HostGator Review

Founded in 2002 in Houston Texas, HostGator touts itself as hosting “everything from small business to enterprise.” The site has quite the wide variety of options to satisfy even the pickiest webmaster.

HostGator offers a wide range of packages, namely cloud, WordPress, VPS, Dedicated and Reseller-based hosting. With servers located in Provo, UT and Houston, TX, as well as additional worldwide locations, the company is known as one of the world’s leading hosting providers.

HostGator Packages and Pricing

All of HostGator’s plans feature unlimited bandwidth, disk space, emails and the company even has a 45-day money-back guarantee on all of its packages.

The hosting provider’s key features can be found below in detail, covering shared web hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, access to a virtual private server, dedicated hosting and paid domains.

It is important to note that prices quoted are only for the first term of the plan. You should check HostGator’s terms and conditions to view the price difference after your initial term.

Shared Hosting

If you’re starting to build your website, HostGator’s traditional web hosting package is recommended. Web hosting is also a good option for small business websites, especially for those just starting out and hoping to host their website affordably. From just $3.95 per month, you receive all the basic features required to safely host one domain.

If you are concerned about paying too much for a difficult-to-use platform, this is for sure the way to go, as it is inexpensive and simple to use. We do recommend adding additional features as need be, to better suit the needs of your small business.

Features such as added site security for an additional $19.95 annually, and SiteLock Monitoring, which costs $19.00 annually, are highly recommended add-ons. They give your site extra security and provide you with peace of mind.

There are also a number of additional features that come standard with the purchase of a HostGator Web Hosting plan.This includes things such as automatic weekly off-site backups, spam prevention with SpamAssassin, customer support 24/7/365 and many more additional perks.

Each plan level gives buyers the chance to take advantage of discounts depending on if they take the one, three, six, twelve, twenty-four and thirty six month plan. The longer your hosting plan, the more discounts you qualify for.

Shared Hosting Pricing

Each shared hosting plan comes with the following website essentials, free of charge.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud-based websites are for those who want extra security, knowing their data are fully backed up as frequently as possible. With this in mind, we highly recommend taking the $9.95 / month plan, which offers a simple dashboard for insights into your site’s performance.

There are also a number of other additional perks such as integrated coaching, which makes your website’s pages load faster, because they are hosted in the cloud.

The coolest feature by far offered by HostGator’s Cloud Hosting option is its ability to automatically distribute three mirrored copies of user data across multiple devices to ensure safety and numerous backed up copies, providing users with much-needed peace of mind.

Cloud Hosting Key Features

Integrated Caching

This feature enables your pages to load faster, because of HostGator’s caching configuration, which is custom-built for speed.

Intuitive Dashboard

Through this feature, you can manage and track site performance and gain specific insights on key metrics.

Resource Management

You can monitor and distribute additional resources quickly and easier.

Failover

This feature ensures that if issues arise with your server, that it will switch over to a backup server, with no interruptions.

Data Mirroring

This feature makes automatic backups of important data across multiple channels, ensuring data security.

cPanel

This is a simple-to-use interface that helps control every aspect of the platform from one screen. Another of HostGator’s key promises is that additional website traffic will not make your website slow or sluggish, when you use Cloud Hosting through HostGator. The company promises 100% uptime, with no downtime whatsoever.

Access everything from WordPress Installer to email accounts and disk usage.

Each site hosted in the cloud also comes with the following web essentials for free.

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting is ideal for those searching for more powerful hardware, reliability, increased security and relative low-cost. VPS hosting also gives you more control and overall access to HostGator’s server, eliminating the need to call tech support half way across the world.

This is the perfect tool for business owners who want to improve their website’s performance, increase its speed and more. It does however require some technical knowledge.

VPS Pricing

Dedicated Hosting

Having a dedicated server is a bit more expensive than other popular options, but in the end, well worth it. Dedicated hosting is designed for websites with high traffic, and slow-loading sluggish websites. You can think of dedicated hosting as a sort of optimization tool.

Essentially, dedicated servers allow you to manage every aspect of your server and hosting. You also do not have to share your resources with others, which can lead to faster speeds, overall better website performance and a ton of flexibility to manage a website properly.

This plan also includes a data center-level protection against DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and an IP-based firewall to ensure your server’s safety and highest performance.

Dedicated Hosting Pricing

All dedicated servers also include the following added features:

• 3 Dedicated IPv4 IPs
• RAID-1 Configuration
• Full Root Access
• DDOS Protection
• 24/7/365 Live Support
• Unlimited Databases
• A Fully Redundant Network

WordPress Hosting

Named ‘best managed WordPress Hosting Service of 2016’ by PC MAG, it’s no surprise that HostGator’s hosting for WP sites has a wide array of options to accommodate users.

