So, you are thinking about starting with HostGator or switching to HostGator. That’s a smart move to consider, especially if you’re looking for a hosting provider with a long-standing reputation in the industry. HostGator is certainly a very popular hosting provider — 46% of the people we surveyed knew HostGator, which speaks volumes about its brand recognition and widespread use. It has built a strong presence over the years by offering beginner-friendly plans, competitive pricing, and a range of hosting options suitable for blogs, small businesses, and growing websites alike.
You can’t really go wrong with this hosting provider, but like any service, it has its strengths and weaknesses. While many users appreciate its ease of use, customer support, and scalability, others have noted areas where it could improve. That’s why we’ll walk you through both the good and the bad, covering performance, pricing, features, and overall value, so that you can make the most informed decision possible before committing to a plan.
Here is HostGator Review at a glance:
Table of Contents
HostGator’s overall rating in our research is 4.7/5 stars, which puts the company in second place just behind Bluehost – so you’re definitely in good hands. Read on to weigh the positives and negatives of HostGator and decide if it’s the best provider for you.
HostGator offers the best shared plans, where you share a server to keep costs low. This makes HostGator great for entry-level websites and small businesses, as it handles low traffic but very well. HostGator is also ideal if you want to create a blog, with its excellent performance scores and unlimited storage and bandwidth. In our test of blog hosting features, HostGator scored 3.8 out of 5 for performance – the highest performance score of all the blog hosts we tested.
In addition, HostGator received a shared hosting rating of 4.7 out of 5, with second place going to Bluehost with a shared rating of 4.5/5.
Are you already interested in HostGator?
HostGator In Brief
HostGator’s beginnings lie in a dorm room at Florida Atlantic University in 2002 (hence the “Gator”, in case you were wondering). Since then, the company has opened offices around the world and hosts over 8 million domains.
| Overall Rank | #2 out of 12 hosting providers |
| Pricing | Starting at $2.75/month (renews at $6.95/month) |
| Hosting Plans | Shared, WordPress, VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud |
| Help & Support | 24/7 live chat, phone, and email |
| Features | SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, email marketing software |
| Uptime | 99.99% guarantee |
Uptime
HostGator offers a pretty solid 99.90% uptime guarantee, which means that your website will have 8h 41m 38s of downtime per year. If you’re looking for reliability, HostGator is the ultimate – this kind of consistency is good for any website, but if you’re looking to set up an e-commerce store, it could be quite a loss. Time is money, after all!
When it comes to shared packages, there’s also DreamHost, which beats HostGator’s uptime with an amazing 100% uptime. And in the VPS offerings, Liquid Web also has an amazing 100% uptime. Otherwise, HostGator is firmly in the middle with its uptime guarantee.
If your shared or reseller server is down for more than nine hours per year, you get one month of credit for your chosen plan.
Do you want high uptime?
Features
HostGator offers five different types of hosting: Shared, Managed WordPress, VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud. HostGator scores best in the shared plans with an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5. This is due to good pricing, a 45-day money-back guarantee, by far the highest performance rating, and unlimited storage and bandwidth.
The VPS plans are tied with Bluehost for first place, offering the best help and support of all the providers we tested. While the dedicated plan offers unlimited bandwidth, HostGator comes in third with a dedicated hosting rating of 4.4 out of 5.
Here’s a closer look at each type of hosting HostGator offers:
HostGator has received the best rating for photography hosting with 4.3/5. In comparison, the rating for shared hosting features was 4/5, ranking it 8th out of 12 providers.
Every HostGator plan comes with a free SSL certificate and unlimited bandwidth. You also get a free domain for the first year (after that, you’ll have to pay to renew your domain name). These features aren’t uncommon, but HostGator sets itself apart by also offering unlimited email accounts, subdomains, and file transfer protocol (FTP) accounts (which let you transfer files from a computer to a network). HostGator also offers unlimited storage space in its shared hosting plans, something that most providers only offer when you upgrade to higher-end hosting.
HostGator gives you the option to use your own drag-and-drop website builder to create your website. The builder offers a large number of templates in 20 categories, including photography, restaurants, and personal portfolios. However, while these templates are customizable, they aren’t very easy to navigate – so if you don’t want to invest time, you don’t have to use HostGator’s own website builder!
If you’re planning to create a website with a CMS system, you’ll be happy to hear that HostGator’s WordPress hosting option offers a convenient one-click installation. It also offers support for Joomla and Drupal, as well as the Magento e-commerce platform.
The standout feature of HostGator’s basic package is the free email marketing software provided through Constant Contact. This feature is incredibly valuable because it allows you to build an audience through consistent newsletters and automated email campaigns. Just like high uptime, email marketing is a benefit for any website, but it’s especially helpful for e-commerce sites.
Build Your Site With HostGator’s Features
Pricing
You can sign up for a HostGator plan with terms ranging from one month to three years. The longer you commit in advance, the cheaper the corresponding monthly price. For example, let’s take a look at HostGator’s simplest shared plan:
| Time Frame | Cost |
| One month | $10.95/month |
| Three months | $10.95/month |
| Six months | $10.95/month |
| One year | $5.95/month |
| Two years | $3.58/month |
| Three years | $2.75/month |
We think that three years is a huge commitment, and that’s why we recommend the annual billing option – this way you’ll save money, but you won’t tie yourself down for too long. You’ll still have to pay the full twelve months upfront at the beginning, and most hosting providers organize their payment plans this way.
Heads up: promotional prices!
Every web hosting provider will try to lure you with cheap special prices. If you see an asterisk next to a price plan on a provider’s website, it means that you will pay more than the advertised price after the first term.
