GreenGeeks Review: Is It Right for Your Site?

Best for the Environment

If you click to purchase a product or service based on our independent recommendations and impartial reviews, we may receive a commission. Learn more

3.5

out of 5
Powering

600 thousand sites

Starting from

$2.95

Best for

Best for the Environment

Overall rating

3.5 out of 5 stars

GreenGeeks is a top environmentally-friendly hosting provider, and in our research, it came joint first-place in features overall with a 4.5 out of 5! However, some not-so-great value-for-money prices hold it back - so read on to make sure GreenGeeks is right for you.

GreenGeeks serves over 55,000 customers through its four data centers and performed well in our hosting research with an overall score of 3.5 out of 5. But what really sets GreenGeeks apart from other hosting providers is its commitment to the environment. For every amperage that GreenGeeks uses, it matches three times that amount in the form of renewable energy.

Web servers are housed in data centers, which pull energy from whatever power grid they rely on. Data centers generate a lot of heat – this means heavy air conditioning, which in turn requires a lot of electricity. Today, data centers account for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, which puts their footprint on par with the airline industry.

To help combat this problem, GreenGeeks calculates its yearly energy consumption, and then purchases Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) equal to three times the amount of energy consumed by its data centers (you can learn more about RECs here). GreenGeeks then puts all of that energy back into the grid. In short, this means that your website will be carbon-reducing if you host it with GreenGeeks.

Thanks to this hard work, GreenGeeks has been officially recognized by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Power Partner since 2009.

GreenGeeks is an incredible hosting choice for the environment – but how does it perform in other areas? We’ll cover all of that in detail below, but if you’re in a rush, check out this quick snapshot:

Best for the Environment

3.5

out of 5
Types of Hosting

4 out of 5 stars

Help and Support

2.3 out of 5 stars

Features

4.5 out of 5 stars

Value For Money

4.2 out of 5 stars

Uptime

4 out of 5 stars

Disk Space

5 out of 5 stars

You may be wondering how exactly we evaluate hosting providers like GreenGeeks. Each one we review is put through a testing and research process where we evaluate it against the rest and judge from a list of five all-important categories.
  • Pricing – GreenGeeks’ price range, number of plans, money-back guarantee, billing cycle, and more.
  • Performance – This is the amount of storage space, bandwidth, cores, threads, RAM, and how fast the server response time is for each hosting type we test.
  • Features – The extras GreenGeek adds in, such as migration, backups, security, domains, control panel, green hosting, and more.
  • Help and support – This is testing how good the hosting provider’s knowledge base is and what support options are available.
  • Market analysis – What consumers say about the provider, as well as competitor reviews, search volume, etc.

We focus on these categories because we believe it’s what is most relevant and popular to you, our readers.

We test all hosting types through the same categories, as oftentimes there can be quite a difference in scores. For example, GreenGeeks scores 4.8 out of 5 for features in shared hosting but only 1.9 in the same category in VPS hosting.

We go in-depth so we can make sure you have all the knowledge you need when you make your decision. Check out our How We Conduct Our Hosting Research page if you’d like to know more.

Now, let’s dive in!

Pros and Cons

GreenGeeks Hosting Pros

  • Free website transfer service: If you’re switching to GreenGeeks from another hosting provider, GreenGeeks will handle the entire process for you at no cost.
  • 300% renewable energy match: GreenGeeks lives up to its name by restoring three times the amount of energy it consumes, so your website will be carbon-reducing.
  • 98% uptime guarantee: This is well above many top hosts, and amounts to just about one hour and 45 minutes of downtime per year.

GreenGeeks Hosting Cons

  • Pricing could be better: GreenGeeks has some value-for-money issues. In shared hosting, it only scored 2.5 out of 5, and across our eight research categories, GreenGeeks came in the bottom three for five of them.
  • No cloud hosting: If you’re looking for a cloud hosting provider, GreenGeeks is not for you, as it doesn’t currently offer this plan.

Performance

GreenGeeks’ Uptime

No provider can offer a 100% uptime guarantee, but you’ll ideally want to aim for an uptime somewhere between 99.97% and 99.99%. Hundredths of a second might not seem like a lot, but actually, even upgrading from 99.95% uptime to 99.96% uptime means about one hour less downtime per year.

GreenGeeks has an impressive uptime guarantee of 99.98%, which amounts to less than two hours of downtime per year.

