As you read this article, the chances are you’re planning to host your first website or blog… Or perhaps you are already a veteran webmaster who is planning on migrating to Hostgator. And you want to find out if Hostgator is the choice hosting platform for you or not. Whatever category you belong to this review will help you clearly understand why I believe Hostgator is the choice web hosting for you.
Quick Disclosure: I’m a Hostgator customer and affiliate. So if you sign up with them through through any of my Hostgator Affiliate links in this page I’ll receive a referral fee at no extra cost whatsoever to you.
Brief Background About Hostgator
Hostgator Inc. was founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley in the year, 2002. The company’s operation grew from one man’s operation to a staff force of over 850 employees. It grew rapidly until it ranked 239th out of 5,000 Inc’s fastest growing business rakings. In 2012 Brent sold Hostgator to a company known as Endurance International Group (EIG). Till date, Hostgator is one of the most popular Webhosting Services around on the web.
Hostgator offers six types of Webhosting services, namely: Shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Reseller Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting. They have their offices in four locations, namely: Houston and Austin, Texas. And Sao Paulo and Florianopolic, Brazil. Their Data Centers are located at Houston, Texas, and Provo, UT, U.S.A.
The Contents of This Hostgator Review
- The Intriguing Features of Hostgator
- Hostgator Web Hosting Services
- Hostgator Web Hosting Pricing
- The Cons Of The Hostgator Web Hosting Platform
- Why I Recommend Hostgator
The Intriguing Features of Hostgator Web Hosting
Listed below are the intriguing features of Hostgator web hosting which make many webmasters and bloggers choose them instead of their competitors…
- Reliable 99.99% Uptime Performance with Guarantee: Hostgator maintains 99.99% uptime performance. And they even guarantee this their 99.99% server uptime. They guarantee that if your website performance falls below the 99.99% uptime performance they give you free 30 days hosting credit as you inform them.
- Beginners Friendly Platform: The entire Hostgator’s hosting portal, including their dashboard, cpanel and filemanager, is designed to be very easy and beginners friendly. A beginner can easily navigate his way around the Hostgator hosting platform.
- Topnotch Customer Support: Hostgator has one of the most robust customer support system in place. They have a variety of Customer support media. These include: 24/7/365 days Live Chat, Toll Free number, knowledgebase, Video Tutorials and Forum.
- Unbeatable 45 Days Money Back Guarantee: While some web hosting companies manage to offer the standard 30 days money back guarantee, Hostgator offers unbeatable, 45 days money back guarantee for all their hosting plans except for dedicated server. Which gives a first time customer ample opportunity to test out the Hostgator platform; and if the person is not satisfied, he can request for refund within 45 days.
- Great Starters Discounts—Up to 70% Discount: Hostgator gives mouthwatering discounts for every of their hosting services and plans to starters. Their discounts range from 33% to 70% off, for first time customers, from their different hosting services. And basically the longer the period you sign up for, the more discount you get. For instance you get higher discount for 36 months period hosting period than for 24 months or 12 months periods.
- Free Domain Name and SSL Certificate: As you sign up a new hosting account with Hostgator for the first time, you are given the opportunity to register one domain name for free. Then along with the free domain name, you also get a free SSL certificate that makes your website secured and also have the HTTPS prefix.
- Free Site Migration : As a first time customer, Hostgator helps you with free migration of one of your websites or blog from the previous host you are migrating from. And this offer is available within the first 30 days of registering the account.
Hostgator Web Hosting Services
As I mentioned earlier, Hostgator offers six different types of Web Hosting, which include: Shared, Cloud, VPS, Reseller, WordPress and Dedicated Hosting. In this section I want to discuss a little more on these different kinds of webhosting; in order to enable you know their differences and choose the one that is more suitable for you.
