Name: GreenGeeks
Brand: GreenGeeks
Rating: 4.3066666666667 (150 reviews)

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GreenGeeks was founded in 2008 by Trey Gardner, and they’ve now shot up to hosting over 300,000 websites (with data centers in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands).

Trey’s background is important, as he’s worked with eight different web hosting companies, including iPowerweb, iPage, StartLogic, Dot5Hosting, Globat, Lunarpages, HostPapa, and now GreenGeeks.

On their website, GreenGeeks goes on to make two bold claims:

99.9% uptime
100% customer satisfaction

So what’s the verdict? Do they have excellent, wind-powered uptime and support? Or are their promotional claims just full of hot air?

To see for ourselves, we purchased the GreenGeeks ‘Shared Plan’ and set up a basic WordPress test website to run performance tests for over 12 months.

Read on to find out if GreenGeeks got our recommendation.

General Info & Hosting Overview

Our Rating:	Our Verdict: 4.5
SPEED:	477 ms (August 2020 to July 2021)
UPTIME:	99.95% (August 2020 to July 2021)
SUPPORT:	24/7 Live Chat
APPS:	WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, and WHMCS
FEATURES:	Unlimited Bandwidth, 50 GB Storage, and Email Accounts, Free Domain 1st Year, Backups, Free SSL, Unlimited Databases, Free CDN, 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee, etc.
HOSTING PLANS:	Shared, WordPress, and Reseller
SITE TRANSFER:	Single Free Site Transfer
PRICING:	Starting at $2.49/mo (renews at $10.95/mo)

Pros of Using GreenGeeks Hosting

GreenGeeks has a lot of good things going for them. This includes solid uptime, support, and important mission-driven service. Here are the details:

1. Solid Uptime Performance

Uptime is one of the most crucial factors when choosing a web host. Not only does solid uptime show the reliability of a web host but it directly affects your site’s visitor experience and bounce rate (which can potentially mean lost profit for your business).

GreenGeeks didn’t disappoint in this area. They delivered an average uptime of 99.95% during the 12-month testing period.

Looking at the graph below, however, you see another result (94.10%). This is because of an outage in December that was caused due to a technical issue from our side. If we don’t count the December outage, GreenGeeks’ average uptime, as already mentioned, is 99.95%.

GreenGeeks last 12-month uptime and speed statistics — GreenGeeks average uptime | See stats

Last 12-month average uptime:

July 2021: 99.98%
June 2021: 99.82%
May 2021: 99.97%
April 2021: 99.99%
March 2021: 99.99%
February 2021: 99.99%
January 2021: 81.26%
December 2020: 49.63% (outage due to our technical issues)
November 2020: 99.99%
October 2020: 99.99%
September 2020: 100%
August 2020: 99.96%

2. Good Page Loading Time (477 ms)

Another important factor to look for when choosing a host is their server speed.

Why?

There’s a 32% probability of a site’s bounce rate increase if it takes one to three seconds to load a website. In short, the longer your page takes to load, the more likely visitors will leave. And that’s just one of the ways how speed can affect your website.

Once again, GreenGeeks didn’t let us down.

Their speed is better than the industry average, clocking in around 477 ms.

GreenGeeks average speed data — GreenGeeks’ average speed | See stats

Overall, GreenGeeks’ loading times have been consistently good throughout the year which makes us believe that they’re a reliable host.

3. Good Support with Quick Answers

Customer support is another “big element” of the review.

We tested out GreenGeeks’ live chat and were connected to a customer support agent within a minute, who then answered questions quickly and concisely.

GreenGeeks also has an extensive knowledge base where users can search for answers to their questions.

That’s a great perk if you prefer self-help over asking a customer service representative for assistance.

GreenGeeks has a ton of different article categories and subcategories to select from, including sales questions, general hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, billing questions, video tutorials, and more.

You can use the search bar in case you can’t find your solution within the above-mentioned categories.

That way, you always have access to the help you need, even if GreenGeeks’ live chat feature is offline for some reason.

