Watch out for Renewal Notices

I have, until recently, been quite satisfied with Siteground. Their hosting is reliable, their prices are not excessive, their Sitebuilder is simple enough to use. I have a website with them for my own business, which I intend to keep. I had another website for a business my wife was running, which we decided not to continue. On 1/13, I received a notification that the site was due to expire on 2/12. I followed the procedure online to cancel the subscription. On 1/28, I was charged for another year's hosting. When I questioned this the following day, I was informed that the charge was nonrefundable! I replied that this was unacceptable, but since it was by now Saturday, I decided to wait a few days for a response - which I never received. This morning (2/5) I checked in again. The site has not been canceled. No further attempt was made to respond to my complaint. I again attempted to cancel the site. This time, I was told I would receive an email, and that the link contained in the email would allow me to confirm the cancellation. I did in fact receive the email and click on the link. It brought me to a live chat. The person at the other end claimed they never received my initial cancellation request. I am still attempting to resolve this issue... but losing faith that it will be resolved (and wondering how I will insure that come 2011, this unwanted site is not renewed for yet another year!)

SiteGround is a scam. Beware!!!

I signed up for a 1month trial for siteground on Sept. 18. I'm new at this and I wanted to test the service before committing to anything. Immediately I found the site very difficult to navigate through. When ever you click on an icon on the site it doesn't take you to where you need to go. Instead it takes you to a detour tutorial which leads to another tutorial which leaves you with leaving several window open just to go back and review that all your steps are taken right. Its rediculously time consuming. Not only that but they offered a free website transfer for the first 7 days but heaven help you if you can figure out how to do that. Mine fortuanatley would not configure so it was never transfered (which I am grateful for now since I'm sure they would have held it hostage). The main reason I chose to try this service was because I did not have to sign up for a long period without first getting a taste of the service. Their was nothing in the fine print prior to signing up that stated they did an automatic renewal. In fact I recall the page at the time saying it expired after 1 month. Well that was just a flat out lie. After signing up they said they did an automatic renewal and get this they sign you up for a year for $107.49. That is some expensive hosting. I got an email saying that my account was automatically renewed on the October 18th. I tried to call the number that was in the email and lo and behold no one answers. What a shock. I then went to check my bank account and there was a pending charge. Now call me crazy but I'm pretty sure that if I open an account on the 18th and it expires on the 18th then I can cancel on the 18th. So thats what I tried to do. I went online to cancel the account and and it takes you to a page to cancel and says in a box that you agree to the terms that the renewal fee is non refundable when charged after the 1month trial date. I'm like well today is the end of my trial date not after so its in your fine print so whatever. I printed it of course to show to my bank if they want to push it. I then was sent an email to confirm my cancelation. That email had a link to chat live with someone who tried everything to keep me from cancelling. I told them that today was the final day of my trial period and I wanted to cancel and that they needed to remove the renewal charge immediatley from my account. They claimed it was non refundable. I repeatedly reminded this person that today was the last day of my trial and I was canceling by the end of that trial and they had no authorization to charge my account. Apparently they feel that they can just charge you early for your convenience as they put it and after words you can't get your money back. Then after I told them I was going to block to payment from my bank they tell me that I can only get a refund if I talk to billing. Which he had already said was open from 9-5 mon-fri and then said they were available 24/7. So which is it. So I filled a ticket with billing to cancel the account and I havn't heard back from them. I called my bank this morning to tell them the charge was unauthorized and if they attempted to charge it that I want to open a dispute. I copied all of the conversation I had with the man online as well as the first email they sent me to the last proving that the cancellation was requested on the 18th. So now I just have to wait and see if they are mischevious enough to try and actually follow through with their little scam. I am cancelling my card on the off chance they may try and charge more money to my card as well. Oh and by the way even if you read the fine print. Its not their. So everyone on hear that didn't and let these people lie to you because you didn't please call your bank and file a dispute. I'm read details and believe me their were no details there to be found.

Biggest Con: Very disshonest a Huge Con

Biggest ripoff

DO not sign up for an account with these people.

I was suckered in with their 5.00 for the first month sign up.

and that very first day I discovered how difficult it is to navigate their site, and build your own site .

so I did not like it at all.

I ask for cancellation of my account. upon asking for a account cancellation they tell me they will charge me 25.00 fee when my sign up fee was only 5.00. also I discovered u need to chat with some sale person in order to cancel your account in witch the sale person trys to talk u out of it in every way possible.

so then I discover well my account will expire on oct 1st 30 days after my sign up so I will just let it expire and I wont have to worry about any fees.

Boy was I wrong!. I wake up today and find they took 107.00 from my bank account, without my authorization. so im flaming mad of course.

I once again try to cancel my account and I ask for a refund. well after 5 trys into their crappy chat session I finally get some dude asking me how he can help me.

I tell him I want my account deleted and I would like a refund for the 107.00 they took from me just minutes ago. he does not want to delete my account , it took 40 min of my morning arguing with this guy.

finally after the 6th time telling him to delete it he says he will.

on top of this he tells me they only do refunds in the first 30 days. after the first 30 days whatever is charged after that they wont refund at all.

