GreenGeeks Hosting Review- Good For Your Online Business?

Name: GreenGeeks
Plans: Shared, VPS, Reseller, and Cloud.
Website: www.greengeeks.com
Summary: GreenGeeks is a solid host. Highly recommend. This GreenGeeks hosting review will show what others are saying.

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GreenGeeks

is California’s own green energy web hosting service provider and was started in 2006 by its CEO Trey Gardner. A lot of webmasters have used GreenGeeks over the years, but what is the feedback about their service stating? Their management team has over seven years of experience in providing an affordable and eco-friendly website host. This web hosting provider uses wind power, utilizing the natural force of nature (as its name suggest). GreenGeeks has proven that they have the ability to replace three times the energy used by their servers with wind power. So if you’re going to do business with them, you’re supporting the environment. Since I do live on earth, I do support good old mother nature.

GreenGeeks has accumulated a ton of awards over the years from various web hosting review websites. When I review a web hosting company, I like to look at some important factors. I will be rating GreenGeeks on features, uptime, server speed, customer service, and last but not least cost. For a quick overview on how I rate them, please see the ratings, pros, and cons at the top of this page. In this GreenGeeks review, I am going to show why I recommend their service over the other hundreds of web hosting companies.

GreenGeeks Features

With their service, you can choose from shared, VPS, or reseller plans. They also have multiple data center locations you can choose from (Chicago, Phoenix, Montreal, Toronto, and Amsterdam). GreenGeeks provides 300% green energy web hosting which means this hosting company advocates the preservation of our environment. At this time I do have a shared plan with them which I have been using for two years. I haven’t ever had one single issue with my server and love it!

All their packages includes a free domain name for life when you subscribe to their service. I do want to point out that you need to keep your site hosted with GreenGeeks.com or you will need to pay for your domain name separately.

Shared Plans

GreenGeeks offers one shared hosting plan for $3.95/month. Is one of the cheapest shared plans on the market, but not the cheapest. What I do like about their shared hosting plan is you don’t have to sign a long contract if you don’t want to. A lot of web hosting companies like Bluehost, Hostmonster, and WebHostingHub you do need to sign a 12/24/36 month contract. However, with GreenGeeks.com you can select a monthly shared plan and you’re not tied to a yearly contract. Is great for those webmasters that are on a tight budget.

VPS Plans

They offer five different plans for VPS. Depending on which plan you choose the price will be $39.95/month, 59.95/month, $79.95/month, $99.95/month, or $159.95/month. So, if you’re a webmaster you certainly have a lot of options on what plan you can use. Based on the memory, CPU, RAID-10 storage, transfer, and IP you can choose a plan that will best suit your needs.

Reseller Plan

GreenGeeks offer five different plans to choose from just like VPS plans. The plans that are offered are “SEED” ($19.95/month), “SPROUT” ($24.95/month), “PLANT” ($39.95/month), “TREE” ($59.95/month), and “FOREST” ($99.95/month). I should note that if you need 10-250 cPanel accounts, you should choose the best plan that suits your needs.

There Is A Limit

I was easily allow to have 150 unique visitors per day with no issues on a shared plan.

Most of the plans offered by the GreenGeeks Eco site are mostly unlimited packages like unlimited disk space for your storage files needs, an unlimited amount of bandwidth for your site’s visitors. Please read this post on unlimited bandwidth offer. This plan allows an unlimited amount of your domain names and along with this unlimited amount of emails.

Watch out for the words “unlimited” because there is a limit (relating to bandwidth). It is more of a sales pitch than anything. Yes, I am fully aware that it is unrealistic to have an enormous site that gets well over 2,000 unique visitors per day. So if you are looking for more than that, you should check out there VPS package. A high amount of bandwidth being allocated to there shared server wouldn’t be very practical and they would ask that you, please move it. I have tested it out and no issues with smaller sites.

Control Panel

GreenGeeks provides the easiest to control cPanel (much like InMotion) for your hosting customers which include Fantastico script library (they do use cPanel), which simplifies things with its one-click installation so that you can install all the scripts. This can make installing WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal a breeze with the standard control panel (or even migrating your site from another host).

GreenGeeks offers two special templates that even a newbie can use for their sites. The programs that can be used to build websites are called SoHo Launch and RV Site Builder. After you use the template based website program later on you will be able to construct a more modernized website. Whether you are moving your existing website to the green hosting service this company through its staff will give you their all out support to do the migration for you. It is pretty easy, and I have had some clients sites moved from one host over to GreenGeeks without any problems.

Now that we know GreenGeeks features & plans we can put their uptime, reliability, and the customer support to the test. At the end of this review I will either recommend them or recommend another web hosting company over them.

GreenGeeksUptime and Reliability

Uptime

GreenGeeks consistently delivers an uptime of 99.99% (unlike GoDaddy) which is quite phenomenal for a website host provider. This company is somebody who cares for its customers that they are willing to go the extra mile to correct anything that is not right. For anybody who wants an honest to goodness web hosting provider, GreenGeeks is your type of provider. Their rapidly growing clientele will attest to their full commitment to promoting green issues.

