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April 17, 2024April 17, 2024

Upgrading to MySQL 8 on All SiteGround Servers

A few weeks ago we initiated an upgrade to MySQL 8 across our servers. That came as a result of a long process of monitoring and testing the compatibility of this version with our clients’ websites, until we concluded that MySQL 8 is highly compatible with major applications hosted on our platform and safe to switch to.

MySQL is a fundamental piece of software in our stack, used by the great majority of our clients to power up their databases. Its optimal functioning has a great impact on the overall website performance and availability. That is why the SiteGround team dedicates a lot of resources to optimize and customize our MySQL, always aiming to squeeze out better and better performance. To achieve this goal over the years, we introduced various customizations such as our unique MySQL setup, and we carefully plan and test any new MySQL version upgrades, making sure the benefits outweigh the potential damages such an upgrade could bring. We are now confident that MySQL version 8 is largely compatible and our clients can safely take advantage of the enhanced database performance, scalability, and coding optimizations it brings along.

What is the plan for the MySQL update?

First, we would like to announce that all new websites created on our shared servers and all newly created cloud accounts now come with MySQL 8 by default.

Second, the migration process to MySQL 8 of existing shared sites is now in progress. Once our shared servers are updated, we will start updating the Cloud instances too. The process will continue in the next few months. According to our schedule, we plan to have migrated all our customers to MySQL 8 by the end of June this year.

To make the transition as easy and smooth for you as possible, we are sending you emails at least one week in advance to inform you on what dates exactly we are going to upgrade your website to MySQL 8. The upgrade procedure is performed late at night when the traffic to the server is minimal. A brief service interruption may occur while updating the software. No action is required on your side in relation to the migration.

What is new in MySQL 8?

MySQL 8 introduces a variety of new features and improvements of old functionalities all aiming to improve the overall performance and scalability as well as developer experience. Here are some of the most notable ones.

Better performance and scalability

MySQL 8 offers better performance and scalability. Benchmark tests show better results in terms of both performance and scalability for MySQL 8 compared to MySQL 5.7. The tests show that MySQL 8 is handling read/write operations much better and the number of processed transactions is much higher.

Furthermore, the tests show that MySQL 8 utilizes the hardware much better compared to 5.7.

Here are some of the improvements that make this possible:

Scaling Read/Write Workloads

MySQL 8 shows better performance on intensive read/write and more than 2 times better performance on high loads is observed compared to MySQL 5.7.

Better Performance upon High Contention Loads

Performance for high contention workloads has been significantly improved in MySQL 8. A high contention workload occurs when multiple transactions are waiting for a lock on the same row in a table, causing queues of waiting transactions.

In MySQL 8, such bursts are dealt with much better in terms of transactions per second and latency. That leads to better hardware utilization (efficiency), as the system needs less spare resources and can thus run with a higher average load.

Native partitioning/InnoDB Pool Enhancement

MySQL 8 supports native partitioning for the InnoDB engine. That allows you to split large tables into smaller partitions. This can improve query performance and reduce storage requirements, especially for large tables. The new MySQL version also introduces enhancements of the InnoDB pool. The pool is responsible for caching the data and reducing I/O operations.

Common table expressions (CTEs)

With the latest MySQL 8 version, you can now take advantage of common table expressions as well. A common table expression is a result set which exists only temporarily while executing a statement that can later be used in the same statement.

These CTEs allow for creating more complex queries by using simpler blocks, based on temporary tables. In other words, common table expressions allow the usage of named temporary result sets.

Default character change

The default character in MySQL 8 is changed to utf8mb4.

One of the most notable differences between utf8, utf8mb3, and utf8mb4 is the maximum number of bytes per character. While utf8 and utf8mb3 can only store characters in the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane) of Unicode, utf8mb4 can store characters in the Supplementary Plane. utf8mb4 supports a wide range of characters, including emojis and other special characters.

Invisible indexes

Another new feature in MySQL 8 are the invisible indexes. Generally, indexes are used by the MySQL query optimizer to improve the speed with which data is retrieved, while invisible indexes are the ones that are hidden from the MySQL query optimizer and make it possible to test removing an index on query performance, without making a destructive change.

