Follow this step by step SiteGround + WordPress hosting set up tutorial for beginners to get started in no-time without any hassle.
In this tutorial you will learn how you set up a domain name and web hosting for your WordPress website with SiteGround with a nice discount!
SiteGround is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and from my own experience I can say that they offer a fantastic service
I will cover all the features of the available hosting plans so you can properly decide which option is best for you.
The prices are very competitive and SiteGround WordPress hosting has a lot of advantages to offer which I will explain in this tutorial. The figures also indicates that SiteGround is a very successful company!
Currently more than 2 million domains are already registered at SiteGround and new domains are added daily.
SiteGround is also officially recommended by WordPress.org
This also indicates that your WordPress website is in good hands with SiteGround.
Watch tutorial on YouTube
Choose SiteGround WordPress hosting plan (Step 1)
So let’s get started right away!
First you need to go to the SiteGround website by clicking on the link to go to SiteGround.
After the page has loaded you will see 4 different options available on top of the page.
For this tutorial I want to create a regular WordPress website, so I choose the SiteGround WordPress hosting option and click on the Get Started button.
SiteGround WordPress hosting is recommended by
At the top of this page it’s displayed that SiteGround is recommended by WooCommerce, WordPress and Yoast.
If you are not yet familiar with these names, I will briefly explain what they are for.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress which you can use to set up a e-commerce webstore. So if you have any interest to set up your own online store now or in the future, it’s good to know SiteGround WordPress hosting fully supports that.
WordPress
WordPress is the system to use to build a website. This is also called a CMS (Content Management System) and WordPress is the most used CMS in the world. Especially among beginners and people without experience WordPress is a very popular CMS to use.
The reason for this is because WordPress is very easy to use for beginners. WordPress is also widely used for websites of large professional companies.
With WordPress you can create all kinds of websites with almost no coding. For example you can create an informative website, blog, business website or even a complete e-store.
Yoast
Yoast is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin for WordPress that you can easily use to optimize your website for ranking in search engines. It’s one of the most popular free SEO optimization plugins available. This plugin indicates the readability of pages and posts on your website. Concrete tips and instructions are also given to optimize your website for SEO.
You can also enter a keyword per page or post and Yoast will then give you concrete instructions to fully optimize that page for the given keyword. In other tutorials I will further explain how to use WooCommerce and Yoast.
StartUp hosting plan review
Below the recommended by section you will see 3 different SiteGround WordPress hosting plans available. Depending on your preferences, you can determine which hosting plan is the best choice.
There are a number of useful features included in all hosting plans that I will briefly explain. Let’s start off with the StartUp plan which is the cheapest option for only € 5.99 per month.
StartUp hosting plan features
With this SiteGround WordPress hosting plan you can only host 1 website and you have 10 GB of Web Space available. That’s more than enough for a regular professional website.
The StartUp Plan can handle about 10,000 visitors a month and if your website will go over that you can of course upgrade to a larger plan later.
The Free WP installation feature allows you to install WordPress for free for your website in just a few clicks.
SiteGround also has a useful plugin that comes with the Free WP Migrator feature.
With this plugin you can easily migrate a WordPress website in a few clicks.
For safety it is important to keep plugins up to date.
Therefore SiteGround has the WordPress Autoupdates feature with which this can be easily automated.
It is also important that a website has a secure Https connection. You can recognize a secure connection by the padlock that is displayed in the browser. If you click on the URL you will see that https: is displayed for websites that have an SSL certificate installed.
Free SSL Certificate included
Each SiteGround WordPress hosting plan available has the Free SSL feature. You can easily set up a free Lets’s Encrypt certificate for your website in a few clicks!
After the certificate has been set, it is also automatically kept up to date by SiteGround. Other web hosting companies sometimes also charge costs for an SSL certificate and these can add up to more than a hundred bucks!
So it’s nice that SiteGround offers this completely free of charge with all hosting plans.
Another great feature is the Daily Backup of your website.
If something unexpectedly goes wrong, you can restore an older version of the website within a few clicks.
Free CDN is another great feature that can improve the speed of the website.
SiteGround has partnered with Cloudflare to provide a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) for all customers. The free CDN is actually a ‘extra’ benefit because all SiteGround hosting plans are already optimized to make sure that the loading time of your site is very fast!
