Professionals

• Simple setup
• Additional instruments for WordPress customers
• DDoS safety included with all plans

Cons

• Inconsistent, incessantly poor, customer support, particularly for complicated points
• Low storage quantities on shared internet hosting plans

HostGator is a well-liked internet hosting firm that at present powers over 707,000 web sites. HostGator gives internet hosting packages for web sites of all styles and sizes, starting from shared internet hosting to devoted internet hosting.

I signed up for a HostGator plan and completely reviewed HostGator’s plans, pricing, performance and safety. I additionally reached out to customer support to ascertain how efficient HostGator’s reside chat, e mail and cellphone groups are. You may study extra in regards to the course of I’ve used for reviewing and testing HostGator by studying how we check website hosting companies.

Total, I discovered HostGator’s service acceptable for primary web sites, particularly websites with a North American viewers. The instruments are straightforward to make use of and the efficiency is respectable. Web site pace varies loads by area and isn’t nice exterior of North America. There are additionally points with customer support, so I don’t advocate HostGator for a web site with complicated wants.

HostGator plans and pricing: You’ll find the kind of internet hosting to suit your wants and finances

HostGator gives a number of sorts of website hosting: net (shared) internet hosting, WordPress internet hosting, e-commerce internet hosting, digital non-public server internet hosting, devoted internet hosting and reseller internet hosting.

Right here’s a fast overview of HostGator’s plans for every kind of website hosting:

Shared internet hosting is the most suitable choice for many first-time web site homeowners so I’ll discover these plans intimately and share some temporary details about the opposite sorts of internet hosting packages HostGator gives. Reseller plans aren’t lined right here, as these plans are supposed for customers who need to create a internet hosting firm, not common web site creators.

All costs listed below are primarily based on a three-year time period, as these plans provide the steepest reductions.

Shared internet hosting plans

Shared internet hosting — referred to by HostGator merely as “website hosting” — is designed for websites with low information storage and site visitors wants. Websites on these plans are positioned on servers shared with lots of of different websites, sharing assets like processing energy and bandwidth.

All HostGator shared internet hosting plans embrace:

• Pre-installed WordPress
• Free area for the primary 12 months
• SSL certification
• Unmetered bandwidth
• 99.9% uptime assure
• 24/7 buyer help through reside chat
• Fundamental e mail internet hosting for one account

The desk under supplies an in depth clarification of the HostGator shared internet hosting plans, with price primarily based on buying a three-year plan. 

I used to be significantly happy to see that the Child and Enterprise plans each provide a content material supply community, which makes use of interconnected servers to retailer information in caches all around the world so guests’ browsers can shortly pull information from the cache closest to them. Each of those plans additionally present a small quantity of devoted assets, comparable to bandwidth, through digital central processing models.

WordPress internet hosting plans

WordPress internet hosting by way of HostGator is shared internet hosting with pre-installed WordPress — a preferred content material administration system, or CMS, for managing content material like weblog posts — and a number of digital central processing models — CPUs — to spice up efficiency. You’ll be answerable for sustaining and updating the WordPress software program, together with themes and plugins, your self.

The Child WordPress internet hosting plan is essentially the most reasonably priced possibility for this kind of internet hosting, beginning at $4.50 a month and renewing at $15 a month. The costliest possibility for HostGator WordPress internet hosting is the Professional Plan, beginning at $14 a month and renewing at $27 a month. 

eCommerce internet hosting

HostGator additionally gives superior WordPress internet hosting with all the things you’ll want to begin an internet retailer, together with the Yoast search engine optimization plugins. A number of YITH plugins — unbiased instruments created for the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce — are additionally included for reserving and appointments, present playing cards and wishlist creation. These plans are managed, so WordPress updates and day by day backups can be performed for you.

The On-line Retailer plan begins at $10 a month and renews at $25 a month. The On-line Retailer + Market plan begins at $13 a month and renews at $40 a month. 