For example, if you are working with a very large table with a few indexes, and you want to optimize it further by removing certain indexes and adding new ones. Imagine that you know that you will need these indexes in the future. Removing them in the first place might be dangerous, because building them again later on takes lots of resources. To avoid this, you can now simply use invisible indexes – make some existing ones into invisible ones, test whatever you need with the new ones, and then bring them back, when needed, by making them visible again.

Why is now the right time to migrate?

As MySQL is such a fundamental technology, major updates happen rarely and take a long time to be universally adopted. MySQL 8 was first released in 2018, but it took several years for the majority of the websites and their underlying applications to become compatible with it. We were constantly monitoring the level of compatibility and have chosen the current update time, as we have seen that now the risk of negatively impacting a website with the upgrade has greatly diminished. Since the update started a few weeks ago, we have already seamlessly moved hundreds of thousands of sites to MySQL 8.

November 20, 2023September 18, 2025

Protecting WordPress Websites from Critical SQL Injection Vulnerability in WP Fastest Cache Plugin

At SiteGround, we always take proactive measures to identify and address potential vulnerabilities promptly. This was the case with the latest critical vulnerability for WordPress sites using the popular WP Fastest Cache plugin. By upgrading the vulnerable WP Fastest Cache plugin to version 1.2.2, we remedied a critical SQL injection vulnerability within an hour since it was reported.

Understanding the Vulnerability

The WP Fastest Cache plugin is widely used to enhance website performance by generating static HTML files. However, versions prior to 1.2.2 of this plugin were found to have a severe SQL injection vulnerability, reported last week. This vulnerability allowed unauthenticated attackers to inject additional SQL queries into existing queries, potentially compromising the security of the website’s database.

This security flaw scored 9.8 out of 10, indicating its critical nature. As a result, it was crucial for us to take immediate action to protect our clients’ websites.

Upgrading the Plugin for Enhanced Security

To safeguard our clients’ websites, we proactively upgraded the WP Fastest Cache plugin on their behalf. Our dedicated team upgraded over 98% of the plugin users on our servers to version 1.2.2 . The mass upgrade was completed within an hour, effectively eliminating the critical SQL injection risk.

However, a very small portion of WordPress websites did not receive the plugin upgrade despite multiple attempts. If you are using the WP Fastest Cache plugin, please check your current version from the WordPress dashboard of your website. We strongly advise you to take action immediately and either manually upgrade the plugin to version 1.2.2 or remove it from your website altogether. With this upgrade, we ensure that your websites are protected against potential exploits and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

If you’re looking for a reliable alternative to the WP Fastest Cache plugin, we recommend trying the SiteGround WordPress Optimizer plugin. It’s trusted by over 1,000,000 WordPress webmasters, and is ranked among the best WordPress performance plugins by the WordPress community. It’s pre-installed by default for all SiteGround clients, and completely free and available to download on any other hosting provider, if you have WordPress websites hosted elsewhere.

Our Commitment to Website Security

At SiteGround, we continuously monitor the security landscape for potential vulnerabilities. We prioritize addressing critical security issues, even in the event of third-party plugins – like the SQL injection vulnerability in the WP Fastest Cache plugin. Our proactive approach in upgrading the plugin for our clients demonstrates our commitment to providing a secure hosting environment.

If you have any questions or concerns about the security of your website, our dedicated support team is available to assist you. We are here to ensure that your WordPress website remains safe and protected.

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October 25, 2023July 28, 2026

Block Sophisticated HTTP Attacks with SiteGround CDN’s ‘Under Attack’ Mode

SiteGround CDN under attack mode security for websites

As a leading provider of web hosting services, at SiteGround we continually strive to offer the most advanced and reliable solutions to our customers, with a strong focus on website security. In our latest Website Horror Stories series for #cybersecuritymonth, we even gathered real stories of webmasters who suffered some kind of website attack or hack, which could have easily been avoided with our suite of website security services. Now we’re excited to announce a new feature addition to our security features – ‘Under Attack Mode’, part of SiteGround in-house CDN.

Our hosting services already encompass robust network attack protection. Our Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection effectively blocks a significant percentage of malicious traffic, ensuring your websites remain accessible and secure. But despite the effectiveness of all our website protection systems and security features, some HTTP attacks are more sophisticated and can circumvent traditional solutions. To further fortify your website’s defenses against these advanced threats, we’ve developed the new ‘Under Attack Mode’ feature, now part of our SiteGround CDN service.