With the Free E-mail feature It is possible to create an unlimited number of e-mail addresses per website.
In addition, the features WP-CLI and SSH and Unlimited Databases are also included.
SiteGround is also progressive and runs entirely on Renewable Energy which maintains a commitment to carbon neutrality. This is provided by their main data center partner Google Cloud.
And the last feature is that you are always entitled to a 30-Days Money Back guarantee.
StartUp plan pricing
You can get the Startup SiteGround WordPress hosting plan at a high welcome discount which is only € 5.99 per month. After the first term, the regular rate of € 12.99 per month will be charged for the StartUp plan. If you look at all the features and benefits, that’s a very low price.
The only downside is that you can only host one website with this plan. But if that’s not a problem the StartUp plan is a very good choice.
GrowBig hosting plan review
The second option is the GrowBig plan for a discounted price of € 9,99 per month.
Growbig hosting plan features
This is the SiteGround WordPress hosting best seller. This plan has all the great features of the StartUp plan including a number of cool upgrades that I will briefly explain.
With this SiteGround WordPress hosting plan it’s possible to host an unlimited number of websites and this is very useful if you want to create multiple websites. In addition the GrowBig plan has 20 GB Web Space which is twice as much compared to the StartUp Plan.
Other extra features included with the GrowBig Plan is the option to make On-demand Backup Copies of a website. This feature is available in addition to the daily backup that SiteGround already makes for you anyway.
The Speed-boosting Caching feature is also an extra feature that is included in the GrowBig plan. With this you can improve the speed of the website even more.
With the Staging feature you can make a copy of a live website in a separate staging environment with just one click. You can use this option to create a testing environment for your website, which is very useful.
The last extra feature included in the GrowBig plan is Add Collaborators. This allows you to give other people access to the SiteGround Site Tools environment from which the website can be managed. This is a useful feature if you plan to collaborate on a website with other people.
GrowBig plan pricing
You can get the GrowBig plan for € 9.99 and after the first term, the regular price of € 22.99 per month will be charged. This is also very good price considering all the free extra’s and benefits which are included.
GrowGeek hosting plan review
The last option is the GrowGeek plan for a discounted price of € 13.99 per month.
GoGeek hosting plan features
This SiteGround WordPress hosting plan plan has all the features of the StartUp and GrowBig plan including a number of upgrades.
There is no less than 40 GB of Web Space available!
Another extra feature is White-label Clients and with this you can give users access to the Site Tools environment of a website.
You can design the environment completely with your own logo so that it is not visible to the user that it is a SiteGround environment. From this environment, certain settings for the site can be managed and you can also access the WordPress dashboard.
This is a useful feature for professionals who want to give customers access to the SiteGround dashboard.
The next extra feature included in the GrowGeek plan is Highest Tier Of Resources. This allows you to use more server resources than any other of the SiteGround WordPress hosting plans and this will further improve the performance of the website(s).
The extra Ultrafast PHP feature also ensures that the loading time of the website is even faster!
And last but not least, with the GrowGeek plan you are also entitled to Priority Support. SiteGround is already known for good and fast customer service and with the GrowGeek plan you get priority so you can be helped out even faster.
GoGeek plan pricing
After the first term, the regular price of € 34.99 per month will be charged. If you look at all the features that are included this is a really good price.
Choose domain (Step 2)
Now you have a good idea of the available SiteGround WordPress hosting plans and you can determine which option is most suitable for you. In this example, I choose the GrowBig plan by clicking on Get Plan.
On the next page you choose the option Register a New Domain and in the bar below you can enter a domain name and choose an extension for your website. A extension is the last part of the URL and for example you can choose between .com .info or .eu
Sometimes you have to try a few different options before you find a domain name that’s available. The reason is because it’s not possible to register a domain that already is registered.
For example, if you choose nike.com, you will see a message that the domain is not available. But the domain tutorials4wp.com is still available in this case.
The price is only € 13.95 a year, so that comes down to € 1.16 a month. After you have entered an available domain name you need to click on Proceed to continue.
Account set up & payment (Step 3)
On the next screen you will see a Congratulations message. This refers to the domain that is available to register.
