In this Hostinger vs HostGator comparison, I’ll give you a detailed breakdown of pricing, ease of use, performance, security, and customer support for both hosting providers.
Hostinger and HostGator offer super affordable hosting solutions, making them extremely attractive to users on a tight budget. Not only that, but both providers demonstrate fast and reliable performance results.
They also cover basic security needs and have a trained team of customer support representatives available 24/7 to help if something goes wrong.
On the surface, both providers seem very similar, but are they really? In this HostGator vs Hostinger comparison, my goal is to find out their differences and help you choose the right one for you.
Hostinger vs HostGator: General Info
Both Hostinger and HostGator are well-known and affordable hosting providers that come with feature-packed plans and good performance scores. Hostinger is a star when it comes to the lowest prices on the market, while HostGator is known for its “unlimited” hosting deals.
To better understand how the two compare, I’ve put together a table listing key vendor qualities. However, if you want to see a more detailed summary, please skip to the conclusion at the end.
| Comparison |  | VS |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⭐ Rating | 4.8 ★★★★★ | VS | 4.0 ★★★★☆ |
| 💲 Price from | From $2.99/month | VS | From $2.75/month |
| 🌐 Free domain | No | VS | Yes |
| 💳 Payment types | Credit card, PayPal, CoinGate, Google Pay | VS | Credit card, PayPal |
| 🏘️ Hosting types | WordPress, VPS, cloud, cPanel, Minecraft, and CyberPanel VPS hosting | VS | WordPress, VPS, cloud, and dedicated server hosting |
| 🕹️ Control panel | Native hPanel control panel | VS | Native dashboard +slightly customized cPanel integration |
| 🚄 Average speed | 511ms | VS | 525ms |
| ▶️ Monitored uptime | 100% | VS | >99.99% |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee | 99.9% | VS | 99.9% |
| 🌎 Server locations | The US, UK, Brazil, Indonesia, Netherlands, Lithuania, and Singapore | VS | The US |
| 🛡️ Security | Free SSL, server monitoring, weekly/daily backups, DDoS protection, 2-factor-authentication | VS | Free SSL, server monitoring, automated backups, and DDoS protection |
| 👨💻 Support | 24/7 live chat and email | VS | 24/7 live chat and phone |
| ➡️ Website migration | WordPress, cPanel & WHM, and other control panel migrations | VS | WordPress and cPanel & WHM website migration |
| ➕ Extras | RoR hosting support, email account, and caching | VS | RoR hosting support and email accounts |
| 💰 Money-back guarantee | 30 days | VS | 30 days |
| 💻 Website | www.hostinger.com | VS | www.hostgator.com |
Hostinger vs HostGator: Pricing Comparison
Between the two hosting providers, Hostinger offers more affordable plans starting at just $2.99/mo. By comparison, HostGator’s cheapest shared hosting plan will set you back $2.75/mo.
As for other types of hosting, here are some of the scalable options offered by both providers:
| Hosting Types | Hostinger | VS | HostGator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ✔️ |
| WordPress Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ✔️ |
| Cloud Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ✔️ |
| VPS Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ✔️ |
| cPanel Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ❌ |
| Minecraft Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ❌ |
| CyberPanel Hosting | ✔️ | VS | ❌ |
| Dedicated Hosting | ❌ | VS | ✔️ |
As you can see, both hosting providers offer many hosting services. However, the most popular option is still shared hosting, so that is exactly what I will focus on.
Both hosting providers share some common features. You’ll get a custom domain name, SSL certificate, and at least 100 email accounts, with all Hostinger and HostGator shared hosting plans.
Here’s what the cheapest plan from each provider looks like:
Servers on 4 continents
LiteSpeed web servers with built-in caching engine
Free weekly or daily backups
Free website builder included
The customer support team takes a while to respond
Fast website loading time
Affordable pricing starts at $2.75/month
Free Gator Website Builder
Servers only in the USA
Just looking at the feature list, it might seem like HostGator is better with unlimited storage. However, there is no such thing as “unlimited”. The host has set a tight bandwidth and disk usage limit for personal and small business website hosting.
Now, while the cheaper options are always tempting, both Hostinger and HostGator have 2 more shared hosting plans to woo you.
So which of these plans will best suit your needs and requirements?
Hostinger offers you 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting options, priced from $2.99/mo to $9.99/mo.
According to Hostinger, their Premium plan at $2.99/mo is the most popular option, and for good reason. For a reasonable price, you can host 100 websites and the storage is very generous (100 GB). Furthermore, a free domain is also included.
One more thing, Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Within this time you can get a full refund of the services. However, please note that a domain name is non-refundable.
Best Value
For the best value with Hostinger, consider their Premium plan. For $2.99/month, you get generous hosting storage and the freedom to host up to 100 websites and email accounts.
Just like Hostinger, HostGator also has 3 shared hosting plans. Prices for those start at $2.75/mo and go to $5.25/mo.
