Hostgator Hosting Review
Hostgator is one of the web hosting company that spend a lot on web advertisement. You might have been looking for Hostgator review because you’ve seen a Hostgator advertisement recently. They have been around in web hosting business since 2002. With good customer base and more than 12000 servers in management Hostgator ranks among top 10 web hosting providers. But the question is “Should you buy Hostgator web hosting?” In this Hostgator review we’ve highlighted Hostgator pros & cons so that you can make a right decision.
As I mentioned above Hostgator was established in 2002 by Brent Oxley. Later in 2012 Brent Oxley sold the company to Endurance International Group (EIG). EIG is a big group of web hosting companies and have web hosting companies like BlueHost, iPage, FatCow, HostMonster, Justhost etc in their group. Know about EIG Hosting here.
Hostgator used to be a very good web hosting company but since EIG aquired Hostgator, the customer support standard has been dropped. Although the quality of web hosting services is still very good.
Before we go proceed to explore more about Hostgator Hosting, let me introduce a Hostgator web hosting discount to you.
You can save Flat 20% on Hostgator web hosting using the following coupon link.
7 Pros of Hostgator
Let’s look at the things that I liked about Hostgator web hosting services.
1. Web Hosting Plans
The first thing I liked about Hostgator web hosting services are their web hosting plans. Check them out below.
If you’ll have a close look at their plans. you’ll notice that Hostgator has a plan for everyone.
If you’re just starting up and looking for web hosting services, Hostgator’s Hatchling plan is right for you but if you’ve couple of websites and want to host all of them at one place you can go with Hostgator’s baby plan. Although the baby plan is only suitable if you have websites that has little or moderate amount of traffic.
If you’re an expert or a company that owns multiple websites, Hostgator’s business plan is ideal choice for you.
Hostgator’s Hatchling & Baby plan comes with shared SSL certificate but the business plans comes with a private SSL & free toll free number.
2. Money Back Guarantee
Most of the people including me prefer to test web hosting services before we go into a long term contact. To satisfy these kind of people Hostgator offers 45 days money back guarantee. You can test their services for 45 days without worry and if you’re not satisfied with their services, you can ask for your money back. Although you’ve to pay for their web hosting services before starting your trial.
3. Scalability
With Hostgator you can scale to any level. Hostgator offer all kind of web hosting plans i.e Shared Hosting, VPS & Dedicated Server Hosting services. As your website grows, you can move to higher web hosting plans.
4. Both Windows & Linux Web Hosting Options
There are very few good web hosting providers that offers both Windows & Linux web hosting services & Hostgator is one of them. If you’re a person like me who has some websites and web application hosted on Linux platform and some on Windows platform, you may have go with two different web hosting provider to host them but with Hostgator you can host all of them under one roof.
5. Friendly Control Panel
Hostgator offer industry leading control panels with their web hosting services. With Linux hosting you get cPanel & with Windows hosting Hostgator providers plesk control panel.
Their control panels are customized and gives best user experience. They’re very easy to use and comes with tutorials and videos so that you can easily use them.
Hostgator’s control panels i.e cPanel & Plesk comes with the following features
- Website Statistics: AWStats, Webalizer, Raw Log Manager, Referrer and Error Logs
- 1 Click Install Applications: Instant Shopping Carts, Blogs, Portals, Forums
- Password Protected Directories and Custom Error Pages
- Web Based File Manager, Hotlink Protection, IP Deny Manager, Redirect URL
See screenshot of Hostgator’s cPanel
The cpanel comes with Linux hosting services.
See Hostgator’s Plesk panel screenshot below
The plesk panel comes with Windows hosting services.
6. Freebies
Every one including me loves something extra. With every Hostgator web hosting plan, you get lots of freebies. They includes the following
- Free Weebly SiteBuilder
- 4,500 Free Website Templates
- Free Website Transfer, Domain Transfer, MySQL Transfer, Script Transfer
- 52 Applications with 1 click install
- $100 Google ads credit
- $100 Bing/Yahoo ads credits
These freebies are really helpful for anyone just starting up. Using website builder anyone can build a professional looking website in few hours.
If you already have a website hosted with some other web host, Hostgator team will help you migrate the same to their servers at no extra cost.
If you would like to start a blog or want to setup an eCommerce store or a discussion forum, you can install that in just few clicks. Hostgator hosting comes with 52 easy to install application scripts.
Advertisement credits can help you promote your business in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo.
