HostGator Review: Pricing, Features, Pros & Cons

When we talk about the biggest hosting companies in the world today, HostGator is one of them as they have been in the industry for a long time. So, in this HostGator review, we’ll be discussing everything you need to know about this hosting company.

Choosing the right web hosting platform that meets your needs can be a tedious task sometimes. HostGator is a very popular web hosting platform that offers affordable prices, 24/7 customer support, and flexible web hosting options, including WordPress hosting and e-commerce features.

If this is your first time building a website, or perhaps you’re looking to create an online presence for your business, you need a web hosting server. For many business owners, this essential step might be the last thing on your to-do list.

HostGator is established for offering one of the most affordable plans on the market, excellent customer service, and a reasonable money-back guarantee.

HostGator Pros and Cons

HostGator has hosted over 10 million domains and is one of the most popular web hosts in the industry. With 1-click WordPress installation, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and 24/7 support, it’s a smart choice for every website owner.

So Yes! We do consider them one of the best web hostings for businesses. They’re offering our readers an exclusive 62% off discount, a free domain name, and a free SSL certificate.

Read our comprehensive HostGator review to decide if it's right for you. 

In this HostGator review, we are going to put their promises through our testing process. Following are the areas we will look into:

• Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime?
• Performance: How fast will your website load on HostGator? We will run our own performance tests to analyze this.
• Customer Support: Can you count on their customer support? Will you be able to easily get help when needed?
• Features: Do their features help you easily create and manage your website?
• Pricing: Do they offer the best pricing in the industry? Are there any HostGator deals that can save you money?

If you don’t want to go through all the details, then the following is a quick summary of our HostGator review score with our conclusion below it.

Bottom line: Want to skip the details? To summarize, we found HostGator to be a reliable and customer-friendly hosting service. Their 24/7 customer support is among the best.  That's why we've added HostGator as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.

Now, let’s do a deep dive to share more detail-oriented parts of our HostGator hosting review. This will help you figure out if HostGator is right for your website or not.

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Introduction to HostGator

Founded in 2002, HostGator grew quickly to become one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. You can credit the monstrous growth to their great shared hosting plans, reliable web hosting, and quality customer service.

Today it is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and hosts over 10 million domains. They have over 850+ employees that offer around-the-clock support and service businesses of all sizes.

The company is a subsidiary of Endurance International Group and offers a wide range of web hosting solutions to a massive global customer base.

HostGator Hosting Plans

As far as web hosting is concerned, HostGator offers many options including VPS hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting. So, here’s a breakdown of the hosting options available and what each one is best suited for.

Types of Hosting Available on HostGator

• Shared hosting: Shared hosting, which means that you are using space on a server that is also used by other websites, is the most popular plan for websites.
• Cloud hosting: With cloud hosting, you can use the resources of multiple servers instead of using one fixed to a single location.
• WordPress hosting: This type of hosting is optimized to use WordPress in the easiest and fastest way.
• VPS hosting: This type of hosting is best suited for website owners who want more flexibility in software installations and more freedom to send emails and stream media.
• Dedicated hosting: The most powerful type of hosting, this choice is suited to meet the requirements of large businesses. Dedicated hosting is best for businesses that have heavy traffic or a very popular site.
• Reseller hosting: This type of hosting is suited for website owners who want to sell hosting services for profit. This plan is suited for users who want to start their own web hosting company and white-label HostGator products.

HostGator Pricing

HostGator offers three plans for shared web hosting, all with competitive pricing. The company also provides introductory offers where your first contract can be as low as $2.75 per month.

After the terms of your offer are finished, the service goes back up to the standard pricing. The section below highlights some of the main distinctions between these plans.

HostGator Features and Pricing Overview

HostGator Hatchling Plan

The Hatchling plan offers a single website, a domain and SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, and WordPress installs as well as WordPress/cPanel website transfers.

Hatchling plan cost after introductory offer:

• $11.95 per month for the month-by-month plan
• $9.99 per month for the annual plan (one payment of $119.88)
• $7.99 per month for the three-year plan (one payment of $287.64)

HostGator Baby Plan

The Baby plan is very similar to the Hatchling plan but comes with the ability to make unlimited websites, as opposed to only one. It also includes a $500 Google Ads spend match credit and a $100 Microsoft Advertising credit.

If you plan to spend these credits regardless or know in advance you need more than one website, the small price increase for this plan may be worth it.

