GreenGeeks is a web hosting provider whose goal is to be as environmentally friendly as possible. They offer a variety of shared hosting plans for everyone, from beginners to large companies. Their prices are affordable, and their plans include plenty of useful features. See our expert GreenGeeks review to decide if it’s the right choice for you.
All web hosting companies offer similar plans and the same promises. In this complete GreenGeeks review, we will put their promises to test in the following areas:
- Speed & Performance: How fast will your website load on GreenGeeks?
- Reliability: Can you rely on them to ensure that your website is accessible all the time?
- Customer Support: Will you be able to get quick support when you need it?
- Features: What’s included in the GreenGeek hosting plans?
- Pricing: How much does GreenGeek cost, and can you get a good deal to save money?
We will share many details in this in-depth GreenGeeks review. If you don’t want to read all that, here is a quick summary of our GreenGeeks review score.
GreenGeeks Review Summary | |
---|---|
Performance grade | A+ |
Average load time | 527 ms |
Average response time | 119.7 ms |
Free domain | Yes |
Free SSL | Yes |
1-click WordPress | Yes |
Support | Phone / Live Chat / Knowledge base |
Start with GreenGeeks |
Bottom line: In our review, we found GreenGeeks to be a good hosting provider. However, there is room for improvement in terms of performance and speed.
That being said, let’s get into the details of how we reached this conclusion.
About GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks was founded in 2007 by Trey Gardner. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company now powers over 600,000 websites and offers a green hosting solution.
What is Green Hosting?
Green hosting is an environment-friendly hosting service that uses different technologies and processes to reduce their carbon footprint.
The web hosting industry uses a massive amount of energy and has a significant environmental impact. GreenGeeks aims to mitigate this by purchasing wind energy credits. They purchase three times the amount of power they use. They’re also an EPA Green Power partner.
GreenGeeks Performance Tests
WPBeginner users trust our reviews because we only recommend products and services that we have used ourselves. We sign up for each top WordPress hosting company to thoroughly test their claims by running performance tests.
For this review, we signed up for a hosting account on GreenGeeks and installed WordPress. While using the default theme, we filled the website with dummy data, including media and images. This way, our test site looked and behaved like an actual WordPress site.
GreenGeeks Speed Test Results
Speed is crucial for any website’s success. That’s why the first test we ran was to measure the website’s speed using Pingdom.
Here are the results:
Our test site loaded in less than a second, which is great. However, this test alone does not show the full picture because the site has no traffic.
GreenGeeks Stress Test Results
Next, we wanted to see how well our test site would perform on GreenGeeks during peak traffic. To measure this, we used a tool called K6 (formerly called Load Impact).
We gradually built up to 50 unique visitors to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.
Here are the results:
The light green line represents page response time, and the purple line represents the number of users on the site.
GreenGeeks performed well in this test. Our site remained responsive throughout the test, and the response time remained steady, with minor fluctuations as the number of users increased.
GreenGeeks auto-installs the Litespeed cache plugin when you install WordPress. We disabled it to run our tests.
You can further improve performance by installing a WordPress caching plugin.
We also ran uptime monitoring tests throughout the testing period. Our test site remained up during all the tests.
GreenGeeks Response Time Test
Next, we wanted to test how our GreenGeeks site responds to requests from different geographic locations. To measure this, we used a tool called Bitcatcha.
Here are the results
As you can see, the response time was particularly great in North America. However, it was slower in India and Asia Pacific but still under a second.
GreenGeeks Hosting Plans and Features
GreenGeeks has a wide range of hosting plans for customers of every size. They offer basic shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting.
However, their main offering is their shared hosting plans. These plans include:
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- One free domain for the first year
- Hosting for unlimited websites (Except Lite plan)
- SSD storage (solid state drives web space) with nightly backups
- Free email accounts
- 1-click installation of WordPress
- One-click Softaculous for apps like Joomla and Drupal via cPanel
They also provide a free website migration service as an add-on, so you can easily move from your current hosting company.
