HostGator is one of the most popular hosting companies that host over 8 million websites from all around the world. HostGator particularly rocks the shared hosting space with their affordable starter plans and easy setup. They offer unmatched 45-day money back guarantee to try their web hosting service risk-free.
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HostGator was founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley, a student at Florida Atlantic University, which now hosts over 8 million websites turning into one of the most popular web hosting providers in the industry.
With every HostGator plan, you get a vast array of tools that help you quickly get your website up and running. Whether you want site builder tools or one-click application installer, SEO tools or backup solutions, you get everything at your fingertips. It also comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, so you can sign up for a hosting account risk free.
HostGator’s award winning support team is available every day throughout the year whenever you need it by telephone, live chat or email. The documentation is extensive that helps you walk you through every aspect of website hosting with ease.
Hostgator always strive for excellence by upgrading their infrastructure as well as user experience. Whether you want to build a hobby site or a company website with off-the-charts growth, you’ll find their backend user interface extremely easy to use. As your business grows, you can easily upgrade to their VPS and dedicated server options.
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HostGator offers cheap hosting, also known as shared hosting, which is the best choice for users who are just starting out and are expecting a low traffic volume for their site. With HostGator’s cheap hosting, many websites will share a single hosting server.
You can choose from a hatchling plan, baby plan, or business plan. All shared plans come with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. You can create unlimited websites with the baby and business plan. And on the business plan, you’ll get one free dedicated IP address and free domain name.
HostGator also offers cloud hosting for a website that requires faster page rendering even during frequent traffic surges. While cloud hosting plans utilize multiple server resources for your website, shared hosting is limited to a single server.
With every HostGator’s cheap host plan, you get tons of different website scripts that let you easily kick start a website, including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal with one-click installers.
Unlike most other hosting providers, all the HostGator plans allow you to set up unlimited email addresses from your account with your domain name with unmetered storage. Plus, you can try their hosting service risk-free for 45 days. It’s the best web hosting choice for beginners.
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HostGator’s dedicated hosting is the ideal solution for extremely high traffic blogs and websites. With a dedicated server, you have the full system resources directly at your disposal.
You also get data center level DDOS protection and an IP-based firewall, which ensures the security of your website and also gives you peace of mind. With dedicated hosting, you get a minimum of 4 cores per server, 1TB of RAID storage, and between four and 30 gigs of available RAM.
If you want to save big, you can subscribe to a plan with their legacy server for as low as $79 / mo. While both generations of dedicated servers are powerful and flexible, the new servers allow multiple Linux distributions.
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HostGator’s VPS server gives you more flexibility and performance around your website. With entry-level VPS nodes, you get more flexibility without a significant performance improvement from your cheap hosting. Whereas the higher end VPS gives you both flexibility and performance improvement.
HostGator strives for excellence and regularly improve their VPS server hardware infrastructure by working with industry leaders like Intel and AMD to constantly evaluate the platform for maintaining optimal performance.
With every VPS hosting plan, you also get a weekly off-site backup of your data, so in case something goes wrong, you can easily revert it back without hassle.
All VPS plans include 2 IP addresses with a disk space ranging from 120 GB to 240 GB.
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Having been a recommended WordPress partners for years by WordPress.org, HostGator now also offers managed WordPress hosting for those who want to build a highly efficient WordPress website. With WordPress hosting, you get additional protection out of the box to prevent WordPress-specific vulnerabilities and attacks.
Unlike traditional web hosting option, HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting comes with an easy to use cPanel interface by which you can quickly auto backup your WordPress sites, handle traffic spikes and access your email accounts.
You can experience 2 times faster website speed, a higher level of protection for your WordPress sites and automatic WordPress updates.
All WordPress hosting plans include 100% free migration, automatic malware removal and automated daily database backups along with unmetered storage space.
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HostGator’s reseller hosting allows you to make some extra income by hosting your clients’ website. With the best reseller hosting plan, you get all the powerful tools you need to succeed ranging from WHM to billing software.
Not only can you allocate resources to best fit your clients’ need, but you can also even offer additional services to your clients, like SSL certificates, domains, etc.
