Texas-based HostGator is a widely known web hosting firm with greater than 15 years within the enterprise. It’s now a part of Endurance International Group, together with Domain.com, Bluehost, iPage, SiteBuilder.com and extra.
HostGator gives a strong vary of merchandise masking all of the core internet hosting necessities: shared hosting, a drag-and-drop website builder, cloud hosting and VPS hosting, dedicated servers, a handful of Windows hosting merchandise, reseller hosting accounts, and extra.
There’s not plenty of depth to any particular person space, although. HostGator solely gives three VPS server plans and three base devoted servers, as an illustration, and these solely have very restricted configuration choices.
Dedicated servers solely help you select Windows or CentOS working system, for instance. Meanwhile, Hostwinds has 4 VPS plans obtainable in Linux and Windows flavors; its devoted servers allow selecting as much as three extra drives, including RAID help, further RAM, selecting from 5 working techniques and a number of variations, and including further IPs and bandwidth.
The merchandise HostGator does supply are surprisingly succesful, although, particularly on the price range finish of the vary.
Shared internet hosting
HostGator’s shared internet hosting vary delivers from the beginning. Even the most affordable shared internet hosting plan, Hatchling, will get you unmetered disk area; limitless bandwidth, MySQL databases, electronic mail and FTP accounts; a free SSL certificates, simple WordPress and buying cart set up (osCommerce and ZenCart) and full-featured cPanel-based website administration. That’s greater than sufficient energy for a lot of private and enterprise web sites, but it is priced from solely $2.75 a month on the three-year plan ($6.95 on renewal).
At the top quality, the Business plan helps internet hosting limitless domains and provides skilled options reminiscent of a free devoted IP and a premium SSL certificates. This has a really low headline worth from $5.95 a month over three years, and renews at a still-reasonable $14.95-$16.95, relying on subscription size (1 month to 3 years.)
All plans are protected by a beneficiant 45-day money-back assure, topic to the standard restrictions (if HostGator has already paid to register a website for you, as an illustration, that will not be refunded.)
The solely small difficulty we may see was in HostGator’s alternative of automated installers. Many internet hosts supply Softaculous, a sensible platform which simplifies the method of putting in WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, PrestaShop, Drupal, Magento and lots of of well-liked internet apps. HostGator is generally targeted on WordPress, with only a handful of others. That will likely be superb for many customers, however if you happen to’re searching for one thing else, you might have to put in and set it up your self.
Application internet hosting
HostGator gives easy WordPress hosting for a really low worth, however with out some of the high-end options you may get with the extra specialist competitors.
The Starter plan helps a single website with a median 100,000 customers a month for $5.95 a month over three years, as an illustration ($9.95.) The Business plan consists of extra assets, can deal with three websites and 500,000 guests a month, and is priced at $9.95 a month over three years, $22.95 on renewal. HostGator additionally gives a free migration service to switch your current WordPress website to the brand new account, whereas computerized WordPress updates ought to hold your website securely patched.
Liquid Web’s WordPress plans embody a staging surroundings to allow testing updates with out breaking your manufacturing website, and a really sensible updating system which might routinely replace WordPress and plugins, and lift an alert if there’s an issue. Bandwidth is ‘restricted’ to 2TB a month, most likely sufficient for many customers. It’s an excellent product, however it’s priced at $19 billed month-to-month, or $15.83 on the annual plan, so if you happen to solely want the WordPress fundamentals, it is nonetheless the higher deal.
Creating a web site
After a easy signup, HostGator’s shared internet hosting packages have a variety of instruments that will help you create and handle a web site.
There’s an Install WordPress hyperlink, as an illustration. This takes you to a web page the place HostGator gives to arrange WordPress for a charge (from $99 with $49 WordPress theme credit score), and if you happen to’re not paying consideration, it is simple to imagine it’s essential to select one in all these choices. They’re just a few over-enthusiastic upselling, although, and you may set up WordPress your self by getting into only a few weblog particulars: title, admin username, electronic mail and so forth.
A Softaculous setup permits speedy set up of 400+ different apps, together with Drupal, Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop, phpBB, MediaWiki and extra. It’s most likely the very best of the auto-installers, however for some motive HostGator additionally features a comparable (however extra fundamental) One Click Installs software of its personal.
The shared internet hosting packages additionally embody a free Weebly Builder plan. This has a superb drag-and-drop editor, the location may be hosted by yourself area and there is free SSL thrown in. The catch? Well, there are two: your website is proscribed to 500MB in measurement, and it shows advertisements.
You can improve inside a shared internet hosting plan from $5.99 a month over three years, which drops the advertisements and area limits, and consists of website search, password safety, HD video and audio help, and extra. But if you happen to’re after drag-and-drop simplicity, take a look at HostGator’s Gator Website Builder first– costs begin at $3.84 a month and you may get e-commerce help for below $10 a month on the preliminary time period.
If you are an skilled consumer who would not want any of this handholding, that is okay; a full-featured cPanel set up offers you all of the FTP, SSH, database, file administration and area performance you must get your website up and working.
Site administration
HostGator’s buyer portal is a web-based dashboard the place you are capable of handle your account and take full management of your internet area.
This could be very text-heavy with a stack of hyperlinks, however many of those relate to elective extras. ‘CodeGuard Backup’ sounds intriguing, as an illustration, however until you bought it throughout signup, you may simply get an upselling try making an attempt to steer you to purchase it now.
Despite these hassles, the dashboard scores for its many handy touches. A ‘Control Panel’ part consists of hyperlinks to frequent website administration modules – Email Accounts, Webmail, Databases, File Manager – and with one click on you may get on with importing recordsdata, creating electronic mail accounts or no matter else you must do.
Unsure methods to do one thing? Begin typing within the search field and the location instantly shows matching articles. There’s plenty of content material, sensibly organized, and we typically discovered what we would have liked in a click on or two.
If you are not as fortunate, help is on the market 24/7/365 through stay chat and phone (toll free within the US.)
We’ve all the time had good outcomes from HostGator’s help, and this time was no totally different. When we tried stay chat, a useful agent responded inside two minutes, understood our query instantly and gave us smart and correct recommendation: precisely what we would have liked.
Performance
We started our efficiency testing by establishing a easy static web site on our HostGator plan, then utilizing the location Uptime to test its availability and response time for per week.
Our website was by no means down in the course of the monitoring interval. That’s what we might anticipate after solely per week of testing, however it was nonetheless good to see.
Response occasions averaged 378ms, on the slower finish of the essential shared internet hosting market (most suppliers common between 200-400ms.)
There’s higher information in HostGator’s ‘worst case’ time. In greater than 2,000 exams, the slowest response logged was solely 556ms, significantly higher than many hosts (the present common for our final 30 opinions is 891ms.)
As a ultimate test, we used Dotcom-Tools’ Website Speed Test to test the load time of our website from 16 places across the US and Europe. This delivered a lot better outcomes of round 870ms, placing it within the higher mid-range of the shared internet hosting competitors.
That’s excellent news for HostGator, however remember the fact that these comparisons are primarily based on the low-end shared internet hosting merchandise for every supplier. If you are seeking to purchase a VPS or different extra high-end plan, the outcomes could also be very totally different.
Final verdict
HostGator’s high-end VPS and devoted plans are brief on configurability, however its shared internet hosting plans supply a great deal of options for a particularly reasonable worth, there’s top-quality help to make sure the whole lot runs easily, and a beneficiant 45-day money-back assure ensures there isn’t any danger. A wise alternative for shared internet hosting customers who want extra.
