Does someone who is genuinely a paying customer after a proper HostGator review?
Then that's your review.
Since I was a client for HostGator for 8 years, my web host is an insight into my detailed and long-term picture.
I will also reveal the advantages and disagreements of HostGator with you, like speeds, uptime, customer support.
Moreover, this assessment is done for those in the United Kingdom. Let's start! Let's start!
HostGator Review UK [currenttear] (8 Years Of Experience)
Quick Overview: My HostGator Experience
After 8 years of HostGator and dozens of websites have been hosting them. I can easily state that I have ever utilized them as one of the top providers.
They have always been giving me superb Webhosting for an inexpensive price since they signed up for them in 2011 and continue to do so for a new web hosting companies. Therefore, to this day I still use them.
What I also really like about HostGator is:
- Awesome pricing (£2.16/mo for beginner plan)
- 1-click CMS installs
- Very beginner-friendly
- Unlimited storage & bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Good customer service
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- 99.98% average uptime
- Cloudflare integration
- Good speeds
- Unlimited email
It would be nothing short of spectacular if I would zoom out and saw my total HostGator experience in the 8 years. Very advisable.
Brief History Of HostGator
Created in 2002, HostGator expanded to a staggering 200, 000 clients in just four years, based in Florida, by then student Brent Oxley.
In 2009, HostGator extended its initial premises and relocated into a hosting facility which is still significantly larger than 20,000 square meters.
HostGator today employs over 1,000 staff members with only 1 university student. HostGator has 1,5 million hosted and counted websites.
HostGator’s Plans, Pricing & Features
HostGator was the first provider to offer this service really when it came to cheaper shared hosting plans and still remains at the front end of shared web hosting.
Although HostGator's common/budget plans are generally known, they also provide a decent assortment of additional items such as:
Cloud web hosting
- VPS hosting
- Dedicated web hosting
- Managed WordPress hosting
I will cover the shared hosting plan for HostGator just for simplicity, as it is the one I have used myself. Moreover, it is your most popular long-shooting product!
Above are the common hosting plans of HostGator (I'm on the plan for baby). Sadly, HostGator does not charge GBP, therefore I could not find GBP official rates. I did make some currency conversions, however, so you can see the cost to those in the UK of each shared plan.
- Hatchling Plan: (£2.16/mo for 3 years)
- Baby Plan: (£3.11/mo for 3 years)
- Business Plan: (£4.68/mo for 3 years)
These are a few strange sound plan names (sometimes for the first 2), but they all offer a lot of value.
I myself developed the "Hatchling Plan," which enabled me to host 1 website and offered me a non-metered bandwidth and storage that was greater than I ever needed.
After 2 years, though, I updated my website to a "baby plan," which gave me a limitless number of web domains. Yup. Yup. Yup. There is no limit.
HostGator also offers free SSL certificates, quick backups, WordPress 1-click setup, 24/7/365 support, and an uptime guarantee of 99.90 percent with each of these services. Not to mention a guarantee of 45 cashback!
So the Hatching Plan is a perfect selection if you start just constructing 1 website. The Baby Plan cannot be neglected when developing the next internet empire.
Easy To Use For Beginners
In all honesty, their user interface and cPanel were old schools and clunky, to say the least, when I initially started with HostGator. Fortunately, the cPanel and the platform have been totally renovated. a major breeze for existing users (see the screenshot of my dashboard).
It is now also a lot easier and better for people who only create their first website to use their experience.
HostGator made it so simple that nothing can be screwed up nearly impossible.
1-Click CMS Installs
HostGator delivers a 1-click installation of CMS for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Wiki as well as PHP, in combination with its easy user interface.
This feature is a necessity for any reputable web server since it enables new users to access a website online in less than 5 minutes.
As for the HostGator website setup, it is unbelievably straightforward. I connected my .co.Uk domain for my latest website and installed a new WordPress version.
All up, it took me just a couple of minutes and I was online a fresh new WordPress website! This information may be found here on WordPress web hosts for more WordPress hosts. See my guide for beginners on the best website builders!
👉 Also, you can read: HostGator Cloud Review
Average UK HostGator Speeds
The second thing which I considered was the load times and the speed of websites hosted on HostGator servers in my HostGator review.
I have touched on this in past posts, but it is crucial to have fast speeds for your site today. No compromise is just there.
This is primarily because slow-loading websites can literally lose traffic, traffic, and revenue. So what is HostGators doing in the speed department?
Well, they're good, to be honest, but they're not big. For web pages headquartered in the UK in particular.
The fastest load time I had in London was 636ms, on a blank WordPress website, from my tests.
While they're not the fastest in the market, for the shared web hosting company they're still fairly good.
Side Note: HostGator also offers Cloudflare CDN free integration, mainly making copies of your websites worldwide.
This leads to minimal latency and nearly immediate load times. Thus, it is an excellent alternative to increase speed if the speeds cannot be scratched.
Average UK HostGator Uptime
I also checked the amount of time a Website has been online successfully in my HostGator review. An uptime of at least 99,90% is a solid rule of thumb for the target.
So in the previous 8 years, I have been using HostGator, how? HostGator?
In short, the uptime of HostGator was amazing. I never had a serious failure on my website throughout this time, allowing me to keep visitors day by day.
When you look at the long term, the average uptime for Hostgator is around 99.98%, which is a very renowned figure.
- 2019 March average uptime: 99.98%
- 2019 February average uptime: 99.99%
- 2019 January average uptime: 100%
- 2018 December average uptime: 100%
- 2018 November average uptime: 99.98%
- 2018 October average uptime: 100%
- 2018 September average uptime: 99.95%
- 2018 August average uptime: 100%
While HostGator guarantees uptime of at least 99.90%, its real performances are significantly higher than this level.
