Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.
With the Internet permeating every aspect of our lives, every business and individual should have a website. Whether it's fully functional e-commerce or a simple blog that is updated frequently, you need a useful web hosting service.
The feature-rich HostGator is a great choice. It offers services such as outstanding quality cloud hosting, dedicated servers, and reseller hosting, however, what really makes them stand out is the shared hosting business with many great features.
What is HostGator?
View Details
Like BlueHost, HostGator is one of the most popular colocation providers and a subsidiary of EIG.
Headquartered in Houston, HostGator currently hosts over 9 million domains and has partnerships with Cisco and Linux, and has now grown into a successful international brand. To continue expanding their reach, they opened an office in India in early 2012.
What makes HostGator such a huge success? To find honest and unbiased answers, we purchased their shared hosting plan in 2017 and continue to track various monitoring data, including uptime and page load speeds, among others, which we'll share together next.
Benefits of HostGator
HostGator has many great qualities, such as a longer-than-average money-back guarantee and an easy-to-use interface.
- Uptime (99.98%)
Your website only works when it is up and running. Over the last 12 months HostGator has achieved 99.98% uptime, which is 0.04% higher than the industry average. In the first month of testing, their uptime was not so good, but it has been improving since then.
HostGator's uptime is getting better, but still below the industry average.
- Good customer support
HostGator offers 24/7/365 support via phone, live chat and email, and the customer service representatives are not only experienced and friendly, but can usually be responded to within 10 minutes during our testing.
While not providing instant responses like SiteGround or Hostwinds, they were able to give extensive answers to every question we asked. For example, when we asked how to control spam in our mailbox, we got two useful suggestions, as well as a detailed implementation guide.
- 45-day money-back guarantee
Most of the hosting providers we reviewed offer a standard 30-day money-back guarantee, but HostGator goes a step further and raises that number to 45 days.
It is worth noting that their money-back guarantee has some restrictions and terms, as stated on the official website.
- your refund does not apply to dedicated servers, administration fees, installation fees for custom software or domain name purchase fees for shared, reseller or VPS hosting only.
- orders of only $0.01 are not eligible for refund.
- If you paid for the package by check, money order or wire transfer, that will not be eligible for a refund.
- DreamHost is the best performer in this area, offering a 97-day money-back guarantee; Hostwinds is also good, with their figure of 60 days.
- Enhanced security and free migration
HostGator will be happy to help you migrate your existing website for free, but only for 30 days after registration.
If you are experiencing troubles with other companies adding a lot of sales, then you can also enjoy daily data backup, automatic malware removal, and SSL certificates for free here. In addition, HostGator can also defend against DDoS attacks.
- very friendly to newcomers
For newbies, HostGator is very user-friendly, which is great, especially considering that some companies have useful documentation that reads like Martian text.
They also offer a wealth of tutorials, FAQs and various operating manuals to help you whenever you need it.
Disadvantages of HostGator
Despite its excellent performance in many areas, HostGator still falls short for some of the most important metrics, as shown in our test results below.
- page load time
Their average load time over the past 12 months was 984 milliseconds, slightly slower than the industry average (890 milliseconds).
- Additional costs for backup services
HostGator advertises instant backup as one of its differentiating features, but the problem is that you have to perform it manually.
Want automatic backup to simplify your life? Pay up, it's $15.95 per year.
- Industry pricing techniques
At a cursory glance, the prices in the web hosting industry seem pretty good, but when you look deeper, you can find a lot of fishy stuff.
First of all, orders with a longer period are only eligible for the lowest fees, which means that if you want to get the best price listed on the website, then you must buy for a long time at a time, and if you buy on a monthly basis, then the fees will go up by 50 to 150%.
The other is the renewal price. You can get a lot of bang for your buck on your first purchase, but when the plan expires and you're ready to renew, you'll be hit with an expensive renewal price. Often, the renewal price can be more than twice the original price.
HostGator's prices
HostGator's shared hosting offers three hosting plans with the best prices for the first year of purchase.
Hatchling
$2.58/month
- 1 site
- Unlimited traffic
- Unlimited storage space
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Free SSL Certificate
- $100 Google Ads credit
- $100 Bing Ads credit
- View Details
- Baby
- $3.33/month
- Unlimited Sites
- Unlimited traffic
- Unlimited storage space
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Free SSL Certificate
- $100 Google Ads credit
- $100 Bing Ads credit
- View Details
- Business
- $3.75/month
- Unlimited Sites
- Unlimited traffic
- Unlimited storage space
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Free SSL Certificate
- $100 Google Ads credit
- $100 Bing Ads credit
- Dedicated IP address
- SEO Tools
- View Details
- Additional information.
- Account registration: very easy
- Payment method.
- Account activation: may take up to 24~48 hours
- Control panel and dashboard: cPanel
Summary
A sister company to BlueHost, HostGator is a behemoth in the hosting industry, and their shared hosting services are great for anyone just starting out with a website.
While uptime is good, page load speeds are slow, even below the industry average. If you can increase your budget a little bit, then we suggest you to choose BlueHost or SiteGround.
Advantages
- Many hosting types, more than most competitors, to suit all needs and budgets
- The e-commerce features are excellent, and HostGator gives you everything you need to run an online store and accept all kinds of payments
- Provides many simplified tools for website design, suitable for beginners
- Enhanced security to help you migrate your website for free
- Stable uptime
- 45-day money-back guarantee
- Disadvantages
- Some plans are more expensive than competitors
- Slow page load time
- Industry Pricing Tips
- Established: 2002
- Lowest price: $2.58/month
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Page load time: 984 milliseconds
- Hosting plans: web hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, dedicated servers
- Customer support: live chat, phone, knowledge base
- Control backend: cPanel
- Payment method.
- Money back guarantee: 45 days