Besides live chat and knowledge base, GreenGeeks also have phone support.

4. Free Domain Name & Website Migration

GreenGeeks offers free domain name registration and transfer. If you get your domain name through them, they will keep it free for as long as you use their services – kind of. See the Cons section for the details.

However, it’s also worth mentioning that the domain name is free for the first year only. After that you’d have to pay the renewal price, starting from $13.95 per year for .com, .net, .org domains.

Moreover, if your website is already hosted elsewhere, they can help you transfer your site to their servers for free.

5. Environment-Friendly

GreenGeeks claims to be – well – green. What does that mean exactly?

Here’s how they explain it:

GreenGeeks will purchase three times the wind energy credits to make up for the energy used by their services to power your website.

They replace more than 615,000 kWh a year. To put that in perspective, the average American consumes 12,000 kWh of electricity per year.

GreenGeeks is a recognized Green Power Partner with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), too.

6. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

If you’re unhappy with moving over to GreenGeeks, they have a full 30-day, ‘no-questions-asked’ money-back guarantee on most hosting plans.

There are a few exceptions, though. Read more in the Cons section.

7. Nightly Backups

Sometimes bad things happen. And by bad, we mean that sometimes your site just crashes.

Maybe it’s self-inflicted, or it could be someone with malicious intent trying to hack their way in. Regardless, GreenGeeks provides free nightly backups (in addition to SSH access). This way, you can sleep soundly, knowing that even if something goes wrong, your data is backed up regularly.

For additional security measures, they also offer real-time security scanning, automatic brute force detection, Spam Assassin protection, SSL secure server, and the ability to password-protect your directories.

8. Multiple High-Quality Server Locations

GreenGeeks offers data centers in three locations:

Chicago, US
Montreal, CA
Amsterdam, NL

Choosing the right server location can have a huge, positive impact on your website’s SEO. Plus, if you pick a server closer to you, you’ll experience faster speeds.

GreenGeeks also promises customers that they will keep servers up to date with the following specifications:

Never oversold
Gigabit Connectivity
The Latest Generation Energy-efficient Intel Xeon processors
Minimum of 128 GB DDR3 ECC-Registered Memory
No desktop hardware whatsoever
BGP4 Gigabit connectivity to several Fiber GigE Tier 1 Backbones
Name brand server parts
RAID-10 SSD Storage Arrays to give you maximum performance & redundancy
Solid State Drive (SSD) Acceleration

So you can be sure with GreenGeeks that your data is stored on high-quality, state-of-the-art servers.

9. Free CDN

Everyone interacts with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) on a daily basis if they browse the web, whether they’re looking at news sites, social media pages, or shopping online.

GreenGeeks offers a CDN to users that are powered by Cloudflare. That’s great news for your site optimization, especially if you’ve got a global reach.

The best part? It’s absolutely free.

Cloudflare allows users to cache content and use servers closest to website visitors to get it delivered. As a result, web surfing is much faster for those who come to your website.

Cons of Using GreenGeeks Hosting

Unfortunately, all that glitters is not gold.

Despite all of the upsides to GreenGeeks, there are a few things you should be aware of before making a final decision.

1. Industry-Standard Pricing (Higher Renewals)

GreenGeeks follows the tried-and-true industry-standard practice of advertising a very low monthly rate of $2.49 on their website, only for you to find out that you actually have to sign up for three years in advance to get it.

Moreover, the prices get more expensive the shorter the signup term:

$3.95 Biennially
$4.95 Annually
$10.95 Monthly

2. Questionable Refund Policy

Many web hosts will throw in a domain name for free when you create a new account with them.

GreenGeeks also offers you a free domain name with them.

But be aware of the fine print:

If you request the aforementioned money-back guarantee and you took them up on that ‘free’ domain name offer, your refund will be deducted by the amount you paid for a domain name registration fee.

This means that the domain name is not really free and that their money-back guarantee has some strings attached.

This tactic is, however, quite common among many other hosts.

