Greengeeks hosting packages are currently relied upon by over 40,000 customers across the globe, who have transferred or built over 500,000 websites on its servers at last count. These are hosted in any of four data centers operated by Greengeeks expert staff, and notably, powered by 300% renewable energy.
For the agreement to reduce its carbon footprint, Greekgeeks still doesn’t skimp on its services, and offers hosting solutions prepackaged for popular platforms such as Magento, WordPress, Joomla and more—in shared, VPS, or fully-dedicated hardware. This Greengeeks review is focused only on the most crucial details and will look as closely at the granular specifications of the web host’s hardware as it does the level of service provided by the customer support team. Ultimately, Greengeeks doesn’t disappoint, for many of the reasons discussed below.
Greengeeks Pros and Cons
Pros:
Reliability:
Greengeeks managed to clock 100% uptime in our own tests, which is no surprise given that their own guarantee puts its uptime at 99.9%. Its latency was middle of the pack at around 230ms. Greengeeks servers and its primary co-location internet connection go a long way towards ensuring 100% on any timeline but no host can afford to make that promise.
Pricing:
Its best-value shared plan comes in at just $2.49 per month, and with it Greengeeks packs in a ton of features including 1-click app installations, unlimited web space and bandwidth, a free domain and website (build or transfer), SSL, and more. VPS plans start at just $5.00 per month for 25GB SSD storage, 1TB bandwidth, 1 dedicated core and more.
User Friendly:
The process of creating a website or transferring it to a Greengeeks plan is one of the more streamlined that we’ve encountered. There are hundreds of templates to choose from, easy drag-and-drop functionality to add or remove elements, a Softaculous one-click application installer, and sites that come optimized for Google and mobile.
Support:
For smaller businesses and individuals who are migrating their web property for the first time or need tips on making a great site, 24/7 support from Greengeeks does much to instill confidence. These experts can help with the migration process or answer questions about website building nuances and are available via email and live chat, or by phone 24/5.
Cons:
Few Configuration Options:
Though Greengeeks offers shared, VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting plans, there is no option to choose Windows-configured servers, nor any managed hosting solutions. This cuts out a small portion of the market who not only prefer but require that their provider’s hardware be compatible with Microsoft apps.
Low Power Dedicated Plans:
For the money one pays each month to Greengeeks, they may be able to get more raw power with another provider’s most basic dedicated plan. Greengeeks charges $169.00 per month but offers an Intel Atom 330 dual core CPU with 2 GB RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and just 5 IP addresses.
Greengeeks Prices and Payment Methods
There are a few ways to pay for a plan through Greengeeks, with a 30-day money back guarantee supporting all shared and VPS plans and multiple types of plans to purchase depending on the degree of control and power required. A Greengeeks coupon code is as worthwhile as a Greengeeks promo code, regardless of how affordable its plans are, and are appreciated by potential clients.
- Shared web hosting plans begin at a very competitive price considering the value gained in exchange. For clients, $2.49 achieves a plan with one website, a one-click application installer, unlimited web space and bandwidth, a free domain, and SSL. This goes all the way up to the Pro shared plan which provides unlimited websites, premium SSL, PowerCacher, and four times the performance for $11.95 per month.
- For Greengeeks VPS plans one will pay $5.00 per month for 1GB RAM and 25GB SSD storage on 1 core. That’s a great value considering it is half the price of the Pro shared plan, but there are four other VPS plans to consider as well. From $10.00 to $80.00 per month they offer increasing SSD storage (up to 200GB) and RAM (up to 16GB), and 8TB premium bandwidth on 6 cores.
- Dedicated servers are on the pricier side, beginning at $169.00 for a 500GB SATA drive with 2GB RAM and 10,000GB transfer. CPU architecture gets more sophisticated in the other three plans up to a Xeon E5-2620 2.0Ghz with 16GB RAM and two 500GB SATA drives for $439.00 per month.