I never read this anywhere when I signed up.

so I got charged 107.00 for a site I never used and will never use. and im out that 107.00 which I really needed for my utility bills .

so please dont sign up for these people. they totally mislead me to think my account would be deleted if I dident renew instead they renewed my account.

SiteGround is a Hosting Scam. Read all their fine print.

After no problems for 3 months, I uploaded a few joomla sites which have a lot of small files. They told me my account was going to be shut down because of too much 'inode' usage. So I was forced to delete all my work. I was not using a lot of space (only 200mgs!) so I was very surprised this would happen on an account with 'unlimited' space.

Several months later I got another notice saying my site would be turned off in 2 days because of too many 'multimedia' files. The files they were referring to were not audio or video, but simply jpgs! Again I had to quickly delete all the work. My total space used was only 100GBs for an 'unlimited' account! They said I had to upgrade to a dedicated server ($250 per month) in 2 days or they would shut off my site!

I did find an 800 number through Google but after many attempts I gave up the illusion of actually talking to someone. After a few minutes they just cut you off.

Even their ticket system is ridiculous. I had a lot of trouble finding the place to submit a ticket (they make this purposely very difficult). Of course their response to my please of mercy went unheeded. I don't understand how such a company can even be in business. I guess it will attract people looking for something for nothing. I understand what goes into hosting and I was not looking for that. My mistake was not reading the fine print. I've never had to do that before with hosting companies who keep things simple: you pay for space and bandwidth and leave you alone.

Enough was enough. I closed my account. This is the worst hosting scam I've ever seen.

Biggest Con: Everything siteground.com does is a scam.

This company is a rip off

They pretend to give you a low monthly, but in return charge you some sort of fees elsewhere.

DO NOT GO WITH THIS COMPANY or be fooled by their low monthly. They are dishonest.

Do not go with this company because:

- You need to purchase an addon space for each domain added to your account.
Where as other company and my current company is unlimited.

- You're only allowed 5 domains maximum added to your account.
Other companies and my current company is unlimited.

- Do not give free domain for new accounts
Other companies and my current company give a lifetime domain.

It was all going fine, until.....

I'll make it short and sweet.

I've been with siteground about 8 months, never had a problem really. Decent data transfer, reliable enough uptime.

Then I try to login to my cPanel one day and get this message:

Not Found

The server was not able to find the document (./frontend/sg/index.html) you requested.

Please check the url and try again. You might also want to report this error to your web hosting provider.

I followed their procedures for informing them if my cPanel is down.

I've heard not a word.

Thusly, I can't recommend this host to anyone.

Biggest Pro: Good, until your site is accessible...discluding yourself
Biggest Con: absolutely zero customer service

Questionable Integrity

I hosted my site with SG for a year, then moved because I wanted to host more than one site for a better yearly rate. My domain name was registered with Siteground for 2 years, though so I didn't transfer it.

It was set to expire in Feb 2010. On March 31, 2009, it got pulled - without warning either via email or a notice on their site-and they said I'd have to pay $199 to get it back. They offered no real explanation and refused to let me speak to a supervisor.

I'm still trying to figure out how they pulled an unexpired domain and can hold it hostage.

Morale of the story-stay away from Siteground. They are unethical and their customer service is pitiful.

I like Hostgator.

Be Cautious!

They are decent for the first year... then all of a sudden when your site is no where close to using the 7500GB of bandwidth they will place a bandwidth limitation on your site noting the cause as too much bandwidth I/O and guess what, everything that makes your site go from 0-60 in 2 seconds is now reversed and they quote their TOS every other reply if you argue. Everyone has bad experiences, some could have great ones w/ them but I did not and www.tournamentgamingworld.com (the site they placed the limit on) is not any longer, the site runs slow now and a map download less than 25mb which used to take 1-5 mins to download now takes 2+1/2 hours to download. After arguing my heart out to a bunch of morons only two employess saw my logic... Siteground now suck IMO but Anatoli & Natalie rock for being human just like you and me, helping a person not their company as everyone should to make the company look better else why work for them? Thanks to you 2 only and the rest of ya I'll quote some of the EURO guys off our Teamspeak... Bullocks and kiss me arse.

Mike Miller
now w/ GoDaddy.com FTW!

Biggest Pro: 1 good year of decent hosting
Biggest Con: OVERSELLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good service

Very thorough service. There is a handy interface, but some of it isn't very intuitive.

One big drawback, however, is that their website interface makes it difficult to submit a ticket for customer support. If I send an email, they'll just direct me back to their web site with no obvious way to ask for help.

I would recommend SiteGround Hosting to anyone with a basic knowledge of web development. In isn't for newbies, however.

Biggest Pro: CPanel
Biggest Con: Can't easily find help request form.

Siteground have been helpful when needed but did freeze my site.

Helpfule when started as a noob on Joomla etc and only recently froze my site for extreme CPU usage.

Were patient over a week or so and helpful on solutions to reduce it back into reasonable limits, but figured it out mainly myself.

The cause was my own doing allowing spammers in the back door to my Gallery comments section and massive IFRAME page views from my main Turbo Car Automotive site www.TurboClub.com.

Biggest Pro: Uptime and General Help
Biggest Con: Cant handle high traffic like 30,000 requests a day