GreenGeeks Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of the shared hosting plans offered by GreenGeeks:

	Lite Plan	Pro Plan	Premium Plan
Pricing	$2.49/month Renews at $10.95/mo	$4.95/month Renews at $15.95/mo	$8.95/month Renews at $25.95/mo
Websites	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
Storage	50 GB	Unmetered	Unmetered
Email Accounts	50	Unlimited	Unlimited
Other Features	• Multi-User Access	• Multi-User Access • On-Demand Backups • WordPress Repair Tool	• Dedicated IP • Free AlphaSSL • Object Caching

WordPress Hosting: Their WordPress hosting is basically the same as their shared hosting plan, but it seems to be especially enhanced for WordPress. We haven’t tested it yet but will do it soon.

Quick Facts

Free domain? Yes.
Ease of Signup: Easy signup process.
Money-Back: 30-days money-back guarantee.
Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal.
Hidden Fees and Clauses: Your account must not use more than 100 percent of 1 CPU core and/or 1GB memory, or 20 concurrent connections, or 75,0000 files, or you will risk account suspension. If a due invoice is not paid within four days, your account will be suspended and you will need to pay a reactivation fee of $15 to have your account back online.
Upsells: No upsells.
Account Activation: Quick account activation.
Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): 1-click install tool to easily install popular apps and CMSs.

Do We Recommend GreenGeeks?

Yes, we do.

GreenGeeks has a bigger mission than just simply providing web hosting, and we like that.

They’re not necessarily the best we’ve seen, but they do provide solid speed, uptime, and good customer support.

For those reasons, you should consider giving them a look.

Just be aware that you’ll need to sign up for the long-term if you’d like their lowest rate. And that your ‘free domain’ and ‘money-back guarantee’ might not be so iron-clad if you decide to ask for a refund.

Visit www.GreenGeeks.com

Do you have any experience with GreenGeeks – positive or negative? If so, please leave a transparent and honest review below!

150 user reviews for GreenGeeks

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Maria E

1 — May 29, 2021

Disappointed and Misled

My experience with GG started off positive but soon became negative. I wanted to point my site from godaddy to greengeeks and use wordpress to spiff it up a little.

I was told by GG that this was possible and that they would not have to take ownership of my domain or DNS. However, that was a lie. After clarifying with them several times that the instructions they sent would simply point my site to GG instead of giving them ownership, it turned out that they pointed my site to theirs AND took ownership.

This was really frustrating as it resulted in my email server going down!

After I transferred the email to another domain and set it all up again with the original provider, I wanted to make an edit to the site that was now on GG. However! That was not made possible in GG! I talked to them for an HOUR about this issue and it was not resolved.

Overall, I am really disappointed that I was misled by GG. This was a terrible mistake.

Durrani

3 — May 26, 2021

Speed is not sustainable

It has been 2 years since I started using GreenGeeks. My experience with Greengeeks is that their server speed decreases over time for shared hosting accounts. I don’t know why this happens. Being nice in customer support shouldn’t count for quality. I think every business should treat their customers in a better way. That’s how things work

Victor B

5 — April 22, 2021

Excellent support

Among all the great things that GreenGeeks offers to their customers, what I like most is their support staff. They are responsive, knowledgeable and friendly. They helped me transfer my WordPress website from another host without a hitch, answering every question I had along the way, usually within minutes. They always had a quick solution. That said, the tech, the user interface and options available are far superior in comparison to that of my previous “major” hosting service, who charged a hefty price substantially higher than what I pay at GreenGeeks but offered much less in return. Thanks GG!

Sean

5 — April 20, 2021

Quick & Quality service/network performance

Green Geeks customer service is outstanding!!! They are quick to respond and provide a lot of references. The customer interface is easy to use although I would like to see a little improvement in the help section. It’s not that the subject matter isn’t there, it’s just hard to find. Most of the time the fix for my trouble ticket is already on the site. I just couldn’t find it. However, sometimes it’s just because I do not know the correct term to search for. The network itself runs way better than Network solutions and you can not beat their price. Getting your SSLs updated or established and installed is also way easier and only takes about 5 mins. Whereas with others it took a few days or weeks and I had to install the very myself.

