GreenGeeks Review – Web Hosting Services

GreenGeeks is specialized mainly in shared web hosting, but they also offer VPS and dedicated hosting, WordPress hosting and reseller services for their clients. The company claims to be the best green energy hosting provider in the world. Many GreenGeeks review writers appreciate their eco-friendly approach to business. They achieve this through wind energy. Three times the energy a hosting account would consume is put back into the power grid.

Based out of Los Angeles, California, GreenGeeks also has data centers in Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, and another scheduled for the near future in Amsterdam. They’ve attained over 35,000 customers and host over 300,000 websites. Below, you will find a comprehensive GreenGeeks review of the main features and web hosting services offered by this company.

GreenGeeks Service Overview

Besides the obvious theme of remaining environmentally friendly that GeenGeeks openly touts regarding its web hosting service, there are some other nice features that help this company stand apart from its competition, as shown below in our GreenGeeks review:

  • Superior Server Hardware: As of this GreenGeeks review’s writing, the company promises at the bare minimum, certain specifications of hardware that each and every customer will enjoy. This includes latest generation Intel Xeon processors with low energy consumption ratings, 64 gigabytes of ECC DDR-3 memory, gigabit connectivity, RAID-10 SSD storage arrays, and to never oversell each server’s capacity.
  • Reliable Data Centers: GreenGeeks’ data centers are all equipped with raised floors, around the clock 24/7 security, climate control, water detection systems, fire suppression systems, and a combination of generators and uninterruptible power supplies.
  • Feature Rich: With a 30-day money back guarantee, 99.9% service uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 US-based support, unlimited domains on one account, unlimited web space and data transfer, a free domain, and free website transfer help from their own specialists, GreenGeeks has all of the important benefits of most all other big hosting providers.

Pricing Information

Our GreenGeeks review would be incomplete without detailing their plans and prices. Check them out in the table below:

Package Name Dedicated to Price Disk Space Bandwidth Websites Hosting Type
cPanel Hosting Individuals and small business owners. $3.95/month for unlimited websites. Unlimited Unlimited Linux cPanel
WordPress Hosting Individuals and small business owners. $3.95/month for unlimited websites. Unlimited Unlimited WordPress Optimized Hosting
Drupal Hosting Individuals and small business owners. $3.95/month for unlimited websites. Unlimited Unlimited Drupal Optimized Hosting
Joomla Hosting
Individuals and small business owners.
$3.95/month for unlimited websites. Unlimited Unlimited Joomla Optimized Hosting
Seed Hosting Resellers that don’t need much storage space and bandwith. $19.95/month for unlimited websites. 50GB 500GB Reseller Hosting
Sprout Hosting for businesses engaged in reseller hosting. Resellers that need a little more storage space and bandwith. $24.95/month for unlimited websites. 80GB 800GB Reseller Hosting
Plant Hosting Resellers that need a moderate amount of storage space and bandwith. $39.95/month for unlimited websites. 120GB 1200GB Reseller Hosting
Tree Hosting Resellers that require a fair amount of storage space and bandwith. $59.95/month for unlimited websites. 160GB 1600GB Reseller Hosting
Forest Hosting Resellers that require a lot of storage space and bandwith. $99.95/month for unlimited websites. 200GB 2000GB Reseller Hosting
1GB RAM for individuals and small business owners. Users requiring VPS hosting that need little storage space and bandwith. $39.95/month for unlimited websites. 25GB 1000GB VPS Hosting with cPanel/WHM
2GB RAM for individuals and small business owners. Users requiring VPS hosting that need a little more storage space and bandwith. $59.95/month for unlimited websites. 50GB 1500GB VPS Hosting with cPanel/WHM
3GB RAM for individuals and small business owners. Users requiring VPS hosting that need a moderate amount of storage space and bandwith. $79.95/month for unlimited websites. 75GB 2000GB VPS Hosting with cPanel/WHM
4GB RAM for individuals and business owners. Users requiring VPS hosting that need a fair amount of storage space and bandwith. $99.95/month for unlimited websites. 100GB 2500GB VPS Hosting with cPanel/WHM
8GB RAM for individuals and business owners. Users requiring VPS hosting that need a lot of storage space and bandwith. $159.95/month for unlimited websites. 125GB 3000GB VPS Hosting with cPanel/WHM
Entry Server for demanding individuals and business owners. Users requiring an entry level dedicated server. $169.00/month for unlimited websites. 500GB 10000GB Dedicated Server with Intel Atom 330 Dual Core Processor, 2 GB DDR-3 RAM, and 5 IP Addresses.
Standard Server for demanding individuals and business owners. Users requiring a standard dedicated server. $269.00/month for unlimited websites. 1000GB 10000GB Dedicated Server with Xeon E3-1220 3.1Ghz Processor, 4 GB DDR-3 RAM, and 5 IP Addresses.
Elite Server for demanding individuals and business owners. Users requiring a dedicated server with a fast processor and adequate memory. $319.00/month for unlimited websites. 1000GB 10000GB Dedicated Server with Xeon E3-1230 3.2Ghz w/HT Processor, 8 GB DDR-3 RAM, and 5 IP Addresses.
Pro Server for demanding individuals and business owners. Users requiring a dedicated server with an extremely power processor and plenty of memory. $439.00/month for unlimited websites. 1000GB 10000GB Dedicated Server with Xeon E5-2620 2.0Ghz w/HT Processor, 16 GB DDR-3 RAM, and 5 IP Addresses.

