When it comes to choosing the best web hosting, HostGator stands top in the list. HostGator is a superb web hosting service that’s simple to use and offers an array of useful plans for consumers and small businesses. It’s our top pick for shared web hosting and novice webmasters generally.
HostGator Hosting
Overall rating 4.5
Highlights
- Feature-packed hosting plans
- Excellent shared hosting offers
- Free domain
- Good for novice webmasters
- Good customer service
- Outstanding uptime
- Best site-building software
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Table of Content
HostGator Web Hosting Review
HostGator web hosting could be one among the most important, oldest web hosting companies within the industry, but they’re still making improvements, posting a median uptime of 99.98% over the past 24 months.
Their basic shared hosting plans go with unlimited storage, bandwidth, free domain (for the first year), and a free SSL certificate. They even have great customer service, who connected through a live chat instantly and answered each question within a couple of seconds each.
HostGator’s average page loading times pull them down (1191ms average). Many extra services, like backups and security, are going to be tacked on as additional fees. Plus, the renewal rates rise aggressively after your first term expires.
Here’s an exclusive review, using third-party data from Pingdom to shed light on their performance.
Advantages of HostGator Shared Hosting
HostGator’s uptime performance wont to be a problem in years past. But not anymore, supported our 24 months’ worth of tracking. On top of that, their customer service was fast and friendly. They’ll help migrate your site over to their service for free of charge . And beginners will like a lot of the easy, intuitive options directed their way.
Here’s a brief summary:
1. Stable Uptime of 99.98%
HostGator has posted a 99.98% uptime over the last 24 months. They’ve been according to 99.98-100% uptime for several months. That’s not even the simplest part, though. They’re consistent for a reason: their uptime guarantee says that if they drop below 99.90%, you’ll receive one month of credit on your account.
Obviously, any planned maintenance or impossible-to-predict hacks aren’t factored into this guarantee. You will, however, need to reach out and invite the credit by submitting a support ticket to their billing department within 30 days.
We’ve began to see a couple of other hosts crop up with uptime guarantees recently, and it means all customers win as a result. Competitors beginning and doing this helps raise the bar for the whole industry. It forces everyone else within the market to either match their guarantee and lift the quality level of service or risk falling behind.
2. Responsive Customer Support
HostGator provides a knowledge base, phone, email, and live chat support. The last option is that the fastest, connecting us to a service rep within about 15 seconds.
You can come up with any questions, jumping around from topic to topic, and they will never hesitate. Their staff seems knowledgeable, well-trained, and friendly. I have absolutely honest experience all-round.
3. 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee
HostGator is so confident in their service that they extend the industry-average 30-day refund policy an additional period approximately to 45 days. That means you’ll use them for over a full month and still get your price back if any issues crop up .
This 45-day money-back guarantee applies to all or any shared, reseller, and VPS hosting packages.The important thing is that this doesn’t apply to HostGator’s dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software.
After combing through 30+ Terms of Service documents by now, we’ve found that these caveats are fairly common within the hosting industry.There are a couple of other points to form. HostGator’s Terms give them up to 90 days to really issue a refund. No refunds are going to be given on check, postal order, Western Union payments, or bank wire transfers, either.
Refunds are only available for brand spanking new plans or accounts. So if you previously signed up for one, and are cancelling a renewal or second attempt, you won’t get anything in return.
And last but not least, foreign currency refunds are processed based on the U.S. Dollar exchange rates.
4. Site Security Features
HostGator’s shared hosting plans are fairly bare-bones. You’re getting enough for one site, but not an entire lot of extras on top of it.
thankfully, they are doing offer a couple of extra security measures just like the ability to feature SiteLock monitoring to your site. This service will run daily, searching for any potential site breaches or hacks and allow you to know instantly once they find it.
They also offer Spam Assassin on their email plans to assist prevent spam from hitting your inbox within the first place.The only downside is that SiteLock will cost you a touch extra. We’ll expand on this below within the Cons, but the sticker price is $1.67/mo, billed annually at $19.99.
5. Free Website & cPanel Migration
If this isn’t your first website, and you’re trying to maneuver an existing one over, HostGator’s web hosting got your back. You’ll have 30 days after sign-up to urge in-tuned and have them help move any site files, databases, scripts, and even a domain name over for you.
This includes a full cPanel transfer. So if you happened to possess multiple site installs (like subdomains for one large site), you’re covered.
All of HostGator’s shared hosting plans accompany one site (or cPanel) migration included. Different plans, like resellers, as an example , will get access to more (up to 30).
6. Easy-to-use knowledgebase
HostGator web hosting is tailor-made for beginner bloggers or webmasters. Their site is filled with tutorials, walkthroughs, and more to assist you navigate the murky world of DNS and data centers. They even have extra features for beginners who are looking to line up a site without the effort of hiring people to style, build, and manage everything.
Their website builder, Gator by HostGator, is one among the higher ones we’ve reviewed. It comes with free hosting and a website name, so you only got to purchase one account for all of the necessities. The customizable templates are all pretty modern, to start with, and you’ll easily customize how they appear by dragging and dropping each feature.
You’ll also get site analytics and a free SSL certificate to assist safeguard your visitors’ personal data (like their physical location). Gator by HostGator even comes with an eCommerce plan, so you’ll found out a fully-functioning online store with inventory and more, all without fear about payment gateways, plugins, or the other messy technology. It just works.
HostGator Pricing and Plans
Most recommended: HostGator has three shared hosting plan choice to choose from:
Hatchling plan
This plan starts at $2.75 per month. You get one domain, unlimited space and storage, SSL certificate, and unlimited subdomains.
Baby plan
This plan starts at $3.95 per month. It supports unlimited storage, bandwidth, and domain names.
Business plan
This plan starts at $5.95 per month. It supports unlimited storage, bandwidth, and domain names. It comes with a free dedicated IP, SSL, and a toll-free number.
Some other points:
- Ease of Signup: Easy signup process
- Payment Methods: credit card, PayPal
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: Introductory pricing is merely available for long-term plan purchases. Renewal rates also will quite double. Extra services, like backups and malware monitoring, are all extra fees, too.
- Upsells: many upsells.
- Account Activation: Instant activation mostly. It can take up to 24 – 48 hours to activate sometimes.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel. Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.) using QuickInstall.
Final thoughts
HostGator’s shared hosting does offer tons of advantages. The uptime has really improved over the past year approximately. The customer service is good and therefore the plethora of beginner-friendly options makes it user-friendly.
However, a mixture of the slow speeds and additional pricing hikes make it too expensive to be considered a decent value.
HostGator’s WordPress Cloud hosting may be a little costlier initially on paper, but the performance is additionally substantially better.
So we’d recommend taking a glance at that one, first, because you’ll probably find yourself paying an equivalent at the top of the day once you contribute these extra fees and price increases.
Read my another article about Top 7 Best Web Hosting in India.
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