HostGator Review

 HostGator Introduction:

HostGator's eccentric TV advertisements and alligator mascot have done a lot to keep the business in the public eye, giving rivals like GoDaddy a run for their money in the publicity and advertisement department.

The Houston, Texas-based company's dedication to providing improved efficiency and superior functionality has held them at the forefront of the shared hosting industry for more than a decade.

“In this HostGator analysis, I'll go through the benefits and drawbacks of HostGator, as well as why they could be a better fit for advanced hosting needs than for tiny, low-mid traffic sites.”

HostGator Pricing and Key Features:

Getting to the right company on the right day is one of the most difficult aspects of getting the best deal on a shared hosting plan.

The cost of the HostGator Baby plan was £3.25 per month just two days ago, as I was collecting my notes and writing an outline for this study (I even had the screenshot graphic with that price ready to go live). As I sit down to talk about the service today, I note that it has risen by just over one dollar.

What I'm getting at is that companies like HostGator have a history of fluctuating their costs, so it's always a good idea to keep an eye on things and search around to find the best deal.

What’s included:

Other main features of the HostGator Baby Plan, in addition to unrestricted storage and bandwidth, include:

– Immediate backups

– An unlimited number of MySQL databases

– FTP accounts with no limits

– SSL that is shared

– Email accounts with no limits

Cheaper option

I decided to study the Baby Plan in order to make a fair comparison with other companies' unlimited hosting plans, which all support multiple websites and unlimited domains.

If you only want to launch a single website, however, you may be better off saving a little money and going for the Hatchling Plan, which offers unlimited storage and bandwidth but only supports a single domain name.

Domain Names

There are a lot of things to like about HostGator, but one of them is the price of their domain names.

A free top-level domain name (.com,.org,.net, etc.) is included with most of the big-name shared hosting plans. Some companies offer you a free domain for the duration of your account, while others only give you a year or a single contract period before you have to pay for your website address.

Unfortunately, HostGator does neither. Instead, if you want to add a new domain name to your hosting contract, you'll have to pay at least $12.95 for the first year and $15 per year after that.

It's a small consolation that if you already have a domain name registered somewhere, you can move it to your HostGator account for free.

Addons and Subdomains

As frustrating as it is to learn that the HostGator Baby plan does not include a freebie, there is some good news in that the company does not limit the number of sub, addon, or parked domains you can use with your account.

Ease of Use

I've had positive and poor experiences with HostGator in terms of general user-friendliness and ease of use, and I've noticed that certain tasks are a lot easier than others.

First, let's get the bad news out of the way. Managing my account has been one of the most difficult aspects of my HostGator experience. Almost every top company I've encountered needs only one username for a single platform where you can do anything from updating your billing address to paying your hosting renewal fees to set up a new WordPress website or a subdomain.

HostGator does it a little differently, with one billing login for general account management and another for accessing and controlling your control panel and website. Although I can see why this will be better for account security, I can also say that I've never had any security problems with hosting companies that only require one login. In the end, this approach makes using your HostGator account more time-consuming and tedious than it needs to be, particularly because HostGator's billing management system isn't the most intuitive I've ever seen.

Website management

Thankfully, the company compensates for its shortcomings in account management with the overall simplicity of its website management controls. Many other providers, such as BlueHost and iPage, use cPanel, which is as simple to learn as cPanel. The more commonly used icons, such as program installs and email management, are given precedence here. These are usually found at the very top of your control panel, with icons selected from lower down rising to the top for smoother, more effective use.

Billing aside, I've found HostGator to be pretty simple to use, and while intermediate and advanced users can take advantage of the more advanced options, beginners should have no trouble navigating the dashboard, using most of the more popular resources, and eventually getting their new website up and running.

Performance and Reliability

One of the key reasons I continue to use HostGator for some types of sites, despite the higher price tag, is the superior uptime and efficiency.

The company promises at least 99.9% uptime as part of their customer guarantee, and my own server testing tests (see the chart to the right of this review) show that they almost always deliver what they promise.

In terms of speed and efficiency, even a massive, high-powered online store I launched on the platform returned page load speeds that dwarfed those of some of HostGator's competitors, and the overall performance makes this one a good choice for anyone anticipating higher-than-average traffic levels.

Building a Website

HostGator, like most good hosting companies, offers a variety of options for creating and launching a website, allowing users of all ability levels to find a tool that best suits their needs and technical knowledge.