VPS internet hosting

Digital non-public server internet hosting or VPS internet hosting provides you entry to a digital server with devoted assets, comparable to bandwidth and processing energy. The bottom-tier HostGator VPS plan consists of 120GB of solid-state drive — SSD — storage and two-core CPUs.

Probably the most reasonably priced HostGator VPS internet hosting package deal is Snappy 2000, beginning at $37 monthly and renewing at $86. Snappy 8000 sits on the different finish of the value vary, beginning at $96 a month and renewing at $149.

Devoted internet hosting

Devoted internet hosting provides you a whole bodily server. You should utilize all of its storage — beginning at 1TB HDD or 512GB SSD — bandwidth and processing energy. You’ll additionally get full management over your server’s digital configuration.

Worth Server is essentially the most reasonably priced HostGator devoted internet hosting plan, beginning at $92 and renewing at $182  a month. Enterprise Server is the costliest possibility, beginning at $142 a month and renewing at $291 a month.

HostGator ease of use: One of the user-friendly net hosts

Now that we’ve explored the internet hosting packages, it’s time to take a look at what occurs after you’ve chosen a plan. I used the Hatchling plan for this a part of my HostGator evaluate and examined three elements of utilizing HostGator: buy course of, account administration and web site and server administration.

Buy course of

Shopping for a plan from HostGator is remarkably straightforward. You may enter your area, HostGator account credentials and billing data all on the identical web page.

There are a few issues I dislike in regards to the buy course of. The primary challenge is that you just don’t see renewal pricing on the plans web page; it’s discovered as an alternative in small textual content below your time period size on the acquisition web page. This renewal price is well neglected when you’re in a rush to purchase your plan.

The opposite challenge is within the Add Extra Companies space. Almost each net host gives some upsells through the checkout course of, however HostGator routinely indicators you up for the SiteLock Necessities service.

SiteLock Necessities is highlighted to face out if you’re scrolling, however I dislike routinely opting customers into additional companies. Furthermore, this add-on comes with its personal renewal pricing, leaping from $35.88 to $95.88 a 12 months and it’s billed yearly even when you select a three-year internet hosting plan.

Account administration

After I entered my HostGator account for the primary time, I had the chance to create a PIN to confirm my account possession throughout customer support interactions. A private identification quantity is a superb safety measure, besides it didn’t work on my first try:

I used to be in a position to transfer on to the account dashboard with out creating my PIN however I acquired a warning that I may solely skip making a PIN 4 occasions. This was regarding, particularly because the error wasn’t my fault. Fortunately, I managed to create a PIN on the third try.

I appreciated what I noticed as soon as I acquired into the HostGator account dashboard. The dashboard is simple to navigate, and there’s a guided tour that can assist you perceive what (and the place) the necessary areas are.

Billing and account administration is accessed by way of a drop-down menu linked to the profile picture within the high proper nook. I’d have most popular these areas to be extra seen, however this can be a widespread placement for account administration hyperlinks, so I can’t fault HostGator for it.

There’s one huge draw back to HostGator’s account administration space: Each time I logged in after the primary time, HostGator redirected me to a web page making an attempt to persuade me to purchase backups by way of the WordPress plugin Jetpack. Jetpack is nice, however I don’t admire being despatched to a purchase order web page earlier than accessing my account dashboard.

Web site and server administration

Shared plans on HostGator function pre-installed WordPress, so I may entry my WordPress dashboard from the Web sites space of HostGator instantly.

I additionally appreciated that HostGator routinely set my web site to show a Coming Quickly web page and supplied a web site launcher with a pre-launch guidelines:

This space additionally supplies instruments so that you can:

• View your pages and posts
• Join WooCommerce and carry out primary retailer administration
• Simply entry premium instruments and companies
• Management settings for caching, backups and extra

I appreciated how beginner-friendly this device is and the way it helps you to work together with a number of core WordPress capabilities in a single place. You’ll nonetheless have to learn to use your WordPress dashboard, however there’s loads you are able to do from this web page.