All HostGator’s reseller hosting plans come with unlimited domains, SQL databases, email accounts, and FTP accounts. For your privacy, you can set private nameservers based on your domain name.
The WHM control panel lets you monitor server status and set a brandable client panel with your company logo for white labeling your service.
HostGator comes packed with features you’ll need to run your website smoothly. Let’s take a look at some of their highlights.
HostGator has a lot to offer but like every hosting company, it has its downsides too. Keeping this review fair, we’ve listed out the pros and cons of this hosting provider.
HostGator promises an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Moreover, you get one month credit on your account if you experience downtime that falls short of their uptime guarantee.
Unlike most web hosting companies out there, HostGator allows you to try their service risk-free for 45 days and if you’re not fully satisfied with their service, you’ll get your money back.
HostGator’s expert migration team helps you transfer your existing website and domain registrations from anywhere to your HostGator account. This way you can manage your entire online portfolio under a single hub. All new accounts are eligible for HostGator’s free transfers.
HostGator offers 24/7/365 server monitoring and customer support via telephone, live chat, and email ticket system. Their extensive support portal boasts over 500 video tutorials and about 700 step by step articles that help you explore different aspects of web hosting.
Unlike most other hosting providers, all web hosting plans allow you to set up unlimited email accounts with unmetered disk space.
When signing up with HostGator, you can choose to pay for one month to 36 months, with discounts for longer periods.
You can build your website with the HostGator website builder which starts at $3.84 per month. It lets you create email campaigns and online stores as well.
Here are some limitations of HostGator hosting:
Hostgator domain hosting is free only for the first year, after which you’ll need to pay.
Unlike Bluehost, HostGator doesn’t offer WooCommerce hosting option. So there’s no dedicated option to create an online store. However, you can use their WordPress Cloud hosting service for hosting a WooCommerce website.
Website performance is one of the biggest factors you need to consider when choosing a web host.
Without a doubt, your visitors expect your site to load quickly – and they’ll abandon your site if it takes about three seconds to load, according to a study.
To test the performance of HostGator, we created a test site with WordPress using the default Twenty Seventeen theme. We also uploaded some dummy content to mirror the live environment on our test site.
According to Pingdom’s website speed test, our test site loads in less than a second for a server in Dallas, Texas. That’s faster than 94% of all tested sites.
Apart from Pingdom, we also used a testing tool called Load Impact to figure out how HostGator handles visitors during a traffic surge. Load Impact sent some virtual users (VUs) to our site and gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time.
For a detailed look, take a look at the charts below.
In the chart, you can find a blue line (VUs active) which shows the number of virtual users sent to our HostGator site and a green line (VU load time) which represents how much time it would take to load a web page for a user.
Evidently, our site was quick until there were about 80 visitors at a time. As traffic grew, the site started to slow down.
Considering the shared hosting environment, these results are pretty good. With shared hosting, you’ll be sharing your server resources with other sites. If you often get that much visitors at a time, you’ll likely need to upgrade your hosting to VPS for smoother performance.
That being said, the site never went down during our speed test. Take a look at the report on uptime and response time of our HostGator site.
Content published on your website will have an impact on the performance of your site. For instance, a site containing too many images will likely take more time to load compared to a site with no image.
To get a more accurate result on server response time, we decided to ignore the content of our page entirely and test the response time.
For this purpose, we used a speed testing tool known as Bitcatcha, which works differently by completely ignoring the content and records the loading time from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
From the report, you can find that our HostGator site was rated C by Bitcatcha. In the United States, the web hosting server responded quickly, in just a few milliseconds.
For all locations around the world, HostGator still responded in less than a second. It came as no surprise since HostGator servers’ are located in the United States. It also means your site will load quickly for your website visitors around the world and even faster for US visitors.
Over 2 million customers have already trusted HostGator; without a doubt, HostGator is one of the most reliable web hosting companies in the world.
HostGator’s award-winning customer support team is available every day throughout the year whenever you need assistance via telephone, live chat or email. Upon subscription to any of their hosting plan, you’ll get access to HostGator’s dedicated support portal from which you can manage all of your support tickets.