GreenGeeks uses advanced technologies like LiteSpeed, LSCache, MariaDB, and unlimited MySQL databases. There are also a few advanced features for more technical users and developers:
- Pre-installed Git
- PHP version selection
- WP-CLI for direct command line access
Hosting plans
Their primary shared hosting / WordPress hosting service is available in 3 levels:
- Lite – Limited to 1 WordPress install
- Pro – The Pro plan includes unlimited websites with 2x performance
- Premium – The premium plan also includes a free dedicated IP address
Each GreenGeeks web hosting plan also comes with eCommerce support, generous disk space, automatic WordPress updates, unmetered data transfer, and more.
Plus, you can easily upgrade to VPS plans or WordPress hosting as your site grows.
GreenGeeks offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. This means that within 30 days after signing up, you can cancel your account for any reason and get a full refund of your hosting fees.
Note: The refund doesn’t include domain registration fees, and you get to keep your domain.
Support and Customer Service
GreenGeeks provides support 24/7 via live chat and email support tickets. They also offer phone support Monday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. EST.
For managed WordPress hosting customers, there are WordPress expert support specialists available to help you set up your site or handle any WordPress-specific issues.
Many customer reviews of GreenGeeks rave about their top-notch support. They have a reputation for responding quickly to inquiries and providing expert help no matter the issue.
Pros and Cons of GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is a popular web hosting company, but it may not be right for everyone. Consider these pros and cons before choosing a plan.
Pros of choosing GreenGeeks hosting
- Better for the Environment – GreenGeeks is a web hosting company with strong values, that cares about the environment. By hosting with GreenGeeks, you can help support renewable energy.
- Packed With Features – GreenGeeks hosting plans include all the features you need to help you build a website.
- Affordable – GreenGeeks offers very competitive prices for all the features they provide.
- Highly Rated Support – Customers rave about the top-notch expert support GreenGeeks provides.
Cons of choosing GreenGeeks hosting
- Phone Support Isn’t 24/7 – Phone support is not provided from midnight to 9 a.m. EST. If you have a problem in the early hours of the morning, you must use live chat or email support instead.
- Setup Fee for Monthly Billing – If you choose month-to-month billing, there’s a $15 setup fee. The fee is waived if you pay for a year or more.
Is GreenGeeks Right for You?
Now that you have read through our entire GreenGeeks hosting review, you might be wondering whether GreenGeeks is the right web host for you.
After reviewing GreenGeeks’ services in detail, we award them with the title “Most Eco-Friendly Hosting.”
The web hosting industry has a huge impact on the environment. Every web hosting server produces 1390 pounds of CO2 per year, surpassing the airline industry in environmental pollution.
As a GreenGeeks customer, you can support renewable energy by choosing eco-friendly web hosting. GreenGeeks purchases wind energy credits and is a recognized United States EPA Green Power Partner. They put back into the grid three times the amount of energy they consume, helping to lessen your web hosting’s impact on the environment in an energy-efficient manner.
GreenGeeks is a good hosting solution for newbies. For higher traffic volumes, you may need to upgrade to a high-performance plan or move to a managed WordPress hosting provider.
Ready to get started with GreenGeeks? Click here to select your GreenGeeks plan today.
FAQs About GreenGeeks Web Hosting Services
Following are some of the questions we have been asked about GreenGeeks’ website hosting services.
1. Is GreenGeeks Hosting Good?
If you are looking for eco-friendly web hosting services for a small business, then GreenGeeks hosting is among the best web hosting options out there.
They have an easy-to-use control panel for newbies, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a friendly support team, and helpful knowledge base tutorials.
2. Where are GreekGeeks Data Centers Located?
According to the GreenGeeks website, their data centers are located in Chicago, Phoenix, Canada (Toronto and Montreal), and Europe (Amsterdam). They are powered by green energy and equipped with high-quality SSD-based Raid-10 arrays.