After I began constructing my web site, I found that my plan included Surprise Blocks, a device for creating pre-formatted blocks like FAQ blocks. I didn’t see this listed within the Hatchling options record, so it was a pleasing shock, as these blocks make it straightforward to create a gorgeous net web page in minutes.

Total, HostGator supplies strong instruments for getting arrange with WordPress. What in regards to the server aspect of issues?

Since that is shared internet hosting, HostGator does the necessary stuff, like maintaining your working system and safety software program updated. You may go years with no need to concentrate on the extra technical aspect of issues (past important WordPress software program updates) except you’re transferring a web site from one other host.

For those who do need to view or handle extra superior settings, you may entry them by going to Web sites and clicking the Settings button below your web site. This results in an space the place crucial web site data is displayed:

To shortly entry the cPanel itself, you may choose Internet hosting within the sidebar and click on on cPanel within the Fast Hyperlinks space.

Total ease of use

HostGator’s buy course of is likely one of the easiest I’ve encountered, and the beginner-friendly account administration space makes it straightforward to carry out primary area, web site and account administration duties. HostGator additionally gives glorious instruments to simplify launching and managing your web site inside WordPress.

I had a problem creating my PIN, however analysis suggests this isn’t a standard expertise. What’s a shared — and irritating — is the aggressive try to promote you on Jetpack each time you log in. 

Nonetheless, HostGator is usually intuitive, so it will get a 9/10 rating on this class.

HostGator efficiency: Adequate for primary use

Subsequent, I created a check web site utilizing the WordPress theme Whole to check three elements of HostGator’s web site efficiency:

• Efficiency instruments are software program — and typically {hardware} — configurations used to enhance web site pace and reliability.
• Uptime is the period of time a web site spends on-line.
• Velocity is how shortly a web site hundreds.

I performed these checks over the course of 1 week to gather sufficient information to get a good suggestion of how properly HostGator’s shared servers function.

Efficiency instruments

The Hatchling plan doesn’t provide many efficiency instruments. There aren’t any efficiency instruments listed for Hatchling within the plan comparability desk for shared internet hosting. I used to be shocked to seek out caching settings in my web site’s Settings space.

These settings allow you to arrange primary caching to extend your web site pace by storing information in an easy-to-access house so browsers don’t want to drag out of your web site’s server. I additionally like the choice to refresh the cache to make sure that guests see essentially the most up-to-date model of your web site.

HostGator gives extra efficiency instruments at increased tiers of internet hosting:

• Extra central processing models for extra processing energy, rising the quantity of bandwidth you may have.
• Content material supply networks or CDNs to distribute information to international servers so guests’ browsers can pull data from a server near their location, bettering loading occasions.

These options can additional enhance loading speeds and uptime.

Uptime

HostGator gives a 99.9% uptime assure, that means a web site shouldn’t be down for greater than ten minutes per week. Some net hosts present the identical assure, however the perfect net hosts transcend this to supply a full 99.99% assure, making certain {that a} web site gained’t go down for greater than two minutes every week because of server errors.

HostGator’s 99.9% assure is on par with numerous different net hosts, although, so the actual query is: Does HostGator’s service reside as much as that assure?

I monitored uptime for my HostGator check web site for one week utilizing Higher Stack. Throughout this time, my web site went down twice, for a complete of seven minutes. This does reside as much as its assure, though it’s slicing it fairly shut.

Primarily based on these outcomes, HostGator will get a 6/10 rating for uptime.

Velocity

I ran a number of pace checks over one-week utilizing WebPageTest. The check web page I created for this function had two pictures and two textual content blocks to simulate an actual homepage. I enabled HostGator’s built-in caching however didn’t add any extra optimization instruments.

I performed my checks at numerous occasions of day and carried out checks for quite a lot of places to find out what the consumer expertise could be like for customers in numerous elements of the world. Ideally, I hoped to see loading occasions of three seconds or much less in most areas, as bounce charges improve by 32% when loading time goes from 1 – 3 seconds.