The documentation is extensive that helps you walk you through every aspect of website hosting with ease. Their extensive support portal comprises answers to your pertinent questions regarding web hosting. You can easily find a solution by using the search bar in the portal. Their robust help center/knowledge base includes 680+ help articles and 500+ video tutorials.
The best thing is that HostGator support is guaranteed by the CEO, Adam Farrar himself. If you find an issue with the regular support, you can ask your ticket to be assigned to Adam, so he can respond directly.
HostGator is currently home to millions of websites from all over the world. It offers a robust platform that is extremely easy to use for beginners and fully matured for advanced users.
cPanel
All HostGator hosting account comes with an easy to use cPanel by which you can manage all your website, emails, billing and support portal. This dashboard provides users access to all the features offered by their hosting plan. You can manage your websites, get FTP details, check CPU usage, install your free SSL certificate, and more, from a very graphical and easy to use interface.
1-Click Apps Installers
Most users want to set up their websites as quickly as possible. HostGator makes it incredibly simple with their 1-Click installers for the most popular content management systems and other web apps. This includes WordPress which users can install with just a couple of clicks. You’ll find tons of different website scripts that help you easily kick start a new website.
Web Based Hosting Management Tools
Most beginner users don’t know how to use SSH or SFTP to access their files. They don’t know how to create new databases or manage existing databases from the command line. HostGator’s cPanel allows users to do all that using web-based tools. This makes life a lot easier for people who are creating websites for the first time.
Help and Support
Help is easily available throughout the hosting environment. Users can easily launch live chat from any screen to ask questions. There is comprehensive and very detailed documentation available for almost any topic.
Website Builder
HostGator also comes with a complete drag and drop builder known as HostGator website builder, which is shipped with 100+ mobile-friendly templates. It also offers seamless integration with PayPal, making it easier for your customers to purchase your product or services right from your site built with HostGator builder.
HostGator offers a diverse range of hosting plans, including their immensely popular shared hosting packages.
The shared HostGator web hosting plans have three different levels. The basic starter package, the Hatchling Plan, starts from $2.52 per month and has a single domain limit.
Apart from the shared HostGator hosting packages, it also offers managed WordPress cloud hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers.
This range of plans, packages, and pricing options provides users with plenty of choices and room for growth.
Here are some of the shared hosting plans offered by HostGator:
| PLAN | DISK SPACE | BANDWIDTH | PRICE |
| Shared Hatchling | 10GB SSD Storage | Unlimited | $2.52/ mo. |
| Hatchling Cloud | 2 GB | Unmetered | $4.95 / mo. |
| WordPress Starter | 20GB SSD Storage | Unmetered | $3.05 / mo. |
| VPS Snappy | 120 GB | 1.5 TB | $23.95 / mo. |
| Dedicated Value Server | 1 TB HDD | Unmetered | $89.98 / mo. |
| Reseller Hosting | 60 GB | 600 GB | $19.95 / mo. |
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their website, we have answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about HostGator.
Which HostGator plan should I get?
Use shared hosting if you’re just starting out and are not expecting extremely high traffic volume. As you grow, you can upgrade your hosting to VPS (Virtual Private Server), which gives you more flexibility and high performance.
Dedicated server is for hosting a website with high traffic volume. It doesn’t share server resources with any other websites, except yours.
Where are HostGator servers located?
HostGator servers are located in Provo, Utah and Houston, Texas.
Can HostGator handle high traffic?
Yes. It depends on your hosting plan. If your site starts consuming too much resources, then HostGator will ask you to upgrade to a higher plan.
What’s unmetered bandwidth and disk space?
This means you’re NOT charged based on the amount of bandwidth or disk space you use. However, keep in mind that with a shared hosting account, according to HostGator’s Terms of Service, you can only utilize disk space and bandwidth in the normal operation of a small business website.
Hosting accounts that use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds would be in violation of HostGator’s Terms of Service.
What happens if you exceed usage?
Once you exceed usage, you’ll receive an email notification asking you to reduce the usage. If you continue to exceed usage, you’ll probably need to upgrade to a higher server.
Does HostGator offer free website migration?
If you have an existing website that you want to transfer to HostGator, the good news is they offer FREE site transfers for new accounts within 30 days of subscription.
Can I upgrade my HostGator plan later?
