Should You Go Green?

In this GreenGeeks review, I’ll go through everything that it has to offer in terms of pricing, ease of use, performance, security, customer support, and more.

In the crowded web hosting industry, it’s no easy feat to stand out. But GreenGeeks seems to be doing a pretty good job.

Much of this is because the provider is one of the more eco-friendly hosting solutions – a maximum use and no waste of resources company. More so, it also purchases 3x the electricity that it consumes in the form of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to offset carbon output.

But beyond its commitment to green hosting, GreenGeeks has also garnered much attention for its hosting services. “Fastest speed, best security, easiest scalability, and exceptional support” – pretty bold claims, yet the host promises it all.

Now whether it lives up to these claims or not, that’s what I aim to find out in this GreenGeeks hosting review. So let’s jump right into it.

Pros and Cons of GreenGeeks

Pros

• Easy to use cPanel integration
• Robust security package
• Datacenters in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands

Cons

• SSL certificate is not activated automatically
• Customer support is not very helpful

GreenGeeks pricing & plans

GreenGeeks pricing is rather affordable,?with its cheapest shared hosting plans starting at just $2.95/mo. While shared hosting is the most popular solution, GreenGeeks also has other hosting options like WordPress, VPS, and reseller hosting.

It’s obvious that while GreenGeeks’ selection of hosting services isn’t very big, it covers most users’ needs. In any case, shared hosting is still its most sought-after hosting option. So, I’ll be focusing on it for this GreenGeeks web hosting review.

GreenGeeks has 3 shared hosting plans, with prices ranging from $2.95/mo to $25.95/mo.

Talking about the?plans, all come with unmetered transfers, unlimited bandwidth, and databases, managed WordPress convenience, caching plugins, and multi-user access. Plus, GreenGeeks also throws in multiple freebies, including an SSL certificate, a domain for a year, daily backup, and CDN.

But, of course, there are distinctive features, too:

From the looks of it,?GreenGeeks is very liberal with its resources and features. Sure, the entry hosting plan (Lite) is a little short on disk space, but even then, 50GB should be more than enough for most basic websites. Plus, GreenGeeks more than offset that drawback with generous freebies like domain names, daily backups, and built-in caching despite its fairly affordable price tag.

Before you check out, there are a couple of things to note. First,?GreenGeeks has an unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee, which is always handy in case you aren’t satisfied with the host.

Plus, while GreenGeeks isn’t very in-your-face with its upselling attempts during checkout, it isn’t entirely above it, either.?Make sure to uncheck some checked-by-default add-on options?like WHOIS privacy before payment if you just want hosting.

All things considered, GreenGeeks is an affordable and generous hosting service provider. For a reasonable price, you get good server resources, advanced features, and a well-rounded security package.

Hosting management: is it easy to use?

When it comes to ease of use, GreenGeeks hosting is as easy as it can be. The provider has a straightforward yet?modern-looking dashboard that it pairs with the powerful cPanel.?The combo makes for an intuitive yet functional management experience for everyone from rookies to seasoned users.

Here’s a look at GreenGeeks’ main dashboard:

It’s easy to see why so many users praise the dashboard in their GreenGeeks hosting reviews.

The dashboard is contemporary, neat, and intuitive. But, above all else, it’s extremely functional. Here, you can set up email accounts, activate SSL, connect domains, access and manage databases and files, track resource usage, and even use it for staging your sites. More so, this is also where you can find the shortcode to the cPanel.?Essentially, you can manage the site with just this panel.

However, for users who need to tackle?more advanced and diverse tasks, GreenGeeks also offers cPanel. And, let’s not forget that cPanel is the only place where you can install a CMS of your liking if WordPress isn’t your first choice.

GreenGeeks control panel

GreenGeeks uses the standard cPanel?but jazzed things up with a custom skin. Despite the design change, the control panel is intuitive, clean, and well-organized. So even complete newbies will master it in no time.

To your right, you’ll find the sidebar with your site’s general information and statistics. But, right smack in the center is where you’ll easily find all the tools that you need to run your site.

Since we’re on the subject, let’s talk a little about what you’ll need cPanel for:

• WordPress installation?– cPanel is where you can install any CMS, including WordPress. You can do this very quickly and effortlessly with the Softaculous one-click app installer.
• Setting up professional email accounts?– under the?Email?section, you’ll find all sorts of email-related tools and features. Whether you’re looking to create new email accounts, manage existing ones or add email boxes, all of these tasks are just a click away.
• Domain management?– everything you need to manage your domains is under, well,?Domains. From here, you can add multiple new domains, create new subdomains, manage aliases, and more.
• Other GreenGeeks web hosting management tasks, including?database management, file management and edit within File Manager, SEO tools configuration, and more.

In short, GreenGeeks made a checkmate move by including a cPanel for hosting management. It’s straightforward and intuitive but also powerful enough to contain everything you need for hosting management.

Adding an SSL with GreenGeeks

Unfortunately,?GreenGeeks doesn’t activate an SSL on your behalf automatically. However, you can easily do that yourself.

To enable your SSL certificate, you’ll first need to head to your main control panel.?On the left side menu, click on?Security. From here, you just need to click on Add SSL Certificate in the upper right-hand corner.

You have the option to either go with the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate or shell out for the Premium AlphaSSL, which comes for an extra fee.

Once done, just refresh the My SSL Certificates status to check whether the certificate is now active. Not too much of a hassle, eh?

Overall, while it’s a bit of a bummer that GreenGeeks SSL isn’t automatically activated, the process to do so yourself is very straightforward time-efficient.

As a whole, GreenGeeks web hosting is very easy to use. With an intuitive user interface and a user-bellowed cPanel, GreenGeeks effectively delivers both simplicity and functionality.

GreenGeeks performance

GreenGeeks remains at the top of its games even when it comes to performance.?The host is both?very reliable and fairly fast.?Plus, even on its cheapest plan, its servers deftly handled some serious traffic without a hitch.

GreenGeeks uptime and response time

For the first test, I’ve checked the provider's reliability in terms of keeping your site up and running.

For that, I’ve monitored GreenGeeks for 2 weeks. In this time, the provider had 2 outages or 4 minutes of downtime. This has resulted in a?very reliable 99.98% uptime.

Keeping in mind that the host?issues a 99.9% uptime guarantee, the actual results are very pleasing indeed.

Now talking about the?server response time, GreenGeeks has averaged at 773ms. While this is notably higher than the market’s average of 600ms, there’s no need to worry just yet. Based on the graph, it’s clear that the slow response time has improved significantly.

All in all, GreenGeeks proved to be a reliable provider. While the response time could be improved, there is no reason to stress about that.

GreenGeeks website speed

The next test for this GreenGeeks review is a speed test to find out how fast the host can load up an empty and fully-built site.

Before we get right down to the nitty-gritty, there are 2 important measures you should know to understand the results:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?– this is the time it takes to load the largest chunk of the page, and it’s one of the many things that Google takes into account when ranking sites on its search result page. For best results, keep the LCP below 2.5s.
• Fully Loaded Time?– this specifies the time it takes for the site to be fully loaded. The time shouldn’t be longer than 3 seconds to ensure a good user experience and low bounce rates.

To start, I tested an empty WordPress site’s load time from 3 different locations. Since my?site is hosted in the US, that’s also where the best results were seen.?The LCP in the US was only 530ms.