I used my checks to calculate common loading occasions — measured in seconds — for the next places (keep in mind, decrease is healthier):

These numbers recommend that HostGator has a mean cell loading time of three.45 seconds and a mean desktop loading time of two.41 seconds. This earns it an general pace score of seven/10 — with a 6/10 for cell and an 8/10 for desktop — with a few caveats:

• Cell loading occasions range significantly relying on the gadget you employ and the plan you may have; the quantity right here is my try to create an correct common, however it might not completely characterize the cell expertise for all customers.
• In case your web site is aimed toward a North American viewers, the 1.71-second common brings the pace rating as much as a 9/10 in your viewers.

Total efficiency

My HostGator check web site had mediocre uptime, however the web site pace was fairly good for a web site with none extra measures to enhance loading occasions. Total, HostGator will get a 6/10 rating for efficiency.

HostGator safety: You may get the basics, however not a lot else

HostGator supplies a firewall to forestall malicious software program from infecting your web site — the minimal safety normal for a high-quality website hosting firm — and Distributed Denial of Service safety to forestall your server from being overwhelmed by malicious site visitors. Some plans additionally embrace automated backups and WordPress updates to extend safety.

You may additionally get free SSL — safe socket layer — certification. This protocol encrypts information despatched to and out of your web site, maintaining delicate data like e mail addresses submitted by way of your contact type protected. SSL certification additionally tells browsers and VPNs that your browser is protected — a few of them will not even let guests open websites with out it. Final however actually not least, SSL certification is a rating issue for Google and websites with out it might be penalized.

These safety measures are fairly common when in comparison with different standard net hosts. The one widespread safety protocol HostGator lacks with its base shared internet hosting tier — Hatchling — is malware scanning to detect and get rid of malicious software program that sneaks by way of the firewall. Malware scanning for HostGator websites is simply accessible by way of the SiteLock Necessities add-on or a extra superior plan just like the Child/Enterprise shared internet hosting plans and the WordPress internet hosting plans.

HostGator buyer help: Nice reside chat and data base, however lackluster cellphone and e mail help

The following stage of my HostGator evaluate concerned exploring the 2 primary avenues HostGator gives for buyer help: the data base for self-directed troubleshooting and direct communication through reside chat, e mail and cellphone.

Data base

The HostGator data base gives complete assets on most simple web site internet hosting and creation capabilities, plus some extra superior subjects. The search perform is extremely seen, making it straightforward to seek out the article you want.

Particular person useful resource pages use headers, concise textual content and pictures to make tutorials straightforward for even a newbie to comply with. A number of of the pages I checked out additionally included video tutorials.

All of this earns the HostGator Data Base a ten/10 score.

Direct communication

I ran right into a minor error throughout web site creation, reached out to HostGator through reside chat and was linked to an agent in three minutes. After half an hour of back-and-forth communication, the agent escalated my criticism to a better stage of tech help and instructed me to count on an e mail “quickly.”

I acquired a cellphone name an hour later. I as soon as once more requested them to ship me an e mail, because it was the top of my workday. After I didn’t obtain an e mail the following day, I reached out once more through reside chat. The reside chat consultant mounted my preliminary challenge inside a couple of minutes.

This repair introduced new errors, so that they provided to schedule a name with a extra superior tech help group. I requested them to schedule it for two:30 PM EDT. I spent an hour ready for a cellphone name that by no means got here. As soon as once more, I needed to attain out myself.

I finally acquired my challenge mounted, and everybody I spoke to was well mannered and tried to assist. I additionally perceive that reside chat attendants are usually skilled on fixing minor points, and escalating high-level tech issues to different groups is regular. In the event that they inform me I’ll obtain an e mail, I count on to obtain an e mail, and in the event that they inform me they’re scheduling a name, I count on to obtain it on the scheduled time.

