SiteGround is an IT company providing businesses with services including web hosting SaaS platforms for site building, e-commerce and email marketing.
The firm’s director of product development Daniel Kanchev spoke exclusively to UKTN about how the company’s technology is helping startups grow, how AI can be incorporated into its services and the future of its products.
What sets SiteGround’s tech apart from other hosting providers, and how does that help SMEs grow?
We believe great hosting isn’t just about having fast servers, it’s about giving every small business the power to perform like an enterprise. That starts with building on Google Cloud’s premium infrastructure, the same global network that powers websites like YouTube and Google.
But what truly sets us apart is how we have built on top of that foundation.
We’ve created our own custom technologies, purpose-built for speed, security, and reliability. Unlike providers who rely on off-the-shelf solutions, we design and maintain proprietary tools that boost website performance without requiring users to be technical experts.
Take our custom PHP implementation–a custom, in-house solution that processes requests up to 30% faster than standard setups. Or our unique site-isolated architecture that keeps each website (even those from the same hosting plan) independent, so one site’s issues don’t spill over to another.
These details make a big difference where it counts: your website loads faster, ranks higher in search engines, and can handle high-traffic moments like a holiday sale or viral campaign.
We make these advanced technologies available even in our basic plans, helping small businesses compete online with the same technological advantages that larger companies enjoy.
How does SiteGround’s technology scale with SMEs?
Scalability is baked into how we’ve designed our platform. Whether you’re launching a portfolio site or running multiple high-traffic online stores, you can grow with SiteGround without worrying about migration or downtime.
Most small businesses start with our basic hosting plan, which includes powerful features like multi-layer caching, a global CDN, daily backups and more – tools that many hosts only offer on premium plans.
Our technology allows businesses to start small and scale without disruption. When a customer needs more resources, they can upgrade their plan without experiencing downtime or having to migrate their website.
This is possible because of our container-based infrastructure, which allows us to allocate resources dynamically. There’s no interruption and no need to change providers.
For businesses experiencing rapid growth, our cloud hosting provides dedicated resources with auto-scaling capabilities. This means resources automatically increase during traffic surges, ensuring websites remain operational during crucial business moments like marketing campaigns or sales events.
How does SiteGround’s approach to performance optimisation translate into tangible business outcomes?
Website speed directly impacts a business’s bottom line. Research shows that websites loading in under 2.4 seconds achieve nearly three times higher conversion rates than slower sites.
That’s why we engineer performance into every layer of our platform. On average, sites run 85% faster after moving to SiteGround.
Our approach works on three critical layers that together create a noticeable difference for businesses:
At the network level, we use Google Cloud’s premium infrastructure combined with our centralised DNS system to reduce loading time. Our global CDN with over 170 edge locations ensures content loads quickly for visitors worldwide.
On the server level, we use enterprise-grade SSD drives and a site-focused architecture that prevents performance issues on one site from affecting others.
We have also developed our own ultrafast PHP implementation that processes requests 30% faster than standard setups, a critical advantage since PHP powers most business websites including WordPress.
For WordPress users, we provide application-level optimisation through our SiteGround Optimizer plugin, which automatically handles technical improvements like code minification and image compression.
These technical optimisations deliver concrete business results: higher search engine rankings that bring more visitors, lower bounce rates as fewer visitors leave due to slow loading and higher conversion rates as more visitors complete purchases or contact forms.
For e-commerce sites, our optimised database handling means they can process more simultaneous transactions during busy periods.
The real value isn’t just in the technology itself, but in how it helps small businesses compete more effectively online without requiring technical expertise from business owners.
What new tech is SiteGround developing in the coming years?
We have moved beyond the traditional hosting model that just provides server space, creating instead a complete ecosystem that supports the entire lifecycle of a business website.
For small business owners, managing a website often means juggling multiple tools from different providers – plugins for performance, separate services for security, and various developer tools. This fragmented approach creates compatibility issues and requires significant technical knowledge.
Our ecosystem starts with a fundamental advantage for small business owners: everything under one roof. Instead of managing separate services for websites, domains and emails, SiteGround provides a unified platform where these essential business tools coexist and work seamlessly together.
This integration begins with our site management interface, SiteTools, which offers intuitive control over all aspects of a business website.
Unlike traditional control panels, our infrastructure is site-focused rather than account-focused, which means each website is isolated for better security and performance.
For WordPress users, our SiteGround Optimiser plugin extends this ecosystem advantage. It works hand-in-hand with our server technology to speed up websites through image compression, code optimisation, and lazy loading.
Because we built it specifically for our infrastructure, it delivers better results with much less configuration than generic plugins.
Security is equally important for small businesses, so we’ve built integrated security tools that work at multiple levels – from server protections that block threats before they reach the website to specific safeguards that protect against common website vulnerabilities.
For growing businesses, we have built collaboration tools that streamline work with developers, employees, or contractors. Features like staging environments for safely testing changes and flexible access controls allow business owners to delegate website tasks without compromising security.
What has been the most significant technical achievement at SiteGround so far?
Our biggest win has been redefining what’s possible in shared hosting. Traditionally, shared hosting meant compromise – crowded servers, slow speeds, unreliable uptime. We’ve turned that model on its head.
By combining Google Cloud infrastructure with our proprietary caching, isolation, and performance systems, we’ve created a platform where small businesses enjoy speed and reliability once reserved for enterprise clients.
We have brought enterprise-grade tech to everyday users, without the complexity. That shift has had the biggest impact on the millions of small businesses growing with SiteGround today.
In what ways is SiteGround incorporating AI into its services, and what tangible benefits do these provide?
We are using AI where it matters most to our users: protection, productivity and peace of mind.
On the security front, our AI system constantly analyses traffic patterns to block emerging threats including ones traditional firewalls miss. This helps small businesses stay protected without needing to manage security updates or configurations themselves.
In customer support, we use AI to quickly offer guided solutions for users who prefer self-service.
These implementations focus on delivering tangible benefits rather than simply adding AI as a marketing feature.
Our approach is to use AI where it genuinely improves the experience for small businesses, helping them maintain secure, high-performing websites with less technical overhead.
How can businesses and web hosting services ensure site security and stay ahead of emerging threats?
Staying ahead of cyber threats requires a multi-layered approach that combines proactive security measures with responsive capabilities.
For hosting providers, this means implementing defence-in-depth strategies that protect websites at multiple levels. This includes network firewalls to filter traffic before it reaches servers, Web Application Firewalls (WAF) to block malicious requests, and server-level protections to prevent compromised sites from affecting others.
Regular security updates are critical, as many attacks exploit known vulnerabilities. Hosting providers should automate these updates whenever possible, especially for common software like content management systems and their plugins.
For small businesses, selecting a hosting provider with robust security measures is the first step, but they should also implement best practices like:
Using strong, unique passwords and enabling two-factor authentication, keeping all software updated, including plugins and themes, limiting admin access to only those who absolutely need it, implementing regular security scans and malware checks and maintaining regular backups that are stored separately from the live website.
The most effective security approaches combine automated protections with human expertise. Automated systems can handle known threats at scale, while security experts monitor for new patterns and develop countermeasures for emerging vulnerabilities.
Given the increasing sophistication of attacks, businesses should also have an incident response plan that includes how to restore from backups if a breach occurs, ensuring they can recover quickly with minimal disruption.
