Bluehost vs Hostgator
Bluehost and hostgator are among the major web hosting companies hosting millions of domains on top of their world class infrastructures. Competing with a hundred other web hosting companies, they definitely come on top. With uniquely priced plans and pricing that is strategically positioned to provide maximum resources at the maximum prices, the companies provide maximum possible features to their customers at the cheapest prices.
All websites are run on top of highly optimized infrastructures and thus provide maximum performance. You can also customize your allotted server resources to suit your custom requirements.
Moreover, the company provides highly scalable plans as its shared plans are modified into cloud based servers that allow resource consumption based on server load instead of available resources.
Bluehost targets most types of businesses but primarily focuses on high resource consuming customers. Thus they have highly optimized servers running on top of powerful SSD drives along with optimized applications that can be modified as per requirements. You can also opt for additional add ons that cost more and are available for custom applications. The servers are configured for any kind of application to be run on top of it and are thus easily deployable.
Hostgator on the other hand likes to attract customers who want to use less resources and is thus ideal for blogs and personal websites or even in case of less resource consuming corporate websites.
You can build any type of web application on top of it due to their highly extensible platform. The infrastructure supports major application types and thus can be easily modified to suit specific requirements. Although it does not provide exact resource limits, most web hosting clients have never faced any problems regarding resource constraints. As most users don’t need most users do not utilize most of their allocated resources, The remaining resources are equally distributed across the other users and thus there is hardly any resource constraint for most clients. Lets dive deeper into each of the features and services provided by both the companies to understand which one might suit your requirements.
Also Read: Bluehost vs Godaddy vs Hostgator
Plans And Pricing
Although the plans offered by both the companies are quite similar in nature, their strategic pricing allows users of all types of host any type of small or large web application on top of the servers. As bluehost provides plans ideally suitable for businesses of all kinds, it precisely specifies and restricts the limits on the resources allocated to each user. However the resource allocation per user in case of hostgator is variable and completely depends on other users on the same server. Here is a detailed overview of the plans provided by each of the companies below.
Hostgator
As hostgator wants to satisfy all kinds of customers, its plans are also priced accordingly. They come with all the resources necessary for building basic to high powered websites but they also lack the necessary flexibility as provided by web hosting companies like A2hosting and Arvixe. You can deploy most types of popular web content management systems to run nearly any kind of web application on top of the servers. However you cannot modify their core installation or other features as you are only provided limited resources. The plans provided in its shared hosting section are:
- Hatchling: Starting at $4.86/month, this is the basic plans that can be deployed on top of godaddy servers. You have to Although it allows unmetered disk space usage and bandwidth, you can hardly get any idea about the exact amount of resources allocated to you, You never know when you are going to run out of computing memory and thus it is ideal for only small websites that get upto 1000 page requests a day. The yearly plan comes with 1 domain name and you can host only one website on top of it. It doesn’t have any addon or parked domains and also lacks anonymous FTPs. You can run most small web applications but business websites often tend to consume more resources. Hostgator is popular for providing its own toll free number. But as this is the basic plan, the toll number only comes with the business plan. It also lacks a dedicated IP address and private SSL addresses.
- Baby: This is a more powerful plan with even more amount of resources. It comes with additional features that lack in the hatchling plan. Unlike the Hatchling plan, you get a private IP address that can be greatly useful for any kind of web application. Unlike the hatchling plan, it also comes with unlimited addon or parked domains that can be useful for most. It is priced at $6.96/month and is ideal for running any kind of blog or website. If you don’t require SSL certificate for your website then you can easily host a small ecommerce websites. You also get unlimited domain hosting and thus you can host more than one website on the plan until your resource consumption is within the arbitrary allocated limits.
- Business: Priced at $10.46/month, this is one of the most powerful plans provided by Hostgator. You can literally host any kind of website and web application including custom web apps that need api based services. It includes numerous business specific features that lack in the previous plans. Along with all the developmental features, it also provides a toll free number that can be used for any business related purposes. As it is the most powerful plan among the shared hosting plans provided by the company, you will have to upgrade to the next VPS plan in case your resource consumption exceeds the maximum allotted to you. However as it is a very high resource plan, it is highly unlikely that any web application that receives less than 10K visitors a day is likely to suffer in any ways. The business specific features further ease development and deployment for any kind of web app on top of the optimized servers.
Bluehost
One of the respected companies in the web development industry, Bluehost comes with unique features that and services that are priced attractively to allow users the maximum flexibility for usage and deployment of any kind of web application. You can build any type of web application and the resources allocated to you should be enough to handle any kind of web application. As each plan comes with precise limits for each allocated resource, you can easily monitor your usage and plan your application and strategy accordingly. Each of the shared plans are in fact highly optimized scalable plans, you can easily consume more resources than you are allocated and be charged accordingly. Any additional features that you may required can be easily opted for extra or you can directly upgrade to the next best plan for better resources and features. The three types of shared plans offered by Bluehost are:
Also read: Bluehost VPS Hosting Review
- Basic: meant for all kinds of customers who require a basic web hosting account to host their blog or any other such small website that may not take up huge resources, this plan comes with a price tag of $3.95/month. You can easily build any type of web application on top of the plan if the resources allocated would be enough for your requirements. The plan comes with 50GB storage, 1 domain name that can host only one website along with 1 parked domain and 25 sub domains. It also comes with 5 custom email address for your domain name that can be used with your website. You can 100mb storage space for each of your email addresses. It offers standard performance and is therefore one of the few cheap but performance oriented plans.
