There are so many different web hosting services available today that it really makes it a buyer’s market. Web hosting services know that they have to be offering the cream of the crop in features, uptime, plans, support, and more.
It can make it hard to wade through the different offerings to find that perfect host for your needs.
I am here to help guide you through some of the web hosting services that I have used personally for my business and for my clients.
Here is your guide to learning more about GreenGeeks.
Background
GreenGeeks was established eight years ago, and their management team boasts of having over 40 years of experience in web hosting. The company was created in California, and has a North American presence according to their website.
They currently have over 35,000 customers with over 300,000 websites hosted during their time in business. The company offer web hosting, WordPress hosting, reseller, and VPS services.
Green Hosting – An Unique Eco Service
One of the things that makes GreenGeeks unique among website hosting services is that they offer green hosting. GreenGeeks purchases three times the wind energy credits that will offset the CO2 that is produced by their servers during the year.
As servers can be a large producer of CO2, this is a huge win for the environment.
In fact, this means that they have a 300 percent offset of carbon, so if you use this hosting service for your blog or website, you’ll find that you’ve reduced your carbon footprint. Thanks to this eco-friendly hosting methodology, they’ve been inducted into the Green Power Partnership that is with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
GreenGeeks Plans and Pricing
There are several different plans available through GreenGeeks. They offer Web Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Reseller, and VPS accounts.
Web Hosting is good for one account with unlimited domains, free domain name, free site builder, free migration, free domain name, unlimited data transfer and web space, free marketing and SEO, and secure email accounts.
This plan normally runs for a little under 10 dollars a month, but as of the writing of this review, you can get this for an introductory sale price that falls under four dollars a month. There is a caveat to this price that I will discuss in the downsides section.
A web hosting plan through GreenGeeks is good for an individual or small business owner that’s looking for a budget web hosting plan with a lot of bells and whistles.
WordPress Hosting offers free migration for your WordPress, 1-click install, free domain name, unlimited data transfer and web space, free security, and free storage. This plan also starts a little under 10 a month but is currently on sale as I write this for a little under four dollars a month.
As noted with the Website Hosting plan, check out the downside to learn more about this sale price. This service works for bloggers and WordPress website developers.
There are a number of plans for reseller accounts that start at the Seed plan which is a little under 20 dollars a month to the Forest plan that is a little under a 100 dollars a month. The Seed plan offers unlimited cPanel accounts, 50 GB SSD web space, and 500 GB premium bandwidth.
The Forest plan also offers unlimited cPanel accounts, along with an increase to 200 GB SSD web space and 2,000 GB premium bandwidth with three plans falling between these two.
In addition, all of these plans also offer the 1-click installer, wholesale domain rates, free billing system, free builder tool, free website transfers, and advanced security. This service is meant for developers that create and manage websites for their clients.
VPS or virtual private servers has a number of plans, as well. They start at the 1 GB RAM plan which runs a little under 40 dollars a month to the 8 GB RAM plan which falls in under 160 dollars a month with three plans falling between.
The 1 GB RAM offers 25 GB SSD RAID-10 storage, 4 cores, and 1,000 GB premium bandwidth. The 8 GB RAM plan ups the ante to 125 GB SSD RAID-10 storage, 4 cores, and 3,000 GB premium bandwidth.
In addition, plans come with a control panel, free nightly backup, cPanel, free migration, quick provision, and free eNom Domain Reseller account.
Uptime
Uptime is an important factor to look at when comparing web hosting services as it helps to determine how many times your website will be unaccessible to your visitors due to an error of some kind or another with the server that hosts your website.
GreenGeeks offers a 99.9 percent uptime on their website, and this seems to hold pretty true. During my research for writing this review and my own personal observations, this percentage stays pretty accurate with only slight dips at times.
Most website hosting services offers this high of a percentage, but not all are able to actually put their money where their mouth is, which brings us to our next point, satisfaction.
Satisfaction
GreenGeeks offers a 100 percent customer satisfaction guarantee during the first 30 days of your account being set up. This means that you can request a refund of the full amount minus any transfer costs, domain registration fees, or setup fees accrued.