GreenGeeks Uptime

As stated above in the features section I always recommend them to those clients that are looking for a monthly plan. Uptime is one of the most reliable features you can expect with them. Nothing is worse for a webmaster; that constantly has to deal with downtime issues. I can promise you that you won’t have a problem with downtime. However, I have tested their uptime and was impressed with the results I found. From the screenshot above you can see that GreenGeeks has been tested for one year. They have only had three outages in a year. That is very impressive. The data shows that they have been down for 67 minutes in 2014!

Performance & Reliability

Obviously, you don’t want your sites to run slowly. Nothing is more frustrating than going to a website and waiting for it to load for 20 seconds. I have run some sites on their shared servers, and I didn’t notice any slow loading times.

GreenGeeks Response Times

However, whenever I want to check a hosting providers performance I like to go to isitdownrightnow.com. What this does is give me a screenshot of their downtime. However, I am not interested in the downtime when I got to this site. I am really checking the response times of their servers. I consider under 20 ms response times to be quick, 21-50 ms response times to be average and 51 ms or over to be slow. As you can see from the screenshots above GreenGeeks servers do respond in 53.59 ms. This is slower than I hoped to see. I was actually shocked because as I stated above I haven’t ever seen any problems with performance.

GreenGeeks TTFB (Time To First Byte)

I then went to byecheck.com and found out there Time To First Byte (TTFB). Saw that their response time was .182 which is what I was expecting. So at a glance, you might think that their response times are slow, but the TTFB is very fast! Rather than ramble on about it I will just state this; performance is not an issue with GreenGeeks!

GreenGeeks Customer Service

GreenGeeks customer service is amazing. I have talked to customer support a number of times (mainly when moving a site) through live chat. They are always quick to respond and make sure that everything runs smoothly and I can count on them to get the job done right. If you ever have any issues with your server you can always call them on there 24/7 tech support line and they will bend over backwards to help assist you. I prefer to talk to them on live chat, but you can always call them or fill out a support ticket if you want. Moreover, they don’t use overseas customer support so you know that your call will be routed to the closes location to you (this is a huge plus!).

GreenGeeks Hosting Review Summary

GreenGeeks is amazing, and I support them. They are my number 3 rated hosting company. For anybody who wants a web host provider that has their commitment to mother earth coupled with excellent service and support beyond your expectations. Whether you are new to building your website or a veteran in this field you can appreciate the hard work and diligence that this web host provides its clients.

You can’t go wrong with GreenGeeks! Take advantage of GreenGeeks and a free domain with your hosting! However, if you find they simply won’t work for you I would recommend reading my Inmotion or WebHostingHub review. I would ask that if you have anything you would like to add about GreenGeeks please feel free to do so up above in the user reviews section. Please share this review with other webmasters on Facebook or Twitter down below (or any other networks you participate on). Thanks for taking the time to read my review on GreenGeeks.

Research on GreenGeeks.com.

“Positive”

GreenGeeks Awards & Reviews

GreenGeeks has acquired a number of awards over the years. On their awards section on their website they have collected nearly 45 awards. These awards could be from other web hosting review sites, PC World, Inc., etc. Some of the awards they have won are “America’s fastest growing private company”, “green power partner”, “top vas”, “best support”, etc.

They actually have a GreenGeeks reviews section on their website. This is basically, like a testimonial page that a lot of similar companies have up on their site. They have several hundreds of clients that wrote to them and agreed to put up their review. These reviews come in about 10 per week. The reviews have been coming in steadily since September 30, 2010.

WebHostingSecretRevealed.net

Jerry Low over at WebHostingSecretRevealed.net has written GreenGeeks a review. His hosting review site is another site I feel is creditable. Meaning he doesn’t just give thin reviews that don’t provide any value to the user. Most of his reviews are quite long which I do like.

Jerry shows that GreenGeeks does have certificates that show GreenGeeks certificates from Booneville Environmental Foundation, which shows that they purchased “2.3 MW of clean energy back into the grid”. He goes into detail about how the 300% green energy works.

Pros

Obviously, they are a green web hosting company.
They do daily backups for a small monthly fee.
Very cheap hosting company.
You do have the room to grow as your site expands.

Cons

Lacking customer support.
Domains cost $24.95. (you do get a free domain name when signing up).
Refund policy does not include (domain names, SSL, and CDN cost).

WHSR does rate GreenGeeks 4 out 5 stars. Jerry says that if you can put up with the possibility that customer support might not spoon feed you, and you have the technical capabilities to handle basic hosting operations yourself they are a solid choice. Jerry recommends GreenGeeks over a number of popular hosts.