3. How does GreenGeeks.com Compare to Other Hosting Companies?
We are often asked to compare GreenGeeks with other hosting companies, such as Bluehost, GoDaddy, SiteGround, HostGator, Hostinger, and more.
We believe Bluehost and Hostinger are better than GreenGeeks in terms of performance and user experience. GreenGeeks will be a better option than GoDaddy due to better customer support. SiteGround is more expensive but far superior in terms of technology, customer support, and user experience.
GreenGeeks Coupon
WPBeginner users get a free new domain and 75% off their web hosting with our GreenGeeks coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to purchase. The discount will be auto-applied.
Scott McKernan
Their customer support and treatment of customers is appalling. They repeatedly won’t answer why a domain renewal email stated that if I wanted the domain to renew I would need to pay the invoice before it expired. I let it expire without paying because i no longer need it. They charged me against my will and keep refusing to answer why their email stated this. Horrible!
Love
Customer Support is not helpful. I followed the tutorial on GreenGeeks website about meta-tags and wordpress. When the tutorial didn’t match what I was seeing I contacted customer support who couldn’t explain so my case was escalated. The reply I received,
“If you require assistance with website development, we kindly suggest that you reach out to a web developer to get the best possible support for your specific scenario.
Sincerely,
Server Support Administrator
GreenGeeks® Web Hosting”
My website is developed I just have a specific question on the GreenGeeks instructions, but they keep kicking the can to someone else.
David Kuoppamaki
I’ve been with Greengeeks since 2013. For whatever reason last week – the week before Thanksgiving 2023 they decided I can only keep my emails archived for 90 days. I literally have 10 year old emails with this company on their ftp. Well fast forward to 1 week after they threatened to delete my emails, what did they do…. delete all my email. This company is rude, non responsive and most likely going through ownership issues and I would highly recommend staying away from them.
Ron Martin-Adkins
I managed a GreenGeeks account on behalf of the now defunct Transition Asheville. TA discontinued in 2020 and I terminated the account, I thought. Yet, I still get billed for renewals. I’m not impressed with the billing department, and find the GG website less than user friendly for an older guy. When the service was working, it was fine. Now the bill comes for a site that cannot be reached online, quite appropriately…
Dima R
This is almost unbelievable, but my business email has been working 99.99% perfectly well with Green Geeks. For any issues I had to chat with their support a few times, and they seem to be very knowledgeable about their products and services.
Shlomo Skinner
I’ve been happy with the service, the price, and the tech support that I’ve received from GreenGeeks.
Belinda Roozemond
I usually don’t leave feedback for web hosting services, but I’m so pleased to do this for GreenGeeks. I was a bit out of practice in setting up websites, and when I initially signed up, customer service patiently and quickly answered ALL of the questions (so many!!!) I had. Competent, fast, and friendly. They also followed up later to ensure I had everything I needed to move forward. I did, thanks to their help.
The user interface is super easy to navigate, and I can find everything I need without searching. The addons are great too!
Very satisfied customer here
Noellie Garand
Thank you for hosting my email address.
Your service is most reliable and the only time there was an interruption for hardware failure (overt he past six months) you informed us very quickly. Excellent customer service.
Kind regards,
Noellie
Amy Claxton
Green Geeks hosting is by far the epitome of what a hosting company should strive to be. They offer top notch customer service as well as top notch hosting environments. I have contacted support many times since I have been with Green Geeks and have always felt that my questions were not only actually read but responded to in a timely and correct fashion. So many companies use form replies that make it look like they did not even read your question. This is not true here. I have never had any site downtime. I have had as many as 30 sites hosted here at once some are higher traffic and I have never had an issue. I use Wordpress to build all websites and this has been the best experience I have had with any company. I have been with many companies in 25 years and GreeGeeks has beat them at every level. I have a permanent hosting home here. My only negative feedback is that the affiliate program only pays out via PayPal and I do not do business with Paypal so it leaves me out of maybe making a few bucks in promoting the hosting.
