Founded by Trey Gardner in 2008, GreenGeeks provides affordable, high-quality web hosting to more than 300,000 customers. What makes it unique is its commitment to the environment by replacing the energy used by clients with wind power credits. They partner with Bonneville Environmental Foundation in Oregon to purchase three times as much wind energy as they consume, leaving GreenGeeks and its customers carbon-negative.
GreenGeeks Special Features
Depending on where you come from, you may know that we have a website management service. That’s how we have access to accounts with hosting companies like GreenGeeks, A2Hosting, and Bluehost and a bunch of others.
We know the sites we manage at GreenGeeks are in good hands. We rarely have hosting issues with them, and that means easier management for us.Then out of the blue, I have read this!
This in-depth review will take a look at everything you need to know about this green energy web hosting company.
But wait – there’s more!
I have jumped into the middle of it and created a brand new account with GreenGeeks. Setup was simple. They sent me an email that they will need to verify my payment, and I will get my access only after that.
It took them literally five minutes to do that, and I have received my welcome email:
Here is a screenshot of the My Services screen:
I will delve into more technicalities like uptime and cPanel.
You Say Green Hosting and I Say GreenGeeks
Currently, the Internet is responsible for two percent of the carbon emissions in the world. It is growing rapidly, and it is expected to grow to 14% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2040. GreenGeeks has partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) in Oregon to lessen their impact on pollution. Every year, they calculate their energy use and carbon footprint, and they have BEF purchase three times as much wind energy as they have consumed. They put this energy back into the grid. As a result, they are offsetting all of the energy they consume times three, and the company and their customers’ websites are carbon negative. They are recognized as an EPA Green Power Partner, and they are actively working to spread awareness. This sets GreenGeeks apart from their competitors.So How Green Are These Geeks Really?
GreenGeeks’ founder, Trey Gardner, has worked in the web hosting industry for over 20 years, and he helped to build a number of successful companies. Greengeeks was founded in California, and seeks to provide superior web hosting in an environmentally responsible way so that the company and its clients have a negative carbon footprint.They Are Invested in Your Success
It’s a pretty unique service in that they aren’t just out there looking for a quick buck like so many of the other companies floating in the web hosting industry – they understand completely just how important it is to provide a knock out service and strive to do so to the highest standards possible.It’s not like you buy a piece of the server and left alone to figure out everything on your own. Support is there for you all the way. I found it quite extensive, with 24/7 live chat and phone support.
As with virtually all web hosts I dealt with, they have tiered support, meaning that in case you face a more complicated issue, live support will likely not be able to solve your problem. It will be forwarded to second tier support via ticketing system, and they will solve it for you usually within 24 hours. This is not a model without flaws, but it has worked for us so far.
Comes with the Best Control Panel
cPanel is pretty much the standard among control panels. I prefer it to the other ones.
cPanel at GreenGeeks is pretty standard with the features most retail hosting companies offer nowadays.
I don’t want to write about cPanel here, that would be too long.
I particularly like that they gave me SSH access.
The important thing is that you can use 1-Click Installation of popular scripts like WordPress or Drupal.
Light
Light is the entry level plan at GreenGeeks. You get a pretty standard set of features.
The major drawbacks are:
- you get standard performance
- you can send 100 emails per hour (more than enough for most people!)
- PCI compliance is a paid addon
You can get this plan for as low as $2.95, so it’s still an excellent value for money.
Pro
The Pro plan gives you twice the performance. You get PowerCacher and can send more emails.
For about 2x performance you pay twice as much: $5.95/mo.
Premium
You get everything in the Premium plan.
I particularly like the free PCI compliance and the 4x performance.
You can use this plan for some serious business. You can accept credit cards, and your website will be much faster than with most shared web hosts.
It comes with a price tag! At $11.95 it’s more than what most people can afford. There is a market for this kind of premium service though. HostingManual.net has also chosen a similar high-performance plan. Even though it’s more expensive than most shared plans (or even some VPS plans), we felt it’s worth the price.
WordPress Hosting at its Best
Virtually all hosting companies market themselves as a WordPress host. There are huge differences among some of those services. One of the best WordPress hosts I like is Siteground. They are WordPress optimized.So why not compare the two? I did!
I have set up two skeleton WordPress websites and headed to GTMetrix.
The results are incredible: GreenGeeks matches one of the best WP hosts in the industry.
The comparison is not exactly 100%. For some reason, the page size is bigger on Siteground than on Greengeeks. I have removed all the plugins and content, so both were bare minimum using the same theme.
Since I have written this review, other tests were published and Greengeeks consistently ranked in the top 3 in terms of performance!
Wildcard SSL Certificate for Free
Let’s Encrypt’s free wildcard SSL certificates let you secure multiple subdomains. You set it up on your main domain, and all its subdomains will also be SSL protected.So how wildcard SSL is different from a simple SSL certificate? It lets you use it on any number of subdomains (e.g., subdomain.yourdomain.com). For most people, it doesn’t make a difference, but for some people, it’s a must.