7. Programming Languages & Application Support
Hostgator supports all popular programming languages on their servers
Linux Hosting
Programming Languages: CGI, Fast CGI, PHP 5, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, SSL
Programming Modules: Curl, CPAN, GD Library, ImageMagick
System Management Tools: SSH Access and Cron Job Scheduling
Databases: MySQL databases with PHP MyAdmin
Windows Hosting
Programming Languages: ASP, ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET 4.5
Programming Modules: Curl, GD Library, MVC 3.0, AJAX
System Management Tools: Scheduled Tasks
Databases: MS SQL, MY SQL & MS Access
4 Cons of Hostgator
1. Customer Support
Customer support is the place where Hostgator face lots of criticism, although they don’t do it intentionally. Hostgator has everything in place to serve their customers better. They have the following support options
- Phone
- Email (Ticket System)
- Chat
- 500+ Video Tutorials
- 680+ Help Articles
- Social Media (Twitter)
Because of the huge customer base, sometimes you’ve keep waiting for your turn.
We don’t say they don’t support their customer but the waiting period is more compare to other good web hosting providers.
Below is the screenshot of Hostgator’s chat support. When we pinged them on chat, their system indicates a 6 minutes wait time.
We further dig it more and tried to find out what others says about their support sysmtem. We moved to social media and below is what Hostgator’s real customer says about Hostgator support on Twitter.
sorry – there are so many viewers it crashes at times. I’ve contacted support from @HostGator. #workingonit 👌 https://t.co/gUPruU4Zaj
— Jamie N. Otis (@jamienotis) January 19, 2016
Gr8ful to the @hostgator support team @HGSupport as always. My site is back online & Chaila E. from da Live chat should get a raise! #thanks
— Kei Dubb (@keidubbnujazz) December 22, 2015
#Hostgator our sites has been down gator3046. Need fix asap. Was suspended for no know reason, please check tickets. We’re losing business
— Mark Tristan Patena (@mark_patena) January 11, 2016
A full day of downtime because @HostGator@HGSupport can’t be bothered to support an easy fix. Ticket # NDU-41117420 #doyourjob
— Shawn Smith (@ShawnStang) January 11, 2016
From the above mentioned tweets it is clear that their support team is highly active and reply to customer queries even on social media channels like Twitter but there is a wait time for everyone.
2. Spammy Email Server IPs
Some users complained to us that their emails are not being delivered on Google & AOL. They were using Hostgator’s email service that comes free with their web hosting plans. You can create email accounts on your domain name hosted with Hostgator using Hostgator’s control panel. We dig it a bit more and found many people are facing the same problem. You can see the below comments that we found on PC Mag.
In the above comments Hostgator’s customers has shared their experience with their email services.
3. Over Priced
Although we have said earlier that Hostgator has a plan for every customer & size of business and that is their USP but their plans are priced on a higher side.
To host a single website you have to pay almost $7 per month when you pay for 12 months. That is huge comparing to other hosting providers like Godaddy. You also need to pay additional price for domain registration, which is free for first year with most hosting providers.
Godaddy offer great deal when it comes to host a single website with free domain, you can check the deal here.
Dreamhost is another good option that offer web hosting at a better pricing. Check Dreamhost offers here.
4. Hostgator allow adult content: Bad for SEO
Neighborhood plays a big role in SEO. If there are websites that has good authority in search engines on the same server where your website is hosted, search engines treat your website with trust because it is using the same IP address. But if there are adult websites, illegal websites or websites that has hate speech hosted on the same server where your website is hosted, it may negatively impact your website’s ranking in search engines.
It has been observed that Hostgator allows adult content on their server and people all over the internet has reported that it has effected their website’s ranking in search engines. Many bloggers has already written about this on their blog. They themselves confirm the same on their website.
Hostgator Server Performance Review
When we tested Hostgator’s server performance with server performance checker. We found that it performs just ok. Below is the screenshot of results of our test.
We also test a website hosted with Hostgator using pigdom tool. Below is its performance report.
You may also wants to read
- Bluehost vs Hostgator : Comparison between two EIG owned hosts.
- Hostpapa vs Godaddy vs Hostgator : Comparison between 3 affordable web hosting providers.
- Bluehost vs Godaddy vs Hostgator : Comparison between 3 most popular web hosts.
Conclusion: The Verdict
Hosting is backbone of any online business. It is a responsibility of a good host to provide you all the tools that are required to smoothly run your website. Hostgator is one of the hosting company that provides you all the necessary tools and support so that your website can run smooth.
Although their plans are a bit costly compare to others and their servers perform just average. But you can not accept must with a shared hosting plan.
If you also looking to run your business email with Hostgator, there service is not right for you.
Over all we will give Hostgator 2.5 rating out of 5.
Some expert even advise to stay away from Hostgator.
There are other good options available in the market. We personally recommend Godaddy & Siteground to our readers.
If you have budget, you can always look at these VPS options.