TopTenReviews.com

TopTenReviews offers reviews of web hosting services on the internet, much as tbwhs.com offers. Their reviews are easy to navigate, with a quick overview of pros and cons, along with an overall score based on a ten point scale. TopTenReviewws then offers separate scoring on each of the different features being reviewed. In this case we’re looking at what TopTenReviews.com has to say about the hosting service GreenGeeks.

Overall Score

TopTenReviews gives GreenGeeks an overall score of 8.4 out of 10. This is an excellent score and indicative of a good hosting service.

Pros

TopTenReviews likes GreenGeeks because of the eco-friendly setup for powering the servers. They use energy-efficient equipment and wind power to keep everything running. GreenGeeks also gets high marks for customer service, with support provided via telephone email, and live chat.

You’ll find the Ecosite Starter Plan with GreenGeeks and a free domain name. You also get SSH access.

Security with GreenGeeks receives a 9.4 out of 10, backing up websites every day.
TopTenReviews likes the prices that GreenGeeks provides, and notes that new customers often get discounts. They like it for its unlimited database and bandwidth, and for the support available.

Cons

TopTenReviews says that they did encounter some server-side errors such as 500 and 503. Since GreenGeeks allows for streaming audio and video, it can overload the shared servers.
GreenGeeks does limit the number of emails you can send each hour, so if you plan to do bulk emails, this may not work for you. However, for everything else, GreenGeeks is a great host.

Overall, this article does speak very highly of GreenGeeks. They are TopTenReviews.com’s seven rated web hosting company. As mentioned above they do get an 8.4/10.

WhoIsHostingThis.com

WhoIsHostingThis , like tbwhs.com, reviews web hosts. So far they have collected nearly 200 reviews from webmasters. They list the price per month, along with a listing of key features. They score the web host on a basis of five stars. Then customers leave reviews and rate GreenGeeks.com Here, we’ll look at WhoIsHostingThis.com’s review of GreenGeeks hosting service.

Overall Score

WhoIsHostingThis.com gives GreenGeeks four stars out of five, with five being the best. This is a pretty good score, especially considering that so many hosting services receive only two or three stars.

Pros

GreenGeeks receives high marks for offering unlimited traffic and databases while reducing the overall cost of hosting services. They also offer reseller services. Customer service with GreenGeeks gets a high score as well. Customers say that the host offers different levels of tech support so that as your needs become more technical, you have access to representatives that have much more to offer.

GreenGeeks supports online stores, blogs, forums, and emails, while also providing a wide range of project management features. cPanel is easy to use with GreenGeeks, and software options are varied. This host is great for beginners, because of the ease of use and the tech support offered. But, advanced applications are also found here. Unlike other hosts, you won’t outgrow this one. Your little basic site can grow into a full-fledged online store with heavy traffic, and you’ll still get the same great service.

Overall, GreenGeeks is rated 4.1 out 5 stars. Nearly 200 people have left a comment about GreenGeeks. About 95% of them had something positive to say about GreenGeeks. It looks like most of the people that took the time to leave a comment about GreenGeeks is satisfied with their service.

HostingManual.net

Just like tbwhs.com, HostingManual offers reviews of web hosting services. HM provides a score based on the five star scale, with five stars being the highest score. Their reviews feature a note from the editor, and a thorough analysis of the offerings of each individual service. In this case we’re looking at what HM has to say about GreenGeeks.

Overall Score

We’re finding that GreenGeeks consistently gets high scores from reviewers, and HostingManual is no different. HostingManual.net gives GreenGeeks 4.3 stars out of five for their service. The owner of HostingManual.net has clients who use GreenGeeks, and he likes it.

Pros

HostingManual.net says that the tech support is unequaled, with layered the support that can cope with all kinds of questions, from patiently coaching beginners to deftly handling the advanced tech problems. This tiered support system is sure to provide the appropriate service.

HostingManual.net also likes the fact that GreenGeeks uses lots of servers. They limit the number of customers on each server, adding new servers as necessary. This keeps speed up, providing good service for their customers. GreenGeeks also makes backups every night.

GreenGeeks gets high marks, too, for being a truly green company. They get their power from wind energy and produce a negative carbon footprint.

Customers get a 30-day money back guarantee with their account, which provides unlimited bandwidth, add-on domains, disk space, and more. Reliability is incredible, and the speed is great, too.

Cons

There was a minor con that was pointed out in this article, though. Awhile back GreenGeeks had a problem with sites that were using the Drupal CMS. The webmaster Coty Lance does have several websites with GreenGeeks and has never had a problem.

Overall, this article does praise GreenGeeks. They have received a 4.3 out of 5 rating from HostingManual.net. They do have a professional staff that can troubleshoot anything you might face when developing websites.

“Negative”

“Neutral”

Interviews on GreenGeeks.

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All content on tbwhs.com are opinions and not facts. I have thoroughly reviewed each company and then provide my personal opinions on them. It’s up to you as the consumer to do your due diligence and do more research if you feel something might be inaccurate.