Site5 Reviews (2024)

Site5 Reviews (2024)

  • Unlimited Diskspace
  • Unlimited Bandwidth
  • Instant Provisioning
  • 1-click WordPress Install
  • CPANEL
  • Free Domain Name Reg.
  • 45 Day Money Back Guarantee

From $4.95/mth

View Site5 Plans

Site5 Reviews

Site5 Review

For our Site5 review site we went with their entry level plan, hostBasic, which starts at $4.95/mth.

Site5 Provisioning and Installation

We used to use Site5 all the time (and still do use them for some accounts), and one of the features we used to really like is the option to choose your data centre when signing up. They used to have options in Europe, Asia, South America and a bunch in the US and Canada. 

A nice option for those with a target market in a particular place. Sadly, with the migration to the EIG infrastructure these options seem to be no longer available. That was a real point of difference so it is a shame to see it go.

Site5 Systems and Support

Site5 provides chat, email and phone support. Our experience of 1st level support over the years has generally been great, however, we do note a big uptick in complaints since the sale to EIG. 

This is a common problem when a host is acquired and migrates of their service to another platform (never goes smoothly). We expect the complaints to subside as the migration is complete.

Site5 Load Test

Site5 Hosting Review 2020

As previously noted, since their acquisition by EIG we believe that Site5’s service has been migrated to the centralized EIG infrastructure which they seem to use to manage all their mainstream brands. 

As a result, the load testing results are vastly improved and not far off EIG’s big brands Bluehost and Hostgator, with really solid performance right up to 100 concurrent users. Load Impacts average Virtual User load time for the duration of the 10 minute test was actually faster than Bluehost at 0.754s. 

They only missed out on a better overall ranking due to their weaker performance on the Pingdom tests, and due to the less than perfect uptime record. We have recommended Site5 highly in the past but they went through a rough transition after being acquired by EIG. 

We are pleased to see their technical performance return to a high standard.

See all the tested WordPress hosts ranked.

Site5 Page Speed & Uptime

Site5 Result
YSlow Score 79
West Coast Load Time 1.09s
East Coast Load Time 1.00s
Average Page Load Time 1.045s
Site5 Uptime 99.95%

Site5 scored an 79 on the YSlow test which is actually a bit of a drop from the last round of testing (when they scored 83). We still find it curious that the EIG hosts didn’t all get the same YSlow grade (if, as we suspect, they are all hosted on the same EIG infrastructure).

Their average home page load time as recorded by Pingdom was a minor improvement in the latest round of testing despite the lower Yslow score. They scored a 99.95% uptime in the last 30 days which is not perfect but within the bounds of acceptable and better than promised.

Best WordPress Hosting

WPX logo
1-click WordPress Install
10GB Storage
100GB Bandwidth
Free SSL Cert
Free Malware Removal
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
 From $20.83/mth
Pressable logo
1 WordPress Install
20GB Storage per/mth
WP Cloud Platform
30,000 Visits per/mth
Free Site Migrations
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
 From $25.00/mth
Siteground logo
Free WP Installation
10 GB Web Space
10,000 Visits Monthly
Free SSL Cert
Free WP Migrator
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
 From $3.99/mth

About Site5

Site5 is a web hosting company established in 2001, emphasizing “guaranteed performance” for their clients. They tout how “uncrowded” their servers are and the fact that they don’t use outsourced customer support.

The company offers in-house engineering and development capability, and promises no gimmicks, no hidden fees with their accounts.

In addition to Basic, Pro and Turbo hosting plans, Site5 has fully anonymous reseller hosting options, preventing clients from knowing that Site5 is the hosting being resold and allowing them to use personalized domains.

Site5 offers a VPS hosting plan with “100% dedicated protected resources,” using hosting nodes with at least eight cores and 24 GB of RAM for all VPS accounts. Each individual client is given unique disk space, RAM and CPU core allotment.

This plan eliminates the possibility of other users taking up more than their fair share of space allotment, as all clients get the space they pay for along with a dedicated hosting setup and support.

The company offers a fairly standard “No Worry Full Management” promise, meaning they keep track of updating all software, all operating system security fixes and 24/7 monitoring for VPS clients as well as all others.

FAQ’s

What comes with the standard Site5 plans

All plans include unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, free migrations, disaster recovery backups, and 24×7 support.

Does Site5 provide unlimited disk space and bandwidth?

Yes. The average cost of hard drives keep getting lower and lower. It’s not really all that expensive to offer it.

The Shared Web Hosting plans do not place hard limits on the amount disk space or bandwidth an account may use, but all customers must use their hosting accounts in accordance with the Terms of Service and Resource Usage Policy, to “ensure disk space and bandwidth are used in the regular operation of websites.” 

