HostGator is best known for its simple shared hosting services.
They’re not high performance, but perfect for people getting started with a little site who don’t want to affect tons of technical issues.
This includes small businesses, but also hobbyists.
But WordPress can still be a pain if you’re fresh to web development of any kind, and if you only need an easy site, it's going to be overkill.
That’s one of the most reasons that HostGator finally created their own site builder, called Host Gator
It’s cheap, easy, and there’s no got to ever touch a server or instrument panel.
In this review, I’m getting to show you what Host Gator seems like behind the scenes in order that you'll decide if it’s the proper fit for you.
Keep in mind that Host Gator is comparatively new, and it'll likely be improved over time.
Find What You’re Looking For
Getting Started: The Setup Process
The Drag-and-Drop Editor
Is Host Gator Suitable for E-Commerce?
Advanced and Unique Features
Summary
Getting Started: The Setup Process
Getting up and running with Host Gator is painless.
Step #1: Pick Domain Name
You start by choosing a website name to register to your account.
You can bring your own name, but that link is quite hard to ascertain. It’s clear that they’d rather you register a website through them.
That’s not necessarily a nasty thing to try to, since 12 and 24-month plans accompany a free domain. Note that if you are doing cancel your account at any time, you've got to pay a non-refundable fee for the domain.
You’ll pay more for domain registration through HostGator than a third-party domain registrar, but it’s also more convenient since you don’t get to point your domain’s name servers to your HostGator account.
Step #2: Pick a Plan
There are 3 main plans to select from, and every one of them is fairly similar.
All the plans come with:
The site builder
Free hosting
No advertising on your site
Free advertising credits.
And a couple of other basic features.
The “Premium” and “eCommerce” plans even have priority support. If you would like help, you jump straight to the front of the support queue to urge support as quickly as possible.
The “eCommerce” plan is that the costliest, and therefore the just one that has built-in eCommerce features within the site builder. If you propose selling things through your site, you’ll need this plan.
After picking an idea, you’ll be prompted to buy it and fill out basic account details.
Step #3: Creating a New Site Through Your Dashboard
Once your account is about up, you’ll be taken to your main dashboard, which features a modern interface and is straightforward to use.
This is where you’ll see stats about your site, and add apps. More importantly, you'll click the “create your website” button or attend the “my sites” section to make your first site.
Step #4: Pick Your Theme
When you create an internet site, the primary step is to select a topic, which controls the essential design and layout of your site.
You can always customize it later, so just pick one that’s almost like what you’re aiming for.
You can prefer to filter themes built for a selected sort of site by category or search by keyword.
All the themes have a contemporary design and are responsive. The library is already large, so there’s plenty to settle on from.
If you click the preview for any theme, it'll open within the same browser window. there'll be a little ribbon on the highest of the screen that allows you to toggle the view from desktop to mobile.
When you choose a topic, click its “edit” button to pick it.
At now, your basic setup is completed.
The Drag-and-Drop Editor
Now we move onto customization, which is all about the location builder itself.
The theme you chose is going to be loaded, complete with placeholder text for now.
The site builder uses a typical drag-and-drop interface. the location preview and interface appear on the most right panel, while your menu is on the left side panel.
Again, it's a contemporary design with an intuitive interface.
You can click on any element on the most right panel to edit it.
Once you click a component, a little menu will crop up right above it, letting you modify everything from font color to alignment. You edit the text a bit like you'd during a standard text document.
You can also click and drag around elements to maneuver their location.
Customizing Your Design
Most themes won’t be perfect for your site out of the box, so you’ll get to customize them.
Host Gator gives you near full control of customizing the design and layout of your pages but does so in a way that’s simple to know.
There are 2 main ways of customizing the planning of a page: the menu, or the location preview.
Let’s start with the menu.
There are 3 menu options, all at the highest of the left menu that you’ll need:
Elements
Section
Design
The final top menu option there's “pages,” which is where you'll add pages or navigate to them:
Clicking on a page will open it within the editor within the main panel in order that you'll edit it.
If you’d wish to add a replacement element to the page (a button, image, text box, etc.), you attend the “elements” menu option.
There are many elements to settle on from, numerous that I can’t list all of them here. Most notably is that you simply can pick a component like Google Maps or PayPal, and simply integrate a map or payment button into your page.
When you click a component from this menu, it’ll stick with your mouse cursor until you click somewhere within the editor where you’d wish to put it. you'll always drag it around later if you don’t just like the initial location.
On any page, you’ll likely have multiple sections.
Sections are small containers that will hold elements and have their own custom styles. they will even be rearranged on the page in order that rather than traveling all the weather one by one, you only drag the whole section.
You’ll use the “section” menu choice to manage your sections.
It allows you to add new sections with just a click, or rearrange their order easier than using the editor to try to do it. This gets more convenient as your page gets longer.