Security & Risk

In this section of our GreenGeeks review we will focus on the solutions the company offers in terms of security. GreenGeeks has been in business for ten years. They’re based in four major cities, with a fifth one on the way. Hosting over 300,000 websites and presently consisting of a customer base that is over a third of that number, it’s a fair assessment to make that GreenGeeks is not likely to go out of business soon.

On top of the aforementioned and as previously stated in our GreenGeeks review, their data centers all utilize important features like constant security, backup power systems, environmental protection from fire, water, and excessive heat, and even raised flooring.

Automatic brute force detection, real-time security scanning, secure POP3 & IMAP e-mail protection, full SSL support, OpenPGP/GPG encryption, free Let’s encrypt Wildcard SSL and courtesy nightly backups all round out features that every hosting account with GreenGeeks include.

Usability & User Friendliness

As you will learn from this section of our GreenGeeks review, a one-click installer is available with each hosting package. It installs popular web applications like Joomla!, Drupal, and WordPress with just one click. There are over 150 web applications that can be installed in this fashion.  They’ve got website migration specialists that handle the entire process of migrating to their servers for any customer that requests the service. Also included with any hosting package is a drag and drop website builder, which will create an entire website with no coding knowledge required. The website transfer service is free for their customers, and so are the website builder and templates, and the domain name registration.

As far as interfacing with the site is concerned, GreenGeeks utilizes the latest version of cPanel. Most of the people who have any website management experience will already be familiar with it, which makes it easy to use and access. The choice to stick with this classic and popular option is widely appreciated by GreenGeeks review writers. Many of them prefer to work with a familiar interface without having any need for training in order to effectively manage their websites.

Customer Support & Additional Info.

  • Around the clock, 24/7/365 live chat is always available on the GreenGeeks.com website, and is available instantly. This feature was tested multiple times over the course of multiple days, and found to be true each time.
  • E-mail support with a 15-20 minute wait time is available for sales, support, billing, affiliates, and notifying their staff of abuse.
  • Toll-free telephone support (1-877-326-7483 or 1-310-496-8946) is available from 9:00 AM EST through midnight EST, Monday through Friday and from 9:00 AM EST through 8:00 PM EST on Saturday and Sunday.
  • They also have a California-based mailing address: 5739 Kanan Rd Suite 300, Agoura Hills, CA 91301, USA.
  • Unlimited domains, subdomains, parked domains, POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, forwarding e-mail addresses, e-mail autoresponders, storage space, data transfer, databases, and FTP accounts are included with each shared hosting account.
  • Note that custom cron jobs, overriding .htaccess, SSH shell command line access, server-side includes, site statistics, log files, custom error pages, password protected directories, anonymous ftp access, and SpamAssassin protection are features of all accounts.
  • Perl/CGI, PHP/MySQL, Python, Javascript/DHTML, and Flash/Shockwave are all supported with Green Geeks web hosting.
  • Other notable features include free search engine submission and SEO tools, as well as a free marketing package. In addition to the one-click installer, Softaculous and Fantastico installers are included. Plus, 24/7 monitoring is done on their servers every 10 seconds.
  • You can use the GreenGeeks contact page to get in touch with the company;
  • GreenGeeks Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