GreenGeek’s Speed

GreenGeeks uses an optimized LiteSpeed web server to ensure fast page loading times, without eating into memory or CPU. In our research, Green Geeks scored 3.5 out of 5 for performance in both shared hosting and Managed WordPress hosting, while fairing a little worse in VPS hosting with 3.2 out of 5.

Why? Well, two of GreenGeeks’ four data centers are in North America. This is a reliable situation for people based in North America, while those in Europe and Asia have a center each, but those in Africa or Australia are left without. If most of your website visitors are located elsewhere your server response time could be slightly slower for them.

It makes up for this with free CDN integration. Every GreekGeeks hosting plan includes a one-click integration with a free Content Delivery Network (CDN), which allows pages to load faster via a more geographically distributed network of proxy servers.

All of GreenGeeks’ servers are housed inside climate-controlled data centers with generators, fire suppression systems, and water detection systems, which means your website’s data is well protected from unexpected physical threats.

Types of Hosting and Features

Types of Hosting

GreenGeeks offers five different types of hosting: shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated, and reseller. With no cloud hosting, GreenGeeks is lacking behind top competitors like Bluehost or HostGator. Because of this, GreenGeeks sadly only scores an overall score of 2.3 out of 5 for types of hosting.

However, the individual scores for shared, VPS, and WordPress hosting tell a different story. GreenGeeks’ strongest hosting type is Managed WordPress with a score of 4.1 out of 5, coming in 5th overall in the total ranking for that research category.

GreenGeeks fairs a little less well in shared hosting with a 3.7 out of 5 and VPS is GreenGeek’s weakest hosting type – second from the bottom with an overall score of 3.6 out of 5.

GreenGeeks doesn’t currently offer a cloud hosting plan, which is why it only earns a 2.3 out of 5 for types of hosting. If you’re dead set on this type, then you may want to check out our reviews of the 9 best cloud hosting providers to see the top GreenGeeks alternatives.
Plan: Cheapest Introductory Price: Cheapest Renewal Price: Features:
Shared $2.95/month $10.95/month Shared plans are best for small to medium-sized personal websites, and small business websites. Each plan includes unlimited bandwidth and SSD storage, which means your site can accommodate a lot of traffic and will have plenty of room to grow. You also get free domain name registration for the first year of any shared plan.
WordPress $2.95/month $10.95/month WordPress plans come with the same features as shared plans, and go for the same price. This is because shared hosting is a platform on which WordPress can operate, so shared and WordPress plans are essentially the same. WordPress plans are simply optimized specifically for the CMS, so they’re best for anyone hosting a WordPress website.
VPS $39.95/month Same price VPS plans are best for medium to large-sized websites and online stores. VPS plans offer more dedicated resources than shared plans, but you’ll definitely notice the price increase as a result. Depending on which VPS plan you choose, you’ll get 2-8 GB RAM and 4-6 vCPUs.
Reseller $24.95/month $32.99/month Reseller plans allow you to purchase web hosting space and then resell it to a client (or use it for your own multiple websites), almost like renting space out on the internet. Reseller accounts let you easily deploy WordPress and (other CMSs) with one click, and GreenGeeks will also help you register wholesale domains for your customers.

Features

In our research, GreenGeeks scores a 4.8 out of 5 for shared hosting features, the highest in our research! Every GreenGeeks hosting plan (regardless of hosting type!) includes:

  • 300% match with renewable energy: Every GreenGeeks plan is eco-friendly.
  • Drag-and-drop website builder: All the basic functionalities of a website builder, including hundreds of customizable templates to choose from.
  • Unlimited email accounts: Create an unlimited amount of email addresses in the format [email protected].
  • Unlimited MySQL databases: Create as many databases on one plan as you like.
  • cPanel control panel: Easily manage and organize your website and email.

However, even all these great features can’t help GreenGeek’s VPS hosting, which as well as having a third party take over backups also has no free domains on offer. It only gets a 1.9 out of 5 for VPS features, which compared to shared is a decrease of nearly 58%!

Overall though, GreenGeeks actually still maintains a strong feature score of 4.5 out of 5, the joint-highest in our research. If quality features are your deciding factor, you can’t go wrong with GreenGeeks.

Pricing

GreenGeeks’ cheapest shared plan starts at $2.95/month, and its priciest VPS plan costs $109.95/month. Within that range, there’s a best-fit plan for every budget, and we’ll cover each one below. Every GreenGeeks plan also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

GreenGeeks earned a 3.2 out of 5 overall in the value-for-money category of our research. This is due to some of the types of hosting not bringing as much value with their prices as others. For example, while GreenGeek’s shared hosting features are the best in our research, it’s not as value-packed as Bluehost, with expensive renewal prices and not much variety in plans. It gets a value-for-money score in shared hosting of 2.5 out of 5.

