The question why was SiteGround removed from WordPress.org has been searched thousands of times since mid-2023, yet no authoritative answer exists. SiteGround had been listed on the WordPress.org recommended hosting page for years. Then, quietly, it was gone. No blog post. No community announcement. No email to SiteGround customers. Just a change to a webpage and a brief comment at a Meta team meeting that raised more questions than it answered.

This page is not a hit piece on SiteGround. SiteGround still hosts millions of websites and still performs well on many technical benchmarks. But the WordPress.org removal is a documented event with documented consequences — and anyone currently on SiteGround, or considering switching, deserves a clear account of what happened, what the platform changed, and what the WordPress.org list now recommends instead.

01. When Was SiteGround Removed From WordPress.org and Who Made the Decision?

SiteGround was removed from the WordPress.org recommended hosting page in mid-2023. The change was executed by Samuel Wood — known in the WordPress community as “Otto” — a contributor to WordPress.org who is sponsored by Audrey Capital, the investment firm controlled by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg.

When the removal was raised at a Meta team meeting shortly afterward, Wood’s explanation was blunt: “Matt asked me to remove SiteGround because that page is getting revamped. I know no more than that.” That statement, reported by WP Tavern in July 2023, is the complete official record. Nothing further was ever published — not by Automattic, not by WordPress.org, and not by SiteGround itself.

Following SiteGround’s removal, only Bluehost and DreamHost remained on the page. In late 2024, DreamHost was also removed. The current list — confirmed live on wordpress.org/hosting — shows three hosts: Pressable, Bluehost, and Hostinger. The promised “revamp” of the page did eventually happen. SiteGround was not included in it.

02. Why WordPress.org’s Own Selection Criteria Doesn’t Explain the Removal

The WordPress.org hosting page does list criteria for what qualifies a host to be recommended. The stated factors include contributions to WordPress.org, the size of the host’s customer base, ease of WordPress auto-installation, and various performance indicators. These are reasonable criteria that SiteGround, with millions of customers and years of active presence in the WordPress ecosystem, plausibly meets.

But the page also includes a phrase that undercuts the entire framework: listings are described as “completely arbitrary.” That is not a paraphrase — it is the language WordPress.org uses to describe its own recommendation process. It means there is no appeals process, no published scoring system, and no stated reason required for adding or removing any host.

WordPress contributors — including Review Signal founder Kevin Ohashi, who runs the widely-respected WPHostingBenchmarks data — had been calling for greater transparency around the listing criteria for years before the SiteGround removal. The removal simply brought those concerns to a wider audience. The community wanted to know: what specifically did SiteGround do, or fail to do, that triggered this? No answer ever came.

03. What SiteGround Changed in the Months Before the WordPress.org Removal

The WordPress.org removal gave no stated reason. But it did not happen in isolation. In the period surrounding the delisting, SiteGround introduced changes to its pricing and feature set that generated significant pushback from existing customers. Whether these changes directly influenced the removal is unknown — but they form the documented context around it.

The CDN change is particularly noteworthy. SiteGround had long marketed its free CDN as a standard feature. Introducing a paid premium tier — at $14.99 per month on top of hosting costs — represented a meaningful departure from what many customers had signed up for. The professional migration fee similarly surprised users who had previously migrated sites at no extra cost. These are the kinds of changes that erode trust, generate negative word-of-mouth, and show up in community forums as sustained complaints.

The renewal pricing gap is arguably the most significant structural issue. SiteGround’s introductory rate for the StartUp plan runs as low as $2.99 per month. The renewal rate for the same plan is $17.99 per month — a jump of approximately six times the original price. This pricing pattern is not unique to SiteGround in the hosting industry, but the gap is wider than most comparable providers, and it has been a recurring source of criticism in independent reviews.

04. How the WordPress Community Reacted to SiteGround Being Removed

The community reaction to the SiteGround removal was immediate and pointed. Developers, agencies, and site owners who had recommended SiteGround to clients based in part on its WordPress.org endorsement wanted to know what had changed. The absence of any explanation made the situation worse, not better — it left the community speculating about financial relationships, competitive dynamics, and whether the recommendation page was a reliable signal at all.