Enhanced Security and Reliability
GreenGeeks has taken steps to ensure that customers’ websites are secure and reliable as much as possible. Through Host Account Isolation, they designate dedicated computing resources and a secured virtual file system to each client account. As a result, individual clients will not have any impact on other clients in spite of site traffic or demands on computing resources.
In addition, they provide all users with Linux Secure vFS. The secured virtual files safeguard users because other users cannot see or access other accounts. Their system scans for malware in real time and locate and isolate any compromised files so that everyone else is safe. They also make use of other software to preemptively prevent any potential attacks across the network.
Finally, they monitor all of the critical servers in real time and administrators are able to identify problems before they happen, which allows them to maintain 99.9% uptime.
Use Redis for Caching
In 2022 GreenGeeks introduced Redis with some plans. Redis is the most popular in-memory database and it’s widely used for caching.
If you are using WordPress, setting up Redis caching is as easy as installing a plugin since it is supported by most caching plugins out of the box.
The other option is Memcached, which incidentally GreenGeeks also provides. My personal preference is Redis though. It has a more active community, it is constantly updated and developed, and has a much more intuitive API.
Pros of Using GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks has some distinct features that make them stand out from competitors. Here are the pros of hosting with Greengeeks:
No Crowding
Many web hosting companies put as many customers on a server as possible to increase profits. That’s not the case with this hosting company. They don’t crowd customers, and this means better speeds for your website.They do make sure that if something happens in spite of all these measures, your data won’t be lost. They make nightly backups.
A Well-Rounded Hosting Service
Maybe you don’t care, but Greengeeks has made it onto some exclusive lists:
- Inc 5000 List – They have made the 5000 fastest growing companies list.
- EPA Green Power Partner – They have been invited to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership.
- Featured in PC World – PC World featured them multiple times.
- Accredited Business – They are accredited by the Better Business Bureau.
The advantage is simple – not only do you get an incredibly robust web hosting platform for right around $6 a month, but you’re also helping to support a green business (where energy efficiency, waste reduction, and green initiatives are all as important as profit) along the way.
Prices on Par with Comparable Web Hosts
Priced right around most other comparable web hosting providers, they make it a no-brainer for anyone looking to host a website or fleet of websites and help pave the way for the future at the same time.
The Green Movement is in full swing, and GreenGeeks fully embraces it.
Risk-free for 30 Days
It’s possible to cancel anytime. For new accounts, there is a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. If you don’t like the service, you can cancel and get your money back. Please note that a domain fee will be charged, because this is a cost for web hosts too.
Let’s not Forget about Speed
GreenGeeks uses the latest technology to ensure that your pages load as fast as possible. Statistics suggest that visitors to your site will abandon it if your page takes more than two seconds to load, and GreenGeeks does everything they can to make sure this happens for you.They have the fastest SSD hard drives, and website files and databases are stored on solid state drives that are configured in a redundant RAID-10 storage array. In addition, they use ultra-optimized web and database servers that enable fast read and write serving pages up to 50 times faster than others.
GreenGeeks offers free CDN that is powered by Cloudfare, and this provides much faster web serving. They also offer HTTP/3, which provides the fastest in browser load times. Overall, GreenGeeks goes all out to make sure that client websites are running quickly and efficiently at all times.
This makes for a perfect web hosting solution for small business owners, freelancers, professionals – even someone looking to build a personal site could take advantage of the incredible fleet of tools and technology that GreenGeeks.com makes available to all of their customers.
Cons of Using GreenGeeks
- The domain registration fees are not the cheapest.
- You get a refund only in the first 30 days.
- If you ask for a refund, you will have to swallow the expensive domain registration fee.
Uptime Stats
I have seen an uptime of more than 99.9%. That’s pretty much standard among the web hosting companies nowadays. You can play around with our uptime calculator to see what downtime means for your website.
GreenGeeks Is A Great Option
While this web host is targeting a specific niche in the web hosting world, that shouldn’t dissuade anyone from trying out their service. I’m glad I gave them a run through for my review I’m writing now, and there is a fantastic possibility that I stay on as a customer with them in the future.
I love the idea of helping the planet through innovation, and if you’re given identical options for web hosting but can also contribute to the green innovative. I think it’s a no-brainer where you want to spend your money.
Bells and Whistles
If you’re looking for a stable web host with all the bells and whistles, as well as some of the best marks in the industry for reliability, customer service, uptimes, and innovations, then this green company is where you need to head to for your next web hosting project.
Armed with a professional and friendly staff, easy to use tools and technologies, and a brilliant business team GreenGeeks is going to be poised to make a run at the top dog spot in web hosting.
If you want to see what others are saying, you can check out these customer reviews.