Aimee

5 — April 13, 2021

Quick customer service

I’ve been a customer for a couple years now and been very pleased with their prompt and helpful customer service. The few times I’ve had issues or questions, they’ve been answered and resolved right away. I’ve also been happy with my domain’s uptime; I don’t have a lot of traffic, but it’s been nice not to worry about periods of having my site or email unavailable.

Clint.K

1 — April 6, 2021

Worst Hosting EVER, worse than even godaddy

First of all let me say that there are in fact an amazing few techs at this company, but they’ve been getting less and less over the last couple of years… It’s their policies, lack of customer skills and extremely bad management that makes this place even worse than GoDaddy (who at least are nice while being ineffective).Besides email server outages happening for my hosted domains, at least every few months, if you do have a tech issue… realize their techs hardly ever read the ticket thoroughly. So plan on calling in and getting a little further. I had a simple migration issue that I’ve spent 4 days trying to get resolved..

Bálint

5 — March 30, 2021

Until now it’s the best

I chose GreenGeeks because I wanted a good WordPress Hosting for my sites, and previously I had a bad experience with another WordPress Hosting company.

I have been at GreenGeeks for a couple of months, but until now I am really satisfied by their WordPress Hosting package. My site works really well, even at the higher traffic.

I hope my satisfaction will remain the same in the future too. Thanks.

Olivier S

5 — March 23, 2021

Sharp customer support

If you forget your password, want to know some bit of information or need whatever support, it’s nice to know a capable person is always available to chat. Have had a website for a while now and used the customer support to my satisfaction.
Cheers GreenGeeks!

Marc

5 — March 8, 2021

Excellent Hosting

We switched over to Greengeeks a little while back from a different provider and we have been very happy with the service and lack of issues with the site. It also seems like our customers are able to download materials and images from our site faster than they used to.

David T

1 — February 22, 2021

Poor customer service

Got to say both times I tried their live chat I found the customer service/sales agent to be exceedingly cute to the point of rude.

Once they decide you have asked too many questions or ones they don’t want/know how to answer it all turns sour pretty quickly.

At the end of the day, I am the customer, I am asking valid questions, in a professional and polite manner.

Greengeeks offer reseller accounts for businesses wanting to set up as a web host, yet in the available plans they only offer 60, 80 or 160GB hosting space for up to 80 clients. They don’t offer resellers ‘unlimited’ disk space or bigger disk space so the reseller can only offer customers 2GB or less depending on the plan.
Totally unworkable, as no one would buy off a hosting company with such a limited space offering.

I tried to understand how I would market the service as a reseller and was shut down in the live chat both times with a curt ‘I have provided you with the details, anything else I can help you with’ .

Don’t offer unrealistic reseller plans if they are not workable in the real world.
Poor show Greengeeks, your customer service is absolutely the worst, take some training from Hostgator.

Jack

1 — February 22, 2021

Not for me

I have 2 hosting accounts with greengeeks and I needed to merge the accounts together as It was senseless to have independent hosting. When one of my hosts was about to expire I requested for them to merge the accounts.

One of my hosts ended up expiring and they said they wouldn’t be able to merge the account unless I paid the hosting for the account I no longer wanted. After asking many times I finally decided to just pay the hosting so they can migrate the websites and merge the accounts.

After I sent them payment they now are saying they are going to charge me an additional $15 per website to transfer to a new hosting account even though they never mentioned that before and kept telling me in order to do the migration my old account needs to not be in a suspended state.

DO NOT TRUST GREEN GEEKS. They will do whatever they can to take your money and there are all these hidden costs and fees. Worst hosting company I have ever been with.

Pieter R

5 — February 16, 2021

Awesome support.

I have been a Green geeks customer for nearly a year and I am very satisfied with their support, as I am not a techie guy I had to contact them on numerous occasions they have always sorted out my problems in no time at all. I would recommend them to anyone that wants to receive the best support.