We always recommend users to start with the smaller plans and upgrade as needed. HostGator makes it easy for you to upgrade without hassle.
Does HostGator offer a month-to-month payment option?
Yes, HostGator offers a month-to-month payment option for all of their hosting plans. Although it’s important to note that they offer significant discounts for longer-term deals.
Can I create subdomains in HostGator?
Yes, you can easily create subdomains in HostGator using the cPanel.
Do I need to purchase the addons that HostGator offers me?
No, you do not need to purchase any addons while purchasing a hosting plan. Should you decide that you need them later, you can always add them to your account.
How can I start an online store with HostGator?
HostGator supports a lot of different online store tools, including Magento. With a single click, you can install Magento on your hosting server.
If you want to create an online store with a WordPress powered solution like WooCommerce, you’ll first need to install WordPress on your host and then WooCommerce on top of it.
Which is better HostGator or Bluehost?
Both HostGator and Bluehost are reliable web hosts that offer feature-rich hosting packages. In terms of Bluehost vs HostGator, they’re pretty similar when it comes to MySQL databases, CPU resources, pricing, unmetered bandwidth, disk space, and more.
We find Bluehost performs slightly better and is a cut above when it comes to SSD storage, security, and value for money. With HostGator, you’ll benefit from a 45-day moneyback guarantee, cheaper hosting plans, and faster support.
Wondering how HostGator stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
HostGator allows you to select from a wide variety of hosting plans that best suit your needs. You can find dozens of one-click installers to quickly kick start your website. Each plan also comes with a built-in free website builder with 100+ free mobile-friendly templates to choose from.
Over 2 million websites have already trusted HostGator, which proves that HostGator is one of the most reliable web hosting providers. Whether you are a seasoned Internet pro, or just kick starting your online career with your first website, you’ll find all tools to run an awesome website without hassle.
If you’re looking for an affordable and reliable web host, HostGator is the best bet for you.
All HostGator plans include a money-back guarantee. 
Do not use the site and do not enter any of your personal information.
Otherwise you will find out one year later, that their system kept your information and settled the payment method as an automatic and you will be charged for whatever package you were looking for. even though you thought you deleted your information there.
Most importantly, they do not refund? Because they want so. Because they are desperate, hunting for every penny they can steal!
This host stinks if you actually turn your site into something. Once I started getting traffic and making money, they were the worst for support and help.
Took them 2 weeks to migrate me to a better sever after paying them over 1000 dollars to do so.
You would be a fool to use hostgator, their customer support is terrible and your website if even meaningfully successful will hit some imaginary threshold on their part and they will freeze your site for a few days without any replies. They do pay a lot for referrals however.
I have used Hostgator services, these were OK. I shifted to Hostinger and I believe it was right decision to take. If you want good quality and cheap hosting services, I suggest one should go for Hostinger. They guarantee 99.99% uptime and have dedicated 24/7 customer support.
It has simple and user-friendly cpanel without any complexity.
Really Slow… It is not a good option.
I purchased Hostgator’s shared hosting service and was happy with the service throughout my first year. However, upon logging in to my account at renewal time, I noticed had they had signed me up for MANY optional services but had not emailed me a monthly invoice for any of them. They deducted the funds from my credit card, but never once sent an invoice. At the end of the day the fee for the service was 3x what they said it would be when i signed up. In addition, at the end of the first year the price goes up significantly (it works the same for most hosts), and they charge extra for everything. Want domain privacy, that will be $25. Want Sitelock ($35), Backup ($25). It goes on and on.
I’m now using A2hosting that offers free SSL with let’s encrypt their performance and optimization tools are super useful for WordPress sites.
I am hosting my website and two others on hostgator from last one year. In starting my wordpress email not going to customers. but soon they start.Also there support takes much time to help otherwise it is good overall
I have been using Host Gator for about 5 years now and have never had a problem.
Using Host Gator is one thing I never have to think about. Owning a small business your time is pulled in many directions and time is money. I love having Host Gator because it just works as expected and rarely needs me to do a thing.
I have had Hostgator as my only hosting for about 7 years now. I love it because it is easy to set up and use for a newbie. I have set up databases, chron jobs, and multiple email accounts using only the instruction on their website. I couldnt do that at GoDaddy, it was too confusing. I’m soo glad I switched!
