Let me be very clear: SiteGround will smile while they extort you.I’ve been a loyal customer for years. Referred people. Spoke highly of them. But the moment I hit a tough patch financially and couldn’t renew my hosting, I learned exactly what kind of company they really are.My hosting expired in April. I reached out recently, hoping to at least save my data before it was deleted. They confirmed backups do exist, but I’d have to pay a $100 “restore” fee to access my own websites. And that’s on top of a $49.99 fee just to renew the hosting for one month.Here’s the kicker: that $100 fee is waived if you pay within 30 days of expiration, but when I explained that I simply couldn’t afford it back then and still can’t now, they offered no flexibility. No compassion. Just a smug shrug. According to them, it doesn’t matter why you couldn’t pay. If you’re past that arbitrary window, they’re happy to ransom your data.And while they’re charging me $49.99 for a single month of hosting, their current promo is $7.49/month, but no one offered that either. I wasn’t even given the option to restore just one site. No partial help. No read-only access to download my content. Just a cold “pay the full amount or lose everything.”So to be crystal clear:SiteGround will hold your website hostage and delete your data if you can’t pay their inflated fees in time, no matter how long you’ve been a customer, or how hard things are.They’ll wrap it in polite live chat small talk, but make no mistake, this is exploitation, plain and simple.If you’re a small business owner, or someone who values empathy, avoid SiteGround at all costs. Because the second life gets difficult, they’ll drop you without a flicker of conscience.
