I made the purchase to buy the hosting. I did this enquiry on 4th December 2020.
I got a reply from the support that you need to keep at least one card detail for renewal and if you want to remove the current card details, then you have to update it with another one.
Only after sending them the Under Right to Erasure of the GDPR act, they finally removed my card details. This type of difficulty should not occur, as the support team should know what they are doing. Hope they improve on this.
GreenGeeks also has a knowledge base on it’s website with general questions and solutions for them. And you can also create a ticket from your hosting account to get help from the support.
If your priority is customer support, you should go with ChemiCloud, FastComet, or A2 Hosting.
GreenGeeks Inode Count
Inode count refers to the total number of all the files of your website and directories. This includes emails, files, folders and everything that you store on the server. For each new file created, the inode count increases by one.
GreenGeeks offers generous Inode count for all the plans.
- Lite plan – 150k
- Pro plan – 300k
- Premium plan – 500k
You can try Rocket.net hosting which imposes no restrictions on Inode count.
GreenGeeks Hosting Plans and Prices
Shared Hosting plans come with many features like free CDN, free SSL, free domain for 1st year among others and unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth in few plans that also have unlimited domain option. And the cheapest hosting plan starts from $2.49 per month (applicable if bought for 3 years).
WordPress Hosting plans start from $2.49 per month and come with complete WordPress installation with auto-updates, unmetered bandwidth and other features.
VPS Hosting starts from $39.95 per month and comes with a virtual private server, similar to dedicated hosting. With this VPS plan, you get better security, daily backups and a dedicated IP address.
Reseller Hosting is also available with GreenGeeks. This is used to provide or resell their hosting service under a new company name.
GreenGeeks Payment Options
The only available payment method is through Credit Card. GreenGeeks offers no other payment option, not even PayPal.
However, if you need Indian payment options, Bluehost and Hostinger provide UPI payment option for Indian customers.
GreenGeeks Refund Policy
GreenGeeks has a 30-day money-back guarantee for all its services. You can purchase any plan from GreenGeeks and if it does not satisfy you, you can claim the refund within 30 days through support.
However, I like the refund policy of A2 Hosting that charges you on a pro-rata basis.
Website Migrations
GreenGeeks states they offer free Website Migration for all the plans. But as you explore this, you get to know that they will transfer your website only from certain hosting companies that use cPanel.
If you want to transfer a WordPress website, then only 1 transfer will be free of cost, and they will charge $15 per migration after this.
Below is the list of companies that GreenGeeks offers free website migration from:
If your priority is website migrations, you can look at ChemiCloud that offers up to 50 free cPanel migrations and 10 non-cPanel migrations!
GreenGeeks Sitebuilder
GreenGeeks offers a SitePad website builder which is a drag-and-drop site builder with many features and integrations. It is fast and is provided by most of the hosting provides for its ease of use.
GreenGeeks CDN
You get free CloudFlare CDN with GreenGeeks. Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) helps in case you have an audience from many countries by delivering your website faster to the users.
SSL
GreenGeeks includes a free SSL certificate for all the websites. SSL certificate is important for your website security.
It is necessary for websites that accept online transactions and take in users private information. SSL helps secure your website and keeps this user information private and secure.
Technology used in GreenGeeks
Similar to ChemiCloud, FastComet, A2 Hosting, and StableHost, GreenGeeks also uses Litespeed servers and supports PHP 7. NodeJS, Perl and Python are only supported by the VPS server, and not supported by the Shared Hosting plan.
Best Alternatives
GreenGeeks Vs FastComet Vs Hostinger
Factors | GreenGeeks | FastComet | Hostinger |
---|---|---|---|
⭐ Rating | 3.4 | 4.2 | 4.1 |
💲 Price | $2.95/mo | $1.79/mo | $2.99/mo |
⚡ Speed | 1.33 sec | 861 ms | 1.1 sec |
🕒 Uptime | 99.84% | 99.99% | 99.95% |
🔗 Free Domain | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
🌎 Data Centers | US, Asia, Europe | North America, South America, Australia, Europe, India, Asia, Asia Pacific | India, US, Singapore, Europe |
🔄 Backups | 2 days | 7 - 30 days | Weekly Backups |
➡️ Migrations | 1 | 1 - 3 | Unlimited |
💰 Money back guarantee | 30 days | 45 days | 30 Days |
🏆 Best For | Beginners and bloggers | Developers, WordPress bloggers, small businesses | Beginners |
🔍 Review | GreenGeeks Review | FastComet Review | Hostinger Review |
🔥 Coupon Code | Get extra discount with my link | Get extra discount with my link | "KRIPESH" - Get extra 10% OFF |
Pros
1. Litespeed Servers
GreenGeeks uses Litespeed servers for its hosting service. These servers are relatively fast and reliable. With an inbuilt Litespeed cache plugin, your website will perform much better and faster.