Only roughly .1% of customers ever fall outside of normal usage and are violating the TOS.

How much does Site5 Cost?

Site5 has plans starting around $4.95/mth. They’ll offer special prices at different times of the year, but those intro prices are usually limited to the first year of service so you should check regular retail prices and expect to pay this after the first year if you sign up during one of their regular sales.

Does Site5 have a free trial period?

Site5 offers a free 30 day trial. Just use the coupon code FREETRIAL and then select the one month billing contract term when signing up for Web Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Reseller Hosting or Reseller Cloud Hosting. 

After your free trial, your account will automatically renew for the billing term (monthly, annually, etc.) selected at sign up. If you wish to cancel after your free trial or change your billing frequency, contact Site5.

Does Site5 have a money back guarantee?

They do have a money-back guarantee time frame. If you are still within the money back guarantee period for your service, Site% will return 100% of your money, no questions asked. 

If you have gone beyond the money back guarantee for your service plan, they do not offer any monetary refunds. Any refunds at this point would be at the discretion of Site5 management.

Is shared cloud web hosting a good idea?

The idea behind Shared Cloud Web Hosting is to keep downtime for your email and websites to an absolute minimum. It’s good for businesses and consumers who need consistent uptime, but don’t have a large IT budget for things like load-balanced, multi-server solutions.

If you’re a small online store, affiliate marketer, budding entrepreneur, web designer, photographer, or other small businesses site that honestly isn’t busy enough to need a VPS or dedicated server, but still wants enterprise grade hardware and uptime, it might be for you.

How does Site5 cloud hosting work?

They start with enterprise grade hardware and software that encompasses every component of the system. There is at minimum two of EVERY component, all configured for seamless and automatic failover.

They use network storage in a RAID 10 configuration, mirrored to a secondary RAID 10 array. The arrays are accessed by frontend servers which serve the data to your websites.

There are multiple routes to the storage so if an interface card failed the secondary would take over instantly. In addition to this redundancy, the data is backed up to a third location in an easily restorable format.

Does cloud hosting offer all the same account features?

Site5’s Cloud Hosting includes every feature found in their normal shared web hosting packages. The only difference is the system is built on enterprise grade hardware and designed for full redundancy.

Where are Site5’s servers located?

Site5 has server locations all over the world, so you can easily find one close to your market.

Check the site for the exact locations offered, but there are quite a lot of them — about a dozen in the U.S. alone, and plenty of foreign locations in places like Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America.

Site5 Comparison & Alternatives

Rank Host Price Action
1 Siteground From $20.83/mth View Plans / Full Review
2 Siteground From $25.00/mth View Plans / Full Review
3 Siteground From $3.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
4 Bluehost From $2.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
5 GreenGeeks From $2.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
6 Arvixe From $7.00/mth View Plans / Full Review
7 Site5 From $4.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
8 iPage From $1.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
9 A2 Hosting From $3.92/mth View Plans / Full Review
10 Dreamhost From $7.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
11 Hostgator From $3.82/mth View Plans / Full Review
12 GoDaddy From $2.49/mth View Plans / Full Review
13 InMotion Hosting From $4.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
14 Web Hosting Hub From $4.99/mth View Plans / Full Review

Disclosure

This page contains affiliate links which means we earn a commission if you click through and signup. This is at no extra cost to you and helps us maintain this resource for all webmasters’ benefit. We own and pay for all the hosting accounts we use in our reviews and performance testing. Read our full disclosure statement here. Thanks for your support. 

Real Site5 Customer Reviews

12 reviews on “Site5 Reviews (2024)

  1. Michelle says:

    I lost all my sites with them!!! Stay away! I have been with them since 2006, it used to be great, then it was ok, and now it’s just awful. Support is slow, sometimes a ticket will take up a week to answer. Now one seems to know anything and the reply is mostly canned format (of course super polite but offers no help of any substance). Had server problem since May this year and opened multiple support tickets with them. Answers are very inconsistent and 3 months later they have managed to lose all of my websites (8 of them). What was even worse is that I paid extra to have backup generated and saved by them. When I asked them to provide the backups and restore the sites they told me that their backup server appears to be corrupt and they have lost all my backups!!! I had to move to a different hosting company and build all my sites from scratch which is extremely devastating. I asked them for partial refund, they told me that I don’t qualify for any refund!!! My business and livelihood has been impacted drastically! This is not a company you can trust! Stay away!

    1. Michelle says:

      If I can give negative star I would!