GreenGeeks is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and is the recipient of over 40 awards and commendations.

Green Geeks Service Overall Rating

What We Like:

  • Being green and environmentally friendly is admirable.
  • Pricing is rather competitive.
  • The reliability of data centers with such extensive protection measures in place is quite notable.
  • In reviewing Green Geeks web hosting, it’s easy to like the emphasis they place on using the latest hardware for their servers and the most recent versions for their software.
  • There exists quite an extensive set of features for their Linux-based servers.

What We Don’t Like:

  • There are not any hosting accounts available other than Linux-based plans.
  • GreenGeeks has terminated accounts in the past for reasons that involve too much usage of some specific resource.

Rating

Web Hosting Plans & Prices: 3/5
Security & Risk: 4/5
Usability: 3/5
Customer Support: 4/5

GreenGeeks Top Alternatives

If the features highlighted so far in our GreenGeeks review do not convince you, read on about some prominent GreenGeeks competitors:

HostGator has a similarly priced per month shared hosting plan that in some ways offer more. HostGator’s shared hosting plan, the hatchling plan, offers $100.00 in Google Adwords credit and $100.00 in Yahoo!/Bing credits for signing up. Also, as opposed to a 30-day money back guarantee, with HostGator that offer is good for 45 days. HostGator only offers to host one domain with this account, though, while the similarly priced GreenGeeks shared hosting plan supports an unlimited number of domains.

GreenGeeks isn’t the only hosting provider that touts being eco-friendly. In fact, the number of hosts that do is quite numerous. One of those providers, Web Hosting Pub has a very similar plan to GreenGeeks’ shared plan, but costs roughly five dollars more a month than GreenGeeks’ plan, unless acquiring a discount via a Web Hosting Pub promotion. In Web Hosting Pub’s defense, they do include $250 worth of ad credits and a 90-day money back guarantee that GreenGeeks does not.

Codero is another green web hosting provider, and they offer 100% uptime guarantees with no contracts. In exchange for roughly 90 more dollars a month, Codero’s dedicated server plans offer nearly ten times the bandwidth and eight times the storage space as GreenGeeks’ dedicated VPS plans.

Reseller plans with GreenGeeks offer features like white label hosting with private nameservers, and allow customers that resell their hosting to brand it with their own company’s logo. These plans tend to follow a fairly standard formula, in comparison to other reseller accounts, in which the customer gets a set amount of storage and bandwidth to resell to their own customers.

Reseller plans with Codero are different in comparison than GreekGeeks’ reseller plans. These plans with Codero offer discounts on setup and regular pricing fees based on the volume of servers that are utilized, while with GreenGeeks, there are no discounts on fees based on volume purchases. In this way, Codero’s program is more like an affiliate type reseller program with discount offerings available.

Our Verdict

With this Green Geeks web hosting review analysis, it’s safe to say that they are one of the most environmentally friendly web host providers on the planet. No other host invests three times the power consumed back into the power grid. If eco-friendly Linux hosting for your site, with lots of room for expansion that is both feature-rich and budget-friendly sounds good to you, and you don’t want to compromise on reliability and speed, consider this company favorable to you.

Thank you for reading our GreenGeeks review! Please share any feedback you may have, it’s much appreciated!


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