GreenGeeks is among the many recognized web hosting companies in the industry today. From its beginner-friendly and cost-effective tools to affordable plans and friendly customer support team, the web host sure offers competitive hosting services.
To make it short, GreenGeeks has everything you need.
But the same goes with other web host solutions that, unfortunately, gives aspiring web owners—particularly non-techy folks—a hard time choosing the right web and server support for their sites.
That being said, my in-depth GreenGeeks review could help sort things out. It covers various aspects of GreenGeeks as well as its most important web host elements.
Let’s start?
What is GreenGeeks?
GreenGeeks is a web hosting company composed of high-quality web and server features but is primarily known for being an environment-friendly web host provider. It is founded by Trey Gardner—a sales and marketing expert who happens to work in several web hosting firms such as Hostpapa and Lunarpages—way back in 2008, with its main office now located in Agoura Hills, California.
After more than a decade of business, GreenGeeks now serves more than 50, 000 customers across the globe with over 600, 000 hosted web pages. It has replaced over 615, 000 wind power credits per year as well for the total amount of energy its hosted sites consumed.
Aside from being an eco-friendly hosting platform, GreenGeeks is also known for its reliable and high-performing network infrastructure, latest speed technologies, and top tier customer service.
What is it for?
GreenGeeks is a web hosting solution providing several hosting services including shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, as well as Virtual Private Servers.
Essentially, it is created for individuals who wish to dip their toes into eCommerce and website monetization. It can support personal websites too for folks like freelancers and industry leaders. Its services typically accommodate startups and small to medium-sized companies.
However, many web enthusiasts highly recommend it to aspiring entrepreneurs. I do share the same sentiment as well and the reason behind it is because it supports several content management systems including WordPress and Woocommerce, which are both known and are proven efficient as eCommerce platforms
It finds it also a great option for non-techy beginners thanks to its easy-to-use and intuitive user interface.
But above it all, GreenGeeks is a perfect web hosting service for folks who are environmentally conscious as it offers perks like an energy replacement credit system wherein the web host allots wind power credits 3x the total amount of energy consumed by their users’ webpages
How does it differ?
From small to huge aspects, GreenGeeks varies in many ways compared to other web hosting platforms. There are, however, a few features that I believe sets GreenGeeks apart from other hosting services
Per my evaluation, these are:
· Carbon-reducing websites. Surprisingly, GreenGeeks provides eco-friendly hosting services. In fact, it is the leading environmental-friendly web hosting provider in the industry today and has received numerous awards under the said category including the EPA Green Power Partner.
· Auto-scalable hosting plans. Another thing that sets GreenGeeks apart from other web hosting solutions is its auto-scalable feature which guarantees users nearly 100% uptime even with a sudden surge of web traffic.
· Cheap hosting plans. Although other web hosting providers also give cheap plans, I find GreenGeek’s web hosting services much more affordable given the quality of services it provides. The company made an effort to take care of our environment while providing reliable, low-cost hosting solutions.
The pros and cons
Here is a list of GreenGeeks’ perks and drawback to help you weigh things further:
The pros
· Budget-friendly hosting plans
· Nearly 100% uptime guarantee
· Robust security tools
· Top tier site speed
· Zero carbon footprint websites
· Highly scalable
· Free site builder
· Free domain name
· 30-day money-back guarantee
· Auto data backups
The cons
· Its 30-day money-back guarantee policy has limitations
· Domain name registration is pricey
· Confusing refund policy
· Pricey renewable price
Everything about GreenGeeks
What you have read is just GreenGeek’s tip-of-the-iceberg features. To help you weigh things better, let’s dive a bit further and see what else the web hosting platform could do.
1. GreenGeek’s best features
First on the list is GreenGeek’s “best” features.
As I have mentioned earlier, the web host provider is composed of a wide array of tools ranging from basic to advanced ones. Among these tools, however, are a few that I believe have stood out and give GreenGeeks a better footing in the market.
That being said, to give you an idea, I enumerated each of them below along with a detailed explanation.
2. Environment-friendly
When it comes to environment-friendly hosting solutions, GreenGeeks is the leading hosting service in the industry that has chosen to commit a 300% renewable energy. And such a feature, in fact, is what separates the platform from its competitors.
Having said that, there are several reasons as to why GreenGeek’s commitment to providing zero-carbon footprint websites—aside from the fact that it is the only hosting solution that offers the sad service—made its way as the platform’s best features.
And these are:
· Eco-friendly by design. Maintaining a website requires a significant amount of energy and emits tonnes of Co2. In fact, the web hosting industry is now the leading contributor to environmental pollution, surpassing the airline industry.
So to keep things in check, GreenGeeks decided to build its network infrastructure eco-friendly by design in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint.