2. Good Speeds
According to the tests, the servers provided good website speed across Europe and the US. GreenGeeks can be considered for the website with an audience from these areas.
3. Ease Of Use
As mentioned in the article, GreenGeeks user interface is straightforward. With cPanel, you can manage your website easily under a single panel.
4. Sitepad Sitebuilder
Sitepad is a drag-and-drop site builder trusted by many people to build their websites. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any coding knowledge.
Cons
1. Bad Backup Management
My experience with the backup system of GreenGeeks pushes me to say that this is one of the worst backup management systems in web hosting service. No regularity in backups, with backups done on random dates and it is difficult to restore the website as well.
2. Bad Load Management
GreenGeeks servers didn’t manage the load well when I tested it by sending 50 virtual users. Considering they use Litespeed servers, there is room for improvement in load management.
3. Average Support
Didn’t expect the support to be average from this web hosting company. Given the reputation of the company, the customer support should be quick and give apt replies on the problems. But this is not the case with GreenGeeks.
4. No Data Center in Asia
With data centers of GreenGeeks in the US, Canada and Netherlands, it leaves the Asian users with slower website speeds and poor uptime.
Conclusion
After considering the results of all the tests, GreenGeeks web hosting flared poorly in almost every test. Be it in uptime, load management, backup management or customer support. All these areas should be near to perfect to provide good hosting service.
Yes, the website speed is good and use Litespeed servers, but overall I got an unpleasant experience with GreenGeeks hosting service. Hope you got all the insights in this GreenGeeks review.
With people suggesting this as an alternative to SiteGround, GreenGeeks did not live up to the mark. Hope they focus more on the Asian market and improve their service.
Let me know your thoughts on GreenGeeks below in the comments section. Also, let me know if you purchased any hosting plan from GreenGeeks or from any other hosting provider.
Subscribe to my Newsletter to never miss out on the latest articles. This is Kripesh signing off! Take care and happy learning!
FAQs
What type of control panel does GreenGeeks use?
GreenGeeks uses the cPanel for its interface. This control panel is easy to use and has everything under one panel. Easy to manage and install new software and security tools.
What are the best GreenGeeks alternatives?
The best alternatives to GreenGeeks are FastComet, Hostinger, HostArmada and BlueHost.
Does GreenGeeks accept credit card payments?
Yes, in fact GreenGeeks accepts credit cards as the only payment method. No other mode of payment is available like PayPal or debit card.
Does GreenGeeks offer a free domain name?
Yes, GreenGeeks offers a free domain for the 1st year if you buy it with any hosting plan. Renewal prices apply after this period.
Where is GreenGeeks data centers located?
GreenGeeks has 3 data centers in Chicago, USA, Montreal, Canada, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
GreenGeeks Pros (+)
- Litespeed Servers
- Good Speeds
- Ease Of Use
- Sitepad Sitebuilder
GreenGeeks Cons (-)
- Bad Backup Management
- Bad Load Management
- Average Support
- No Data Center in Asia
Green Geeks has a super hosting plan and eco friendly their uptime is good . and your post is wonderful thank you for share your Valuable information. Lucky me I discovered your site
Greengeeks has now servers in Asia. Singapore
Thanks for the update.
Will probably buy it and then update the review on performance.
e come across. They are nothing but scammers. Do not fall for their “unlimited” spaces. The total disk space they offer is 10GB and if you plan to keep more than 10GB on their server for 30 days your emails will be suspended immediately. I had hosted around 5 hostings with them until I was aware of their scamming. Now I happily migrated them to other professional hosting company.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I am having a similar experience with GreenGeeks, and I’ll need to migrate off next week. Can you let me know what other hosting options you found that allow larger email storage? My email storage is currently at 50GB. Thank you!