Understanding SiteGround’s ‘Under Attack Mode’

SiteGround CDN’s ‘Under Attack Mode’ adds an additional layer of protection against potentially malicious HTTP traffic. If your website is under an HTTP attack, it’s immediately overloaded with fake traffic requests, usually coming from malicious bots, which makes it inaccessible for real users.

When turned on, our Under Attack feature challenges website visits with an automatic CAPTCHA, verifying that they are humans and not bots. It leverages JavaScript to perform automated mathematical calculations in the visitor’s browser. While these calculations are being processed, the end visitors see a loading message for a few seconds. Once the challenge is solved, indicating the visitor is most likely a real human, the system automatically redirects them to the website. This means your website will remain accessible to your real users even if it’s under attack – legitimate traffic will be allowed to proceed to your site, while we block the fake bot traffic.

How to Enable Under Attack Mode

Our ‘Under Attack Mode’ is available as part of our Premium CDN plan. If you’re looking for a way to further enhance the security of your website against sophisticated HTTP attacks, our paid plan now offers this advanced feature, together with a myriad of speed and security enhancements.

Once you’re using SiteGround CDN’s Premium plan, enabling the ‘Under Attack Mode’ is simple. It can be activated per domain name from the Site Tools management interface. Once enabled, the ‘Under Attack’ mode feature operates for a period of 24 hours, after which it is automatically disabled by the system.

Please note that while ‘Under Attack Mode’ is enabled, some third-party website analytics tools may not function correctly, as they may not be able to pass the challenge. This is why the feature is automatically disabled after 24 hours – to prevent any prolonged disruption to your website analytics.

SiteGround CDN’s ‘Under Attack Mode’ applies to all website visitors and all traffic towards the domain. This means all requests – from real users, bots, to API requests from third-party systems – are challenged, ensuring comprehensive protection.

Conclusion

Our latest SiteGround CDN security feature, the ‘Under Attack Mode’ is a testament to SiteGround’s commitment to providing superior security for our users. We understand the evolving nature of web threats and continually innovate to offer features that keep your website safe and accessible. Stay ahead of the curve with SiteGround CDN’s ‘Under Attack Mode’.

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October 11, 2023September 18, 2025

Response to HTTP/2 Rapid Reset: SiteGround’s Swift Action Against a Novel Vulnerability

In the dynamic world of cybersecurity, it’s not unusual to encounter new challenges. Recently, a novel vulnerability, dubbed the “HTTP/2 Rapid Reset” attack, was discovered. Given that HTTP/2 is considered a relatively new protocol, we see more modern and more clever ways to perform attacks every day. But this latest vulnerability has the potential to disrupt web services at an unprecedented scale.

Before we dive into the details, let’s break down what this means for website owners.

What is the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack?

HTTP/2 is a protocol that helps your website load faster and handle more visitors simultaneously. HTTP/2 allows clients to request multiple website resources (CSS files, JS files, pictures, etc.) with a single query. However, some clever attackers found a way to exploit this mechanism. They developed a technique to send a request to a server and then immediately cancel it, repeating this process at an extremely high rate. This stream of requests and cancellations can overwhelm a server, causing it to slow down or even crash – a classic Denial of Service (DoS) attack. The attack not only overloads the web server offering HTTP/2, but all backends that are also involved in the handling of website requests – such as PHP executions, application servers, static files delivery, etc.

Imagine a call center and a caller dialing the call center and then hanging up immediately after an operator picks up the call. The operators waste precious time handling the bogus calls and cannot handle legitimate requests. The whole call center comes to a halt and cannot handle actual clients requests. That’s exactly what this new attack was causing on a server scale.

SiteGround’s Rapid Response

At SiteGround, we always try to be steps ahead in terms of website security. This time makes no exception, and we were among the first web hosting companies to address this vulnerability. As soon as the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset attack was reported, our security engineers jumped into action. The official announcement was posted no more than 24 hours ago – on October 10th, 2023, with Google, Amazon and CloudFlare simultaneously announcing the problem. The web server software that we use for all hosting servers, Nginx, also released a blog post.

Our dedicated team of security experts worked tirelessly to patch all our web servers within an hour of the vulnerability’s disclosure. This rapid response ensured that our customers’ websites remained secure and operational, with minimal disruption. Right now, mere one day later, all SiteGround servers (web hosting servers and CDN) use patched Nginx code which protects all websites using our services.

