HostGator Review [2020] - Is It The Right Choice For You?

HostGator is one of the biggest, oldest & very well secured web hosting companies in the world. Their basic shared hosting plans comes with unlimited storage and bandwidth and has proven to be the best in the industry with cheapest month to month web hosting pricing option. They even offer free domain for the first year along with free SSL certificate. They have a great customer service and are readily connected through a 24/7/365 instant Live Chat service. With consistent uptime & awesome page load capabilities, it has proven to be an ideal choice for the beginners looking for cheapest web hosting and also the most trusted web hosting for developers.

4.0

 4/5

4.5

 4.5/5

4.0

 4/5

4.3

 4.3/5

FEATURES

PRICING

EASE OF USE

SUPPORT

HostGator offers a wide range of services for its users. They have excellent feedback systems and ticket-based email support system. On top of that, their customer service is very fast and friendly. They help people to move their site over to their service for free. Beginners will like a lot of the simple, interesting options that are directed their way. You can buy the plan and start off. They also offer Spam Assassin on their email plans to help prevent spam from hitting your inbox in the first place.

Despite its huge achievements, they are still making improvements by posting an average of 99.98% Up-time over the past 2 years. An up-time is usually the amount of time that a service is available and is operational.

It is still unfortunate that HostGator’s average page loading times usually let them down. Many of the extra services that they offer like backups and security, will be tacked on as an additional fee. Besides this, the renewal rates rise too soon after the expiry of our first term. HostGator’s uptime performance was an issue in years past. But now this is not the issue anymore as seen on 24 months tracking.

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hostgator features

High Uptimes and fast load times
Flexible and Easy to use Control panel
Unlimited Sub Domains and Email accounts
99.98% Uptime Guarantee
Offer Excellent 24/7/365 Live Chat support
Free SSL certificate
No contract with 45-days Money Back Guarantee
Over 75 apps supported.
Unmetered bandwidth and storage.
Multiple Packages available as Shared, Cloud, WordPress, VPS and Dedicated Servers.
Drag n Drop Site builder feature
Joomla and WordPress integration for maximum versatility
Manage Multiple domains

hostgator plans & pricing

HostGator offers a wide range of Plans and Pricing freedom to choose from. Broadly speaking, the hosting plans are categorized in 6 major plans and subsequent 3 sub-categories each. Let us see in brief what these plans offer.
When browsing through all the different hosting options & plans available, you will find all the necessary information you need to make the right decision. No matter your budget or website needs, you are going to find the right hosting plan for you.

hostgator shared web hosting

Shared hosting plans are a great option for starting a new website with low traffic. On shared hosting, our website shares the bandwidth with other websites hosted on the same server. It’s the most common choice for entry-level business owners who are just getting started online.

hostgator cloud web hosting

While a shared hosting account is restricted with a single server, cloud hosting utilizes multiple servers. Thus, this plan is suitable for the websites getting frequent traffic.

hostgator wordpress hosting

Shared hosting plan optimized for WordPress powered websites and thus saving it from some common WordPress attacks.

hostgator vps hosting

Virtual Private Server allows you to manage your virtual resources over cloud hosting platform. It is thus suitable for the websites having more frequent traffic.

hostgator dedicated server hosting

With Dedicated hosting comes a server solely for your own website. You do not have to share the resources now and thus it becomes useful only for those having a serious and large business website with heavy traffic.

pros & cons

Pros

Lowest Price : $2.75/month for 36 months is the lowest and much affordable with such reputed Hosting firm
Strong and Stable Uptime of 99.98% : HostGator has an incredible uptime of 99.98% in the last 24 months and they have been consistent with it for several months. Here is an interesting fact about their guarantee regarding this. Their uptime guarantee says that if they drop below 99.90% uptime, they will provide you one month of credit on your account. Seems bold, right?
24/7/365 Support : HostGator provides a huge Knowledge Base, phone, email, and Live Chat support with any hosting-related issues. The live chat support is the fastest among all. They connect us to a service representative within as less as 15 seconds. Their staff is knowledgeable, well-trained, and friendly. Any amount of questions you may ask, and they provide you answers to all of them
Generous 45 Days Money Back Guarantee : HostGator seems so confident in their service that they have extended the usual 30-Days refund policy to an extra two weeks i.e. for 45 days. This means you can use them for more than a full month. If any issue pops after this period, you can still get your purchase price back. This 45-Days money back guarantee applies to all shared and VPS hosting packages
Site Security Features Available : HostGator do offer a few extra security features. Premium feature like the ability to add Site Lock monitoring to your site is also available. The best thing with this service is that this service will run on daily basis. It will look out for any kind of potential site hacks and let you know instantly
User Friendly for Beginners : HostGator works like charm for beginner bloggers or Webmasters alike. Their site is full of tutorials and many more to help with easy navigation. They also have special feature for beginners who aim to set up a site without hiring other people to design, build, and manage everything
Free Website Migration & Installs : HostGator also offers free website migration service with all new accounts. Their support team would help you transfer your existing website from the previous host at no extra cost for first 30 days of signing up

Cons

Slow Page Speed : The HostGator severs had no issues keeping the website up and live for some years. The core problem is that their servers are somewhat consistently slow. Their average page loading time in last 2 years has only been a 1191ms, on an average
Lots of Extra Fees for Backups, Gmail, and Malware : HostGator’s shared hosting plans are very cheap. The introductory price starting at only $2.75/month. Besides this, if you need true backups you need to pay them extra. Also, for having malware support they require extra fees
Industry-Standard Pricing ‘Tricks’ : In addition to the above extra fees, HostGator pulls pricing tricks that are very much standard in the industry. HostGator’s renewal pricing increases dramatically after your initial plan expires. This is often annoying to the users
No free domain : Unlike other competitor hosting companies, HostGator doesn’t offer free domain registration along with signup registration; which is somewhat strange

our verdict on hostgator hosting

Now that you have read our detailed review on HostGator Hosting, you must be probably confused whether out of so many options in the market, Is HostGator the right choice for you?

HostGator offers a variety of hosting plan options to choose from; which fits the average person’s budget & requirements. The uptime has seen a great improvement over the past few years. The customer service is top-notch and beginner friendly as well.

If you were to ask me, I would give it a Thumbs up!!

If you are a new entrant in the Internet world and looking for a well reputed & consistently awesome option, you should definitely go with HostGator.

But still, if you still feel in dilemma, just look up for all the available options in the market by yourself. Maybe you can actually find some other option that delivers more value as per your need. HostGator’s WordPress Cloud hosting is a little expensive but its performance is also substantially better.