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GreenGeeks Review: How Good is This Eco Friendly Host?

With the many platforms to choose from in hosting your website, GreenGeeks may not be one of the biggest players, but it does have a catchy hook. The company itself is founded on being environmentally friendly by using wind power for electricity in powering its servers. Over the past decade, GreenGeeks has grown considerably based on its green emphasis, but also because of what it provides to customers looking for affordable web hosting platforms.

In this GreenGeeks review, we will look at the history, hosting plans, support, and options that comprise one of the faster growing hosting platforms around.

GreenGeeks History

The company itself was founded by Trey Gardner in 2007. Based in Los Angeles, CA, GreenGeeks today sports about 300,000 websites created by over 35,000 customers. Being an environmentally friendly company, the core values of GreenGeeks can be seen in the emphasis of using wind energy to help power the multitude of servers it has in place.

By purchasing wind energy credits, the company has actually bought three times the power it actually uses on a daily basis. GreenGeeks are also a partner of EPA Green Power. The company itself may still be small by comparison to the larger hosting platforms, but their green energy usage is only one of the selling points that the company makes. Another is the variety of hosting plans for customers that GreenGeeks provides.

Hosting Plans

This GreenGeeks review wouldn’t be complete without a hosting breakdown. There are just three main shared hosting plans offered by GreenGeeks. Recently the company lowered their prices and added WordPress specific plans. They are all relatively simple and geared towards WordPress users. This should not be surprising given the popularity, simplicity, and flexibility of WordPress. It should be noted that all three plans offer the following;

Unlimited Bandwidth
No Limit for Email Accounts
No Limit of Hosted Domains
Unlimited SSD Disk Space

There is also a 30-day guarantee, which means that during that time if you are not satisfied with the services offered by GreenGeeks, you can get out without having to pay anything more than you have for your time with the company.

Ecosite Plans:

Starter: This is the beginning plan which is currently featured on the GreenGeeks website starting at $2.95 per month. The features offered by the Ecosite Starter include the following;

Free Site Builder
Free Website Transfer
Let’s Encrypt Wildcard
Emails Per Hour – 100
Premium Wildcard SSD – w/Addon
PCI Compliance – w/Addon
One Free Domain Included
Cloudflare CDN
Nightly Backups
Unlimited MySQL Databases
CPanel and Softaculous
Standard Performance

Essentially, the Ecosite Starter is exactly that, perfect for individuals starting up their own website for personal use. Or, business owners and entrepreneurs who want a simple, inexpensive site for their business that can grow as they move up the chain. The features are standard and somewhat impressive for such a low price, but there are two more levels to choose.

Additional Ecosite options include:

Ecosite Pro: Under the special offer, you can start with Ecosite Pro for just $5.95 per month. It offers all the features listed under the Ecosite Starter site with the following additions;

2x Standard Performance
PowerCatcher Technology
Emails Per Hour: 300

The Ecosite Pro is primarily designed for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to jump in with both feet.

Ecosite Premium: The premium version is just that, the best that GreenGeeks offers to its customers for $11.95 per month. This version provides everything that the starter and pro versions offer and includes the following;

4x Standard Performance
Emails Per Hour: 500
Premium Wildcard SSL: No Addon Required
PCI Compliance: No Addon Required

Although the additions to the premium version are seemingly few, they do represent a significant part of the price boost compared to the pro version. This version is designed for established businesses and corporations who want to get the most out of their site right off the bat.

WordPress Plans

As a new addition to this GreenGeeks review we wanted to update you with three plans offered by GreenGeeks. These are the Ecosite Lite, Pro, and Premium plans. These three plans were created for WordPress users, but in reality there is no real difference between them and their shared plans. Their sales support team told me it is literally the same and was only created this way for marketing purposes. Even the prices are the exact same for each of the plans. I’m happy the prices are the same for them and the shared plans though as I’ve seen other companies make the same WordPress plans more expensive.

Additional Features

As part of any fair GreenGeeks review, it’s important to look at all the features that the company offers to their customers. Such features range from the small to the quite important. What follows are a few that deserve greater scrutiny.

Uptime Performance

One of the most critical aspects of any hosting platform is that they have excellent uptime, preferably 99.99%. The bad news is that even the best platforms will slip now and then usually for reasons beyond their control. Uptime is one of those areas where if a company can string together several 99.99% months in a row, that is quite impressive.

GreenGeeks is no exception. While they do have good uptime averages, even they have slipped every now and again. Therefore, they are no different than all the other hosting platforms that at the top of the list.

