Before they were bought out by EIG, HostGator was a great business. They were a popular option among both new and seasoned bloggers. It's still a successful hosting service, thanks to their reliable results at a low cost.
In our ranking of the best web hosting firms, they are ranked third. However, until 2016, when we saw a decline in their results following the EIG acquisition, HostGator was placed first on our list.
Our ranking is based on a variety of factors, not just results. When it comes to selecting the right web host, the cost is a big consideration. There are hostings that perform better and are quicker than HostGator, but due to their high price, they still rank below HostGator.
About HostGator
Brent Oxley, who was a student at Florida University at the time, founded HostGator in 2002. They gradually expanded until 2008, when they became one of the first companies to provide unrestricted hosting. They were named one of the fastest-growing web hosting companies by Inc Magazine in 2012, and EIG stepped in and bought them for $229 million in cash.
Due to an arrangement between Oxley and EIG, HostGator management remained unchanged, unlike other EIG acquisitions. Despite the fact that some EIG policies have tarnished their image, they are still regarded as one of the best web hosting providers for beginners and medium-sized websites.
Is HostGator a good fit for your online presence?
If I tell HostGator is a great hosting or that it has all of the best output and features available, I'm lying. It's perfect for small to medium-sized websites where it matters the most, and it's good in every other way. They have a lot of problems with consumers complaining about their upselling strategy and other billing concerns. As a consequence, you should be cautious and periodically search for any extra costs.
HostGator is reviewed by Inline Host Blogger.
For this study, we looked at the following topics.'
- Speed
- Price
- Popularity
- Uptime
- Support
- Interface
- Ease Of Use
- Client satisfaction
- Security
- Scalability
- The Verdict
Is HostGator fast?
HostGator has two top-tier world-class data centers in Houston, TX, and Provo, UT, both of which pledge to use cutting-edge web hosting technology. Most notably, all of their hosting accounts use SSD storage. In comparison to the traditional HDD hard drive that we commonly use, SSD is faster and safer.
In addition, HostGator provides PHP 7.3, which is the most recent version available. This is critical because it improves the pace of your website while still ensuring its stability.
Here's how many requests per second each PHP version can handle.
In comparison, PHP 5.6 is still used by over 39% of WordPress blogs, and PHP 7.3 is used by just 5.6 percent of websites. When it comes to selecting a web host, having the most recent version is important.
Kinsta recently released a PHP version guide, stating that 60.4 percent of users are still using PHP versions that are no longer supported.
How fast is HostGator compared to other hostings?
SiteGround and Bluehost are HostGator's main competitors. Let's see how HostGator stacks up against these two hosting companies in terms of loading speed.
On all three of the above hosting companies, we hosted a WordPress website with the exact same theme and content. Then we used tools like Uptrends and Pingdom to determine how long it took for their website to load.
Here are the outcomes.
Is HostGator fast around the world?
The gap between the web hosting server and the user influences how quickly a site loads. As a result, we were curious to see how HostGator loaded in different parts of the world. In comparison to Bluehost, here's how quickly HostGator loads from around the world.
|
LOCATION |
HOSTGATOR
LOAD TIME |
BLUEHOST
LOAD TIME |
|
Berlin |
2.7S |
5.15S |
|
Manchester |
1.8S |
5.4S |
|
Miami |
1.6S |
2.7S |
|
Boston |
2.6S |
2.8S |
|
Washington |
2.2S |
2.8S |
|
Azure US West |
1.8S |
2.6S |
|
Tokyo |
6.8S |
3.3S |
|
Seoul |
6.4S |
3.6S |
|
Vienna |
3.08S |
5.15S |
HostGator did not disappoint in terms of tempo, as shown above. Given that their plan starts at just $3 a month, they provided a very high pace. Furthermore, they are ranked third in terms of pace on our website, only behind Kinsta and SiteGround.
Is HostGator affordable?
Basic shared hosting plans from HostGator start at $2.75 per month and provide unlimited bandwidth and 1 website. To put this into perspective, the most simple plans at SiteGround, our top-rated web hosting provider, cost $3.95 per month.
Furthermore, HostGator offers free one-year domain registration, saving you about $12 per year.
The following is a rundown of HostGator's plans, pricing, and functionality.
PLAN NAME | HOSTGATOR HATCHLING | BABY | BUSINESS |
Price | $2.75 | $3.95 | $5.95 |
Visitors Allowed/mo | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Disk Space | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Number of Websites Allowed | 1 | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Data Transfer | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Sub Domains | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Parked Domains | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Free Domain Name | Yes | Yes | Yes |
45-Day Money-Back Guarantee | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Email Accounts | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Server Location | Hoston and Provo | Hoston and Provo | Hoston and Provo |
Free CDN | No | No | Yes |
Free Site Backup | No | No | Everyday |
Backup On Demand | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Operating System | Linux | Linux | Linux |
Free Site Transfer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Staging | No | No | No |
In-Built Caching System | Yes | Yes | Yes |
SFTP And SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
24/7 Support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Support Channel | Live Chat/ Phone and Email | Live Chat/ Phone and Email | Live Chat/ Phone and Email |
Priority Support | No | No | No |
What is good about HostGator pricing and features?
- In comparison to other hosting companies in their group, they are extremely affordable.
- Space and visits are unrestricted.
- For one year, you get a free domain.
- There are no limits on the number of email accounts you may have.
- No-questions-asked 45-day money-back guarantee.
- Their support staff can transfer your website manually for free.
What is bad about HostGator pricing and features?
- There are no cloud backups available; instead, you must backup your website to your own device. SiteGround, on the other hand, offers automatic cloud backup for the previous 30 days. With a single click, you can go back to any day in the last 30 days.