Its hardware used to host site data, for instance, is energy efficient. It also stores its servers in data centers that are, by design, developed to be environmentally-friendly.
· Offers wind energy credit as compensation. GreenGeeks also offers wind power credits as compensation for all the energy its hosted webpages consumed. To be specific, it gives three times the amount of energy each of its customers’ sites is consumed.
And because of that, GreenGeeks replaces more than 615, 000 kWh/year.
· Green badges for web owners. Another perk from its eco-conscious feature is that GreenGeeks gives green badges for webmasters to use and display on their pages. These badges certify that the owner of the page commits to lessen Co2 emission by using an eco-friendly hosting solution.
It does not do much compared to the first two but it will help aspiring web owners like you to earn a potential customer’s trust.
3. Auto-scalable
An auto-scaling feature is developed to handle a sudden influx of web traffic. In layman’s terms, a site supported by GreenGeeks can handle an unexpected surge of traffic or number of visitors no matter how much the amount is.
But why did I include it in my list of GreenGeeks’ best features? What is the deal?
Here’s why:
A highly scalable hosting allows users to scale up by adding specific resources to improve their site performance. It is also crucial in certain types of websites particularly digital stores.
And as mentioned, it essentially prevents your page from slowing down or having downtime due to an unexpected influx of visitors. It is why it suits well with already established pages that are earning a significant amount of traffic and continuously earning more.
It is also a cost-effective feature particularly for beginners since through it, they would not need to subscribe or upgrade to higher tier hosting plans like a dedicated server or Virtual Private Server (VPS). They could instead add more computing resources such as CPU or RAM. It enables users to upgrade to a higher shared hosting plan too.
But what happens if your hosting plan is not auto-scalable?
It is simple. Your web page—depending on the amount of web traffic and load—will either slow down or, worst, crash. And such a situation usually causes troubles in sales and revenue as a result.
4. Exhilarating speed
Another feature to commend about GreenGeeks is its stack of “latest” speed technologies. Yes, you read that right. It isn’t just some random speed tools but the latest technologies to give its users the best performance and to keep up with other web hosting providers.
Having said that, here is of GreenGeek’s list of speed tools as well as their usage:
· Litespeed and MariaDB. As its name suggests, LiteSpeed and MariaDB web and database servers are fast and ultra-optimized. It essentially enables speedy data reading and writing, which then results in 50x faster content delivery.
In other words, your website will load quickly.
· SSD hard drives. This tool is a type of hardware that allows data and file storage like HDD or Hard Disk Drives. The only difference is that SSD Hard Drives are much faster compared to HDD.
Moreover, GreenGeeks specifically uses a “redundant RAID-10 storage array.”
· Free CDN. Powered by Cloudflare, Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a technology to cache your site’s content and deliver it fast to your viewers wherever they are in the world.
· HTTP/3, QUIC enabled. HTTP 3 is the latest network protocol used to improve a site’s speed and loading time. It is, however, used specifically for in-browser.
· LSCache. LSCache is a speed technology built specifically for applications. Essentially, what it does is that it boosts an app’s speed and loading time. HTTP/3 requires encryption as well.
· PHP7 enabled. When it comes to the latest PHP version, GreeGeeks comes first. It is among the very few web hosting platforms that offer PHP7 enabled websites. Essentially, what it does is that it serves as a tool for a faster PHP execution time.
You might say there are other web hosting solutions—SiteGround and Kinsta, for example—that provide better and advanced speed tools compared to the ones GreenGeeks offers.
Yes, that is true. But the problem is that those platforms offer pricey hosting services. Hence, if you compared it, GreenGeeks still stands out for having affordable hosting plans and at the same time quality speed technologies.
5. Free site builder
GreenGeeks also offers a free website builder that users, particularly non-techy beginners, can utilize to create a webpage. It is available in all GreenGeeks’ hosting plans and has an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
I find it particularly handy for non-techy folks since using a website builder does not need coding skills. In fact, GreenGeeks’ page builder comes with a drag and drop system that enables users to simply drag any elements and drop them into the canvas.
Here are the other perks of the site builder tool:
· Choose from its collection of ready-to-use web themes
· Uses a drag and drop technology
· SEO-optimized web themes
· eCommerce-ready and mobile-oriented templates
· Google-friendly
· It has a dedicated 24/7 customer support team
6. eCommerce-oriented solutions
For entrepreneurs and aspiring ones, GreenGeeks offers eCommerce solutions that could be integrated into your online stores. Installing a shopping cart, for instance, is just one click away using the one-click install feature.
The web hosting service also provides a Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL certificate for free, which is crucial for an eCommerce site as it serves as a protection to all data getting in and out of a site. But it is specifically needed to keep your customers’ monetary-related stuff like credit card and bank information secured.
GreenGeeks’ servers are also PCI compliant, which serves as an extra layer of protection to further secure your page’s data.
