Hostgator is a large, privately held hosting company operating out of several state-of-the-art facilities in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 2002, Hostgator has grown rapidly since then and currently hosts over 400,000 websites. They are also widely regarded as the world’s leading provider of reseller hosting accounts. Currently they offer hosting for over 10,000 unique reseller account clients.
Hostgator offers many different web hosting packages and caters to a wide range of customers. From the first webmaster who needs simple, hassle free hosting for their personal website; to large companies that need specialized dedicated hosting services.
Hostgator’s hosting plans can be classified into three groups; Standard shared hosting plans (suitable for the vast majority), reseller hosting plans (mainly for individuals and businesses that want to “resell” their account resources to their own customers), and finally dedicated server plans (these accounts give customers to their own server so you don’t have to share its resources with others). Very few of us will need a dedicated server, so this review will focus on the shared hosting plans Hostgator offers.
characteristics
Hostgator’s three main shared hosting plans are: Hatchling (the entry-level plan priced at $6.95/month), Baby (this is the most popular plan and likely meets the needs of a very wide range of customers) and “Swamp” (similar to the “Baby” plan but with more bandwidth and storage, priced at $14.95/month).
For a full list of features and a side-by-side comparison of all hosting plans, be sure to visit Hostgator’s website here. Below is an overview of the main features of the “Baby” plan. This is probably the most suitable package for most users and our favorite plan.
Storage space 100 GB – This amount was recently increased from 5 GB to a whopping 100 GB by Hostgator. All users will probably find it impossible to make full use of this amount of storage space.
Bandwidth 1000 GB/month – Bandwidth allocation has also been increased from 75 GB to a seemingly inordinate 1000 GB. Again, next to no chance to use all of this, but it’s nice to know that even if you have a very busy website(s), you will definitely not incur any additional costs if you exceed your limit.
Site Studio Website Builder – This is a great free program that you can use to build your website from scratch. You have over 500 templates and color schemes to choose from. You don’t need HTML experience or code-writing skills. It offers the easiest way to design a professional looking website in no time. No need to take my word for it, though, as Hostgator gives us a demo version of the software on their website!
Unlimited add-on domains – This is really the standout feature of this hosting plan (the “Hatchling” plan only allows 1 domain) and allows you to host as many websites as you want on a single account at no extra cost. All of your websites then share your account resources. This allows you to take full advantage of your massive bandwidth and disk space, and host multiple websites at a fraction of the normal cost. Fantastic!
99.9% Uptime Guarantee – This basically tells us that Hostgator is a reputable host that offers a reliable service. If the uptime falls below this number in a given month, you don’t pay for hosting that month, it’s that simple! We would never consider using a host that doesn’t offer a solid uptime guarantee; This is only because there is only one good reason why a host doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee – unreliable uptime!
30 Day Money Back Guarantee – This has become quite a standard feature in the web hosting community, although it’s nice to have for added peace of mind.
Instant Setup – Most hosting providers take 24-48 hours to set up your account, but Hostgator promises to have you up and running in under 15 minutes (they don’t charge a setup fee either)!
Unlimited MySQL Databases – This is very useful as each Fantastico script (see below) needs its own MySQL database.
Fantastico DeLuxe – With this impressive program you can immediately install over 50 scripts via your control panel. Scripts include blogs, forums, galleries, shopping carts and more.
Unlimited Email Accounts – You can have as many or as few different email addresses as you like.
cPanel Control Panel – The heart of any web hosting experience is the control panel, luckily Hostgator uses one of the best units out there, a cPanel. It is clear and easy to use. It packs a lot of features and performs well. Best of all, there is a fully working demo on the Hostgator website so you can try it out for yourself!
Customer Service and Technical Support
Hostgator offers us 24/7 phone support and live online chat. The fact that you are offered two options to get instant tech support any time of the day is great. Our experience has always been very good when contacting Hostgator, their reps are very polite and most importantly they seem to be knowledgeable about technical issues. However, we always recommend contacting them yourself before signing up. Ask them a question and see if you’re impressed with their answer. That always says a lot about a company!
Performance
The performance of Hostgator’s servers is excellent! Hostgator sets much tighter limits on the number of websites sharing the same server compared to most other shared hosting providers. This increases reliability because there is less load on the servers; Also, the speed at which your web pages run will be greatly improved.
Server performance is another key area where Hostgator stands out from the crowd of other web hosts.
Our verdict
Overall there is so much to like about the way Hostgator does business, they really seem to have a good understanding of what the average customer expects from a web hosting provider. Rarely do you come across reports of unhappy Hostgator customers, and having hosted with them ourselves, we now know why! The reliability, performance, and uptime of the servers are top-notch, and their customer service is also way ahead of most other web hosts out there. However, the area where Hostgator really excels is value for money. For only $9.95/month for the “Baby” plan (which includes unlimited domains); Anyone looking to host more than one website has a pretty simple choice. The other great thing about this package is that you don’t have to sign a contract. You pay monthly, so you can cancel your account at any time without losing any money. So, in summary, we don’t have any really bad things about Hostgator; At the prices they charge, we really feel that they provide exceptional service. Keep it up Hostgator!
Source by Ma Jianlin