HostGator also has a plan that they consider to be the best value of the 3. The provider’s official recommendation is their Baby plan at $3.50/mo. And it’s not hard to see why. For just $0.75/month more than Hatchling, you can host unlimited websites. At the same time, Baby’s renewal rates are much lower than with the business plan.
One thing to note, HostGator comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just keep in mind that items like a domain name are not refundable.
Pro Tips
For the best value with Hostinger, consider their Premium plan. For $2.99/month, you get generous hosting storage and the freedom to host up to 100 websites and email accounts.
In short, both providers offer feature-rich plans at very reasonable prices. However, taking price as the main deciding factor, Hostinger wins this round.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Ease of Use
Both Hostinger and HostGator are aimed at beginners and as such offer simple user interfaces. Although similar in terms of simplicity, Hostinger and HostGator use different management systems. Hostinger presents you with a single native hPanel, while HostGator uses a classic native dashboard and a combination of cPanel.
One great thing about Hostinger is that they make the setup process extremely quick and easy. Immediately after account creation, you will be met with an automatic account setup wizard.
It will help you with SSL certificate activation, domain registration and setting up your hosting environment.
You will also get your hands on Hostinger’s custom control panel: hPanel. It offers a clean, organized, and easy-to-use interface that allows you to access and manage various tools like domain names, SSL settings, email accounts, databases, a CMS installer, and much more. If you are curious to know more about provider management, go to Hostinger review.
On the other hand, you have HostGator which includes a native user interface and cPanel.
HostGator’s native interface handles basic tasks like billing, connecting to support, accessing the HostGator marketplace, and serving as a link to cPanel.
Speaking of cPanel, there you access more advanced tools like email accounts and files on your server, manage databases, and security features. In a nutshell, all your website administration settings and core tools are in cPanel.
This is also where you will find the Softaculous Installer app to help you install WordPress or any other CMS you want. To further explore provider management features, check out the HostGator review.
In general, both providers are very simple and easy to manage. However, with its custom control panel and automatic setup wizard that practically holds your hands, Hostinger came out on top in this round.
Hostinger vs HostGator Performance
In my time with Hostinger and HostGator, I’ve found that both hosting services offer similar performance. However, to pick a winner, I ran a series of tests on both. What I found was that Hostinger offered slightly better uptime, response time, and faster upload speeds.
The performance difference is not that big between HostGator and Hostinger. However, as your site grows and adds more content, graphics, CSS/JS scripts, etc., the slight edge with Hostinger could be exactly what you need.
Uptime and response time
For this test, I looked at both providers over an almost identical period of time, only around 2 months. Here are my findings.
In 2 months of testing, Hostinger did not have a single outage, resulting in a perfect 100% uptime.
This is excellent! However, expecting 100% uptime in the long term (>1 year) is unrealistic. That being said, Hostinger offers a standard 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Now looking at the responsiveness, I got an average response time of 511ms, the time it takes for the browser to retrieve the HTTP headers and the first byte of data. This is also within the industry average of 600ms.
Coming to HostGator, the host experienced 3 outages or 5 minutes of downtime in 2 months. This has brought HostGators uptime to an impressive >99.99%.
Like Hostinger, HostGator comes with the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. Knowing this, I am even more impressed with the results I got.
Moving on to server speeds, I got an average response time of 525ms. While this is only slightly slower than Hostinger’s, HostGator still manages to fall below the market average of 600ms.
In short, both hosts put up a good fight and went hand in hand in terms of uptime and response time. However, I have to admit that Hostinger did show slightly better results overall.
Website speed
I host my website in the US with both providers. So the upload speed also takes place in the US. It’s important to note that HostGator has data centers only in the US, while Hostinger allows you to choose 1 of 4 locations (US). , Lithuania, the Netherlands and Singapore) with their shared hosting plans.
- Largest Content Painting (LCP) is the time it takes to load the largest graphic element. According to Google, an LCP should not exceed 2.5s, as that is the maximum recommended time.
- Full load time, as the name suggests, means how long it takes to fully load all the elements on the site. For the best user experience, this time should be less than 3 seconds.
With that being said, this is how my Hostinger site performed:
As you can see, the site has an LCP of 849ms and a full load time of 936ms. Both of these numbers are well below industry averages, further proving just how fast Hostinger is. It easily makes it one of the fastest hosting providers on the market.
Moving on, this is how my HostGator site held up:
As you can see, the LCP here is 1.1s while the full charge time is 1.2s. Here, too, both measurements are significantly below the unwanted 2.5 and 3 seconds, respectively.
However, Hostinger is slightly faster than HostGator, giving it the win in this round.
In general, when it comes to overall performance, Hostinger and HostGator are pretty much equal rivals. However, it’s pretty clear that this Hostinger vs HostGator comparison has to crown Hostinger, as the host was more reliable and generally faster.
Website Security
Hostinger and HostGator cover the basic security features you’ll need to keep your site safe and secure.
- Free SSL certificate.
- DDoS protection.