7. Robust security tools
Aside from being an eco-friendly and, at the same time, affordable web hosting provider, GreenGeeks also wants you to feel “confident that your webpage is secure and always online” thanks to its arsenal of security solutions.
GreenGeeks provides a series of security technologies ranging from basic to advanced tools. It includes several features like real-time scanning, which checks and examines your sites and servers.
The other tools, on the one hand, function as the following.
· Linux secure VFS. To prevent malware and other digital threats, GreenGeeks supplies all its users with their own second Secured Virtualized File System or VFS. Essentially, it protects all users accounts from being accessed by other accounts, which often prompts server security issues.
GreenGeeks’ VFS works together with an account isolation tool (which I will discuss later) as well to prevent contaminated websites from infecting yours.
· Account isolation. As mentioned, GreenGeeks uses an account isolation feature or a container-based solution. The web hosting service provides dedicated computing resources for each of its users as a way to secure all accounts from getting contaminated in case there are malware-infected sites.
In other words, it ensures that no users could affect each other’s accounts.
· Nightly backups. The hosting platform also provides nightly data backups in case a site or server trouble occurs while you are sleeping. The tool makes several copies of your site’s data too for an extra layer of security.
· Real-time scanning. As its name suggests, this tool can identify suspicious files and automatically scans them in real-time. GreenGeeks also utilizes a kernel level of tracking in which once a malware or other malicious threats are recognized, the will automatically isolate the file using the secured VFS to prevent further damage.
· Clustered security. This feature is a combination of third party and proprietary software which allows GreenGeeks’ system administrators to identify possible threats and other malicious attacks.
That way, the system can develop fitting security rules to avoid further problems.
· Proactive monitoring. GreenGeeks’ proactive monitoring tool serves as a real-time checker and spot potential problems. Essentially, it helps the platform’s servers to maintain a 99.99% uptime.
8. Reliable server infrastructure
Aside from its arsenal of security tools and latest speed technologies, GreenGeeks also boasts its built-for-speed network infrastructure. In fact, all its servers are housed in a state-of-the-art facility equipped with quality features including a 24/7 security system and fire suppression system to ensure that all its customers’ data are protected.
Apart from that, the web hosting service also utilizes Intel’s latest generational processors as well as Cisco and Juniper for routing and switching.
GreenGeeks owns a total of four data centers located in four countries namely Canada, the U.S., and the Netherlands. It lets its users have the freedom to pick which data center they want to use for their pages as well
· On-site generator
· Automated transfer switch
· 24/7 staff lie data center technicians and engineers
· 24/7 security with a biometric and key card system
· Fire suppression system
· Climate control rooms
Performance
GreenGeeks’ overall performance is a perfect blend of good and bad. It has up to par uptime score and at the same time a decent page loading speed. And for a beginner, it is a great option for a web host to help you venture into the realm of digital commerce and website monetization.
Having said that, I ran several site tests to give you exact numbers and data about GreenGeeks’ uptime performance and page loading time
Below are the results:
1. Page loading time
Unfortunately, GreenGeeks’ loading speed is not as remarkable as other web hosting providers. It is, however, decent enough especially with its price and suite of perks.
That being said, I ran two separate site tests using two different tools called GTmetrix and Sucuri Load Time. Here are the results.
· Using the tool called GTmetrix, the fastest loading speed of a website supported by GreenGeeks is 0.8 seconds while the slowest was 2.4 seconds. The average loading time, on the one hand, is 0.8 seconds.
· Using Sucuri, GreenGeeks’ average loading speed hit 1.832 seconds. The fastest, on the other hand, is 0.752 seconds while the slowest is went down at 4.552 seconds.
But do take note that the average time for every country varies given the physical distance of servers from users. It means the nearer the server is, the fastest the site is too.
2. Uptime
On the flip side, qhen it comes to its uptime performance, GreenGeeks provides a top tier result compared to its page loading speed; the reason why I described the hosting platform’s overall performance as a perfect blend of good and bad.
GreenGeeks promises its users of 99.99% uptime guarantee. And per my evaluation using the app called UptimeRobot, I concluded that the web hosting solution truly provides an uptime score of 99.99%
Moreover, the duration period of the said uptime score was 60 days. Hence, technically, it means that your webpage is always available online except for a few events like site and server maintenance.
Customer support
Aside from offering websites that leave zero carbon footprint, GreenGeeks also does a great job in assisting its customers. In fact, many web enthusiasts swore to how friendly and accessible their team of customer support.
Users, for example, can reach out to GreenGeeks’ representatives through various means namely live chat, email, and phone calls. Its team is available 24/7 as well so all its users all around the globe can get assistance when needed
Another aspect I like about GreenGeeks’ support system is its self-help resources. Apparently, the web hosting platform has a knowledge base packed with helpful articles. These articles cover a wide range of topics too that, of course, are related to web hosting, web monetization, eCommerce, and digital marketing.