Primarily based on the whole lack of communication I acquired when my tickets had been escalated, I’m giving HostGator’s buyer help channels the next score:

• 10/10 for reside chat
• 0/10 for e mail help
• 5/10 for cellphone help

Word: HostGator eliminated cellphone service for customers on the Hatchling plan after this check was accomplished. If you need entry to cellphone help, you may have to pay for one of many higher-tier shared internet hosting plans. Since HostGator’s reside chat group is simply able to coping with low-level points, this would possibly make it not possible for Hatchling customers to get high-level help.

Total customer support

I spent numerous time debating find out how to rank HostGator’s customer support. The data base is nice, and I acquired glorious help from the reside chat specialists, however issues fell aside when my points needed to be escalated. They known as me once I particularly requested for an e mail, and once I requested for a name, I didn’t hear something again in any respect.

I settled on a 6/10 for general buyer help. The data base and reside chat will often meet clients’ wants, however the failure of e mail and cellphone help means you is likely to be out of luck when you encounter a extra complicated downside.

Repute

I could know a factor or two about website hosting, however I’m only one consumer. The following query turns into: what produce other customers skilled whereas working with HostGator?

The solutions appear fairly combined. HostGator has a 4.1 out of 5 score on TrustPilot, however 24% of the evaluations are one star, and poor customer support is a high criticism. There are additionally allegations on TrustPilot that the corporate is review-bombing its personal web page with five-star evaluations from staff and different vegetation, though these haven’t been confirmed.

There are extra pink flags on HostGator’s Higher Enterprise Bureau web page: HostGator isn’t BBB accredited, and there’s a Sample of Grievance warning citing repeated accusations of misleading enterprise practices. Particularly, HostGator has constantly did not honor its money-back assure.

All in all, it looks like HostGator’s customer support is poor throughout the board. HostGator might even use misleading practices to maintain individuals on its companies.

HostGator worth: Center-of-the-pack costs

Primarily based on the pricing plans and all the information collected throughout testing, how does HostGator stack up when it comes to worth?

There’s yet another factor I have to do earlier than I can reply that query: check out the competitors.

Right here’s a fast overview of three standard hosts:

Let’s break this down a bit:

• HostGator’s beginning pricing is barely costlier than comparative plans at DreamHost or A2 Internet hosting, however notably lower than GoDaddy’s.
• HostGator’s renewal pricing is identical as GoDaddy’s, which sits between the DreamHost and A2 Internet hosting costs.
• HostGator’s options are largely according to what you’ll get from different hosts, together with necessities like safe socket layer — SSL — certification and primary safety protections. It doesn’t provide a lot storage — the Child plan solely gives 10 GB, and the costliest shared internet hosting plan solely gives 40 GB.

As for efficiency, HostGator’s pace is on the excessive aspect of common and the uptime is on the low aspect of common. The customer support is unreliable, which sadly appears widespread among the many similarly-priced hosts I’ve examined up to now.

Briefly, HostGator’s fairly common, offering higher worth than some hosts — like GoDaddy — and fewer worth than others — like A2 Internet hosting. Primarily based on these comparisons, HostGator earns a price rating of 6/10.

HostGator: Is it best for you?

To start with, I used to be excited to dive into HostGator. HostGator is a family identify amongst net hosts, and when you take the TrustPilot score at face worth, it looks like a superb firm.

I found some issues I appreciated throughout my HostGator evaluate: the easy-to-use account administration space, caching settings, pre-installed WordPress and the HostGator WordPress web site administration instruments. Uptime and pace testing had been fairly common, and the latter may be improved with free caching plugins for WordPress.

There are some main drawbacks to HostGator. The aggressive upsells are annoying and the customer support is inconsistent throughout channels, offering extraordinarily restricted help for complicated points.

So, what’s the official rating?

Let’s begin with the rankings for every class:

• Ease of use: 9/10
• Efficiency: 6/10
• Buyer help: 6/10
• Worth: 6/10

Averaging these numbers out, HostGator receives an general rating of seven/10. HostGator’s a strong alternative if you wish to create a primary web site for an reasonably priced value, particularly in case your viewers is North American. As a result of poor customer support, I wouldn’t advocate it for any web site with complicated wants.