- Automatic backups
- Security enhancements at the server level.
Hostinger also comes with 2-factor authentication. However, HostGator skips this basic feature.
Apart from this, it is worth noting that Hostinger offers weekly backups with the Basic and Premium plans. Daily backups are only available with your Business plan. Unfortunately, HostGator is not that transparent. All of their plans get automatic backups. They state that backups can be done daily, weekly and monthly, but the schedule is not clear and you are asked to pay if you want to restore one of the versions.
- With Hostinger, you get 24/7 server monitoring backed by security modules like mod_security and PHP open_basedir. This is good enough to keep your site safe from common threats.
- HostGator’s custom firewall provides the same level of security to keep malicious and suspicious traffic out of your website.
- Positive SSL upgrade ($39.99/year): Secures your domain and subdomain with a TrustLogo site seal and offers a $10k guarantee. This is free with HostGator’s Business plan.
- SiteLock Essentials ($23.88/year): An automatic monitoring tool that will examine your site to combat malicious attacks, spammers, and hackers.
- CodeGuard ($23.95/year): An enterprise-grade website backup utility that offers automatic server backup, monitoring, and restore services.
Now, it’s worth noting that these are all third-party security plugins. You can easily get these features on Hostinger by installing similar or alternative security plugins. As such, to compare Hostinger and HostGator, I will only consider their free security features.
In general, Hostinger is a bit more attractive in terms of security. Its clear backup policies and the addition of 2FA make it a very secure hosting provider. Other than this, both providers are the same.
Customer support
Both Hostinger and HostGator have 24/7 live chat support and fairly detailed knowledge bases. Additionally, Hostinger offers email support, while the HostGator agent can be reached via phone.
Now whenever I try support from any provider I always choose the live chat option as I find it to be the fastest and most convenient. Here are my findings from each provider:
Speaking of Hostinger, I had to wait up to 20 minutes before being connected to a support expert. However, once I did get through, my issue was quickly resolved within a couple of minutes. The support members were also extremely friendly and helpful, which is always a plus.
On the other hand, I was connected to a HostGator support representative in just a few seconds. It took 9 minutes for the agent to resolve my issue, but to be fair, it wasn’t a common mistake. The agents were also very helpful and friendly, which always leaves a good taste in your mouth.
Now, in terms of knowledge bases, both providers offer very well organized, informative and easy to navigate options. Whatever problem you may be having, chances are you can find an article about it.
In general, Hostinger and HostGator come with very knowledgeable support agents and extensive knowledge bases. Although, I have to say that the lack of phone support with Hostinger and email for HostGator takes away some points.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Final Recommendations
And this brings us to the end of this HostGator vs Hostinger comparison. Both Hostinger and HostGator are pretty comparable in most departments. However, Hostinger offers slightly better performance at much more affordable prices. This gives Hostinger a huge practical advantage over HostGator.
| Feature | Hostinger | HostGator | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ | Hostinger is much more affordable, with prices starting at $2.99/mo. HostGator’s cheapest plan costs $2.75/mo. |
| Ease of use | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | Both Hostinger and HostGator are easy to use. However, Hostinger is more optimized for beginners with its custom hPanel. With HostGator, you get a native user interface backed by a traditional cPanel. |
| Performance | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | Hostinger demonstrated a perfect 100% uptime, an average response of 511ms, and a full load time of 936ms, while HostGator scored >99.99%, 525ms, and 1.2s, respectively. |
| Security | ★★★★☆ | ★★★☆☆ | Hostinger gives you all the basic security features like SSL, automatic backups, and 2FA on all of their plans. HostGator skips 2FA but offers paid security plugins for those who need extra security. |
| Support | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ | Both providers offer 24/7 live chat support. In addition, Hostinger offers support by email and HostGator by phone. In general, both hosts have fast and knowledgeable agents. |
With cheaper pricing, a more intuitive control panel, friendly support, and slightly better performance metrics, Hostinger takes the overall win. It is one of the best options for users who are on a tight budget but want reliable hosting to establish their online presence.
However, if you’re looking for a host with fairly generous storage for a personal site, HostGator is also a great option.
FAQs
Hostinger vs HostGator: which provider is better?
Hostinger is the best hosting provider if you are looking for an affordable yet reliable option. It gives you an intuitive backend to manage your hosting, complete with basic security features, above average website performance, and excellent 100% uptime.
Hostinger vs HostGator: which host is more secure?
Hostinger offers slightly better security as all of their plans cover basic requirements like SSL certificate, 2FA, automatic backups, DDoS protection, and internal server security optimizations.
Which host is best for WordPress hosting?
Hostinger is a more suitable provider for WordPress hosting. It uses powerful LiteSpeed servers, advanced security options and a simple and intuitive control panel.
Do Hostinger and HostGator use cPanel?
No, only HostGator uses cPanel for their website administration tasks. Hosting uses a native hPanel, which is quite similar to cPanel in terms of functionality.
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