Greengeeks User Experience
Creating a website through the interfaces provided by Greengeeks is relatively straightforward, and requires you to launch cPanel after purchasing your plan and logging in. The cPanel has lots of different functions which are the same across shared and Greengeeks VPS plans, and from there one can launch SitePad to begin picking their theme and dropping in elements. This is literal, as once you pick a theme you drag and drop in different windows and other widgets, replace default text and images, and integrate social media links.
Softaculous also makes integration of crucial software very easy with a single click, so creating a WordPress website or getting ready for the migration of an existing one takes only a few steps in total. This also applies to Joomla, Magento, and other popular business platforms. All one needs to do is export their site data through FTP and then import it into their new cPanel, and then login to their domain name service and paste their new server’s address into the menu provided. If you have a simple blog or WordPress site, however, the Greengeeks team should be able to migrate it for you automatically.
Greengeeks Load Times and Reliability
Greengeeks domains will be some of the fastest around, if our tests reveal anything. In our reliability tests we pinged the server that we had rented with Greengeeks thousands of times to take an average speed reading, and we also measured its uptime over the period of the test. It came as no surprise to find that the Greengeeks US server which hosted our test VPS environment was quite quick, given that it’s backed up with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Our tests saw 100% uptime and an average latency of just 230ms, which is only a bit above what competitors might clock and not enough to hamper site speed.
Speed is also affected by the size of the network and caching mechanism, and Greengeeks performs well with Cloudflare controls in cPanel and a large network for US websites. In terms of reliability, Greengeeks can be measured in many ways including its security. Greengeeks SSL is a nice touch that keeps all sites safe, and other firewalls and encryption methods protect its four US data centers. Any Greengeeks hosting review wouldn’t be complete without scrutiny over its brand of hardware, and we were comforted to know our site was run on an Intel Xeon processor with generous RAM capacity.
Greengeeks Main Features
Carbon Offset Hosting
Many companies these days are genuinely concerned about the size of their environmental footprint and accompanying impact, and Greengeeks satisfies these conscientious clients with a promise to achieve 300% green status. That means its operations are offset by wind energy three times, indicating clients are not only fully offsetting their footprint, but concurrently contributing to a reduction in carbon.
High Value VPS
The best value for money is no doubt found in the competitively priced Greengeeks VPS plans, which start at just $5.00 and offer a dedicated core with 1GB RAM, 25GB SSD, and 1TB of bandwidth. That’s enough to run most sites with medium traffic, at a price that is difficult to beat.
WordPress Support
Lots of sites use the friendly and reliable WordPress platform to serve their viewers, and this is something Greengeeks is aware of. With a Greengeeks WordPress plan, sites come optimized for WordPress with a free domain and free migration, plus unlimited MySQL databases, bandwidth, web storage, and more.
Greengeeks Customer Support
Greengeeks clients can anticipate excellent service from their new customer service department. In my requests of its team, I found that Greengeeks support representatives were kind and patient, but equally knowledgeable. In the rare case where they couldn’t help with an advanced issue, they’d transfer me to someone higher up in minutes who did help. While some web hosts give a live chat option and leave it offline inexplicably, I was consistently answered when I used it, and the same goes for email. By phone is probably the most dependable way to get in touch, and it may take a couple minutes before hearing a voice but calling anytime 24/5 won’t make a difference in your wait.
Greengeeks Hosting for Free
While Greengeeks may offer many free goodies and perks to paying subscribers, they don’t have any free plans. For what’s available at the lowest price of $2.49, however, this amount is easy to pay. It’s unclear what Greengeeks renewal prices are or if they provide a discount for post-promotional renewals with a longer term.
My Conclusion About Greengeeks
A great choice for ecologically mindful individuals and companies, Greengeeks still doesn’t spare the features expected anywhere else in the market. Its 300% renewable energy commitment is certainly unique, but what website owners want to know is that it provides quality hardware in its own datacenter at an affordable price. This is all true. Greengeeks hosting provides a fast and flexible environment for many types of websites including eCommerce and WordPress blogs, on-site SSD hardware, one-click installation of endless applications, and unlimited web storage and bandwidth even for shared and VPS plans. It’s difficult for a mere Greengeeks review to do it justice and I encourage those with a site, or even a plan for one, to try it out.