The cool part about HostGator’s WordPress Hosting, is that it is actually hosted in the cloud. This alone gives users tons of extra perks like added security features and more ways to manage your website. This form of hosting is also ideal for web developers.

One thing to be aware of however, is additional fees. Though it says automated backups are included, they are actually manual backups, and to automate them, users must pay an additional $15.95/month.

There are many benefits of using WP Hosting by HostGator, one is that it comes with AdWords credit, a great perk for small business owners wanting to leverage their marketing efforts. It also comes with a 45-day money back guarantee.

WordPress Hosting Pricing

Each website hosted on WordPress also comes with the following web essentials, a bundle of free features.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is quite a unique form of web hosting. It is exactly what it sounds like, in that the owner of the account uses their hard drive space and bandwidth to host other websites.

The reseller can essentially make a profit if they purchase the hosting space at a wholesale price and then sells it to customers. Naturally, there are many inherent benefits of doing something like this, number one being an increased cash flow.

If you chose to host your site using HostGator’s Reseller Hosting package you should note that once you resell hosting space, the purchaser will be able to resell his/her space to others as well. Essentially, reseller hosting is allows every party involved to make money.

Reseller Hosting Pricing

Which HostGator Hosting Option is the Best Value?

All in all, for small businesses and blogging sites just getting started, we recommend Shared Web Hosting.

For sites that contain a lot of data, and ones that receive high volume traffic — we recommend Cloud Hosting through HostGator.

Many of the company’s bundles only include incremental increases in the amount of data, RAM and storage you receive, so you should make the decision on which package to purchase, based on this.

To help finalize your decision, check out the chart below, which details how HostGator’s traditional web hosting package stacks up to its competition.

A price comparison of GoDaddy and HostGator — two leading hosting platforms.

Standout Hosting Features

Speed and Functionality

When put head-to-head against other popular hosting sites, HostGator often came out on top in the time it takes to load a page through its technology.

24/7 Customer Support

This is certainly something to be proud of, and HostGator absolutely flaunts it throughout its website, ensuring even on major holidays, you can have your website issues resolved.

HostGator’s Support Portal, here you can gain access to the cPanal, web hosting options and more.

Live Chat

This is an option for those who already own domains through HostGator as well as those in the pre-sale stage. You can chat live with a customer service representative, 24/7. There, you will encounter representatives who have been trained to handle a number of issues.

Peer Support Forums

HostGator gives users access to an online forum, designed to crowdsource questions you might have about its various products and features. The forum is full of others who have or are experiencing issues, and those with anything from basic troubleshooting pre-sales questions.

Video Tutorials

This is a series of videos that help uses understand various features of HostGator. The website features videos on everything from how to add YouTube videos to your website, to the proper way to enable Flash on your website.

Payment System Interface

Paying your bill can often be a pain, and cause you to want to simply give up. This is an element that HostGator has completely nailed, and makes it very simple to make payments, purchase buy ups and more.

Domain Registration

HostGator offers 14 Top Level Domain Names, ranging in price from $0.95 to $15, which includes the standard dot com-based websites for $12.95/year.

HostGator partners with Domain.com to provide additional, and less traditional domain names like .ninja, .beer and .pro.

Search through HostGator’s many domain names, and chose the one best for you.

Original Top Level Domain Names

Regarding payments, HostGator accepts a number of forms of payment, including but not limited to credit and debit cards, electronic cards, prepaid and gift cards, overseas “domestic use only” cards, PayPal, checks, money order and more. Here are a few additional important things to note:Payment Terms and Conditions

• Users can only qualify for a refund, if they are first-time account holders. This means, even those who have had accounts, canceled, then reopened the account again do not qualify for a refund.
• Regarding late payments, HostGator gives users 10 days past the due date to settle their bill. If it is not done within this time period, HostGator will flag and restrict your account until the debt is settled.
• As stated on its website, “HostGator reserves the right to change prices or any other charges at any time. It does say that the company will provide users with at least a thirty day notice before enacting any changes to pricing, etc.

Uptime

Uptime has to deal with the amount of time a system spends in operation, which can directly affect things like speed and overall performance.

Regarding uptime, HostGator has a 99.9% guarantee, which is difficult to beat. This speaks volumes to the company’s dedication to its users.

Bottom Line

Not only is HostGator an award-winning platform named “Editor’s choice” and “the best shared web hosting of 2016 by PC Mag, the platform offers a variety of payment options and the ability to integrate thousands of existing applications and software. Additionally, with more than eight million current hosted domains, their customer portal is simple to navigate, and includes 100 + mobile-friendly templates and images. This includes, but is not limited to: WordPress, Joomla Hosting, Drupal Hosting and Wiki Hosting. Not to mention, the UI is simple to navigate, with the option to install Google-related apps, manage your domains, view analytics and even tighten security if and when need be.