- Plus: The next most powerful plan comes with numerous additional features along with increased amount of resources that be easily used to build any kind of web application including ecommerce website that take up high CPU resources. It comes with 150GB storage along with 20 parked domains and 50 sub domains. The plan is ideal for large blogs with a page request limit upto 5K visitors per day. In case you serve media through your website, it may take up more than the allotted resources. However you can easily consume more than the allocated resources and be charged for the extra usage. It is priced at $6.95/month and is thus one of the few powerful plans. It also comes with 100 email accounts for your domain name with each having up to 500GB. The plan can accommodate up to 10 websites whose resource usage is within the limits specified.
- Business Pro: The most powerful of all plans with all kinds of developer and business related features comes at $14.95/month. Along with all the features from the previous plans, it also includes global CDN, spamexperts, 1 SSL certificate, 1 dedicated IP address, 1 domain privacy tool along with Sitebackup Pro. You can easily build high resource consuming applications along with feature rich services ideal for any kind of business app. With unlimited resources for all kinds of features, it is easily one of the best available plans on the web. As all Bluehost plans come with SSD support, the performance of the systems is much faster than traditional websites.
Also Read: Bluehost Coupon Codes
Reliability
When it comes to performance, Bluehost has always had the record of maintaining an excellent server performance benchmark over the years. You may find numerous negative complaints about Hostgator but there are only a few instances where Bluehost has failed to deliver upon its promises.
With an excellent hardware infrastructure and high performance servers always ready to maintain failover measures, it has attracted thousands of customers from its competition.
Hostgator although has the major markets and provides all kinds of services to its customers, it lacks significantly due to its resource allocation method. Moreover from a buyer’s standpoint, it is nearly impossible to predict the amount of resources you can actually use.
As other hosting customers are allocated the same unlimited features, some one may use more than the server can handle. Eventually, you will end up with failed database connection, bandwidth usage, space constraints and numerous other problems that no one can foresee.
On the other hand, Bluehost provides exact resource usage for each client with strict limitations on each of the features allowed to the customers. This helps you greatly in measuring and controlling the resources utilized by your application. Let’s dive deeper into each of the individual performance metrics to deeply analyze how each of the companies can be ideal for your requirements.
Server Performance
When it comes to server performance, Bluehost definitely fares better than hostgator. Bluehost provides SSD drives in each of its plans and the performance increment due to the hardware optimization is quite significant. You can easily install additional applications to improve performance and thus further optimize your application to suit your requirements.
Hostgator also has one of the largest data storage infrastructures in the world, however as most of it is distributed among numerous locations, the performance metrics vary widely across geographies. The variable resource allocation on the server further complicates things for the user. You can easily build a large scale application on top of servers from both the companies but running them with high performance while meeting resource consumption targets is the biggest challenge of all.
This is perfectly handled by Bluehost while Hostgator is still struggling with it. You can also notice that due to the scalable infrastructure of Bluehost, it has termed its shared plans as cloud plans but Hostgator is still stuck at shared hosting plans.
Pagespeed
Pagespeed is perhaps the most important characteristic of any web server. Without necessary improvements to the server software and powerful hardware, it is impossible to maintain a proper pagespeed in any development or production environment. Although Hostgator has a decent page speed for most web applications, it fails when the applications grows in size or resource consumption increases significantly over a short period.
However the SSD drives in Bluehost can handle literally anything the user can throw at it. Due to their enhanced server architecture the applications running on top of the server is highly optimized and the caching mechanism in the business plans further improve page speed for the apps.
As you might have noticed that in above two tests both hosts performed really well. In the first image above you can see a website hosted on Hostgator server has been loaded in about 2.75 seconds where the page size was 2 MB.
In the second test a website hosted on Bluehost server has been loaded in about 3.96 seconds where the page size was 5.1 MB.
Server Uptime And Downtime
Downtimes are the worse things for any web application. Users can handle web application page speed but if the server isn’t available any type of website can easily lose its audience within minutes. If it is a business application, the downtimes hurt the organization even worse. Without any builtin measures to handle downtime, it becomes impossible for any hosting company to maintain continuous uptime.
Bluehost and Hostgator perform equally in terms of server uptime due to their large scalable server architectures and replicated data storage all across the world. Both have had an excellent record of up to 99.98% server uptime over the last year.
If you’re with Bluehost and notice that your server is down, you can confirm your server status here . Hostgator has created a support page, where you can see instructions to know your server status.
Also Read: Bluehost vs iPage vs Inmotion Hosting
Conclusion
Therefore in numerous circumstances, Bluehost fares better than Bluehost. Be it in terms of pagespeed or server performance, Bluehost definitely has a solid server architecture that allows the organization to provide excellent services to its clients. You can easily rely on the company’s provided plans to host any kind of web application and if your resource consumption grows beyond the allocated limit, you can either control your resource consumption or upgrade to the next best plan. Due to their cloud architecture, you can also have immense control over the specific type of resource you consume. Therefore you can easily consume more bandwidth without having to upgrade to a higher plan. Although Hostgator is more popular and provides even more services to its customers, they lack major performance improvements that are crucial to running today’s apps. In a article published on Yoast, popular SEO expert Joose de valk suggest not to use hostgator.