Larissa McCollin
I have been using Green Geeks for over a year now, and they have been so helpful getting me set up and heading in the right direction. Whenever I have needed assistance wading through the steps, terminology and options with a website, they have been patient and make me feel well advised in the decisions I make. I would highly recommend them.
Liz Martin
GreenGeeks offers green web hosting and as someone who’s trying to make an effort to reduce her carbon footprint, the site’s selling point really got me! I like that GreenGeeks is easy to use and when I had trouble migrating my site from Blogger to Wordpress for self hosting, I was guided patiently by GreenGeeks’ customer service agent.
Vali
Always ready to help!
Gerardo Cantu
Green Geeks y’all are awesome! It’s so easy working with you and you have excellent customer service, not to mention your prices, which are very reasonable! I am a fan!! Thank you all for all your help so far.
Michele Delgado
Customer service is spot on. Response time is quick and for a solopreneur it is important to keep things moving and to have clear results.
Green Geeks provides all of this.
Ngozi Chijioke-Agina
When I signed up for GreenGeeks hosting, I was an online newbie, but with their patience and support, I have come a long way in my online business. I am always amazed at their prompt 24/7 response to queries; their professionalism; the team of smart experts and their added services all at the customer’s disposal.
They further gained my respect when my site was under attack. the team took over the challenge and got me sorted till I was satisfied and comfortable with the outcome. They simply exceeded my expectations. Thank you once more GreenGeeks.
Maciek Hrybowicz
Excellent service at a very good price. I love the ‘green’ aspect of their hosting, though to be honest, I have to trust Green Geeks on this. I like their clear and fast customer portal. My few queries were met with a knowledgeable answer from their support team in less than an hour – this is important, since I live in New Zealand. otherwise nothing else to say, which is exactly how it should be.
Judy
I’ve been a Greengeeks hosting customer for many years, because of their great customer service and reliable hosting. The customer service techs are kind, knowledgeable, patient, and prompt, help me fix things and never make me feel like an idiot. I’m an artist, not a coder, but they make it easy to have my own website.
Dave Maino
I started using GreenGeeks awhile ago and have had nothing but good experiences so far. They have pretty good pricing and great support, and they have a good suite of tools that are easy to use. Plus I get to feel good about my money going to support a sustainable business.
Cassandra Brennan
You geeks are the best. Patient and well versed in all things website. Your hosting plan is amazing and your intent to lower your carbon footprint with a portion of the fee is beyond. But most of all, you truly have the most secure and constant improvements to your hosting platform. Thank you GreenGeeks!!!
Peter V
I only work with GreenGeeks. The registration/setup is easy and should you run into trouble, the sales/tech support is really 24/7 available.
They saved my sites several times (1 hijack, 3 updates/upgrades that went wrong) and every time, the sites were back up in 10 minutes.
Neil Hodgkiss
I’ve been a Green Geeks customer for around a year and a half. I am very impressed. Customer service is amazing. I set up a media wiki, accessed through a link on the main page of the site. I had a couple of technical difficulties – not in the implementation or installation of Media Wiki, but a couple of background security bits that were not allowing wiki users to edit their personal page. Green Geeks solved this for me in an instant. I’d thoroughly recommend.
Karin
Love the service of Green Geeks. They are caring, quick, and fun.
Paul Martin
Excellent services, fast / responsive tech support as needed and an easy to navigate site through the dashboard & control panel. I’ve used many hosting services throughout my career. Green Geeks quite possibly is the best one of them all. I am so glad I found GG and have sites hosted here. Over time I will likely migrate everything I have here but with over thirty active domains it will take me a while to transfer them all.
Chris Stevens
I would highly recommend GREEN GEEKS. Having used several other providers in the past, I have now moved multiple domains and to say I’m happy with the service would be an understatement. I have always received quick, prompt, responses when opening a ticket and the interactions with their staff have been professional and pleasant.
If you are looking for an affordable hosting for your site or sites – look no further!