As you’ve paid for the domain after the cancellation, the domain you registered remains yours. Even better is that this is a no questions asked refund period that makes it worry free when deciding you no longer want to have your account.
In addition to the money back guarantee, they also offer a great deal of support. They have email support that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
There’s also live chat and telephone support for when you have questions. You’ll also have access to the knowledge base and video tutorials. I personally think that these are great add-ons to support because they help you to find questions to answers at times rather than having to hear back from customer service.
Online reviews show that there are mixed feelings on the quality of their customer service, but as with anything that’s based on a person’s personal opinion and experience, it’s easy to see how these results could be skewed.
You are able to cancel your plan after this period is over, but don’t expect to receive the full money back guarantee offered in the first 30 days of service. While this may not be ideal, it does help you to keep your options open in case you find that you don’t prefer this service over time.
Features
There are a number of additional features that this web hosting service offers to their users. They have faster page load times. No one wants a website that takes so long to load that visitors jump to the next website because he or she was too impatient to wait for it to load.
There’s also free nightly backups. This is an attractive feature because it means that a backup copy of your website will be made just in case something goes wrong. Plus, there’s the fact that you get to use cPanel for managing your websites, and there’s a lot of different features offered that makes developing and maintaining your website a breeze.
Drawbacks
There are a few negatives as I’ve mentioned throughout my review. No service is a 100 percent perfect, so it’s a good idea to examine any negatives that can exist. One of the first is the sale price. In order to get the bargain basement price, you’ll need to purchase your plan for a longer contract than just trying it on a month to month basis.
If you’re not willing to pay for several years at once, you’ll be paying the price that’s closer to 10 dollars a month. Not exorbitant, but it’s always a bit of a disappointment to think you’re getting a deal when you have to deal with terms like these ones.
There’s also the fact that you may not receive a full refund on the money you’ve paid to the hosting service if you decide to cancel within the 30-day period. This can be pretty expensive as you’ll have to pay for the domain that was offered to you for free, and some other potential fees. It may end up that your refund is much reduced by these fees.
Some reviews point out that the customer service is not perfect, so that could be a potential drawback, but one that may not affect you as there are just as many positive reviews on the quality of the customer service provided.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Eco-friendly
- Wide variety of plans
- 99.9 percent uptime
- Excellent offering of features
- 30-day money back guarantee
- Several options for customer service
- Training and knowledge base
Cons
- Sale price has terms that may not be favorable to you
- Refund may be less than what was paid in
- Customer service may be less than stellar
Final Verdict
My recommendation overall is that this is an excellent service to choose if you’re looking for a web hosting service that helps reduce your carbon footprint.
They offer very comparable services to other web hosts, but the fact that they were one of the first pioneers to deal with green hosting, helps to push them over the top in my view.
Plus, the cons are low enough that you can see how the pros will far outweigh them in most individuals’ minds. I believe this can be the right service for many individuals.
Founder and CEO, Trey Gardner is the brains behind this company. Trey has been involved in the Internet Marketing or Website Design Industry for more than 10 years, and his expertise greatly helped to bring Green Geeks into existence. The whole management team of Greek Geeks has more than 40 years of experience between them.
iPowerWeb was Trey’s earliest of ventures. He was the creator of the franchise and then saw it making profits. He then sold it for a hefty amount before venturing into Lunar Pages and then GreekGeeks.
Starting out in 2006, Green Geeks was quick to support and adopt environment-friendly energy sources for their driving power to the servers and equipment. Green Geeks franchise runs on a unique 300% energy rule.
That means, if Green Geeks spends up 1 unit of energy, it will purchase 300 units more of that energy in the form of “Wind Powered” natural electricity. They’ll then send the power back to the grid. This is one way of compensating for the Carbon Footprint that GreenGeeks creates.
GreenGeeks has Managing Director, Sales Director, Director of Quality Assurance, Director for Reseller Program and a lot more innovative and well-thought-out positions to help customers get the best out of their services.
Other Hosting We Reviewed: