HostGator Review Features, Pros, Cons, and Speed Tests

 

In the shared hosting industry, HostGator is one of the most well-known brands. There isn't a single person who hasn't heard of HostGator or its sister company Bluehost. WordPress also recommends the latter as a web host.

Brent Oxley founded Hostgator in 2002, and the company is headquartered in Texas, USA. However, that is a fairly old story. If you read hosting news and posts regularly, you might have already learned of Endurance International Group (EIG).

After acquiring Bluehost the year before, EIG acquired HostGator in 2012. I've read many online reviews, including one on TrustPilot, that alert people about severe performance declines after EIG buys a business.

But, to be frank, I have nothing to say about EIG. Since I have no prior experience with HostGator's performance prior to 2012. Back then, I had no idea what web hosting was.

My only previous experience with HostGator was in 2013-2014 when I purchased a plan for my first blog from Hostgator's Indian platform. It was fine at first, but recently, I've been experiencing some pace inconsistencies. As a result, I began flipping between hosts before I eventually settled on.

So, putting my biases aside, I decided to give HostGator another chance. This time, I went with HostGator US's cheapest shared hosting plan and thoroughly checked it. The findings can be found below.

Table of Contents

1. Plans & Pricing 2. How to Use & Features 2.1. Data Center Locations 2.2. Signing Up 2.3. HostGator Dashboard Experience 2.4. Installing WordPress 2.5. SSL Options 2.6. Performance & Security Features 3. Performance 3.1. GTMetrix Tests 3.2. Pingdom Tests 3.3. loader Tests 3.4. PHP & MySQL Benchmarking 3.5. WP Query Monitor Results 4. Support Quality 4.1. My experience with HostGator Live Chat 5. Uptime & Reliability 6. HostGator Review: Pros & Cons 6.1. Pros 6.2. Cons 7. Conclusion: Do I Recommend HostGator?

Plans & Pricing

The key navigation makes it clear that HostGator's primary emphasis is on selling Shared Hosting plans, but they also provide VPS and dedicated plans.

They, like the majority of their rivals, propose three plans:

• Hatchling
• Baby
• Business

The Hatchling plan only allows you to host one domain, while the other two plans allow you to host an infinite number of websites. You can also get a dedicated IP address for the most expensive Business plan. However, as most browsers now support SNI SSL certificates, it's no longer a problem. When it comes to pricing, HostGator employs the same ruses as the other hosting companies. The lowest plan's promotional price is just $2.75, but when you renew it, the price jumps to $10.95.

But one feature I like about HostGator is the ability to pick monthly billing cycles. If you're trying the host for the first time, this is helpful. All three plans also include complimentary domain registration and SSL certificates.

How to Use & Features

Data Center Locations

There is no choice to choose your desired data center location when signing up with HostGator(dot)com. As far as I'm aware, the majority of their infrastructure is located in the states of Utah and Texas in the United States. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of them expanding their activities there. Many countries, like India, Brazil, China, and others, have regional Hostgator sites.

For example, you can choose between the United States and India as your server location on the Indian site – Hostgator(dot)in. According to the blog, if you select India, your website data will be stored in India. They have partnerships with service providers in India, such as GPX Global Networks, which provide the requisite infrastructure.

Signing Up

The sign-up page is accessed by clicking the Buy button below your chosen plan. Hatchling is the plan I choose, and it's what we're going over today. Except for a few upsells at the bottom of the list, the registration page is relatively unobtrusive. You have two options at the top:

• Create a new domain name, or
• Keep using a domain you already own.

It's worth noting that in order to qualify for the free domain, you'll need to sign up for at least a year of hosting. Otherwise, the domain name would cost extra if you choose the one-month, three-month, or six-month period. And, at the time of writing, the a.com domain was almost $12.95.

I like to keep my domains and hosting separate most of the time. In addition, Namecheap, my preferred domain registrar, offers significantly lower domain rates. Keep in mind that the front-page promotional price ($2.75/mo) is only valid if you sign a 36-month contract. The price rises to $10.95 if you choose the one-month billing period.

There are a few upsells at the bottom of the registration page, including CodeGuard backup and SiteLock protection. By default, these two choices are selected. But make sure to uncheck these add-ons if you don't want to pay extra for them.

When it comes to payments, HostGator accepts two options:

• Credit Card
• PayPal

And I was able to complete the transaction quickly and easily using PayPal. As a result, there are no problems. HostGator also offers a 45-day money-back guarantee.

HostGator Dashboard Experience

The dashboard, or Customer Portal, of HostGator, is simple and straightforward. As a result, you won't have any problems navigating it. The following is an example of the Welcome page:

To control your hosting account, go to the Hosting page using the connection on the left side. You can see all of your new hosting packages there.

From there, you can take two routes:

• open the settings page (manage), or
• open the cPanel

The Hosting Overview page includes only the most basic information and a few links to key sites such as cPanel, Webmail, File Manager, and so on.

Under Hosting > Settings, you can find the important details regarding your account:

• Server name
• IP Address
• Nameservers

From this tab, you can also change the account's primary domain and password. Shell access is another choice here. Enable the SSH option if you want to connect via SSH.

Tap the ‘Cpanel icon from the Overview tab to access the cPanel, which contains the majority of the hosting-related settings.

And this is how the cPanel looks:

It's worth noting that HostGator is a cPanel hosting company. Unlike Dreamhost and Hostinger, which use a custom control panel, you'll be using the regular GUI here. If you've ever used another cPanel hosting provider, you'll be right at home here.

Installing WordPress

HostGator offers Softaculous for one-click App installs. You can access it in two ways:

• Click on Install WordPress from your Hosting Package’s Overview page, or
• click the WordPress Installer link on your cPanel

Both take you to the Softaculous page for installing WordPress.

SSL Options

For all domains hosted with HostGator, free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates are now accessible. It comes standard for all shared hosting plans. Instead, you can buy a Comodo Positive SSL certificate directly from the Customer Portal if you want to use a paid SSL certificate. Both Domain Validated and Extended Validated certificates are available. If you have an eCommerce website, you can look into the latter.

Otherwise, for a standard website or blog, Domain Validated Let's Encrypt will encrypt and secure your site just as well. It will have no effect on SEO results. Go to Hosting > SSL Certificates in your Customer Portal to verify your SSL status. However, when I reviewed mine, I received an error message stating that the certificate could not be validated.

So I called customer service and inquired as to why it was displaying a warning.

And it turned out that the validation failed because the domain (purchased via Namecheap) was not pointed to HostGator's IP address at the time of purchase. Even though I corrected it and double-checked it later, there was no difference. Also, the live chat support was unable to resolve the problem (more on the Support below). Meanwhile, I obtained a free certificate from ZeroSSL and installed it via cPanel.

That leads me to my next point. You are not required to use a HostGator certificate. Any third-party certificate you've obtained from any provider can be used. Go to your cPanel's SSL management section to get started.

The SSL Certificates page on the customer portal reflected the same after I installed the ZeroSSL issued certificate.

👉 Also, you can read: HostGator Review 2021 – Is HostGator Hosting Worth it

Performance & Security Features

Expecting VPS-level output from a shared hosting company is unreasonable. However, HostGator does provide a few services.

In terms of security, HostGator offers two addons for its shared hosting plans:

• SiteLock
• CodeGuard

The first, SiteLock, protects your websites from malware and other threats. It is available for an additional fee of $1.99 a month.

Is it, indeed, worthwhile? There are many protection plugins for WordPress, in my opinion. If you need essential protection, a paid website firewall such as Sucuri may be preferable.

Backups:

HostGator provides standard cPanel backups that save the files on the server. Additionally, CodeGuard is a premium backup service that allows you to store your files in the cloud. However, there are many free and paid WordPress backup plugins that allow you to backup to any cloud provider of your choosing. As a result, I seldom use these services.

Then there's the show. Endurance Page Cache is a caching plugin that comes pre-installed on HostGator WordPress sites by default. However, their help articles did not include much detail about the plugin.

As a result, I reached out to the live chat help. Following that discussion, I discovered that HostGator has a server-level caching feature built-in, which this plugin incorporates into WordPress. However, I decided to disable it and replace it with W3 Total Cache. After using GTmetrix to compare the two plugins, I discovered that W3 Total Cache outperforms Endurance Page Cache. It's worth noting that the Endurance Page Cache plugin is a must-have. As a result, you won't find it in the list of installed plugins.

Performance

With a sample WordPress site developed with Elementor, I checked HostGator's results. Yoast and WPForms were also active on the site. I have added some dummy text and photos to make it look more like a real website.