The required FTP functions for uploading sites from your hard drive are present and correct for advanced users and serious developers, as is complete support for:

– PHP 5 – Python – Perl – Ruby On Rails – Fast CGI – Cron.

If that's a little too technical for you, you'll be happy to know that your cPanel's one-click program installation feature makes it easy to launch both major CMS platforms and niche tools.

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento, as well as Moodle, phpBB, and tools to help you build wikis, forums, journals, portals, and other types of websites, are all completely supported here, typically by doing nothing more technical than loading up the tool and configuring the different options to suit your requirements.

If all of this still sounds a little too complicated, the inclusion of a free Weebly website builder could be just what you're looking for.

Weebly, one of the most well-liked drag-and-drop website builders on the web, needs no technical skills or expertise to construct functional, attractive websites.

Instead, you can use the tool to load one of several hundred pre-designed website templates and customize it to your liking, modifying everything from the color scheme and typeface to the theme and features. All of this is accomplished by dragging different objects across the screen with your mouse and making adjustments with basic menu choices.

Weebly is becoming a more popular method in the shared hosting industry, with some of HostGator's rivals including it in their plans as well. There's a reason for this, too: it's one of the simplest and most effective ways to build a great-looking website, and it ensures that those of you who are new to website ownership will get just as much out of your HostGator plan as those of you who have been doing it for years.

👉 Also, you can read : HostGator Review

Marketing and Advertising

A word of caution: If you're based in the United Kingdom (or anywhere else outside of North America or India), don't be enticed by HostGator's offer of $200 in search engine advertisement credits.

The company promises $100 vouchers for both Google AdWords and the joint Yahoo!/Bing advertising network, but these are only available to consumers in the United States and Canada, with a similar -albeit significantly reduced- offer available in India.

The good news is that the company's shared hosting plans provide a range of tools and features that can help you monitor website use, plan and distribute email marketing campaigns, and improve your website's Search Engine Optimization for better results with search engines like those listed above through one-click installation.

Not great, but in fairness, I've recently noticed that fewer and fewer companies are providing the kinds of marketing suites that they used to, especially for UK consumers, so this isn't as big a deal as it might seem.

eCommerce

When you move to the top-tier Business plan, HostGator, like rivals like GoDaddy, is at its best for eCommerce.

Despite the fact that all of their shared hosting solutions provide integrated support for shopping carts such as CubeCart and osCommerce, as well as one-click Magento installation and PayPal support, the Business Plan goes well beyond these industry-standard basics.

Dedicated IP address

HostGator Business is one of the few shared hosting solutions I've seen that not only provides a private SSL for data encryption but also includes a free dedicated IP address. It's currently priced with a 20% discount for a total cost of $11.96 per month.

Even better, you can purchase the Baby Plan (which includes Private SSL) but add a dedicated IP for as little as $2 per month. Many of HostGator's competitors charge about £100 a year for similar resources, so this is particularly good value.

This was something I was initially delighted to see from such a competitively low-cost shared hosting solution and is the main reason I still recommend HostGator to my own clients who come to me for eCommerce website growth.

Customer Support

I often feel like calling a specific aspect of a hosting company's overall service "average" is a cop-out, but when it comes to HostGator's customer service, it's the best way to explain it.

The company gets a lot of things right, particularly in terms of providing 24/7 support via live chat, phone, and email, and they are friendly and professional enough without ever doing anything to merit high praise.

In my own personal experience, I've found that calling customer service is the fastest way to reach anyone, with live chat operators taking longer to reply than many of their peers at other hosting companies.

Knowledgebase blogs, tutorials, and how-to guides are adequate and understandable, but they don't do anything especially noteworthy.

Even, I have to admit that even mediocre service is preferable to some of the other providers' dreadful efforts (GreenGeeks comes to mind), so I'm going to award HostGator a respectable customer service rating.

Final Verdict

Throughout my Hostgator analysis, I've attempted to summarize both the benefits and drawbacks based on my own personal experience. Since the cost of a domain name adds to HostGator's already high hosting costs, this isn't exactly a company I'd suggest for anyone looking to create tiny, easy websites on a budget.

Rather, I believe HostGator is best suited to those who want to create efficient, interactive online stores and other large (in terms of file size, traffic levels, or both) web projects and will benefit from features like enhanced performance, free SSL usage, and low-cost dedicated IPs.

Though I can see an argument for using a lower-cost unlimited plan for those with less advanced needs, the company is still one of the first I turn to for my own larger ventures.