- Shared Hosting: In shared hosting plans, several websites share the same web server. And this limits the speed and security of this kind of web hosting. Because of the many websites that share the same server space in shared hosting plan, if the traffic of a particular website under the same server goes up, it impacts on the rest websites on the same server. So Shared hosting is recommended for small websites with limited traffic. It is not recommended for big websites with so much traffic. It is the cheapest type of web hosting service, both in Hostgator and in any other web hosting platform.
- Cloud Hosting: In cloud hosting, your website’s data are stored in multiple virtual servers in the cloud, unlike shared hosting that stores data in physical servers. This means if one server goes down, another server takes over, and as such, your website will not go down. Cloud hosting is more scalable, flexible and reliable than shared hosting. Plus it is faster than shared hosting. Cloud hosting is recommended for websites that experience surges of traffic from time to time such as ecommerce stores. Hostgator has some of the cheapest Cloud Hosting plans available on the net.
- VPS Hosting: VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. VPS hosting is the intermediary between shared hosting and dedicated servers. VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that the same physical server is shared among websites.
But regardless of the fact that each websites share the same physical server, they all have their individual virtual private server. So the activity of a sharing neighbor does not affect the other as is the case with shared hosting.
In VPS hosting, if one of the server sharing website uses up its resources, the website is shutdown. It does not encroach on its neighbors’ resources.
VPS hosting combines the features of shared hosting and dedicated servers at much lower price than dedicated servers. But however, the price of VPS hosting is higher than that of shared hosting.
If your website is already beginning to receive more traffic than can be managed in shared hosting, it would be time for you to step up to VPS hosting for better performance.
Click Here to read more on the different types of web hosting and their differences
Hostgator Web Hosting Pricing
Hostgator Web Hosting plan begins with the Hatchling Shared Hosting plan starting at $2.75/mo and renews at $6.95/mo after the discount period. And from there the prices increases with higher hosting packages and types.
The table below gives a brief breakdown of Hostgator’s hosting plans across their different hosting plans…
| Hosting Type | Basic | Better | Best |
| Shared | $2.75 | $3.95 | $5.95 |
| Cloud | $4.95 | $6.57 | $9.95 |
| WordPress | $5.95 | $7.95 | $9.95 |
| Reseller | $19.95 | $24.95 | $24.95 |
| VPS | $29.95 | $39.95 | $49.95 |
| Dedicated | $118.99 | $138.99 | $148.98 |
The Cons Of The Hostgator Web Hosting Platform
The complains usually brought against the Hostgator web hosting platform are as listed below:
- Occasional Delay in Live chat support: As Hostgator is a very popular web hosting platform, with so many clients to support, sometime if they have so many customers to support at the same time, you may need to wait a little while before you receive support. But with my recent experience with their live chat support, their live chat support speed has increased a great deal.
- Renewal Fees are Drastically Higher Than First Time Price: Another common con of the Hostgator hosting platform as well as with other hosting platforms, is that the renewal prices of their hosting plans are drastically higher than the starting prices which are advertised on their websites homepage. For instance, the intro price of the hatchling hosting plan begins at $2.75/mo for a 36 months hosting period, but at renewal, it becomes $6.95/mo.
Why I Recommend Hostgator
I strongly recommend the different types of Hostgator Web Hosting Services because of the following reasons below, which I have also stated above:
- Hostgator offers one of the best customer supports
- The Hostgator platform is matchlessly intuitive and very beginner friendly
- Hostgator is the only web hosting that gives 45 days money back guarantee for their hosting services
- Hostgator’s pricing are relatively cheaper than their competition
- Hostgator gives you free $100 worth Google and Bing Ads credit
- Hostgator 99.99% guaranteed uptime is unparalleled
If you want to sign up a web hosting account with the reliable, scalable and expert web hosting services of Hostgator Click Here.
If you intend starting a blog, as you register with Hostgator through this my affiliate link right now, you can contact me, and I’ll help you install and setup your blog for you free of charge. For full detail about my free blog installation and setup services click here.