Scott Gorrell
The team at Green Geeks is great. Not only are their products easy to use but when you do have a problem or a question they are quick to respond with easy to understand explanations AND documentation that is easy to follow.
They are no doubt one of the best examples of quality customer service that I have seen in my lifetime. On top of that, their rates are reasonable and their efforts to be environmentally responsible won me over at day one.
Thank you Green Geeks for doing hosting the right way!
Laurentiu
I used the service due to statistics involving server speed. Things seem good in that regard. They have good explainer articles on how to use the service and fix issues and their client service department is quite good and helpful.
Anil Kumar Kapoor
GreenGeeks is one of the most customer friendly company I am associated with. Their telecallers, from picking up the phone, to understanding the problem, to explaining the issue, to helping me correct it and most amazing, going out of their way to solve my issue are truly a customer delight.
Till the next connect..
Linda
Thank you for such a great service, am always looking chatting online when I need assistance and that really works well. Thanks for the after service support.
Kegesa Danvas Abdullah
I signed for a 36 month plan of Green Geeks about 8 months ago. With all due honesty, I am here to say that all of my websites have been up and running and I am glad I did.
SIMON JIVENATION BORLAND
GreenGeeks have been amazing for me since I joined, about 6 months ago.. I have had to ask their help desk to fix things I broke on a few occasions – I am always installing different themes and plugins and sometime I need to help to remove them or restore them to the way it was before – GreenGeeks always respond in minutes, and I am honestly just so pleased with them. Well done team!!!
Rod Minns
Support makes the difference in Webhosting. I’ve been with Greengeeks for about a year and their help is quick and superb. I’m never left stranded in the tech desert wondering what to do. Rarely do I need support, not because I’m a tech champion. Everything just keeps working smoothly. They’re my fourth and final in five years, providing the best help moving my domain. There wasn’t an issue moving it and they did all the work. Also, their tutorials are superbly written with excellent visuals. Finally, they keep me informed and they care about security. Such a great team working for me.
Robert Leaper
I joined GreenGeeks because they were reasonably priced and I needed a site for my travel blog. I created a Wordpress site, learning as I went and hit inevitable snags and bumps along the way. The GreenGeek’s support staff always responded quickly with suggestions or jumping in to fix the problem. As a former IT Manager I realize how important it is to have responsive, intelligent support when you need it. These guys get it!
Octavio
I’m super happy with greengeeks so far. It’s been a year with them and they quickly became my favourite hosting provider. I never had a single issue and if there is something I need help with I can rely on their great support service.
Ryan Millner
GreenGeeks gives you as much, or as little support as you need. The few times I’ve need to help getting something configured the support has been quick, helpful, and incredibly friendly. I like the environmental aspect, the prices are reasonable, and the servers are fast and powerful on even the cheapest plan. I am a completely satisfied customer.
Mark Thompson
I’ve been with GreenGeeks hosting since Nov. 2019 and now have moved several clients here. In each case the sites; performance metrics significantly improved – from page-load to email delivery speeds.
I’ve needed GG tech support’s help several times. They have responded quickly with the correct info that helped me correct the issues. (the problems were not with GG).
All considered I am very happy with GreenGeeks and would recommend them to anyone looking for affordable, hassle-free web hosting.
Sonia May
Amazing customer service. I have worked with other hosters before, but none of them had such a good support. Green Geeks always impresses me with their timely and professional response. As someone with a tech background, it is a relieve to chat with customer support who have excellent knowledge about the service and go above and beyond to fix issues.
Kim
The service at Green Geeks is beyond compare. I have a website for baskets that I create. As a non technical person website building is daunting.
As one might expect, I have come across many things I don’t understand, as well as problems that I can’t begin to figure out how to fix.
The technicians at Green Geeks have gone out of their way to help solve my problems. Yesterday, a very helpful person named Vitality fixed a problem that I didn’t even know I had. He checked out a few things for me and he “found triggered mod_security rule. So I have disabled this rule for your account.” …. ha ha what ever that is??? He fixed it. My website is running so much better today. Thank you so much for the great service. I have recommended Green Geeks to a few of my friends.
