HostGator Review
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- The Good
- Good price
- Excellent uptime
- Unlimited everything
- The Bad
- Expensive in-house domains
- Complex C-Panel
While HostGator may not be the cheapest, they certainly score high with their low prices that always stay low. There are no introductory prices like other web hosting companies tout. They also don’t put as many limitations on you as some of their competitors. With HostGator you get unlimited domains and bandwidth on any plan above a Hatchling, for example.
- Price
- WordPress hosting
- $5.95/month
- Shared hosting
- $2.78/month to $16.95/month
- VPS hosting
- $19.95/month to $149.95/month
- Dedicated hosting
- $79.00/month
- Cloud hosting
- $4.95/month
- Reseller hosting
- $19.95/month
HostGator has a lot of pricing options to choose from because of all the options within their three plans. Those three plans are the Hatchling Plan, the Baby Plan and the Business Plan. Under each plan, you can choose a billing cycle that will determine your price per month. The highest rate is always up to six months, while the 36 month billing cycle is the cheapest. The first two plans offer use of one domain, one-click installs and unmetered bandwidth. The Business plan also offers a free, private SSL and IP address, as well as a special toll-free number for customer service. HostGator’s other hosting plans, like VPS, dedicated servers and cloud hosting, also rely on many different price structures to attract customers with a wide range of budgets.
- Features
- One-click script installs
- $100 for Google AdWords
- $100 Bing/Yahoo credit
- Constant Contact email marketing
- 45-day money back guarantee
- Free website transfer
- Instant shopping carts
HostGator makes it easy for you to be a successful website owner by offering many features that are free to use. When you use HostGator, they will hook you up with free advertising, transfer your website for free and help you create a store in minutes to sell your products.
- Uptime
- 99.9%
- Response Time
- 300 ms
HostGator stands behind their 99.9% uptime figure with a guarantee on their homepage. This number is on par with big sites like GoDaddy and is an excellent number for uptime. As for their speed, their response times are also excellent. In fact, they are 2.5 times faster than their competitors.
- Advanced Features
- MySQL
- Unlimited Databases with phpMyAdmin Access
- Programming Language
- CGI, Fast CGI, PHP 5 and 7, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, SSL
- Programming Modules
- Curl, CPAN, GD Library, ImageMagick
- System Management
- SSH Access and Cron Job Scheduling
- Hosting options
- Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Magento, Wiki
HostGator offers more advanced features than any other major web host, and they are easy to use. The Magento feature comes with a free e-commerce platform for your store and you can easily start a Wiki site using MediaWiki.
- Support
- Online Support Portal
- HostGator Community
- 24/7 telephone support (free to U.S. customers)
- International number
- Live chat
HostGator has many ways to get in touch with them for a wide range of issues, whether billing, technical or something else. They have dedicated numbers for billing questions and to report abuse, for example. Their online support portal has over 500+ video tutorials and 680+ help articles. If you can’t find your answer there, you can try live chat or give them a call anytime of day.
HostGator: User Reviews
HostGator: Comments
HostGator is a hosting company that will help you grow. They offer so many different products that, if you’re not overwhelmed, you can be sure to find a perfect match for your web hosting needs. What HostGator does is try to appeal to all customers, from newbies just starting out to experienced webmasters who have dozens of clients, as well as everyone in between. Read on to find out if you want to be one of those customers.
How Does HostGator Web Hosting Work?
Once you decide which plan is right for you and your set budget, you can easily start the process of hosting a website. Simply click on the plan and follow the prompts. Once you pay and your email is verified, you can access the c-panel and start building your website.
What Makes HostGator Web Hosting Stand Out?
What really makes HostGator stand out is their amazing uptimes and load times that are some of the fastest in the industry. If you are all about speed, then HostGator will get your pages loaded fast, something both you and Google love. HostGator’s price points also help them stand out among the competition. There is a price for every budget and the price stays that way. You won’t be charged a higher price after your contract is up. Instead, you simply renew the contract for the same amount, if you want. Lastly, they run your website on wind power generated in Texas and Utah. How green is that?
Common Reviews of HostGator Web Hosting
Of 535 reviews on the website WhoIsHostingThis?, HostGator received 3.5 out of five stars. The scoring was based on HostGator support, features, uptime and value. Overall, the reviews were mostly positive, with some mixed, and a few quite negative. One positive review that really stood out said about HostGator, “The interface is very easy to get around and has all the popular features like one-click software installations, unlimited mail accounts, unlimited domain hosting and more. The price is great also. As a web designer, I’ve worked with more hosts than I can name and believe me, they all have their quirks but HostGator has been my favorite so far. I recommend using live chat for support issues as you’ll get a quicker reply but otherwise definitely give this host a shot, especially since they allow you to pay month to month instead of annual so you can really test them out before you commit to an entire year.”
The negative reviews seemed to focus on unexpected down times, having trouble with customer support, and long hold times while waiting for customer service. However, even when a customer seemed unhappy with one feature, they still expressed their happiness with other features. For example, one customer wrote, “I have been a HostGator customer for some time now and I am happy with the up time service, sites almost never go offline and if they do it is for just one second or so. I did not like their customer service support.”
Is HostGator Web Hosting for Me?
HostGator offers so many options that every website owner can find a plan to purchase from them. But should you? The answer is yes, if they indeed check off everything you have on your list of “must-haves” when it comes to choosing a web hosting partner. No list yet? That’s ok. We’ve come up with some questions you can ask yourself right now that will help you decide if HostGator or another web hosting company is right for you.
- Is speed and uptime more important than price?
- Do you want to pay month-to-month or lock in for a much lower rate?
- What is your budget?
- How many websites do you want to host?
- Are you an international or domestic customer who needs support more than the average customer?
- Are you a pro when it comes to building a website from a c-panel?
- What kind of experience do you want to have with your web hosting company?
As a hosting company, HostGator seems to hit all the marks. They have excellent uptimes and response times, their plans are varied and fit any budget, and their customer service is available 24/7. On the downside, their c-panel can seem outdated and confusing. You can also can expect to pay more for a domain through them. Their domains start at $5, which is pricey considering you can get them for as low as $1.99 from other competitors.
For beginners, the c-panel can be confusing. However, there is always a learning curve when it comes to starting something new. For experienced c-panel users, you shouldn’t have any issues getting started.
If you try your best to be green in both your personal and professional life, then you might want to seriously consider HostGator as your web hosting company. The fact that they are environmentally conscious enough to use an alternative energy source can only do good for your reputation. However, HostGator is not the only green hosting company out there. GreenGeeks web hosting also uses wind power.
If you plan on having an e-commerce store, HostGator offers a lot of advanced features to get you started, even for free. This is good news to those just starting out. For established stores, you can take advantage of their free transfer.
Whether you plan on hosting one or more websites, need reseller hosting, cloud hosting or something else, HostGator offers everything you could possibly need. This is also important to consider if you plan on growing. There are really no limits with HostGator.
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