Bottom Line

The HTTP/2 Rapid Reset attack is a serious threat, but thanks to our rapid response and commitment to security, SiteGround customers can rest easy. We’ve got your back, and we’re always ready to tackle whatever new challenges come our way. At SiteGround, your security is not just a priority – it’s a promise.

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October 11, 2023May 12, 2026

Exim’s Mail Vulnerability: A Tale of Swift Action and Unaffected SiteGround Clients

Picture this: a lively party, a toddler’s bedtime routine, a road trip – this is what three of our security engineers were in the middle of on that particular Saturday, September 30th. Suddenly, their phones beep at the same time in unison, even though far apart, cutting through the noise of the party, the hush of the nursery, the hum of the highway, respectively. It’s a report of a critical security issue with Exim, the mail server used by 56% of all mail servers on the internet, including SiteGround’s. Despite their different settings, all three of our security engineers cut their plans immediately, summoned for a response – a testament to our unwavering commitment to security.

What’s Exim and Why Should We Care?

Exim is like the mailman of the digital world, responsible for delivering your emails from one point to another. An issue with Exim could potentially mean serious trouble for your emails, and not only. To give you an idea of the scale, Exim is the most popular mail server in the world, used by more than 342,000 mail servers. That’s over 56% of all mail servers on the internet. Naturally, it’s the mail server software we at SiteGround rely on entirely for the delivery of outgoing messages and incoming mail for all our customers.

Given that email services are a crucial part of our hosting offering, used by the majority of our clients, we’re consistently working on maintaining our email security, deliverability, and reliability. It all starts with a heavy customization process, which is our usual approach to all software we use to make sure it meets our client’s needs better, while it gives us more control to keep it extra secure and always up to date.

The Exim Issue and SiteGround’s proactive response

The problem, tagged as CVE-2023-42115, was in fact a combination of six different zero-day exploits against Exim. A zero-day exploit means all servers using this particular configuration are immediately at risk. We got the report as soon as it was issued and immediately dived into all six issues to assess the risk for our clients.

The good news was, since we heavily customize all software on our servers, these particular parts of Exim that were affected, are not even used on our servers. However, our work did not stop there. Here is a breakdown of all issues, why SiteGround clients were safe, and what we did to ensure this remains so.

Three of the reported Exim exploits related to different types of email authentication, namely SPA/NTLM and EXTERNAL auth. Simply put, they deal with proving the Mail Server who you are and then allowing you to send emails. The new vulnerability meant that an attacker could craft a special request, use the security holes in the authentication mechanisms and gain access to the server which runs Exim. Even more than that, the attacker could gain full access to the server – not only Exim as a mail server but all data residing on the server. On SiteGround servers, however, we don’t use any of these authentication methods, so SiteGround clients were not affected.

The fourth exploit was related to a proxy problem, and was very similar in nature, and the fifth issue resided in a library called “libspf2”, used for certain checks related to email SPF records. Since we don’t use proxies in front of our Exim mail servers at SiteGround, nor do we use the problematic library, we were not affected by this vector of the attack, either.

The last problem was related to how people perform DNS lookups. Many people just use third party DNS resolvers and they cannot be sure if the DNS resolvers validate the data they receive. SiteGround uses our own DNS resolvers and we validate the data we receive. So this did not affect us as well.

All in all, we were lucky for most of the vectors of the attack but it took us a substantial amount of time to double and triple-check every one of those bullet points. And, of course, we went beyond that.

Usually, there are two ways to go about a vulnerability: you assess if and how it affects you, and if it does not, you can simply waive it off and sit this one out. The smarter way to go about it, though, is to think ahead, and even if a particular vulnerability, or a number of those, do not directly affect you, to still be proactive about installing the patches just to be safe in case it develops and opens the doors to more exploits that could potentially turn out to affect you at a later stage.

So this is exactly what we did – despite not being directly at risk by any of the vectors of this particular attack, our security engineers didn’t just sit back. In addition to meticulously checking and testing all exploits to make sure they do not affect SiteGround servers, as soon as a new, safer version of Exim was released (version 4.96.1), we immediately upgraded all our Exim mail servers. It’s our way of ensuring your peace of mind, and a testament to our proactive approach to security.