Even though they are the same price, Managed WordPress actually scores higher than shared hosting, with a 3.9 out of 5. That’s because the price doesn’t always mean the best value, so we’ve worked hard to make sure our value calculations reflect the quality and features you get for each price, and GreenGeeks WordPress has a lot of great features for a good price (second overall in our ranking).

Each different hosting type (shared, VPS, etc.) comes with a few different pricing plans to choose from, so we’ve compared the cheapest plan for each type below and their renewal prices:

Plan Paid Monthly Paid Annually Biennially Triennially
Shared $9.95/month $2.95/month $10.95/month $10.95/month
WordPress $9.95/month $2.95/month $10.95/month $10.95/month
VPS $39.95/month $39.95/month N/A N/A
Reseller $32.99/month $24.95/month $21.95/month $19.95/month

What are renewal prices?

Like most hosting providers, GreenGeeks often advertises cheap introductory prices that seem too good to be true. And they are – after the first year or so, anyway. Renewal prices are the regular price that you’ll have to pay after the first introductory period.

Here’s where it gets complicated: Introductory prices often decrease depending on the amount of time you sign up for in advance. For example, GreenGeeks’ cheapest shared plan has an introductory price of $2.95/month if the first three years are paid for in advance. The introductory price jumps up to $10.95/month if only one year is paid in advance.

That is why, here at WebsiteBuilderExpert, we like to show the 12-month prices on all our articles. 36-month contracts can be misleading in price and additionally is a large commitment to make for a hosting provider. We believe 12-month prices offer the best value for the customer and are the best representation of what that particular hoster provides.

choosing between four hosting plans in GreenGeeks' checkout process
The introductory discount price is dependent on the amount of time you’re willing to sign up for in advance. After that initial time period, the standard renewal price kicks in regardless.

GreenGeeks Pricing vs Competitor Pricing

As you can see, GreenGeeks is fairly outpaced when it comes to pricing, especially for VPS. Yet, GreenGeeks offers good value for this price, as it and HostGator achieved the same score of 3.1 out of 5 in value for money in VPS.

Provider Shared VPS
Bluehost $2.95/month $23.99/month
GreenGeeks $2.95/month $39.95/month
HostGator $3.95/month $23.95/month
If saving money is a top priority, here are some guides that can help:

Security

GreenGeeks’ Virtual Security

GreenGeeks plans come with:

  • A free SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt, with automatic (free) renewal every 90 days
  • Automatic app updates for software such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla

GreenGeeks also offers free nightly backups to keep your data safe – but customers don’t actually get access to the backups. And if you need GreenGeeks to recover files for you, you get one free restoration per month. Any more than that will cost you $25 per restore. GreenGeeks does not back up VPS servers. 

Like most hosting providers, GreenGeeks provides basic spam protection and proactive server monitoring to help prevent attacks and detect malware, which is a great start. But if you’re handling payment cards or other sensitive information through your website, you’ll want to invest in some more advanced security measures. You can upgrade from the basic Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to a Premium AlphaSSL Wildcard SSL Certificate, which costs $99.95/year and provides a 256-bit encryption.

GreenGeeks’ Physical Security

GreenGeeks prides itself on its data centers, which are not only green, but also well protected. There are four data centers in total, located in Chicago, Montreal, Amsterdam, and Singapore. Each one is staffed 24/7 by technicians and engineers, and they are all equipped with a biometric and key card security system.

GreenGeeks’ security measures are definitely up to standard – but if security is a top priority for you, then you might want to look into A2 Hosting, whose in-house Perpetual Security Initiative sets it apart from the crowd.

Help and Support

During our research, we found that GreenGeeks struggles in the help and support category – in fact, it only scored 2.3 out of 5 overall. For shared hosting, it scored 3.6 out of 5 and its highest score was for VPS help and support with a 4.2 out of 5. So why the low overall score?

GreenGeeks actually has decent support services – but compared to other top hosting providers, you won’t enjoy the same level of instant help. For example, GreenGeeks offers 24/7 live chat. But HostGator (our top scorer for help and support) offers 24/7 live chat and phone support, meaning you can always speak directly to an agent if you want to. GreenGeeks just doesn’t offer the same level of accessibility.

