HostGator Review – All Features, Pros, and Cons

HostGator is one of the most popular web hosting companies in the market. It is considered to be one of the top website hosting providers and is on par with SiteGround (Check our SiteGround Review, Bluehost (Check out our Bluehost Review), etc. Considering it is extensively used, it is thus imperative to review HostGator so that a call can be made, regarding which web hosting provider is the best suited for our needs.

In this post, we will discuss HostGator web hosting, its features, its Pros, and its Cons.

History

HostGator was founded in 2002 and has its headquarters in Houston, Texas. It was later sold to the Endurance International Group. HostGator caters to over 8 million websites today which is quite a number. Apart from the United States, the company has offices in Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Australia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Wiki, phpBB, and Magento are some of the hosting platforms that HostGator is compatible with.

HostGator Plans Review & Pricing

The following are the hosting options provided by HostGator:

• Shared
• VPS
• WordPress
• Dedicated
• Reseller

The company is very transparent about its features and pricing which are discussed in the following sections.

Shared Web Hosting

In shared hosting, the resources of a server like CPU, Memory, Bandwidth, etc. are shared between various websites. It is good for bloggers and small businesses.

The following is the pricing structure:

As per the packages, HostGator provides cPanel website transfer, unmetered bandwidth, free domain, and free SSL certificate.

The HostGator recommends Baby Plan out of its three Shared hosting packages. Though, if you have medium to big business, Business package is more suitable. As part of the Business Plan, apart from the features in Hatchling and Baby plans, you get add-ons like SEO tools and free dedicated IP.

HostGator claims to have the best shared hosting plan. It has compared the plan’s features and prices with GoDaddy and Squarespace. The following is the comparison image taken from HostGator’s website.

WordPress Hosting

HostGator claims to provide the best WordPress hosting. It provides three packages which are shown below:

The prices are as per the number of websites, visitors per month, and backups. Free SSL certificate and domain are included as part of the packages like other hosting providers.

According to HostGator, it provides speeds up to 2.5x faster than other service providers. It has a cloud hosting solution. With multiple caching layers and efficient dynamic content requests, HostGator provides a powerful WP solution.

The HostGator’s control panel is easy to use. Free WordPress website migration to HostGator is also available as part of different packages.

Dedicated Server Hosting

Like other website hosting providers, HostGator also provides a Dedicated Hosting plan powered by Intel Xeon-D CPU. The dedicated server hosting plan has three packages. The following are the features and prices:

Dedicated server hosting provides:

• IP firewall Security
• DDOS protection
• HDD and SSD options
• cPanel and WHM
• Three dedicated IPs
• Full Root backend access
• Redundancy
• Unlimited Databases

HostGator also provides Managed and Semi-managed dedicated hosting services. Using this, the HostGator’s support team can help in resolving specific issues.

VPS Hosting

HostGator also provides VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting for more control over the server resources when compared with shared hosting. HostGator servers are highly reliable. Full access to the server backend is available. Exclusive network security with redundant data centers is part of the hosting plan.

The resources can also be scaled easily in VPS hosting. The website backup option is also available.

The following are the different VPS packages, prices, and features.

Reseller Hosting

HostGator’s reseller hosting plan provides a means for you to acquire clients and create your own hosting company. All the features like resource allocation, payment methods, SSL certificates, and many more are available as part of this plan.

The reseller hosting plan includes all the features that a particular HostGator plan has. Some of the highlights are:

• Unmetered domains, sub-domains, DB, etc.
• High Availability
• Money-back guarantee
• Server status monitoring
• Updated Web Host Manager (WHM)
• Full backend control
• Latest cPanel
• Unlimited Databases and phpMyAdmin access

And, many more.

The package pricing is shown below:

HostGator Features Review

Servers and traffic load

HostGator provides servers with Intel Xeon-D processor and has the options for both HDD and SSD storage. Their hosting plans can easily handle large traffic loads. In the WordPress hosting plan we have seen that the three packages can handle 100K, 200K, and 500K visitors per month. HostGator also provides unmetered bandwidth.