WP Tavern’s reporting on the removal attracted a large volume of comments from WordPress professionals. The dominant theme was not anger at SiteGround specifically, but frustration with WordPress.org’s lack of process transparency. Several contributors made the point directly: if the criteria for being on the list is “completely arbitrary,” then being listed — or removed — means very little as a quality signal.

Some community members noted that the three remaining recommended hosts all have financial or structural relationships with Automattic: Pressable is owned by Automattic directly, Bluehost operates a partnership with Automattic’s WP Cloud platform, and Hostinger has its own active relationship with the WordPress.org ecosystem including a Five for the Future contribution page. Whether or not these relationships influenced the selection, the perception of conflict of interest around the hosting page is now well established in community discourse.

05. What the WordPress.org Removal Actually Means for Current SiteGround Customers

If you are currently on SiteGround, the delisting from WordPress.org does not mean your website is at risk or that SiteGround will stop working tomorrow. SiteGround still operates millions of domains, maintains a strong technical reputation on independent benchmarks, and continues to offer reliable uptime. The removal from a recommendation page does not affect your hosting service.

What it does affect is the calculus of whether to stay, especially when your introductory pricing period ends. Here is the practical reality for SiteGround customers facing renewal:

06. Why Hostinger Now Appears on WordPress.org Instead of SiteGround

Hostinger’s inclusion on the WordPress.org recommended list following SiteGround’s removal is confirmed. As of 2026, wordpress.org/hosting lists Hostinger as one of three recommended hosts, with the description: “Hostinger, trusted by more than 2.5 million clients worldwide, offers fast and secure managed WordPress hosting.” The listing includes a link to Hostinger’s Five for the Future contribution page — a WordPress.org initiative where companies pledge ongoing contributions to the WordPress project.

From a pure product standpoint, the case for Hostinger on that list is straightforward. Independent testing consistently gives Hostinger strong performance scores — in some head-to-head comparisons with SiteGround, Hostinger’s LiteSpeed servers return faster TTFB (time to first byte) results. Hostinger also offers a more predictable pricing model: renewal rates stay significantly lower than SiteGround’s, and the Premium WordPress plan is available from $2.49/mo for longer-term commitments — compared to SiteGround’s $17.99/mo renewal on the comparable entry plan.

If you are currently reconsidering SiteGround — because of renewal pricing, the removal from WordPress.org, or simply wanting to know what WordPress.org recommends in 2026 — Hostinger is the direct replacement on that list. I now use and recommend Hostinger for most WordPress sites where budget and long-term cost predictability matter. The migration process using Hostinger’s free tool is straightforward and takes under an hour for most sites.

07. Should You Switch From SiteGround to Hostinger After the WordPress.org Removal?

The WordPress.org removal alone is not a reason to switch. A recommendation page change does not affect your site’s performance on its current host. The more relevant question is: when your current SiteGround term ends, does renewing at the regular rate make sense compared to moving to a host that carries the WordPress.org endorsement, offers lower long-term costs, and includes free migration?

Here is a straightforward decision framework based on the why was SiteGround removed from WordPress.org question and what it reveals about the current hosting landscape:

08. What the SiteGround Story Reveals About the WordPress.org Hosting Page

The broader lesson from SiteGround’s removal from WordPress.org is not really about SiteGround. It is about WordPress. org-recommended hosting page itself and the weight it should carry in a hosting decision.

The page openly acknowledges that the listing is “completely arbitrary.” Removals happen without explanation. Hosts are added without published scoring criteria. In this context, the page is more useful as a shortlist of hosts that have an active relationship with the WordPress.org ecosystem than as an objective quality ranking. Being on it is meaningful; not being on it may say more about commercial relationships than about hosting quality.

For the purpose of choosing a WordPress host in 2026, independent benchmarks — WPHostingBenchmarks, GTmetrix performance data, Trustpilot reviews, and real renewal pricing — remain more reliable indicators than the WordPress.org page alone. That said, Hostinger’s current inclusion on the list, combined with its competitive pricing and independent performance data, makes it a strong starting point for anyone building a new WordPress site or reconsidering their current host.

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