Objective review HostGator.com
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Price:
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Speed:
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Reliability:
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Support:
- 🌐 Country: USA
- 🎂 Founded: 2002
- 👨 Customers: 2000000 (~3.85 % market)
- 🌎 Servers Location: USA, India, North America
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🎁 Coupon:
bonusgator65
Up to 65% Off Hosting and 55% Off Gator Website Builder
- 🖥️ Control panel: cPanel, Plesk
- 📅 Free/Moneyback period: 30 days
Participants in ratings (the place occupied in the rating is indicated in brackets):
Countries: USA (20), India (7), North America (16). Alternatives and competitors: A2Hosting.com (9), Bluehost.com (8), Namecheap.com (6), WPEngine.com (7), DreamHost.com (5), Cloudways.com (8), GoDaddy.com (8), Squarespace.com (5), OVH.com (10). Disk type: SSD (17), HDD (2). Payment methods: Visa or MasterCard (18), PayPal (16), Wire transfer (10). Control panel: cPanel (19), Parallels Plesk (11). Technologies: ASP.NET (12), MySQL (17), PHP (16), ColdFusion (5), Java (11). Domains: Domain registrars (7). Other: Unlimited hosting (14), Secure hosting (7), Green hosting (7), Website builder (15), Reseller hosting (18). OS: Linux (22), Windows (15). Free trial: Moneyback (25). CMS: Joomla (17), WordPress (18), Drupal (17), MODX (9), TYPO3 (13), vBulletin (11), Magento (19). Type of hosting: Cloud hosting (11), Shared hosting (20), VPS-VDS (25), Dedicated server (20). Hosting for: Adult websites (5), Corporate website (22), E-Commerce (20), Forum (18), E-mail (20), Web-portal (18). Hosting price: Cheap hosting (29), Price-quality ratio (19), Expensive hosting (5)Overview
First impression
HostGator, a Houston-based hosting provider, was founded in October 2002 by a young entrepreneur, Brent Oxley, a student at Florida Atlantic University at the time. From those early days of the interwebs, he had one goal in mind - to make a successful web presence possible for anyone, anywhere, through scalable solutions & expert support, and HostGator has been excelling at it ever since. The company is made up of more than 1000 highly capable administrators, engineers, and technicians, powering more than 2 million websites globally.
This giant of the hosting world provides easy, affordable, and scalable Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server Hosting plans.
Trial Period
They don't offer a trial run on their hosting services, but they do have a 30-day money-back guarantee. To qualify for the money-back guarantee on your shared, reseller, or VPS-hosting, you need to cancel your account within the first 30 days of purchase.
If your plan includes a free domain registration and you request a refund, their standard fee for the domain name will be deducted from the amount owed to you. It is also important to note that packages paid for with checks, money orders, or bank wire transfers are not eligible for refunds.
Billing Cycle
HostGator offers numerous hosting plans, each with different features and pricing options to suit the needs and budgets of their broad client base. Like most big players in the industry, they offer a substantial discount for first-time customers.
They currently accept any credit or debit card with a MasterCard, Visa, Discover, or American Express logo as valid forms of payment.
Cash payments, Bank wire transfers, Cryptocurrency, Checks, and Money Orders (M.O.) are not accepted.
Control Panel
This provider offers a variety of hosting solutions to fit different needs, and as such, their plans have different control panels. In Shared hosting, you'll be allocated one cPanel and on VPS and Dedicated Linux servers, you'll have WHM (WebHost Manager), from where you can install multiple cPanels. Their Windows plans come standard with Plesk.
Limits
HostGator features three plans on their Shared Hosting, namely the Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan, and then lastly the Business Plan. The Hatchling plan is limited to a single website and 10GB disc space, the Baby Plan has 40GB space and allows you to host up to 5 websites, while the Business plan boasts unlimited space and websites, a dedicated IP address, Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) and a free website migration service. All shared plans come standard with unmetered bandwidth and a free domain for the first year. Unfortunately, the Shared Hosting storage is still on standard HDDs and not SSD Drives as one would expect from a company of this stature.