General account information
The next step is just a matter of filling in some personal information.
I’ll walk you through from A – Z just to be sure everything is totally clear here!
Enter your e-mail and password. Then confirm the password in the next field.
Make a note of these details so that you have them available if you want to log into your SiteGround account later on. Now go on by selecting the country where you live in and fill in your details.
In this case, I choose to pay as a private individual and do not fill in the fields Company and VAT / Tax ID.
But i f you make the purchase for a company you can fill in these fields.
Payment information
You will now see the Payment information and It’s possible to pay with credit card or IDeal. In this case I choose the Credit card option and fill in the details. Of course for privacy reasons I made this not visible in the screenshot below.
In another tutorial I have explained how you can pay with PayPal with SiteGround. This is also possible but not displayed by default.
Hosting Services options
After the payment details have been entered, you can see an overview of the Purchase Information below.
Here you will see that the GrowBig plan has been selected and you could possibly switch to another hosting plan by clicking on the icon.
Below it is indicated which Data Center has been selected. If you have a website that mainly focuses on visitors from a certain location, choose the data center that is closest to it.
You can select a period for the duration of the hosting plan. Keep in mind that the first period is offered at a big discount.
So if you choose a longer period, you have a higher discount!
Extra services options
Now I go to the Extra Services and you can leave them on the default settings. The Domain Privacy and SG Site Scanner can be useful extra options but are not necessary to create a professional website.
At the very bottom you see the total price for the web hosting and domain.
Confirm the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and optionally the option to receive SiteGround news. After that you can click on Pay Now at the bottom of the page to proceed.
SiteGround dashboard (Step 4)
After the page has loaded, a message will be displayed that your account has been successfully created. Now click on Proceed To Cusomer Area to login to your brand new SiteGround account.
This is the environment where you can also log in with the e-mail address and password that you have created earlier.
In another tutorial I will go more in detail about all the features available in the SiteGround account but for now I will just show you how to install WordPress for your domain.
Verify your domain on SiteGround
At the top of the page in the SiteGround dashboard you can see the following message:
Verify your domain tutorials4wp.com
Now click on the orange button View Domain.
On the next page you can also see a notification that verifiaction is required for your domain.
SiteGround confirmation e-mails
To do that you need to go to the inbox of the e-mail adress that you have signed up with. You will see four different e-mails that you have received from SiteGround.
I will quickly show you all e-mails so you can have a good understanding of the entire proces.
First E-mail – Order Details
The first e-mail that you have received is the Sales Receipt. This is only a confirmation of the order including all order details. You can save this e-mail somewhere and you don’t have to do anything with it.
Second E-mail – Important information about your new hosting plan
The second e-mail you have received contains important information about your new hosting plan. Here you will see a link that you can use to log in directly into your account with the given e-mail address and password.
There is also the option Add Website but for now you don’t have to do anything with it.
In a moment I’ll show you how to do this in the SiteGround dashboard.
Below that you will see the message:
Complete Your Domain Verification.
Your new domain name tutorials4wp.com was successfully registered.
However, you will receive an additional VERIFICATION MAIL for your domain. It is very important that you click the link in it and complete the verification process within the next 15 days. Otherwise your domain registration may be suspended.
You can also save this e-mail somewhere and now we will look at the next e-mail.
Third E-mail – Verification required
The third e-mail has the subject line VERIFICATION REQUIRED – Please verify your domain name (s) as soon as possible. When you open the mail you will see the domain name that you have registered. Below that you will see a link that you need to click on to verify the domain.
After clicking on the link a new window will open and after the page has loaded you can see the orange button Verify Information. Click on the button and after that you will see a confirmation message that the domain is now verified!
Fourth E-mail – Control how your data is shared
Now we go to the last e-mail you have received from SiteGround. This e-mail has the subject line Control how your data is shared. When you open the e-mail you will see a link Set your data sharing preferences. Click on the link to proceed.
After clicking on the link a new tab wil open in your browser and all you have to do now is scroll down and click on Save preferences. Now you can go back to the SiteGround dashboard again.
Add website to SiteGround
As you can see the message for verification is still there after refreshing the page.
Just give it a couple of minutes to proces and everything should be fine! I’ll show you later on in this tutorial.
