Both are genuinely good. One advertises £2.99 and renews near £20; the other advertises £5.99 and stays there. A direct comparison for a UK buyer.
SiteGround is the most-recommended quality shared host in the world. Krystal is our default recommendation for UK buyers. They are similar in quality and completely different in how they price, which makes the comparison unusually clean.
Head to head
| SiteGround | Krystal | |
|---|---|---|
| Advertised | £2.99/mo (first year) | £5.99/mo |
| Renewal | ~£15–20/mo | £5.99/mo |
| 3-year cost | ~£430 | ~£216 |
| Infrastructure | Google Cloud, London region | Own NVMe/LiteSpeed, London & Manchester |
| Panel | Site Tools (in-house) | cPanel + Krystal Console |
| Support | 24/7 chat, ticket, phone — excellent | 24/7 UK team — excellent |
| Backups | Daily, 30 days; free restores on higher tiers | Daily, 30 days, self-restore included |
| Refund window | 30 days | 60 days |
| Storage on entry plan | 10 GB | More generous |
| Ownership | Independent (Bulgaria/Spain) | Employee-owned trust, B Corp |
Where SiteGround wins
Support breadth. Genuinely 24/7 across chat, ticket and phone, with a reputation earned over years and at a scale Krystal does not operate at. If you want someone available at 4am in any timezone, SiteGround has the staffing.
Google Cloud underneath. Premium-tier networking and a London region, with the resilience of a hyperscaler behind the platform.
Tooling. Site Tools, SG Optimizer and the migration plugin are polished, and the WordPress-specific features are well-judged.
Global reach. Data centres in the US, Singapore and Australia as well as Europe — relevant if your audience is not UK-centric.
Where Krystal wins
The price you pay is the price advertised. No cliff, no renegotiation, no diarised renewal date. Over three years that is roughly £200 saved on a single small site.
Resource limits are less tight. SiteGround's entry plan gives 10 GB of storage and a monthly visit guideline; Krystal is more generous, and the upgrade prompts are less frequent.
cPanel. If you want a portable, standard backup format and universal documentation, SiteGround's move to Site Tools removed that — see why so many hosts left cPanel.
Ethics and structure. B Corp, employee ownership trust, 100% renewable and carbon negative. If that matters to you it is not marketing garnish — it changes who the company answers to.
The 60-day refund window is twice SiteGround's and signals real confidence.
The deciding question
It is not quality — both are good. It is whether you will actually leave when the renewal arrives.
If you are the kind of person who diarises renewals, negotiates, and moves host every couple of years to chase introductory pricing, SiteGround's first year is excellent value and you will handle year two. That is a legitimate strategy and plenty of people run it successfully.
If you would rather set it up once, pay a fair price indefinitely, and never think about it again — which describes most small businesses — Krystal is straightforwardly cheaper and the UK support is a better fit for a UK company.
And the third option
34SP at £5/month flat, or 20i at £3.99 with unlimited websites, both belong in this comparison for UK buyers. 20i in particular undercuts everything here if you have more than one site.
The uncomfortable summary: SiteGround is excellent hosting sold with a pricing structure designed for people who do not read the second invoice. Krystal is comparable hosting sold at a fair price permanently. Which is better depends entirely on which of those people you are.
Published 14 April 2026. Prices and ownership change — check the comparison table for current figures, and the provider's own site before buying. No affiliate links anywhere on this site.