Wrapping Up

We hope this post helps you understand our approach to security through the lens of a real-life and most recent serious issue with a software used by half of the servers on the internet. Rest assured, at SiteGround, we’re always ready to leap into action for any potential issues that could affect your data. We’re committed to keeping your data safe and your mind at ease. If you have any questions or concerns, we’re here for you. Thanks for sticking with us, and here’s to staying safe and secure with SiteGround.

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September 21, 2023September 18, 2024

Revolutionizing Customer Support: Welcome to the Future with SiteGround’s AI Assistant

In the relentless race to provide unparalleled client satisfaction, companies continually evolve. We, at SiteGround, have proven to be the front-runners when it comes to innovation and improvement. Yet again, we’re embarking on a groundbreaking venture that’s set to redefine your customer support experience – with our new integrated AI assistant in your HelpDesk.

The Game-Changer – Instant AI in your Help Desk!

Gone are the days when you would type in a query and be directed to countless articles to sort through until you find the most relevant one, leaving you even more overwhelmed. Say hello to our cutting-edge Instant AI HelpDesk! It is powered by ChatGPT but heavily trained by SiteGround’s AI engineers and backed by expert prompt engineering, to provide accurate answers and address our clients’ specific inquiries via a broad spectrum of frequently asked questions and manual grading of responses.

The Evolution of AI in SiteGround’s Support Journey

Our AI journey started years ago with an AI-powered search feature. A fantastic tool, it seamlessly directed you to relevant articles within our extensive Knowledge Base. But now, we’re elevating that experience with the integration of ChatGPT by OpenAI. Not only does our AI Assistant fetch all relevant articles, but it also comprehends and consolidates the information to give you a precise response, crafted just for you! Imagine a world where AI doesn’t just find the right answer, but understands and delivers it as if it’s directly responding to a question in conversation. That’s our new reality!

Staggering Accuracy, backed by Fine-tuning and Stellar Prompt Engineering

Our specialized AI team has been burning the midnight oil, ensuring that our AI Assistant is not just smart but ‘SiteGround Smart’. Using the power of both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.0, fine tuning AI models and taking advantage of expert prompt engineering, ensures swift, accurate, and tailored responses for our customers. Here are the facts:

85% of the answers from our AI Assistant hit the bullseye! To be more accurate: a total of 96% of the replies generated by our AI Assistant are correct, but needed a bit more polishing to match the high standards, tone of voice and level of helpfulness that we’re after.

These staggering numbers in just a few months of work are a testament to the significance of fine-tuning models, constant prompt engineering improvements and the enthusiasm our team has invested into creating one more trendsetting tool for our clients’ convenience.

Engage, Explore, & Elevate Your Experience

Available exclusively for our valued SiteGround customers, you can reach our AI Assistant anytime via Client Area > Help Center > Instant AI Help. Each answer is a goldmine of information, often laced with links for a deeper dive. And guess what? We’re counting on you to make it even better! At the end of each response, we’ve provided a quick rating system. Your feedback is our treasure, guiding us to refine and perfect.

Join the AI Evolution

The beauty of AI lies in its potential to learn and evolve. As you engage with it, our AI Assistant sharpens, ensuring you always get the right solution, in an instant. Based on your direct feedback, we’re also expanding and improving our extensive Knowledge Base even more – we’ve added over 60 new articles and topics after the introduction of our AI Assistant.

Dive into this futuristic experience now and be part of our AI revolution. We’re waiting for your feedback! With SiteGround, the future isn’t tomorrow; it’s today!

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August 24, 2023May 13, 2026

PHP 8.3 (Beta 3) Is Now Available for Testing on SiteGround Servers

We are excited to announce that PHP 8.3 (Beta 3) is now available for testing on all SiteGround servers. Yet, again thanks to our unique multiple-PHP server setup, we are able to provide the latest PHP versions safely to anyone who wants to test them, almost immediately upon their official beta release. This means we are once again among the first companies to offer PHP 8.3 (Beta 3) for testing on our hosting platform 🎉🎉🎉.

Continue reading this blog post to discover more about the new features of the latest PHP version.

PHP 8.4: Stay Updated! 🚀 Check out our latest blog post to explore the newest features and enhancements in PHP 8.4.

