GreenGeeks is a web hosting company based out of Los Angeles. Like any web hosting company, it provides server space for your site, but there is a difference- Green Geeks makes a concerted effort to be environmentally friendly in a variety of ways.
With their wind farm, they not only produce their own power, but put 3 times the power they use back into the grid. In a city like Los Angeles, which is notorious for its smog and pollution, this is even more important, so regardless of where you live, you know that the power GreenGeeks is producing is helping the environment as a whole.
The green aspect is a big plus, but it wouldn’t be able to make up for poor services. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to – GreenGeeks is a great web hosting service regardless of its environmental practices. Many services place a limit on how much data you can send or store, but not GreenGeeks.
With them you get unlimited disk space, bandwidth, secure e-mail support for POP3 or IMAP mail systems, and GBs of site transfer. This means that you will never get punished financially for using your site more or adding more features to make it better and more accessible for your users, so everyone wins.
Their monthly subscription fee also covers unlimited use of the e-mail autoresponder, add-on or parked domains, MySQL databases, and, perhaps most importantly, 24/7/365 North American technical support should anything go wrong with your site.
If you are building a site for a business, you especially need it to be up constantly and to fix it as quickly as possible whatever goes wrong, so this is a huge advantage. Their other unlimited services also do a lot to make your work in running a site easier.
GreenGeeks also includes a lot of great features for free with their subscription.
For example, your domain name is free for the life of your account, which is something not many hosting companies offer any more. It also caters to users regardless of experience- there are free features for you if you have never made a site before or if you have one already up and running.
There is free site migration if you already have a site but want to switch to their services or just to a green hosting company. For beginners, there is a free starter site and a free drag and drop site builder to help you build a site that looks great even if you can’t hire an expensive designer.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the general pros and cons of using GreenGeeks:
Pros:
1. A very smooth migration from my previous hosting company. Not only is it free, but it was very fast with no errors. They were able to move my website over within 2 hours. This minimizes downtime for your site.
2. Customer service. When you call, you almost never have to wait more than 30 seconds. This is impressive and rare for customer service calls, and makes fixing any problems that do occur much less stressful. It also shows their dedication to providing quality service.
3. There are some very cool features available. You can use either “CloudFlare” or the GreenGeek “Optimize website” option to compress content and optimize the performance of your website. This is especially important nowadays as an optimized website loads faster and cleaner on devices like tablets and smartphones, which more and more people are using. Do be careful to use only one of these options at one time, though!
4. The uptime. I’ve been with this company since February 2013 and I’ve never had a downtime. Especially for businesses, this is very important. If users have trouble accessing your site or it frequently goes down, that gives a terrible impression of your company and will make them much less likely to buy from you.
5. The price. $4.95/month for such a professional service that covers so many bases is very reasonable. You won’t find a better price for a better hosting company.
Cons:
1. As you can see on the image of the cPanel below, there is no “Backup” or “Backup Wizard” option available.
This is a pretty big downside for me, because I like to generate and have a full backup of my website on my computer. While you can back up your databases using the “phpMyAdmin” feature and make copies of your files through FileZilla, this is difficult and time-consuming. It also feels less secure.
GreenGeeks makes this choice because without the “Backup” on the cPanel you will use less server resources, thus conserving energy. Like any hosting provider, they do keep their own backups, but it always feels safer to have your own as well.
Conclusion:
Overall, GreenGeeks hosting is a great home for any website. If you aren’t bothered by not being able to back up your site yourself, this could be the perfect choice for you. They offer a wide scope of services and great support for a reasonable price, and they have the added advantage of being certified environmentally friendly, which is good for your conscience and your public image.