To proceed we now go to the tab Websites in the navigation menu. Over here you can see the website that is registered and if other domains are added to your SiteGround account they will also be display over here.
The next thing to do is go to the domain and click on Complete.
After the page has loaded you will have 3 options. Go to Skip & Create Empty Site and click on it to continue.
The options SG Site Scanner and Domain Privacy are not necessary so you go on and just click on Finish. Now SiteGround is creating your website. This can take up to 2 minutes but usally it’s done within a couple of seconds.
You are all set!
After the page has finished loading you will see that everything is all set!
On the right you can see information about the host server for you domain.
You will also receive another confirmation e-mail from SiteGround with this information. Now you can click on the Manage Site button to proceed.
Site Tools Panel
After the page has loaded you will see the Site Tools panel for the selected domain. In the SiteGround Site Tools panel you can set various things and view information about the website.
For example:
- Installing WordPress
- Log in WordPess dashboard
- Set up SSL Certificate
- Managing backups
- Setting up e-mail accounts
- Subdomains
- DNS zone editor
In other tutorials I will explain all the options in more detail. As mentioned earlier, I will now only show you what you need to know to set up WordPress for your website.
Log in Site Tools Panel
Before we install WordPress, let me show you quickly how to navigate to the Site Tools panel from the dashboard of your SiteGround account.
To return to the SiteGround dashboard, click on Go To My Account.
As you can see on the image below we are now back at the start screen.
Now we also see that the notification for verifying the website has disappeared. This inidicates that the verification process is completed correctly!
To go back to the Site Tools panel for the website you need to click on Websites in the navigation menu.
Go to the domain and click on Site Tools.
As you can see, we are now back in the Site Tools Panel for the domain.
Site Tools panel easy navigation multiple websites
There is a separate Site Tools panel available for each website that you have registered at SiteGround.
If you have multiple websites, you don’t have to go back to the SiteGround dashboard every time to view the Site Tools panel of a website. By clicking on Change you can easily navigate to the Site Tools panel of another website.
In this case only 1 website is visible because no other websites have been added yet. But this way you can quickly navigate to the Site Tools panel of your websites.
Install WordPress on SiteGround (Step 5)
To install WordPress, go to WordPress in the navigation menu in the Site Tools panel and click on Install & Manage.
Now you will see two options available. For a regular website or blog, choose WordPress.
If you want to create a webshop with WooCommerce, you can choose the second option. I will explain this in another tutorial.
In this case I go for the WordPress option and click on Select.
All you have to do now is enter a Username and a Password. To be clear, these are the specific credentials that will allow you to log in to the WordPress dashboard of the website after installation.
Make sure to choose a strong password and then enter an administrator email address. The option install WordPress Multisite does not need to be checked and then click on Install.
It may take a few seconds to load and then you will see that WordPress is installed.
Log in to WordPress dashboard from Site Tools panel
To log in to the admin dashboard of the website you can click on the small icon with the arrow (Log in to Admin Panel) that will open a new window after you click on it.
Here you can see that you have the option to set up some pre settings for the WordPress Starter. I like to keep the website as clean as possible so I choose not to by clicking on Exit as you can see on the image below:
It’s done!
You are now logged in the WordPress dashboard of the website. At the top right of the page you can see username that you have entered earlier.
And those are all the steps required to set up WordPress on SiteGround. So now we’re done for this part!
If you want to learn more about WordPress and SiteGround also make sure to check out my other tutorials.
For example, you can see that the website does not yet have a secure https: connection. In the next tutorial I will explain how to set up a free SSL Certificate in just 1 minute.
You can watch the video tutorial on YouTube over here.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. I would appreciate that very much!
You can check out the SiteGround hosting reviews for all different plans over here:
- SiteGround StartUp hosting plan review
- SiteGround GrowBig hosting plan
- SiteGround GoGeek hosting plan review
I have also made I tutorial to exaplain how to manage the renewal settings for hosting, domains and add-ons in SiteGround.
Another helpful thing to do to decide if you need to scale up your plan is check your hosting statistics in the SiteGround dashboard.
It’s highly recommended to install a SSL certificate to make sure your site has a secure connection. Check out this tutorial to learn how to install a SSL certificate for your WordPress website with SiteGround.