Duncan M

5 — February 11, 2021

Best move for my business!

GreekGeeks was able to easily and effectively migrate my company’s entire web hosting and 0365 migration from another hosting provider and gave us a high quality, responsive sales and technical support staff with a seamless transition of hosting services.
We’ve had horrible past experiences with a web hosting conglomerate, but our hosting experience with *independent* GreenGeeks has been an absolute pleasure and keeping green fits within our corporate responsibilities.

I would highly recommend GreenGeeks to any organization that can’t “endure” anymore and is seeking web hosting alternatives to their current provider.

Ronald

5 — February 9, 2021

Good

Very efficient and professional support.

Janice T

1 — February 9, 2021

Check their Better Business Bureau Record

You may wish to review their propensity to charge after one cancels and the refuse to return the money. I have never seen a reputable firm with a record like this. I suggest your own reputation can be damaged by supporting a business that practices these tactics.

Janice T

1 — February 8, 2021

Thieves!

I set my account to no auto renew. I was contacted on January 18 and asked if I was going to renew for 3 years at $395USD. I said “absolutely not!”. Caroline R then said she would see if she could get me some sort of discount and then sent an email offer “good for 48 hours only” for $236.52USD. I had, however, already decided against keeping the account.

I checked my account to ensure the auto renew was off. There was a big red banner on my account saying they did not have a payment method for me. I took this to confirm they could not auto renew.

They have now managed to take $395USD from my expired Visa card without my permission. They have offered to cancel my 3 year account from future renewals indicating the cancellation would effective immediately with no refund.

I am happy to offer proof of the above, but as the documents contain personal information, I will not post here.

Jesse R

5 — January 25, 2021

Green is the icing on the cake!

I have been using GreenGeeks for about 4 years now. I have been in touch with the support team numerous times asking for help with this or that. They always help me immediately and I have always been more than satisfied with the help I have received. I started with them because I wanted to use a company that was green but that is really the icing on the cake. Simply put, they offer a great service! I will always recommend GreenGeeks if someone asks for hosting advice.

Derek

1 — January 24, 2021

Cheap and fast to start. Nightmare to quit.

I’ve had these guys for 5 years, 2 of the years, I didn’t use the service. It’s really hard to cancel! You got to submit a ticket at just the right time, to submit a ticket in order to submit another ticket. And they’ll just charge your card anyways, even if it’s expired. So don’t think you’re safe when it lapses. They won’t prorate you when they auto charge you when you forget to cancel in time, but they have no problem prorating their fees when they are in the wrong.

It’s a cheap no frills solution. Nothing spectacular. I use to recommend them to clients just to get going. But I really regret it.

Fritz

5 — January 7, 2021

Simply the Best

I’ve worked with most of the top website hosting companies and I can honestly say that GreenGeeks are by far the best. No other company matches the level of customer service GreenGeeks provides. I refer all of my clients’ sites to be hosted on GreenGeeks.

Steve C

5 — January 4, 2021

Best hosting I have found

I have used several host providers – usually shared services – such as Siteground, Host Papa, 1 and 1, GoDaddy and a ton of others. As with any Shared Service there are limitations and you have to abide by them – they are a hosting company, not a file storage company. As a hosting company, they are hands down top-notch. When I needed better performance and to host multiple sites and have more control, I decided to switch to their VPS account. I was concerned about managing my own site, but they provide managed VPS support. I was golden! They are a huge part of my site successes both personally and at work. They have excellent support and walked me through the entire setup of my VPS, they answered my newbie questions quickly and with ease, they managed configuration challenges I had and helped me setup my SSL certs. They ran the gamut. And I have complete control over my own server – I can upgrade PHP, I can launch WordPress sites, and much more. And I use the server to host my email. The system is intuitive, incredibly stable and the fastest solution I have used. I am very happy. I think anyone looking to host and grow would do well going with GreenGeeks. They are the best I have ever used.