Here’s how the costs for this plan break down by contract length.

Baby plan cost after introductory offer:

• $12.95 per month for the month-by-month plan
• $14.99 per month for the annual plan (one payment of $179.88)
• $12.99 per month for the three-year plan (one payment of $467.64)

HostGator Business Plan

The Business Plan includes the same features and credits included in the Baby plan plus a free upgrade to Positive SSL, a dedicated IP, and SEO tools. The Positive SSL upgrade secures a domain and subdomain and is backed by a $10,000 warranty.

Here’s how the costs for this plan break down by contract length.

Business plan cost after introductory offer:

• $17.95 per month for the month-by-month plan
• $18.99 per month for the annual plan (one payment of $227.88)
• $16.99 per month for the three-year plan (one payment of $611.64)

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HostGator Performance

What would be your reaction if you sign up for a host and find that your website is painfully slow and often disappears? You’d most likely switch to a different provider, and this will cost you more money and headache.

For this reason alone, you need to choose a web hosting provider that is reliably fast with stable performance records all around. But how would you get this information?

Well, I and my team have decided to check HostGator’s performance by running our own tests. Let’s find out how well it performed.

HostGator Speed Test Results

One of the most important website performance indicators is speed. Having a faster website is good for your users, and it also helps your SEO rankings.

In fact, studies suggest that 1 second delay in page load will cost you 7% fewer conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in user satisfaction.

In light of this detailed HostGator review, we created a test site to find out how fast HostGator really is. This new website was powered by WordPress using the default theme. We also imported dummy content for theme development, including images.

After that, we used the Pingdom website speed testing tool to run the tests. Here are the results we got:

As you can see from the displayed results, our test site loaded in 1.03 seconds which is great.

However, this is a new website with no traffic at all so a speed test alone is not the best way to judge its performance. We wanted to see how it would perform under peak traffic.

To test the traffic stability, we used a tool called K6 (formerly LoadImpact). We used it to send virtual users to a website and gradually increased the number of users on the site up to 100 at once.

You can see the result in the chart below:

The blue line in the chart is page load time and the green line shows the number of users on the site. As you can see, our test site performed really well throughout the test with an average response time of 203 milliseconds.

These results are particularly good for a shared hosting account.

HostGator Uptime Test

Another remarkable thing to be noticed here is that our test site didn’t go down during the test. Now, that is a very good uptime advantage.

HostGator Server Response Time

The content of your website significantly affects the page load time. For example, if your website has many images, then it will increase the page load time.

This affects your server’s speed test results. We wanted to see how fast the HostGator server actually responds.

To test this, we used a tool called Bitcatcha. It works differently than other website speed testing tools. Instead of loading the content, it only tests the response time of the server.

Here is how HostGator performed in these tests:

From the test results we gathered during this HostGator review, our test site performed really well. The server response time remained less than a second. In the United States, it was merely 26 ms.

Overall, this result indicates that your site will load quickly around the world. So, that is a good thing for anyone who wants to host a website with HostGator.

HostGator Support and Customer Service

HostGator does offer one of the best customer services in the industry. Customers can easily reach out to the support team 24/7 via phone, live chat support, and ticket-based email support.

Support is easy; Inside your hosting dashboard, you will find their support portal. This portal helps you find quick answers from a knowledge base of hundreds of articles and video tutorials.

Most HostGator customers are satisfied with the quality of support they receive. We do have a few of our students who hosted their website on HostGator and have found their support to be satisfactory.

READ ALSO: Bluehost Review: Is Bluehost The Best Web Host? 

Frequently Asked Questions

READ ALSO: Hostinger Review as an Expert 

In Conclusion: Is HostGator the Right Choice for You?

There you have it; our detailed HostGator review. I believe you are probably thinking if HostGator is right for you. That question should be easily answered now that you have learned everything you need to know about HostGator.

HostGator offers a variety of hosting plans that fit all budgets and requirements. They offer all the user-friendly tools you will need to build a website.

Over 2 million customers have already trusted HostGator. So, whether you are a seasoned Internet pro, or just starting out with your first website, you’ll find every necessary tool to bring your website to the next level.

Are you ready to get started with HostGator? Click here to select your HostGator plan today.

HostGator Coupon & Discount

As a Nwaeze David reader/user, you can get an exclusive 60% OFF with our HostGator coupon code. All you have to do is click here or the button/link below to purchase. The discount will be applied automatically.