- Depending on the plan, renewal rates are 2-3 times higher than the initial price.
Popularity declined post EIG acquisation.
The graph above depicts Google trends data on HostGator's success over time. As you can see, until 2014, HostGator developed quickly. Following that, as a result of the EIG acquisition, their popularity began to dwindle gradually. They are, however, much more successful than companies such as SiteGround and DreamHost.
This drop-in popularity served as a wake-up call for HostGator. They fully redesigned their hosting last year, including redesigning their control panel, recruiting new customer service staff, and providing cheaper pricing than their competitors.
👉 Also, you can read: HostGator Review
Uptime – Is there a downtime issue with HostGator?
One of the most important statistics to remember when selecting a web host is uptime. More importantly, a host with a low uptime will affect your website in a variety of ways, including lowering your search engine ranking, lowering your sales, and negatively impacting your search engine ranking.
HostGator promises a 99.99 percent uptime guarantee, with a prorated refund of one month of hosting for every 1% downtime. In addition, for the past three years, we have been monitoring the uptime of our test website hosted by HostGator. Throughout our testing period, they maintained a consistent uptime of 99.99 percent.
This is the uptime study for HostGator.
In addition, we track the Twitter conversation about all of the hosting companies we evaluate. And, despite the fact that many people had problems with other aspects of HostGator, we didn't find anyone moaning about HostGator uptime.
In conclusion, HostGator is a very dependable hosting provider with excellent uptime.
HostGator offers 24/7 Live Chat/ Email and Phone support
Many newcomers are unaware of the value of help before they buy a hosting package. Since everything about your web hosting is virtual, you'll need competent support that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist you with any issues that arise.
Surprisingly, their customer service has improved since EIG's acquisition. During the years 2014-2016, you might expect to wait about 30 minutes for a live chat agent to respond. Things have changed lately, and their response time has slowed to the point that they now communicate in under a minute, as seen below.
Interface – Uses cPanel.
In certain cases, the guy you prefer is likely the one with which you are already acquainted. With the exception of SiteGround and DreamHost, HostGator uses cPanel as its interface. cPanel is the most widely used interface and is used by nearly every hosting company.
With only a few clicks, cPanel allows you to control your files, add new domains, install SSL, check your disk space and bandwidth use, build email accounts, and much more.
In addition, HostGator offers a free cPanel demo so that you can see how it works.
Demo of HostGator cPanel
How easy is HostGator for beginners?
If you're a novice, you'll need a host who understands your situation and the challenges you'll face. In reality, this is where hosting companies have exploded in popularity in recent years. Building a website nowadays does not necessitate mastering web creation or spending thousands of dollars on web developers; all you need is a computer or laptop with an internet connection.
To make this process simpler, web hosting companies have used content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. These CMSs provide thousands of free templates and plugins that can be used to create a website with just a few clicks and no prior knowledge of web development.
How does HostGator perform in this aspect?
When you buy web hosting from HostGator, you'll get a setup wizard that will help you set up your website in as little as 1-2 hours. Furthermore, their customer service is specially equipped to assist beginners in creating a website without concern. For beginners, we suggest HostGator over other hosts because of their ease of use and low prices.
How satisfied are HostGator’s customers?
Using conversations from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, we tested the happiness of the current HostGator account owner.
Here's what we find out about HostGator from other users.
HostGator’s security is average.
HostGator takes a number of important measures to ensure the security of your files, including installing VESDA very early smoke detection apparatus and hurricane shutters in their data center. Their data center is also located outside of the FEMA 500-year flood plain.
They also have a large number of custom firewall rules and mod protection rule sets in place to protect their servers from various types of DDOS attacks. With the exception of one or two minor accidents, HostGator has been relatively safe over the years.
For example, well-known bug-hunter Paulos Yibelo discovered serious vulnerabilities at Bluehost, DreamHost, OVH, iPage, and Hostgator, where he could steal sensitive information from a website with a simple click.
Surely, HostGator should do more to ensure that our websites are more secure, such as performing automatic cloud backups. And if anyone is able to break into your account and remove your data from your origin server, your data will be safe and secure in cloud storage.
Is HostGator plans easily scalable if we want more resources?
As your website grows in size, there will be occasions when you need additional resources to satisfy a sudden demand at a specific time. If this happens often, you'll need a hosting plan with automatic scalability based on your site's traffic. In reality, HostGator isn't known for its scalability; other hosting companies, such as Kinsta, are better prepared in such a situation. Kinsta, on the other hand, starts at $30 a month, which could be prohibitively costly for others. If your blog is famous, $30 a month shouldn't be a problem in return for a better user experience.
Let me be clear: a scalable website is not needed for everyone. You'll only need it if your website is among the most popular in the world, with thousands of visitors every hour.
After all, HostGator is better suited to blogs and business websites that receive consistent traffic. Do you need a flexible hosting solution? In this regard, I am not a fan of HostGator.
Should you host with HostGator in 2021?
HostGator is a pioneer in providing shared web hosting for small businesses.
If you're looking for the best possible results, I recommend Kinsta, SiteGround, and WP Engine. You can get really worthy hosting for your new startup or a tiny scale website with HostGator for just $2.75 per month.
When it comes to protection and upselling, HostGator has some issues. However, they remain our third option for the best web hosting because they have a wealth of features for both new and small-scale websites at an affordable price. In terms of shared hosting, they are second only to SiteGround in terms of speed. SiteGround has faster servers, but their renewal rates are twice as high as HostGator's.
If you have the budget, SiteGround is the best option; if not, HostGator is the best option.
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