Unlimited, Unlimited & More Unlimited
There are no constraints when it comes to bandwidth and storage with the common plans of HostGator. Well, some sort of...
Although hosting firms say they offer 'unlimited' or 'unlimited,' that is just reasonable. I could see Google and Facebook jumping very quickly if it was unlimited!
Okay, so HostGator says "unmetric," but what does that do for a user in actual fact?
Well, I now have five websites from my own experience that receive a total average of 7,300 visitors per day from my common hosting package. Or, two hundred thousand visits a month.
Although I don't attempt to boast, it's a lot of traffic for a common web hosting schedule. One that is a mere £2.16 per month, in particular.
What about the storage capacity, yet that's a lot of bandwidth (the internet data flow)? I now have over 30GB of website files that have grown slowly over the past 8 years with HostGator.
I have not yet reached any limitations or glass ceilings, guess what. In addition, a typical CMS site is about 1-2GB. There's a lot of archives, so definitely.
HostGator’s Customer Support (My Experiences)
Let me return you to the end of 2018.
On a whim, before going tonight, I decided to share one of my blog pieces about Reddit. My website crushed to my amazement when I woke up. Oh, well?
After researching my Google Analytics, I found that 84,000 visitors were received within 5 hours of this blog post, which caused my website to crash. I could also see that individuals tried to visit my website while the post was still "viral."
I then called HostGator to try and get my site back online to enjoy this increase in visitors.
I got connected to one of HostGator's team members once I authenticated my account and waited a brief period (about 2 minutes).
The service member was quite enthusiastic about my circumstance after presenting my story and granted me extra bandwidth for this traffic upsurge.
He also told me that my site had to be blocked, unfortunately, as I had other users on my server to collect server resources. Sorry, fellows! Sorry!
Overall, I had an excellent customer service experience with HostGator and I had the problem repaired in less than 10 minutes.
Free SSL Certificate (But No Free Domain 😔)
Another advantage I've discovered is that HostGator includes free SSL certificates with all domains on your platform.
Although many hosting enterprises (and even domain registrars) still charge SSL certificates for £20 per year. This is a free HostGator that is a big thumb.
Unfortunately, HostGator does not supply a free domain that is just a little bummer, but given the value, users receive from their service, I can deal with it.
The domains cost HostGator £10/year, and the costs for renewal are the same as are reasonably priced.
Side Note: If you hear about a "SSL Certificate" for the first time, it implies essentially that the server and the web users have an encrypted connection.
If you want to find out if there is an SSL certificate on a website, look simply for the SSL pre-lock indicator. In comparison to the non-SSL http://, you can also check for the HTTP://.
Security & Backups With HostGator
When hosting website files online, it is important to have incomprehensible security and redundancies. Otherwise, the websites of users are in danger of becoming hacked and viruses enter servers.
This might lead to a loss of income and bad online traffic.
Fortunately, HostGator offers outstanding safety on all of its web hosting plans, which every day block thousands of DDoS attacks. Malware and viruses are not to be mentioned.
While these are baked-in features, HostGator also gives consumers extra tranquility, such as SiteLock and SpamAssassin add-ons (for a charge).
HostGator offers daily backups at no extra cost, along with high-security protocols! But I always add secondary backups only when I am highly security-sensitive.
To check my guide to the best British hosting picture, where I can cover more than one web hosting company, to see other firms that give backups.
Free Website & cPanel Migrations
Another thing I examined was the choice of free Cpanel and website migration services in this evaluation from HostGator UK.
It should be noted that it may only be used by those who transfer an existing website from another web server. This service is available only within the first 30 days after registration.
A HostGator team member will do all the hard work for you when users take this up. Simple peasy! Easy breezy!
This is an excellent service as many other suppliers charge this privilege for more than £100.
45 Day Money Back Guarantee
If you are not satisfied with HostGator for any reason, you will be delighted to know that the money-back guarantees are offered for 45 days.
So if a user is unhappy with the service for any reason, he can leave within 45 years if he feels that the service is not ready.
While I have never been forced to take that up, it gives people who are still unsure some peace of mind.
Downsides Of Using HostGator
There is no such thing as an ideal web host, as I touched upon in prior papers on this website.
Although many areas are highlighted by a web host, which is helpful for the majority, some elements always affect only a small number. So, here are some of the advantages that I noticed in the use of HostGator.
1. Pushy up-sells: HostGator is included in the order when it is checked out by HostGator.
While a user can simply unwind, they could find up paying for services they do not need to offer for people in a hurry. Although these tactics are applicable to almost every web hosting firm, not seeing them would be an air breath.
2. No domain name: Unfortunately, HostGator does not provide a free domain name, as I said briefly before. Although it's not an immense "keep away," it could be a barrier on a tight budget for those.
HostGator also does not support .co.Uk or .uk domains on domains that are a disgrace. A co. Uk domain can be chosen from a good UK domain registrar easily for a low cost.
3. Poor assistance for customers at night: Okay this is a bit odd, but I have noticed that support is worse than my expectations if I call customer service for HostGator at late or early morning hours.
Although this is an odd comment, it is something you should know if you need support late in the night.
Final Thoughts
In the last eight years, I was quite impressed by my web hosting package offered by HostGator and think it is a good place of departure for people in the UK.
While HostGator doesn't have European servers, a CDN that can transmit copies of a website to hundreds of server locations in Europe and the United Kingdom can simply be integrated by a user.
Overall, HostGator let me develop many profitable internet companies that receive 100,000 visits each month. They are the appropriate provider for individuals who build a blog, website, e-commerce shop, and plenty more. Very advisable!
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