  2. MP says:

    Consistency is gone. I used to like Site5 but the experience is just not the same as before. I have found myself having to contact Customer Support over again to check on the downtime issues. Sure they give credit for the time lost but it would be great if it was not something that seems to be happening more often than it should.

  3. Chrissie says:

    I have already brought my issue up to Customer Support as to why my billing statement keeps going into spam even if I have marked it as not spam. I don’t like this as monthly invoices may end up being overlooked. Other than that, I have found that the emails sent to the address belonging to my domain do not always go through. I found this out when some of my clients contacted us through telephone and informed us that I have never responded to their “inquiries”.

  4. Chad says:

    It was a good 2 years but I am migrating to another provider (by the way, thanks for suggestions). Malware attacks have become an issue and I wanted to solve this issue with consultations with their team. Their live chat experts, sound like interns who are still figuring the ropes of who knows what. They don’t seem to be experts at all! I wouldn’t even call myself an expert but I sure know some other technicalities than the ones who handled me the other day. I don’t feel very secure with them hence the change.

  5. furqan says:

    Do not use site5 this is the worst hosting website. we have our website hosting with them and it is a complete disaster. Every day their server is down for 4 to 5 hours within 24 hours period. they tell you that we have fix the problem and next day it does agin. i am tired and sick of their server. dont do for cheap price. you will lose your business.
    here is their reply which they send me every day.

    Hello,

    Thank you for the reply.

    Yes, we understand that you were facing issues regarding accessing cPanel and we apologize for that.

    When the server is under maintenance, all the default services will go down which also includes cPanel and websites. Currently, we have resolved the issue with the shared18.accountservergroup.com server.

    If you still encounter any issues, Please reply back to us. We will be glad to help you with that.

    If you have any other questions or concerns please do not hesitate to reach out to our live support again. We are available 24×7.

    Regards,

    [redacted]
    Web Administrator

  6. Sam says:

    I’ve just checked and can see I’ve been a customer of Site 5 for 1 month short of 10 years.

    Until 2 or 3 years ago, I’d have recommended them to anyone. Their hosting was utterly reliable, everything worked smoothly, and their support was excellent.

    Something happened and service levels have dropped off a cliff.

    My domains go off line, email stops working, and on the Site 5 user control panel nothing works – not even the Live Chat function.

    I’ve battled to get through numerous times, and invariably get told, “Oh, yes, I can see the problem, wait a minute, yes, that’s fixed for you.” I never get a decent explanation, and am always told, “No, there was nothing you could have done to fix it. It’s at our end. All sorted now though”.

    All-in-all, incredibly frustrating, doubly so because they used to be so good.

    1. Steve A says:

      Sam has nailed it.

      They used to be good and now are the worst I have even used. Always a reason and always “I really appreciate your patience. I am still working on it. I will be back in 2-3 minutes to give you an update.”…..This goes on for hours.

      Final straw was after I lost my sites for a week because they “migrated” servers and didn’t tell anyone. Then they tried to tell me I need to upgrade because of Disk Space. Lucky I know how to use cPanel or else they would have scammed me too. Stay away

  7. juliuslopezcompany says:

    My first Year with Site5 was great. Then all of a sudden, they fell off a cliff. I noticed something was wrong when a ticket sat for more than twenty minutes without an email response. Three days later, I opened a chat with them and learned they were purchased by a holding company who’s first move was to cut costs by letting go of support staff. After that call I began to process of migrating my sites to Dreamhost. While their hosting was great, it was customer service that did them in for me. Support may have improved since I left Q1 2017, but I’m not willing to take a chance.

  8. I’ve never had any serious issues to report but what ever reason I had for my ticket, the response was always within minutes. What’s even more impressive, and very rare to find, is the level of details in our communication. They are always going an extra mile in their emails and you won’t find them suggesting you to check “if your PC is turned on” or similar jokes.

  9. Luciana says:

    I’ve been hosted with Site5 for over a year now and I have nothing but good things to say about it. Very quality service for an affordable price, didn’t experienced any issue that could be noted.

    But the icing on the cake is, for sure, the incredible support staff, always helpful and fast, even with problems that have nothing to do with Site5.

    You guys have a very happy customer, for sure.

  10. Ben Muir says:

    Site 5 has it’s issues here and there. The features are somewhat buried for those of us who are not highly skilled with web hosting and I can’t give a fair rating of those. Earlier in the year the Dallas server had problems with reoccurring downtime.

    Any issues I have had with the server have been balanced out by Site5’s incredible support staff. I have had several problems but the site5 staff have always had them fixed quickly; even some problems which had nothing to do with site5. When the support staff fixes some of my website’s files which are causing issues hosting problems, because I have a basic grasp of coding at best, I am a happy customer.

Leave a Review