For beginners with less to zero knowledge on how to build a webpage, GreenGeeks has a collection of website tutorials as well users can read and use as a guide.
Hosting plans & pricing
GreenGeeks offers several hosting solutions such as shared hosting, reseller hosting, and Virtual Private Server (VPS hosting). Each hosting is divided into three different plans too and includes varying sets of perks. And, of course, each of GreenGeeks’ hosting plans varies in prices.
It has four subscription period options. The shortest plan you can purchase is a one-month plan. The rest are all long-term subscriptions namely one year, two years, and three years.
Once you sign up, the hosting platform will also automatically charge you a $15 setup fee. Or more like another trick to persuade users to purchase longer plans. A free domain is available too but only for those who will avail of a 12-month plan.
That being said, I listed GreenGeeks’ basic hosting plans down below to give you a brief review.
· GreenGeeks shared hosting’s basic plan starts at $2.95.
· GreenGeeks WordPress hosting’s Lite plan starts at $2.95.
· GreenGeeks VPS hosting’s basic plan starts at $39.95.
· GreenGeeks Reseller hosting’s RH-25 plan starts at $19.95
As you can see, the web hosting provider’s starter plans for shared and managed WordPress hosting are relatively cheap and are very practical for folks who are only starting out. And yes, it is quite a good bargain. However, do take note that you will most likely get it only if you subscribed for a 36-months plan. Otherwise, you will pay more—which I will explain in detail in the next section—than the “initial” offer.
Furthermore, GreenGeeks offer a 30-day money-back guarantee policy as well which means users are guaranteed to receive a refund if, in case, they wish to drop the hosting service. It is a good deal but the catch is—which I will also explain in detail in the next section—the policy has a few restrictions that I find unfair.
When it comes to the mode of payments, GreenGeeks allows the typical payment methods other web hosting providers including PayPal and credit cards. However, due to its sub-par integration of PayPal, the use of credit cards is quite a hassle and sometimes leads to lengthy verification processes
Payment using PayPal is not as seamless as other web hosting companies too since GreenGeeks does not automatically debit your card. What it does is that it gives users a monthly invoice which they will use to pay manually.
Things to take note of
GreenGeeks is not all good and perfect. It lacks a few features and has confusing policies too that I believe potential subscribers should take into account first before they sign up.
That being said, I enumerated below a few things that I think folks need to take note of before deciding if GreenGeeks suits them and their business.
1. Its 30-day money-back guarantee policy has limitations
As I mentioned earlier, GreenGeeks offers a 30-day money-back guarantee policy wherein users will get a full refund for the subscription payment. However, this policy is not an all-out refund and is subjected to certain limitations.
The setup fee, for instance, is not refundable. If you can still remember, the average setup fee for GreenGeeks is $15—and that is quite a lot for something that should be free of charge!
But not only that. The same rule also applies to transfer fees and domain registration fees too.
Thus, if you are not sure about GreenGeeks and are eyeing another web hosting platform, trying it out is quite a gamble.
2. Pricey domain registration fee
GreenGeeks’ refund policy is limited and is already confusing. But the real catch here is that the fees that are not included in its refund policy are all expensive.
The pay for domain registration (yearly), for instance, is quite pricey. And I do not recommend it, especially for those with a tight budget. On the flip side, it does offer a free domain but only if you purchase a 12-month plan.
Hence, if (again) you are eyeing another hosting platform, it is quite a gamble to try GreenGeeks given the said conditions. It could also push potential subscribers to use another cheaper domain service—not quite a great strategy for the web hosting provider.
3. Pricey renewable price
Most web hosting solutions do this kind of strategy wherein they offer their hosting services at an unbelievably cheap price. But, when the subscription ends and you need to renew, the price will hike up double or sometimes thrice than the first payment.
This is a common industry practice when it comes to pricing. And sadly, GreenGeeks does the same trick as well. Hence, if you want to avail it in a cheaper price, you have to purchase long-term subscriptions—three years, to be specific.
The verdict
If you are wondering if I recommend GreenGeeks…
My answer is yes.
The web hosting provider has decent hosting services and given its prices, I could say it is worth a try for beginners. GreenGeeks is a great web hosting option for starters, but particularly for folks who are environmentally conscious and prefer zero carbon footprint for their websites.
Its features, as well as its interface, are all easy-to-use and intuitive too, which also are both perfect for noobs and non-techy individuals. Its overall performance (uptime score and site speed) is not that bad too for starters. I commend its suite of security solutions too most of the tools included are known to provide tough protection
All in all, GreenGeeks can compete with other web hosting solutions and is worth a try.