Fast Load Times

Another area of great importance is the loading speed from the site to the computer, laptop, or mobile device. In this regard, GreenGeeks offered some of the fastest loading times that we’ve tested when comparing it to the competition.

It is true that there are factors which are outside the direct control of GreenGeeks, such as the size of the site being downloaded, including images and video files. However, the overall download speed was deemed to be quite impressive during the testing time.

Choice of Server Locations

The closer the server is to your location, the faster your download speeds will be. GreenGeeks offers server locations in the following cities;

Phoenix, AZ
Chicago, IL
Montreal, CA
Toronto, CA
Amsterdam, NL

Each center upgrades their servers on a regular basis, using the latest generation Intel Xeon processors for maximum results. They also upgrade all their features to ensure that everything is working properly and responds as fast as possible.

Support

Customer service is that angle that GreenGeeks have been working on for some time. Today, they offer considerable customer support that is available 24/7. That means if you have a question about your billing, issues with your website, or just want to know more information they are here for you.

Where GreenGeeks has built up its customer support is through the live chat system which provides fast response to your questions. The live chat itself provides the best of both worlds by the use of text conversation with a live person. This means that you get a speedy response that is direct to the inquiry.

In addition, the phone support is considerable if you want to talk to a customer service or tech person about the needs of your site. Overall, GreenGeeks has some of the best support in the industry.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base is considerable which means that you can look up plenty of information based on the numerous articles which can be easily found on their site.

Billing Questions
Video Tutorials
General Hosting Questions
Sales Questions
VPS Hosting and More

This means that if your question falls into the general category of questions that many people ask of GreenGeeks, you may find the answer even more quickly by consulting their considerable knowledge base. Plus, you may learn something about working with the company through the extensive articles that improves your experience with them.

Environmentally Friendly

Considering the sheer amount of electricity it takes to run server systems, one of the bigger selling points for GreenGeeks is their 300% Green Web Hosting, which is powered by renewable wind energy. The fact that they purchase three times the amount needed speaks to their environmental concerns and is also an effective marketing tool for those who are concerned about the environment.

All things considered, it’s pretty impressive that GreenGeeks is willing to put their money where their mouth is and back up their beliefs with action. For those who share the concerns about the environment, they can feel better knowing that GreenGeeks is here for them when it comes to having a hosting platform.

Free Domain and Website Migration

One of the more interesting features that GreenGeeks offers is the free domain name. While domain names themselves are not that expensive, it is a nice touch to have them paid for as part of your hosting platform. Now you can have the domain name and hosting services all in one fee. As long as you use the services of GreenGeeks, you get to keep the domain name.

Another advantage is that if you already have a website and want to move it over to GreenGeeks, they will do that for free as well. This means for individuals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are not satisfied with their current service can transfer over to GreenGeeks without having to pay for any migration fees.

Pricing Con

During our GreenGeeks review stage we noticed a con in terms of the pricing. I’ll start by saying that many companies within the hosting industry offer low introductory rates. This is pretty much a standard practice. However, the renewal rates that GreenGeeks offers are higher and it’s something you should be aware of. With this being said their renewals are lower than other’s like SiteGround for example. GreenGeeks has lowered their prices since when I first wrote this post as well, which is a big plus.

The pricing can be viewed in multiple ways. For one, they allow you to start, and build up your business for a low price during the first year. However, if your website isn’t generating income then this can be seen as a big con. Regardless, the renewal rate increase is something potential customers need to take into consideration.

Money Back Guarantee

As part of the GreenGeeks review, there is the all-important money back guarantee. This means that if for any reason you should decide that GreenGeeks is not for you within a 30-day period, you get your money back. This is a powerful service that provides you with the ability to try out GreenGeeks without having to make a full commitment.

GreenGeeks Review: Final Thoughts

Overall I think that GreenGeeks is the best option for the environmentally minded users. However, I personally wish that they offered more hosting options on their website for users to clearly see. I also think that their renewal rates are a bit on the higher side when compared to what other companies offer. They are a solid option overall, and would fall into my above average range when comparing them to other providers around the world.

Our final score for GreenGeeks is 9.5 out of 10 stars.

Get GreenGeeks Hosting

I hope that you found this GreenGeeks review to be helpful. Have you tried GreenGeeks for yourself before? We’d love to hear your own GreenGeeks review in the comments section beneath this post! You can also learn more about other hosts I’ve reviewed in my full WordPress hosting comparison.