In the table below, we have summarized both the promotional prices and the renewal prices charged annually for each HostGator offer so that you can compare:
| Hosting Type | Promotional Price Range | Renewal Price, Billed Annually |
|---|---|---|
| Shared | $2.75-5.25/month | $6.95-8.95/month |
| Managed WordPress | $5.95-9.95/month | $7.95-11.95/month |
| VPS | $29.95-49.95/month | $49.95-69.95/month |
| Dedicated | $89.98-139.99/month | $189-289/month |
| Cloud | $4.95-9.95/month | $7.95-11.95/month |
HostGator gets a score of 3.7/5 for the price-performance ratio of its WordPress hosting plans in our research, putting it in the middle of the pack (6th out of 12, to be exact). Its VPS offerings receive a score of 3.1/5, putting it in joint 6th place with GreenGeeks (out of 11 providers). HostGator’s entry-level prices are similar to competitors like Bluehost and A2 Hosting, ranging from $2.95 to $119.99/month and $1.98 to $141.09/month, respectively.
Overall, HostGator offers pretty good value for money, with an overall rating of 3.5 out of 5. However, it really depends on which hosting type and plan you choose. For its WordPress hosting plans, for example, HostGator scores 3.7 out of 5, putting it in the middle of the pack compared to the other providers we tested (6th out of 12, to be exact).
The VPS offerings get a score of 3.1/5, which puts them in joint 6th place with GreenGeeks (out of 11 providers). Many people also tend to prefer features over money – of those respondents looking to switch hosting providers, hosting features were the most important factor at 32%. “Pricing” came in second at 27%.
This shows that people who already have experience hosting a website have found that you often get what you pay for, and that it’s worth spending a little more for the right package and support.
HostGator also offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, which goes beyond the industry standard of one month. However, the usual fine print applies: refunds do not apply to dedicated server plans, and plans paid by check, money order, or bank transfer are also ineligible.
Does HostGator Suit Your Budget?
Security
In addition to the free SSL certificate included in every plan, HostGator also protects against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which occur when a large amount of fake traffic floods a web server and overwhelms its resources, preventing normal visitors from accessing the site. HostGator’s data centers can activate flood protection to prevent DDoS attacks. The provider also promises that its data centers themselves (i.e. the physical servers) are highly secure facilities with restricted access.
If you want to make sure your site is extra secure, HostGator offers a SiteLock security add-on starting at $1.94/month. SiteLock is a tool that scans your website for potential threats and vulnerabilities and can fix many of the security issues it finds. If a SiteLock scan finds anything suspicious on your website, you will be notified by email and through your HostGator control panel.
SiteLock is undoubtedly a great tool that you should have in your arsenal. But beware: promotional prices still apply here. The $1.94/month only applies if you buy a three-year package, while the cheapest SiteLock plan you can buy through HostGator costs $2.08/month for one year. The most expensive plan costs $41.67/month for one year – although most smaller sites won’t have to worry about spending that much for protection.
Want HostGator to keep your website secure?
Support & Ease of Use
HostGator scores perfectly in Help and Support in 5 of the 8 categories we tested! HostGator received a help and support rating of 4.8/5 for shared and WordPress hosting, 4.9/5 for dedicated and another 4.9 for photography hosting.
The provider offers 24/7 live chat, phone service (toll-free), email, a knowledge base and a community center. This is great in principle. But we wanted to know what HostGator’s support is actually like when you need real answers to real questions. So we put it to the test!
We put HostGator’s live chat and knowledge base to the test, and overall, HostGator did great – actually exceeding our expectations by 10% (up from 3% previously). That may not sound very impressive, but HostGator was one of only two vendors to exceed our expectations. It outperformed both InMotion and Bluehost in the same support test!
What impressed us the most about HostGator is its extensive knowledge base, where you can find all the information you need in just a few clicks. It’s a real treasure trove, and you don’t have to deal with dial tones or call forwarding to access it. When we tried it out for ourselves, HostGator’s knowledge base exceeded our expectations!
The searchable knowledge base covers everything from domains to design, and also offers forums where you can directly exchange ideas with other HostGator users.
How did HostGator’s live chat perform in our test? To be honest, HostGator’s live chat has not met our expectations in the past. In 2022, one user said:
“My consultant didn’t seem to know HostGator’s products well. I never got a clear answer to some questions and sometimes I even questioned the information I was given.”
But now, in 2023, HostGator has upped its live chat game! We reached out to live support for information about SEO. The first question about what SEO guidance HostGator offers was answered in less than a minute with a wealth of information.
However, as the questions became more specific, the response was not as helpful. For example, when we asked what SEO tools they offer exactly, such as SEMrush, the answer was a bit slower and was only “proprietary tools”. Therefore, we recommend going to either the Knowledge Base or the Community Center to get more specific answers.
HostGator’s impressive knowledge base was really helpful, and overall HostGator’s support exceeded our expectations by 10%. When we tested the knowledge base, we found that it contained a lot of valuable information and even some handy extras – like video tutorials, search suggestions for common questions, and useful categories on the side.
We took an in-depth look at HostGator’s support, but what about usability? Well, in terms of usability, HostGator’s design has improved since we last saw it. It used to look clunky and have very outdated features, but now HostGator has revamped its design and is much easier to use!
One thing you should be aware of when using HostGator is the fact that, like most hosting providers, HostGator may automatically add certain add-ons to your shopping cart. This means that if you purchase the Shared “Hatchling” package for a year, for example, add-ons that are not absolutely necessary, such as SiteLock protection and CodeGuard backups, may be added to your cart. This can be easily reversed – you just need to uncheck the appropriate boxes – and HostGator offers these options because they are a good addition to any hosting plan. But make sure you don’t unknowingly pay for any extras!
Get the support you need with HostGator
HostGator sounds great!
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