New Features

Let’s delve into some of the new features that PHP 8.3 Beta 3 brings to the table. This version may not be highlighted by sweeping changes or major upgrades, but it introduces a few key features that could significantly enhance the PHP development experience.

gc_status() Returns Additional GC Information

Long-running daemons and cron jobs have always been a weak part in PHP in general. However, with PHP 8.3, the gc_status() function now returns additional garbage collection (GC) information. This is a significant improvement for developers who need to manage memory usage in long-running scripts. More information about this feature can be found here.

class_alias() Supports Aliasing Built-in PHP Classes

Another exciting feature in PHP 8.3 is the ability to alias built-in PHP classes using the class_alias() function. This allows PHP developers to hook up into built-in classes and overwrite classes or declarations in them. This feature opens up a world of possibilities for extending and customizing the behavior of built-in PHP classes.

json_validate() Function

Another exciting addition in PHP 8.3 is the json_validate() function. This function validates if a string contains valid JSON, providing a more efficient alternative to userland implementations that use json_decode(). The json_decode() function generates a ZVAL (object/array/etc.) while parsing the string, using memory and processing that could be saved. The json_validate() function uses the same JSON parser that exists in the PHP core and is used by json_decode(), ensuring that what is valid in json_validate() is also valid in json_decode().

Changelog with all language and library changes in PHP 8.3 could be find at https://wiki.php.net/rfc#php_83

How to test PHP 8.3 (Beta 3) on SiteGround Servers

Now, with a one-button click in your SiteTools -> Devs section you’re able to replace the current PHP version used by your website with PHP 8.3 (Beta 3). It is important to emphasize on the fact that this is PHP 8.3 in its Beta 3 version. This means it is available for testing purposes mostly and as always we strongly advise you not to use it at your production site before the stable release date (November 23, 2023). If you want to test it with an existing site, set up a new site for testing, clone your production site into it, and play with that – our WordPress Staging tool is perfect for that purpose. When you are done, you can just delete it.

As you explore your new testing environment, check your log files after every test. Make sure nothing fails and see if any new warnings or errors pop up.

Wrap Up

PHP 8.3 Beta 3 may not be marked by major upgrades, but it introduces a set of key features that could significantly enhance the PHP development experience – improvements to readonly classes, the new gc_status(), class_alias() and json_validate() functions, additions to the recently added Randomizer class, stack overflow detection, and more. That is not it for sure but there is enough time to “play” with the new PHP 8.3 (Beta 3) version and explore all sidekicks it might bring on before the official release.

Last but not least – remember, at SiteGround, we are committed to providing our clients with the latest and greatest in PHP technology well ahead of the others. Stay tuned for more updates and happy coding with PHP 8.3 (Beta 3)!

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July 3, 2023May 13, 2026

(New) SiteGround Email Marketing tool to boost your business growth

girl at laptop using SiteGround email marketing tool

Since day one, SiteGround has been all about helping our customers create high-performing websites to achieve their goals. We’ve been in your corner, listening to your feedback and constantly improving our hosting services to give you lightning-fast loading times, rock-solid security, and a seamless user experience.

But here’s the thing: while absolutely essential, having a website is only the beginning of your online success journey. The full potential of your site lies in the ability to connect and engage with your audience. To help you achieve that, we’re excited to introduce the new SiteGround Email Marketing tool. Designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind, this powerful addition to our suite of services will help you talk directly to your audience, driving growth and success for your business.

The growth potential of email marketing

Email marketing delivers remarkable results for professionals and businesses of all shapes and sizes. It’s a proven and direct way to effectively reach your audience, build credibility, increase brand recognition, improve sales, and boost website traffic, to name a few. Take it from us; we’ve been using email marketing forever and have seen its tremendous effect first hand. It has stood the test of time and emerged as the most reliable form of online communication, surpassing even social media in effectiveness.

Affordable, yet super effective

Email marketing has proven to be a powerful and budget-friendly tool for driving sales and revenue. Let’s talk numbers. Litmus, one of the most widely-used email testing tools, reports that the average return on investment (ROI) for email marketing is a staggering 4,200%. With minimum upfront investment, you can reach a large audience and enjoy amazing results. All you need is your content and a powerful, yet easy email marketing tool – like the SiteGround Email Marketing.

Direct channel to your leads and clients

When it comes to reaching your target audience, email marketing takes the lead. To paint you the picture, 90% of emails land directly in the intended recipients’ inboxes. In contrast, a mere 2% of Facebook followers are likely to see your post in their feed, according to a Forrester research. Email paves a direct line of communication with the people who genuinely want to hear from you, resulting in better conversion rates than other marketing channels.