Raine Gould
Fast and friendly customer service. They helped walk me through set up and migration. Plus, the green label has been a hit with clients!
Lucy Pruvost
I originally chose Greengeeks because of their environmental credentials. I would still like to see more evidence of their work in reducing their carbon footprint rather than just purchasing RECs, but for their support, cpanel and overall approach, I still think they’re the best!
I’ve never waited to access help on the online chat and the team are really friendly.
I would 100% recommend them.
Michael Glyngsdal
I want to thank Greengeeks for all their support in developing my web site. It can be a bit overwhelming when you are making a career change, starting a new business and creating a new web site all at the same time. Greengeeks makes the process of creating a new web site easy, they have so many tools to use and were always ready to answer any questions that I had. My customers also love the fact that even my web site is green.
Pankaj
Too good customer service., they reply too quick!!, in minutes!!! and solve any concern or issue. They are fast, and thats the reason I want to be with them.
Petru Vornicu
I like this web hosting. They have a good price for what they offer: performance, support, friendly UI/UX. If you compare with other web hostings you will see that. A good place where you can start to learn about WordPress and other plugins.
Mikhael
The first thing I was impressed by is how fast every single one of my tech questions were answered and how accurate and knowledgeable the support staff were. The CPanel has all the wonderful tools and software addons needed for novice and pro web developers and designers. The speed at which my pages and site is served is really great. I have had no downtime issues whatsoever. Even with a heavy load of backend builders at times in wordpress the speed still remains great. Overall I would highly recommend this hosting company to others.
Darrin K
I’ve used so many hosts over the year, from all of the major ones, to the cost-saving ones. GreenGeeks really stands out from the bunch. Great great service, great pricing, amazing uptime and just a wonderful experience. Highly recommend!
David Carson
Support has been great. I’m probably pretty needy, and you’ve done a great job of tolerating me, and making things quick and painless!
Gabe
As a computer technician I know a bit about everything. When a business asked me to quickly move them to a better email provider, oh and while I am at it, move their existing website, I got a little nervous. I did days of research and found prices ranging from crazy high to crazy cheap. I learned about greengeeks from a service provider whose brain I was picking. The more I learned about this Canadian based and hosted company the more I felt comfortable. I must have jumped on their website 20 times to start a free chat and pick their brains about the process I was about to embark on. Long story short I am so glad I chose this company. I still cannot believe how cheap it was, I mean I cannot figure out how they are able to provide the individual help and get me setup moved and many many questions though chat and email along the way, for the price I paid. Greengeeks made me look good and I have never looked back. So if you are on the fence about choosing a website provider with great features for the best price you have found the right place. Thanks again for everything Greengeeks you Rock!
Jacqueline Alderking
I am very happy with GreenGeeks as the new web domain as It is easy to set up a website, it is not expensive, they are very helpful, and they keep their clients up to date with all changes and lets you know when your subscription is about to expire.
I highly recommend GreenGeeks for your web page.
Denise Membreno
Green Geeks has been a great hosting service for my three websites. They are quick to respond with any issues that arise and customer service has been patient in answering all my technical questions.
Kirsten
I’ve been with GreenGeeks for almost a year. Solid, very affordable service when bought as a 3-year package, and I hope I will have similar affordability when I renew in 2 years. We shall see!
My website needs are very simple, so I can’t attest to anyone who has a complex website. However, the few issues I’ve had were resolved very quickly. As well, anytime I’ve needed advice or help to accomplish something new or difficult, there’s loads of articles to help me do what I need on their website and CS is quick to help if there’s no written article on the topic.
Walter Brandt
I’ve grown with Green Geek as the scalability makes it easy to grow. Tech support chat works on a level of expertise from pros to average Joes they really make thing easy when needed and always there. 24:7 365.316