Their VPS Hosting also offers three plans, that are named after their mascot Snappy. The entry-level plan is the Snappy2000, and it comes with 2GB RAM and 2 Core CPUs, the Snappy4000 has 4GB RAM with 4 Core CPUs whilst the Snappy8000 features 8GB RAM and 8Core CPUs allocated. Luckily their VPS storage runs on SSD Drives, and although it is not NVMe Drives, it is still way better than the outdated standard HDDs they use on their Shared Hosting plans.
Website Builder
They provide their clients with an easy-to-use, intuitive drag-and-drop website builder called “Gator Website Builder”. This builder is powered by web.com, and offers access to hundreds of beautiful, industry-specific designs, and more than 2 million free stock images, plus YouTube and Vimeo embeds, making it easy for individuals and small businesses to create a professional-looking website.
However, this builder is not free of charge and comes at an additional monthly fee.
Security
HostGator support comes in the form of DDoS protection as well as a free SSL certificate on all their hosting plans. On Shared Hosting the certificates are issued by Let’s Encrypt, and on VPS it will be a Sectigo SSL certificate. Should you feel that more protection is needed, there is also a paid-for service called SiteLock. This software addon scans your website for vulnerabilities like SQL injection flaws and cross-site scripting. It also submits forms and posts comments to find vulnerabilities hackers use to break in, in essence making your site a lot more secure and preventing blacklisting.
Their infrastructure also boasts a custom firewall, and significant ModSecurity rule sets, which is an open-source web-based firewall application (or WAF) supported by different web servers like Apache, Nginx, and IIS, offering protection from various forms of attack.
Besides these measures, they employ additional server security methods and precautions, that are confidential and not made known to the general public.
OS
For Linux-based hosting, HostGator runs CentOS 7 (a free version of Red Hat) on their Shared Hosting, VPS, and Dedicated Server plans. Their Windows plans work with Windows Server 2016 on Shared Hosting and Windows Server 2019 on Dedicated Server packages.
Should your website be running an older version of PHP, you might run into problems as versions older than 7.3 are not supported on their servers.
Support
HostGator is well known for its excellent and efficient support. Customers can reach out to them 24/7 via Phone, Live Chat, or an Email Ticketing System. There is also a decent knowledge base that you can access from within your hosting dashboard, that will offer solutions to most common issues.
One thing I personally dislike a bit is the fact that you will first chat with a bot on their live chat before being transferred to a real person, however, one still gets friendly assistance fairly quickly. On live chat you can expect to be helped within a minute, emails take a bit longer though, and you should get a reply back within a few minutes.
Conclusion
Pros | Cons |
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HostGator is a reliable web hosting company that has been around for longer than most. They have a broad range of hosting solutions to suit most users, guarantee a 99.9% server uptime, and offer great discounts when first signing up. For me personally, there are a few drawbacks though, with the biggest one being the fact that their Shared Hosting still runs on standard HDDs, which isn’t what one would expect from such a big brand as HostGator. The second is their support on live chat, one gets the impression at times that the agents also need to check the knowledge base for answers, rather than be able to answer my questions right away. Overall, HostGator I still an excellent choice for hosting your site.
Plans
Hatchling Plan | Baby Plan | Business Plan | |
Price |
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DDoS Protection | No | Yes | Yes |
Websites | 1 pcs | 2 pcs | 3 pcs |
Database | ∞ | ∞ | ∞ |
Disk Space | 10 Gb | 20 Gb | 40 Gb |
Platform | linux | linux | linux |
Control panel | cPanel | cPanel | cPanel |
Details | Details | Details |
Snappy 2000 | Snappy 2000 cPanel | Snappy 4000 | Snappy 8000 | |
Price |
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Memory (RAM) | 2 Gb | 2 Gb | 4 Gb | 8 Gb |
DDoS Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Disk Space | 120 Gb | 120 Gb | 165 Gb | 240 Gb |
Platform | linux | linux | linux | linux |
Control panel | - | cPanel | - | - |
CPU | - | - | - | - |
CPU Cores | 2 pcs | 2 pcs | 2 pcs | 4 pcs |
Details | Details | Details | Details |
Value Server | Value Server cPanel | Power Server | Enterprise Server Windows | Enterprise Server Windows Plesk | |
Price |
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Memory (RAM) | 8 Gb | 8 Gb | 16 Gb | 30 Gb | 30 Gb |
DDoS Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Disk Space | 1000 Gb | 1000 Gb | 512 Gb | 1000 Gb | 1000 Gb |
Platform | linux | linux | linux | windows | windows |
Control panel | - | cPanel | - | - | Plesk |
CPU | - | - | - | - | - |
CPU Cores | 4 pcs | 4 pcs | 8 pcs | 8 pcs | 8 pcs |
Details | Details | Details | Details | Details |
.biz 18.99 USD 17.28 EUR 25.64 CAD 14.81 GBP 28.67 AUD 1571.04 INR 136.54 CNY 2809.95 JPY 1715.56 RUB 726.56 UAH | .co.uk 11.99 USD 10.91 EUR 16.19 CAD 9.35 GBP 18.1 AUD 991.93 INR 86.21 CNY 1774.16 JPY 1083.18 RUB 458.74 UAH | .com 12.99 USD 11.82 EUR 17.54 CAD 10.13 GBP 19.61 AUD 1074.66 INR 93.4 CNY 1922.13 JPY 1173.52 RUB 497 UAH FREE A free domain for your first year with annual hosting plans. | .fm 110.99 USD 101 EUR 149.84 CAD 86.57 GBP 167.59 AUD 9182.2 INR 798.02 CNY 16423.19 JPY 10026.84 RUB 4246.48 UAH |
.life 39.99 USD 36.39 EUR 53.99 CAD 31.19 GBP 60.38 AUD 3308.37 INR 287.53 CNY 5917.32 JPY 3612.7 RUB 1530.02 UAH | .name 14.99 USD 13.64 EUR 20.24 CAD 11.69 GBP 22.63 AUD 1240.12 INR 107.78 CNY 2218.07 JPY 1354.2 RUB 573.52 UAH | .net 18.99 USD 17.28 EUR 25.64 CAD 14.81 GBP 28.67 AUD 1571.04 INR 136.54 CNY 2809.95 JPY 1715.56 RUB 726.56 UAH | .org 9.99 USD 9.09 EUR 13.49 CAD 7.79 GBP 15.08 AUD 826.47 INR 71.83 CNY 1478.22 JPY 902.5 RUB 382.22 UAH |
.pro 4.99 USD 4.54 EUR 6.74 CAD 3.89 GBP 7.53 AUD 412.82 INR 35.88 CNY 738.37 JPY 450.8 RUB 190.92 UAH | .co 27.99 USD 25.47 EUR 37.79 CAD 21.83 GBP 42.26 AUD 2315.61 INR 201.25 CNY 4141.68 JPY 2528.62 RUB 1070.9 UAH | .me 17.99 USD 16.37 EUR 24.29 CAD 14.03 GBP 27.16 AUD 1488.31 INR 129.35 CNY 2661.98 JPY 1625.22 RUB 688.3 UAH | .us 18.99 USD 17.28 EUR 25.64 CAD 14.81 GBP 28.67 AUD 1571.04 INR 136.54 CNY 2809.95 JPY 1715.56 RUB 726.56 UAH |
.ws 24.99 USD 22.74 EUR 33.74 CAD 19.49 GBP 37.73 AUD 2067.42 INR 179.68 CNY 3697.77 JPY 2257.6 RUB 956.12 UAH | .city 24.99 USD 22.74 EUR 33.74 CAD 19.49 GBP 37.73 AUD 2067.42 INR 179.68 CNY 3697.77 JPY 2257.6 RUB 956.12 UAH | .today 24.99 USD 22.74 EUR 33.74 CAD 19.49 GBP 37.73 AUD 2067.42 INR 179.68 CNY 3697.77 JPY 2257.6 RUB 956.12 UAH | .xyz 14.99 USD 13.64 EUR 20.24 CAD 11.69 GBP 22.63 AUD 1240.12 INR 107.78 CNY 2218.07 JPY 1354.2 RUB 573.52 UAH |
.online 4.99 USD 4.54 EUR 6.74 CAD 3.89 GBP 7.53 AUD 412.82 INR 35.88 CNY 738.37 JPY 450.8 RUB 190.92 UAH FREE A free domain for your first year with annual hosting plans. | .guru 39.99 USD 36.39 EUR 53.99 CAD 31.19 GBP 60.38 AUD 3308.37 INR 287.53 CNY 5917.32 JPY 3612.7 RUB 1530.02 UAH | .news 27.99 USD 25.47 EUR 37.79 CAD 21.83 GBP 42.26 AUD 2315.61 INR 201.25 CNY 4141.68 JPY 2528.62 RUB 1070.9 UAH | .club 9.95 USD 9.05 EUR 13.43 CAD 7.76 GBP 15.02 AUD 823.16 INR 71.54 CNY 1472.3 JPY 898.88 RUB 380.69 UAH |
testing
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
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Australia (Sydney)
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Germany (Munich)
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Japan (Tokyo)
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Russia (Moscow)
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Great Britain (London)
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США, Нью-Йорк, Гарден Сити
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USA (Los Angeles)
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South Africa (Johannesburg)
Contacts
- Phone number: (866) 964-2867, +1-713-574-5287
- E-mail: support@gator.com
- All
- General impression
- Support
- Reliability
- Price
- Website performance
- Website interface
- Control panel
- Livechat
- Payment process
- Security
Reviews (19)
- Sorting
That seems ridiculous, I've never heard of that.
However, there is a limit on the number of files - 250,000.
There is no restriction, it's just recommended not to have more than 250 thousand files ... plus it won't create a backup if there are more than 100 thousand.
There are other too. For the first year of use there were no problems, then I extended for another year. So, six months after that, some domains (or all) are blocked at certain intervals - because of the server load, although really simple blogs on Wordpress are hosted there... problems are solved in a difficult way ... They recommended, for example, to remove almost all of my plug-ins.
The attendance is just 100-200 people a day in total - but it still causes problems.
In general, at first everything was fine - and then - worse and worse.
I also updated the theme and I think it has to do with the speed but it's not a WP theme so I can't rollback. I gave up on them & moved on.
Mostly the services are oversold. The "unlimited thing" mentioned by Hostgator for storage and bandwidth is just a marketing strategy. Based on my personal experience, I'd recommend you to stay away from this host.
When HostGator was acquired by EIG, live chat support response times went from around 7 minutes to nearly an hour average. Since then, they have improved slightly. My last live chat about 4 months ago I waited around 25 minutes for an agent.
When you do get an agent online, or if you submit a support request, you will find that most agents know very little about web hosting and are likely giving 95% scripted answers. “We cannot help you with that” is a common refrain from this hosts support team.
The quality of their hosting matches the quality of their support. Frequent downtimes or slow performance are the norm with Hostgator, probably due to the fact that they severely overcrowd their servers.
I never right a fully negative review, so what is something positive I can say about them? Ummmm….they are cheap.
Pros: It was cheap.
Cons: Support was nonexistent. Server timeouts. Horrible speeds.>/span>
Their customer/tech support are completely not dependable. They have no idea about the product and escalating to higher tech support position will take days and the issues will always linger.
To sum it up:
Pros:
1. Cheap and affordable price
Cons:
1. Weekly or even daily downtime
2. Nonstop auto billing to your credit card account
3. Outdated database technology
4. BAD customer support
5. Super slow on page load hosting
6. Overall poor user experience when someone using the site
On one hand, it was easy to choose them. You can see their ads all over the place and their prices really looked amazing. Especially as I was planning to run a simple website for my fantasy league.
HostGator is reliable, there's no denying that. We have been monitoring our uptime for the last year and it was 99.9%. Very pleasing!
The problems came when we needed some support for a simple tech question. HostGator operators are rarely helpful, instead, they try to push you tutorial links or templated responses. At the end of the day, we had to find a solution ourselves.
HG might be suitable for small or hobby projects, but prepare to meet the challenges on your own.
if you a small website with a small risk you can try them but with a heavy website, it's not recommended at all.
Pros:
1. Cheap price
Cons:
1. Outdated database technology
2. BAD customer support
3. Slow on load
4. The overall poor user experience.
5 Low security i got several websites hacked there.
The trick with Hostgator is to pay at least one year in advanced. That is where their value lies. For a month-to-month contract, you can expect to pay just under $11/month for their entry-level plan. However, if you pay three years in advance, the monthly price drops to only $2.75 and includes a free domain and SSL certificate.
Of course - this is only revealed during the sign-up process and it's unclear how many users quit the process at this point.
They also offer VPS and Dedicated hosting, however there's no reason to take any of the latter two options from them, as they specs do not justify the price you pay.
If you have perhaps a one-page blog page of a splash page, you could use them for the low pricing. But if you have a serious website or even semi-serious, I would not choose HostGator for anything.
The support department is ridiculously clueless and not helpful. Websites are frequently down, and speeds are very slow due to cheap shared servers.
I found the support to be limited help, and usually slow to respond. Although the price is cheap, this is one where you get what you pay for.
While they're pricing hasn't changed much, it doesn't seem as reliable as it once was and I'm not sure if they will ever get that back. Their speed is lacking and their support is not among the most patient and informative group of support folks I've experienced.
Basically, if you have a small website that you don't need to be too fancy, save your money and go with them. Otherwise, get something with some more strength.
We highly recommend not to purchase the cheapest hosting package. Usually, they come with a row of issues: the server is often down, the hardware is outdated, lousy and slow support, registration and payment errors, etc.
For your convenience, we have created a tool that can help you to choose the right hosting package for you just by answering a few simple questions.
CMS is a content management system. A lot of hosting providers offer so-called CMS optimized packages. However, this is a marketing trick because most CMSs do not have special software or hosting requirements.
Trial period is a period of time, usually from 7 to 30 days, during which you can use the hosting services for free to test them.
Moneyback policy allows the customer to receive a refund for his order within a certain period after the purchase.
OS means the operating system is installed on the server. We recommend to choose Linux hosting unless your website requires another OS.
Bulletproof hosting - it’s a type of service that allows to host almost any type of content, even the restricted one (adult content, warez, spam etc). Bulletproof hosting providers do not remove your content in case someone reports an abuse.
Unlimited hosting - refers to companies that provide packages with unlimited disk space, bandwidth, number of domains, databases or email accounts, etc. This is usually a marketing trick but sometimes you can find something worth a try.
Secure hosting - it’s a type of service when the hosting provider is mostly responsible for the security of the user’s account: updates the software installed on their servers, provides an antivirus and malware scanner, firewalls and basic anti-DDoS protection, etc.
DDoS-protected hosting - companies that provide packages that include anti-DDoS protection. These packages are considerably more expensive than regular ones. Nevertheless, they’re totally worth their price because the company will ensure that your website is secured from cyber attacks.
Most websites require MySQL and PHP installed on the server to work correctly. Almost all hosting providers support these technologies.
ASP.NET is a Microsoft web application development platform.
The more comfortable the control panel is, the easier will it be for you to change the website and hosting account settings.
Most hosting providers that are in TOP20 in our rating offer user-friendly control panels, such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin. That’s why we recommend to pay attention to other, more important parameters, while choosing a hosting provider.