A perfect fit for any project

Email marketing may seem hard, but we promise – it’s easier than you think. You don’t have to be a pro in content creation – you just need to know your goals and that’s what you’re already great at! Planning to share news about a new product with your customers, drum up some buzz with a special deal, or send out a roundup of your best blog posts? Email marketing is one of the most effective tools to use. It’s a great fit for any project and makes connecting with your audience a breeze.

SiteGround Email Marketing – built for your success

The SiteGround email marketing tool is designed to be incredibly user-friendly, so even beginners can create and send professional emails with ease. The tool is available out-of-the box and integrated in the SiteGround Client Area so that SiteGround clients can seamlessly manage their website and email campaigns all in one place. This means less time spent juggling multiple platforms and more time focusing on what truly matters: growing your business.

Let’s take a closer look at what the SiteGround Email Marketing tool has to offer.

Easy builder to create stunning emails

Easily create professional emails with our intuitive builder. Choose from our best layouts or start from scratch, add your content, and make it yours. Plus, our built-in responsiveness ensures your emails look great on any device, from desktops to smartphones and tablets.

Campaign management built to drive growth

SiteGround Email Marketing makes managing email campaigns easy and efficient. Create campaigns with a click and use our intuitive email builder to craft the perfect message. Choose between reaching all your subscribers or targeting specific audience with customized Groups and add a personal touch with dynamic content variables. Preview and test your campaign before sending it to ensure everything works perfectly.

(NEW) Lead Generation plugin for WordPress to build and grow your email list

Want to grow your email list? Meet our Lead Generation plugin for WordPress, a new feature of our Email Marketing tool, designed to help you create and add sign-up forms to your website easily. With just a few clicks, you can integrate the plugin with your SiteGround Email Marketing account and watch as new subscribers grow your list. The best part? Every new sign-up will be automatically added to your contacts as a ‘Subscriber.’

Contact lists for optimized targeting

Effortlessly import subscribers with CSV files and create interest groups for targeted messaging. Have complete control over individual profiles and maintain GDPR compliance. On top, our system automatically suppresses hard bounce email addresses to keep your list healthy and improve open and click rates.

Built-in analytics to improve conversions

Understand your campaign’s effectiveness and boost your results through our built-in analytics. Gain insight into important metrics such as open rate, click rate, bounce rate, interactions, and more to determine the most effective approach for your audience and increase conversions.

Start today and experience the power of email marketing

Don’t miss out on the chance to boost your online success with SiteGround Email Marketing. Log in to your Client Area -> Marketplace -> Email Marketing and get advantage of a special introductory offer and test the tool’s incredible potential firsthand. It’s time to unlock the full potential of your online presence and achieve the growth you’ve been dreaming of.

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June 21, 2023May 12, 2026

Introducing SRS (Sender Rewrite Scheme) to Make Email Forwarding More Reliable Than Ever

forwarded email that goes to the recipients inbox

Email services have always been an integral part of SiteGround’s hosting offerings, and our customers heavily rely on them. Every day, we process hundreds of thousands of emails. Many of them are sent out by forwarders set on our servers by our clients. Ensuring the successful delivery of these forwarded emails can be more challenging than you think, as sender verification is not as straightforward as with direct emails.

With the introduction of our own Spam Protection system, we now have more options to enhance the handling of our outgoing email traffic. It allowed us to become one of the few hosting companies to implement Sender Rewrite Scheme (or Mail SRS) and thus significantly improve email forwarding delivery rates for our clients. Here are the details of how this new functionality works and how it benefits our users.

Why are forwarded emails harder to deliver?

Usually, when there is an incoming email, the receiving server tries to identify if the sending server is legitimate and if the email should be accepted. The purpose of this check is to prevent malicious senders from reaching your inbox (for example, a scam email pretending to be coming from your bank’s domain name).

Domain names used for legitimate email sending need to have an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record, that defines the IP addresses or hosts that are allowed (or not allowed) to send messages on behalf of this domain.

In the Email Forwarding scenario, we have a Sender, who is sending an email to a destination address and after that, the destination address forwards the mail to its end recipient. This means that the end recipient is receiving an email coming from a “mediator” server, which might not be allowed to send messages on behalf of the sending domain, according to its SPF record.