• Plugins used: Elementor, Yoast, WPForms
• Active Theme: Astra
• Caching plugin: W3 Total Cache, Caching method: Disk: Enhanced
• WordPress 5.5.1

With these configurations, I conducted the following tests:

• GTmetrix – ran 3 tests and took the average
• Pingdom Tools – ran 3 tests and took the average
• Stress test using Loader.io
• PHP & MySQL performance test using WPPerformancetester plugin
• WP Admin page generation time using WP Query Monitor Plugin

Let’s analyze the test results one by one:

GTMetrix Tests

HostGator Speed Test – GTmetrix
Location	TTFB	Onload Time
Dallas	219ms	1630ms
Hong Kong	519ms	1910ms
London	555ms	1863ms
Mumbai	831ms	2783ms
Sydney	762ms	3167ms
Sao Paulo	600ms	2453ms
Vancouver	213ms	1977ms
Average	539ms	2255ms

Pingdom Tests

HostGator Speed Test – Pingdom Tools
Location	TTFB	Load Time
Tokyo	729ms	1760ms
Frankfurt	830ms	2017ms
London	730ms	1860ms
Washington DC	297ms	815ms
San Francisco	216ms	821ms
Sydney	891ms	1923ms
Sao Paulo	975ms	2373ms
Average	667ms	1653ms

LoaderIO Tests

To see how well HostGator could handle simultaneous visitors, I used LoaderIO to test the sample website, gradually increasing the number of users from zero to a thousand in under a minute.

And HostGator treated the traffic admirably. Not only was the test performed successfully, but there were also fewer mistakes.

As the number of users surpassed 750, timeout errors began to appear. The average answer time was 715 milliseconds.

No. of users	0 – 1000
Total Time	60s
Avg. response time	735ms
Success rate	99.9%
Timeout started at	47s
Test completed	Yes

Overall, HostGator performed admirably in this test, far beyond my expectations.

PHP & MySQL Benchmarking

Only the loading speeds are measured in the above studies. It will not inform you of the server's capabilities. And to find out, I used the WPPerformancetester plugin to do a quick benchmarking.

Below is the average of three tests:

The numbers aren't particularly impressive, implying that the servers might be underpowered. Take a look at Dreamhost's results for comparison. One thing that piques my attention is that the loading test results are excellent, but the benchmark results are not. Dreamhost, on the other hand, experienced the reverse. That suggests HostGator may have a strong network capable of handling the traffic. However, the server's hardware may be inadequate. That is, at least, my perception. What are your thoughts?

WP Query Monitor Results

The WP Query Monitor plugin helps to measure the following things:

• how long it took for a page to be generated on the server
• time spent querying the database

	Home Page	Admin Page (Dashboard)
Page Generation Time	1227ms	875ms
Database Query Time	51ms	57ms

The home page took about 1 second to generate, which is significantly longer than the other pages. Otherwise, there are no problems.

Support Quality

There are mainly three ways to get help from HostGator:

• Live Chat: available at all times
• Support articles: browser through a ton of help articles
• Phone support: two numbers are given, available all the time

Out of the above three options, I’ve tried the live chat a couple of times, and here are my experiences.

My experience with HostGator Live Chat

First, I contacted Chat support about the SSL validation problem I previously listed. Within seconds, a member of the team had linked. They were unable to resolve the problem after talking for nearly half an hour. Finally, the problem was turned into a ticket. I did receive a response the next day, but I anticipated a quicker response for such a simple task as enabling an SSL certificate.

Got fast replies? Yes, Problem solved: No

I opened a chat session the second time to inquire about the Endurance Page Cache plugin. A new member of staff appeared and began answering my questions in a matter of seconds. I mentioned that I wanted to use W3 Total Cache and inquired as to whether or not I could disable the current plugin. The response was self-evident: you can never use two caching plugins at the same time. But, to my surprise, the individual said he wanted to look into it, and after a few minutes, he said I could disable it.

Got fast replies? Yes, Problem solved: No

The following question concerned their server-level caching. When I saw the two headers in the Chrome Network tab – x-server-cache and x-cache-status – I knew HostGator was using a server-level caching mechanism like Varnish. However, the individual was unable to provide clear details on the subject. Overall, I believe HostGator's customer service is fast, but not efficient enough.

Uptime & Reliability

According to Uptime Robot, HostGator was up 100% of the time during the time I checked it. Of course, I am aware that the test time was insufficient. However, it gives you an idea of what to expect from the hosting company. The inconsistency of response times is something that worries me. Take a look at the graph to the right. It displays the response time over the course of a 24-hour cycle. And there are nearly five spikes, the longest of which lasts over four seconds. While the server has a 100% uptime, it also takes a long time to respond to requests.

HostGator Review: Pros & Cons

Pros

• cPanel available
• Page loading times are decent
• Monthly billing cycle available
• Support available 24/7 – live chat and phone

Cons

• Inconsistent server response times
• Support could be more efficient

Conclusion: Do I Recommend HostGator?

I do not suggest HostGator at this time. The reasons are mentioned in the list of disadvantages above. In comparison, is still, in my view, a better option. However, if their customer service improves, I may consider using them to host small websites in the future. HostGator is a cost-effective choice due to its monthly billing and reduced long-term rates.