Here’s what GreenGeeks’ support does offer:

  • 24/7 live chat
  • Phone support from 9AM – 12AM EST
  • Email support with an approx. 15-20 minute wait time
GreenGeeks live chat popup talking to help and support guru: user text is in green, guru answers in black text
When we tested GreenGeeks’ live chat ourselves, the team’s responses were fast and information-packed.

If you’re not too fussed about 24/7 phone support, then you’ll be fine with what GreenGeeks already has to offer. Debby, a current GreenGeeks customer, had this to say about her experience with the support team:

“I have been extremely pleased with the customer support I get from GreenGeeks. They don’t just try to get you off the line (or off chat, which is my preferred way of contacting them). They answer your questions, and send you instructions that are easy to follow.”

It’s worth noting that, like most hosting providers, GreenGeeks also offers an extensive knowledge base full of articles and tutorials that you can search through whenever you like!

Additional Products

GreenGeeks is primarily a hosting provider, and you can’t really make use of any additional services unless you’re already signed up to a GreenGeeks account. However, once you do have an account, there are three convenient services to think about.

Domain Registration

The first (and the most useful) service is domain registration. Once you have a hosting account, GreenGeeks will act as a domain name registrar that lets you purchase a domain name right from your GreenGeeks account (and don’t forget, you’ll also get a free domain name for the first year of your hosting plan).

Make sure to do some research on the cost of a domain name, so that you won’t be surprised when it comes time to buy! You typically won’t be paying more than $10-20/year for a domain name, but it’s always worth investigating.

WHOIS Privacy

When you register a domain name, your contact information is listed in the WHOIS database, which is a publicly accessible record of domain name owners. In order to hide your contact information, you’ll have to purchase WHOIS privacy from GreenGeeks for an extra $9.95/year.

Website Builder

2x3 gallery grid of GreenGeeks website builder templates

This last add-on is free with a GreenGeeks hosting plan. GreenGeeks offers an optional, drag-and-drop website builder with hundreds of templates to choose from.

The builder is convenient, because you can get a hosted site up and running without any design skill at all – but since GreenGeeks is primarily a hosting provider, its website builder is more like an afterthought than a fully fledged tool (with GreenGeeks, you’re better off using a CMS like WordPress). However, if you’re interested, you can learn more from our ranking of the top 10 website builders on the market.

Need more information? 

Read our GreenGeeks is the best provider available – its 300% renewable energy match is something you can feel really good about!

While GreenGeeks is great, it’s not the best fit for everyone. It has some of the worst performance for VPS posting and in general, the value for money for its different hosting categories is uneven at best.

But it has the joint best overall feature score out of 13 providers, and the best features for shared hosting specifically. For Managed WordPress users, its hosting comes in 5th overall in our rankings. If you want a reliable hoster for a small website while having the satisfaction that you are helping the environment, then GreenGeeks is for you!

What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Till then, happy hosting![/vc_column_text]

Written by:
headshot of Sam Jagger
Being a Writer for Website Builder Expert isn’t just typing words on a laptop. Each day, I’m finding new and innovative ways to help you get online in a mode you feel comfortable with. And it’s a task I do with enthusiasm and gusto. Not only do I have experience building with all the providers we talk about - creating websites such as this Strikingly demo - but we also have our wonderful, constantly updated research fielded by our researchers, so you can be reassured that what we say is an honest reflection of our professional opinions. I’ve written articles and featured guest posts for apps like UXPin on web design in the modern age, as well as answered over 100 user comments on the site and delved into the world of choosing a domain name and adding Bitcoin payments to your site in my own pitched articles. All of this is to say that when I want to get you online - I mean it! Outside the office, I have attended the eCommerce Expo and built up a ton of industry knowledge through talks, workshops, and guided learning sessions with noted experts. The internet is made for everyone, so come online and let us help you get there.
Researched by:
natasha_willett
I love to understand human behavior and the cognitive biases that drive us to do what we do. For over nine years I have worked as a mixed method researcher – research using a mix of numerical data and personal experiences – across a range of sectors, from insurance and policy development to finally arriving at Website Builder Expert five years ago. Fascinated by consumer decision-making, I meticulously built our leading ranking methodology to explore where providers like Wix sit within a competitive industry and what value they truly bring to our audience.
As a member of the Market Research Society, I’m an advocate for high ethical, commercial, and methodological best practices. All of this combines to give you the most ethical recommendations based on real data.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *