Summary

HostGator is a beginner-friendly web hosting provider that offers a range of services for your website, including shared hosting, a website builder, WordPress, VPS (virtual private server), and dedicated servers. Their pricing, coupled with advanced features, make HostGator a good choice.

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Introduction

We reviewed the best web hosting providers this year to help you make the right decision on which company to use to host your website and email.

This is our HostGator review. We’re reviewing HostGator’s plans, user interface, hosting platform, reliability and customer service. As with any company and service we review, we put them through a wide range of tests, and publish the results for you to see.

Plans and pricing

HostGator offers a wide range of web hosting services. Shared hosting, which means your website shares resources with others, WordPress hosting, and VPS hosting, which is great for busy websites that need their own resources.

There are other hosting services provided by HostGator, however we’ll cover the most popular plan types.

HostGator Shared Hosting

Exclusive HostGator Shared Hosting plan: 36 month plan – $2.75 per month ($99 total cost)

HostGator Shared Hosting plans are cheap and come with lots of features.

There are 3 plan types: Hatchling, Baby (Recommended), and Business.

Hatchling – $2.75 per month

Baby (Recommended) – $3.50 per month

Business – $5.25 per month

The Hatchling plan is a solid choice if you have a single website. It comes with all the basics, along with unmetered storage, so you don’t need to worry about how much space your website takes.

Baby (Recommended) is the plan we most recommend. If you have 2 or more websites, this is the plan for you. Starting at just $3.50 per month, it’s cheap, it’s decent, you can host multiple websites, and get free email on them.

Business is HostGator’s answer to top-tier shared hosting plans. It provides additional resources above the Baby plan, and it comes with its own free dedicated IP. Starting at just $5.25 a month, it’s a really solid deal.

All of HostGator’s Shared hosting plans are good for basic website hosting requirements. Most websites will be able to use HostGator’s shared hosting service.

HostGator WordPress Hosting

Exclusive HostGator WordPress hosting plan: 36 month plan – $5.95 per month ($214.20 total cost)

HostGator WordPress hosting plans provide easy to use and setup WordPress.

There are 3 plan types: Starter, Standard (Recommended), and Business.

Starter – $5.95 per month

Standard (Recommended) – $7.95 per month

Business – $9.95 per month

The Starter plan, which starts at $5.95 per month for 1 WordPress website is decent value. A bit more expensive than other options within this range, it still does offer a free domain and SSL which help reduce the overall cost of a WordPress hosting plan.

Standard (Recommended) begins at $7.95 per month and this is where HostGator’s value in WordPress hosting starts to shine. You can host up to 2 WordPress websites and you also get a free domain name and SSL certificate. This means each website only costs a little under $4.00 per month, which is great value.

The Business plan at $9.95 per month is HostGator’s best WordPress plan, providing a ton of resources and the ability to host up to 3 WordPress websites.

All of the HostGator WordPress hosting plans provide a free domain name, free SSL certificate, and come with 24×7 customer service.

HostGator VPS Hosting

Exclusive HostGator VPS hosting plan: 36 month plan – $19.95 per month ($718.20 total cost)

HostGator VPS hosting plans provide dedicated resources for your high traffic website.

There are 3 plan types: Snappy 2000, Snappy 4000, and Snappy 8000.

Snappy 2000 – $19.95 per month

Snappy 4000 – $29.95 per month

Snappy 8000 – $39.95 per month

Snappy 2000 is the cheapest VPS plan, at $19.95 per month. It provides the basics your website will need to have solid uptime and performance. In our tests, we were able to manage just over 2,100 visitors a day while keeping performance at an acceptable level.

Snappy 4000 starts at $29.95 per month, and offers enough computing resources, power, and dedicated resources to power websites with over 6,500 visitors per day. We started getting some slowdowns after reaching this amount of visitors in our tests. However, our site never went down and performed well.

Snappy 8000 is HostGator’s top VPS plan. At just $39.95 per month, it provides a lot of resources for your website. In our tests, we managed to get over 11,500 visitors on a daily basis before the VPS started to slow down the website. That’s a lot of visitors for one day, and this plan definitely excels at providing performance at a reasonable price.

Core features

Starting at just $2.75 per month, HostGator’s services are budget-friendly and offer plenty of value. Most of their plans include free SSL certificates, free email addresses, and sometimes even a free domain name.

HostGator offers a free website migration service for new accounts. In our testing, we put in a request, and it was completed in about 6 days. This is on average 3 days longer than what other providers offer, however, once the migration was completed, it went smoothly.

Their support team didn’t communicate much during the migration process, but we didn’t ask followup questions.

Interface

All HostGator plans also come with cPanel, the web hosting industry’s leader in interface and website management features. Their version is custom-themed to their design, which means some functionality is removed and changed.

Control panel in action

HostGator’s cPanel theme is unique to them. It offers a mostly default cPanel interface, which most people are familiar with. However, they do remove some key features depending on your plan, and those are used as upsells.

There are many other tools in cPanel, such as website analytics on website visitor traffic volumes and sources. You can also add and remove domain names, manage your DNS zone, and email accounts. 

If you have a WordPress plan with HostGator, you’ll get access to their WordPress Manager, which gives you some quick links to access various functions you’d need for a WordPress website. The most useful feature is the WordPress single sign on.

Support options and quality

This is the section of the review I’m most conflicted about. HostGator’s customer service is hit and miss. It depends on what you’re asking, and who is answering.

HostGator prides itself on being built for web pros, and it shows. If you’re someone who is an expert at website hosting, you’ll be right at home with HostGator’s support. You’ll be able to use their self-service tools and not have to rely on their support.

However, if you’re like most people and you only have passing knowledge about website hosting, and are more interested in marketing and growing your website, HostGator’s wait times can be very frustrating. Once you do reach someone, they will help you, but reaching them requires a bit of patience.

The competition

HostGator is an extremely popular website hosting company, that blends budget-friendly prices with a generally well-run service. However, there are some other very good alternatives out there.

Bluehost is a very old hosting provider that’s been in the industry since the very beginning. With cheap pricing starting at $2.75 per month, this company knows how to give a deal. Free SSL and free CDN (content delivery network) are included on most plans. The only catch is their pricing requires a 3 year contract to get the low monthly price.

Read our Bluehost review to learn more.

Another great option is Skystra, who put an emphasis on quality performance, speed, and expert support for WordPress websites and WooCommerce online stores. Prices start at $7 per month to host 1 WordPress website and all hosting plans come with free SSL certificates, free CDN, free email, and advanced options such as premium caching to boost your website speed by up to 125%. Skystra’s biggest difference with HostGator is their support team.

Read our Skystra review to learn more.

Final verdict

HostGator is a provider that offers a wide range of budget-friendly web hosting services, ranging from general shared hosting, WordPress, and VPS services. No matter your website, HostGator will have a hosting plan for it.

Ultimately, your biggest decision will be budget-friendly pricing and features, versus the quality and speed of their customer service. If you’re able to use a lot of their self-service tools, HostGator is a good option at a fair price. If not, you might want to look at other web hosting companies.

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