This, based on the receiving servers’s policies, can result in mails being rejected or sent to your Spam folder due to SPF (Sender Policy Framework) failure.

How does SRS make email forwarding more reliable?

Sender Rewrite Scheme (or Mail SRS) is a mechanism that provides a solution in cases of email forwarding so that SPF failures can be avoided. This way legitimate forwarded mails can be successfully accepted from the receiving mail server.

SRS works by rewriting some of the metadata in the email messages after it’s passed the mediator server, “instructing” the destination mail server to check the SPF against the forwarding server, not the original sender’s domain. That way, the SPF check would pass because the forwarding server’s IP would match the sender’s address. Here is a real-life example of how this works:

Imagine a service you use (your bank, for example), sends an email to your business email address webmaster@yourdomain.com, which is hosted with SiteGround. The mail comes from your bank’s IP and its “from” address is billing@yourbank.com, for example – as these two are matching the SPF check passes and the mail is delivered to webmaster@yourdomain.com.

Now imagine that you would like to have this email forwarded from your business email webmaster@yourdomain.com to your personal email name@gmail.com.

If there is no SRS, Gmail will see an email sent from billing@yourbank.com but coming from a SiteGround IP. As these two do not match, the SPF check will not pass and Gmail will probably deliver the mail to the Spam folder.

If SRS is configured correctly, the “from” address will be changed to webmaster@yourdomain.com to match the SiteGround IP as its host. As these are matching, the SPF check will pass and you will receive the important email from your bank in your personal mailbox as well.

This makes SRS an important part of each mail server configuration for maintaining the efficiency and reliability of email forwarding services, ensuring that important communications are not mistakenly marked as spam or rejected due to SPF checks.

SRS Implementation Results

We’re already observing a very positive impact on the deliverability of the forwarded mails after SRS was made available on our servers. Our data shows 0% SPF failures for all forwarded email messages going through our servers, proving incredible stability and reliability of our mail service and improving the reputation of our mail system addresses. Needless to say, all of this directly benefits the mail reputation of the domains of clients hosted on our servers as well.

We believe that the mail Sender Rewrite Scheme is the best way to ensure trustworthy and reliable email services when it comes to email forwarding. Although it’s popular mainly in mail-specific providers and not so much in the majority of hosting companies, we’ve gone the extra mile to add this super useful and efficient mechanism to enhance the email experience of our clients even further.

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May 17, 2023August 31, 2023

New Data Center and CDN Point in Paris, France

We’re happy to announce that we’re expanding our data center and CDN network with a new location in Paris, France. Our new data center and CDN point will further increase the loading speed for French visitors of our clients’ websites that receive traffic from France.

New data center in Paris, France

Our new data center in Paris, France, is part of our data center infrastructure, powered by the premium Google Cloud platform. It ensures high redundancy and availability, fast connectivity, multi-layered security, and green-friendly service. We believe that our new data center will improve the experience of our customers even further. Here’s how:

What are the benefits of our new data center

The main benefit of our new data center in Paris is that it will improve the website loading speed of websites whose main traffic is from France. Having your website(s) hosted on a server closer to your main website audience shortens the distance between your website and its visitors, and thus speeds up its loading times.

This has a positive impact not only on your website speed, but on your visitors’ user experience as well. People are more likely to stay on your website, if it loads faster, and they tend to visit it again, if they had a good user experience. This in turn will lead to higher conversion rates as well.

How to move your website(s) to our new data center

If you would like to move any of your existing sites to our new data center in Paris, you could order their relocation in your Client Area > Marketplace > Hosting Services > Relocation. You can relocate each of your sites, hosted on a shared web hosting service, or your entire Cloud hosting account, if you are using Cloud hosting service.

From now on, all new sites created on StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek plans by our French customers will be hosted by default in the new Paris data center for your convenience. Paris will be your default location for newly ordered Cloud hosting plans as well.

CDN Location in Paris, France

Our in-house built SiteGround CDN service provides multiple geographical locations around the world in order to optimize our clients’ websites loading speed. We’re now launching yet another location – a CDN point in Paris, which will significantly increase the loading speed of websites with traffic from France, both there and all over the world.

If you still haven’t activated our CDN service for your website(s), go ahead and enable it completely free of charge from your Site Tools > Speed > CDN.

With the launch of our new data center and CDN location in Paris, we hope that our customers will enjoy an even better hosting experience.

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