Finally, what about colors and styles?
To change the particular look of elements and sections, you’ll use the “design” menu option.
This is where you’ll choose global design settings. This includes color schemes, heading fonts, and text styles.
I mentioned that there are 2 ways to customize your page’s design.
You can also select sections individually within the editor, which will mention a pop-up that allows you to edit that section’s style individually.
Unlike the “design” section, these style changes won't apply to other sections.
There are tons of advanced customization options here, including having the ability to feature animations for individual sections (e.g. “fade in”, or “bounce in”).
Adding a Blog to Your Site
Unlike WordPress, your Host Gator site isn’t a blogging platform by default. If you’d such as you, you've got to feature one.
It’s simple enough, just click the “Blog” menu option on the left side.
When you create a blog, you’ll be prompted to settle on a template for it:
This template will decide how your blog posts look, also as your blog page itself (that lists all the posts).
When you click the blog option within the menu within the future, you’ll see an inventory of your posts, and a button you'll click to manage your blog:
On your blog management page, you'll see all of your posts in a neater to browse tile layout, and you'll also toggle your RSS prey on or off.
When you click the “edit” button for one among your blog posts, otherwise you create a replacement one, you’ll see an easy set of inputs, and a WYSIWYG editor, almost like WordPress.
There aren’t quite as many options within the text editor compared to WordPress, but all the essentials are there.
Manage Site Options (“Advanced”)
The final main menu option is that the “manage” option, where you’ll find most of the worldwide site settings.
View save history and revert to an old version of your site.
Connect social accounts for nearly every notable social network.
Collect payments through PayPal (set email address here).
Setup redirects for any pages on your site.
Connect Google Analytics if the built-in stats aren't ok.
See your list and form submissions.
“Advanced” allows you to set basic SEO meta tags for the location.
It has all the essential configuration most small businesses or hobbyists need, plus its built-in functionality to gather email addresses and payments through PayPal. These are free here, where you'd often need to buy a separate tool if you employ a special site builder.
👉 Also, you can read: How to Set Up Website Hosting
Is Host Gator Suitable for E-Commerce?
If you’re willing to shop for the “eCommerce” plan, Host Gator will work well for a little e-commerce site.
To enable your store, choose the “store” option on the left side menu of your site editor:
Again, it’s simple to use, and has all the essential features you’re probably looking for:
Inventory control.
Coupon Management.
Reporting.
Advanced and Unique Features
Now that you’ve seen what the location builder itself has got to offer, there are a couple of other features of Host Gator as a platform that you simply could be curious about.
24/7 Support
Expect an identical level of support for Host Gator as you'd with HostGator shared hosting.
It’s available 24/7/365, but won’t be the very best quality.
As mentioned before, the higher-tiered plans accompany priority support. If you employ a free or basic account, you'll need to wait in line once you need support, counting on how busy it's.
One aspect of support that I used to be impressed with was the knowledge domain.
Despite being new, Host Gator already has an in-depth knowledgebase that covers a good sort of help topics:
The knowledgebase articles are well-written and have clear images that show you ways to repair your problems with the location builder.
It’s already very good, and will only get better with time.
Auto Saving
One useful feature, especially when customizing the planning of your site, is having the ability to ascertain older versions and revert back to them if needed.
You can access you save history from the “manage” menu option, or click the clock icon along the highest bar of the location editor.
It works tons like Google Docs, where you'll see different versions of the location after you’ve edited it:
When you click a revision, it'll quickly load on the most right panel, and you'll restore if needed.
Not many site builders have this feature.
The App Market
The App Market will function tons just like the WordPress plugin marketplace.
These apps will add more advanced functionality to your website.
On your main account dashboard (not the location editor), pick “App Market” from the side menu to ascertain what’s available:
There aren't many apps immediately, but they're going to grow as Host Gator becomes more popular, so this is often something that will need to be re-evaluated within the future.
Note that apps are only available on paid accounts.
Email Functionality
Setting up an email with your site is possible and simple, but unfortunately not free.
You’ll need to purchase and connect G Suite (Google) for a coffee monthly cost.
This will also get you access to professional versions of other Google apps as a side benefit.
Summary
Overall, I used to be impressed with Host Gator
It has a gorgeous modern design, and that I didn’t run into any serious bugs while testing the varied features.
It has a couple of big positives that set it aside from most other site builders:
Cheap! (hosting comes free)
Accept payments through PayPal.
Very simple to use.
Large library of recent, responsive themes.
Host Gator has all the essential features a site builder needs, plus more advanced ones.
It gives you near full control over how your pages look but does so in a way that’s not complex or overwhelming. this is often a tough thing to try to do, and their interface designers should be commended.
The only significant weakness is that the app market is currently very small, but it will only recover with time.
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