If my website was ever down, it must have been very short, because I have never noticed it being down. Not even once.
I began using Hostgator a few years ago while I was taking coding classes and haven’t really had too many issues with it. The only think i would like to convey is that pricing could come down and be relative to the site. My site is not used for ecommerce or anything else really and the plan I have is more than I need. However when I attempted to down-grade the plan I was told I would have to “pay” to move the site??? That to me seemed rather harsh and it kind of put me off -I certainly will not and have not referred anyone to Hostgator because of it. On the up side, as far as I know I haven’t had the site go down which I think is a plus.
Hostgator has been easy to use and the customer service is responsive and helpful. I’ve never built a website before, but after using Hostgater once, I’ve now buikt dozens of sites.
Its easy and friendly to use! Their technical support is helpful and informative too.
We’ve been a customer with Host Gator going on 4 years now. We’re very satisfied with the service they provide hosting our sites. Technical support as always been very responsive when we’ve had questions or issues with their service. And you can’t beat their pricing plans. We plan to continue working with Host Gator as part of our business model for our clients.
For the number of years I’ve been using HostGator, I’ve had only positive experiences. Granted, I tend to be pretty self-proficient for managing my site, but whenever an issue has popped up, they’ve been quick at giving me an answer.
Host Gator has provided a reliable, straightforward, and affordable service. I am happy with Host Gator as a web hosting service and plan to continue using them for the foreseeable future.
Hostgator is easy to use, inexpensive and comprehensive. I’ve been using it for about 3 years now and am very happy.
I have been a HostGator customer for several months now, and the experience has been completely positive. Early on, I changed my name servers and then messed up my WordPress install. I went to the HostGator website and was quickly connected with a super friendly, super helpful support agent. Five or so minutes later, he had fixed my WordPress install and my site was working great! Definitely recommend HostGator.
As a new or beginner blogger I started with hostgator eight months ago without taking any knowledge for my Ease Bedding and niche and one another. I started on two accounts with two domains due to penny program. But after three months I have noticed that I was getting two bills and I requested them to make it one billing account.
They said ok and for around forty dollars. I decide to close both accounts and move to another hosting company. They closed my accounts and refunded for couple of weeks. So I have no complaint about them, but not so much experience with them as well.
I can say for opening two different accounts, was my own mistake, not their. So I can say they are good, but I don’t have much experience to say a lot about them.
HostGator has great servers but their technical support is GODAWFUL.I’m trying to setup an SSL and it has taken them 3 weeks to reply… and this isn’t the first time it’s taken them forever to reply. Other than that, they are great.
Jamie
A huge chunk of the company reviews talk about the reliability of the hosting packages offered by the website. It is true that for some of the hosting plans, the lack of security features can be a bummer. However, when it comes to all the other features like supported scripts and multimedia, the email hosting and the control panel features, HostGator more than meets the standards – a fact which is not entirely surprising given that HostGator has been recognized worldwide as the leading provider of web hosting.
Love them!
Hi WP beginner could you please update this review?
Hostgators cloud hosting plans seem ridiculously cheap – and flexible.
Their presales support says yes to everything I ever wanted.
Being able to add an extra gb memory or cpu core for $1 per month is insane.
But all of the post 2015 user stories in the comments here mean that I won’t buy it.
There has got to be some more balanced story – what can I reasonably expect to get from HG, and what not?
Agreed about staying away from Hostgator. That’s how I found this article – looking for somewhere else to move my hosting. Below par speed, slow Customer Service, and occasional crashes. I’ve had enough.
Stay away from Hostgator!
Hostgator is no longer a viable host and here is why
1.) Performance is way below par
2.) MySQL databases constantly crash
3.) Wait Time for support is far too long – 30-40 minutes. It used be single digits
4.) CPanel is basically and advertising platform instead of a cPanel. Try it and you will see all the pop-ups and advertisements.
5.) Tech support, when you can actually get a hold of someone, is basically an excuse generator instead of true technical support. They are always trying to place the blame on the customer.
I used to recommend them, but please look elsewhere for hosting at this point