Caching and CDN

HostGator provides multiple layers of caching and can also be integrated with CDN like Cloudflare.

Domain

HostGator provides a specific quota of domain registration with different plans. For WP hosting, shared, and cloud hosting, single free domain registration is provided for the first year. The feature is available only for .com, .net, and .org domains. After the 1st year, regular rates are applicable for renewal.

Free SSL

A free SSL certificate is provided by HostGator for encrypted communication between the server and the visitors. It provides up to 256-bit encryption.

HostGator Storage Review

For shared, VPS, and WordPress hosting, HostGator provides unmetered storage. There are storage limits for Dedicated and Reseller plans. Check Dedicated Hosting and Reseller Hosting for more information.

Email

HostGator provides an unlimited POP3 email accounts option with all its plans. This means users can create unlimited @<domainname> email addresses. The option to filter out spam emails, autoresponders, and webmail access is also available. A limited number of email lists option is also present with various plans.

Usage Types

HostGator provides different plans and packages for different user needs. For example, in shared hosting:

• Hatchling plan can be used for a single blog.
• Baby plan can be used for small businesses and multiple blogs.
• The business package provides multiple blogs, dedicated IP, and SEO Tools.

Uptime & Availability

HostGator uptime and availability are considered to be among the best in the business. We went through multiple reviews and found that HostGator indeed keeps its promise of 99.99% availability.

HostGator WordPress Migration Review

Hostgator provides free WordPress based website migration from your current web hosting provider to HostGator. This is applicable within 30 days of signup. There are few plans where users can consult with HostGator experts about migrating their websites.

Resources

We have already discussed the resources as part of various HostGator plans described above. There are plans with unmetered storage and bandwidth like in shared and WP hosting. Dedicated, VPS, and Reseller hosting plans have a limit on CPU, memory, and storage. Access to the MySQL database is also available in a few plans via phpMyAdmin. 

Usage

The HostGator control panel is the latest and very easy to use. Using cPanel, we can monitor different website statistics. According to HostGator, they provide AWStats, Webalizer, Raw Log Manager, Referrer, and Error Logs.

SSH

HostGator allows access to backend via SSH in Dedicated, Reseller, and VPS hosting plans. CRON scheduling is also available.

HostGator Security Feature Review

Just like other web-hosting providers, HostGator lays importance on Security. According to HostGator, they provide multiple layers of security including IP firewall, DDOS attack protection, and network security.

Miscellaneous

HostGator provides other features like:

• HostGator website builder with more than 100 templates.
• Domain transfer & MySQL transfer.
• Important script installation.
• Users can use PHP (both 5 and 7), Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, and CGI programming languages with some specific plans.
• Modules like cURL and CPAN.

Money-Back Guarantee

Unlike most other web host providers that provide a 30 days money-back guarantee, HostGator provides a money-back guarantee of 45 days. No questions or contract.

HostGator Support Review

HostGator’s support has mixed reviews. There are a few dissatisfied customers who think that HostGator’s support is delayed and slow. But overall, we have found that the majority of the customers are happy with the company’s 24/7/365 support. So, no points dropped here.

HostGator provides Customer Support via calls and chats. They also perform activities like weekly off-site backups and server monitoring.

HostGator also has a huge knowledge-sharing database with over 500 video tutorials and over 600 articles. The knowledge base can be referred to solve queries before contacting HostGator’s support.

HostGator Review Summary

HostGator Review Conclusion

HostGator is one of the top-notch web hosting service providers in the industry. It provides all the necessary plans and packages. The latest infrastructure, free SSL certificate, unlimited domains, unmetered bandwidth and storage, caching and CDN features, 99.99% uptime, etc. are some of the key features that HostGator provides with various plans.

Renewal pricing and limitations to domain registration are some of the drawbacks of HostGator. But, overall, HostGator is considered to be the reliable and top choice for most people. We have given it a rating of 9.4 out of 10 which means it is highly recommended.

Let me know your experience with HostGator in the comments section below.

Images are subject to copyright @ HostGator Website

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