Hostgator Web Hosting Review – Forbes Advisor Australia

As with all services, there are benefits and disadvantages to signing up with HostGator. Given that the best deals are available for multi-year plans, you’ll want to make sure to research the pros and cons of the service before committing. In this HostGator review, we’ve outlined the highlights below.

Pros

HostGator offers an affordable price and attractive introductory deals. With unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth for all plans, and an uptime of 99.9%, HostGator’s plans are solid options, regardless of which tier you end up choosing.

Users who want to build a website easily without code will be able to use the company’s website builder, a tool that offers drag-and-drop functionality to easily build websites.

HostGator also provides essential features for free. You’ll receive a domain name for free for the first year. Plus, you’ll be getting an SSL certificate for free, an add-on that’s essential for any website and usually costs money.

Cons

While HostGator offers many services for free, there are also many add-on services offered at an extra cost. These may easily add up and should be considered when evaluating the overall cost of web hosting with HostGator. For example, the advanced tiers of the website builder, advanced security and automatic website backups all cost a monthly fee.

While HostGator does have the standard uptime offered by web hosting platforms, there are some competitors that promise better uptime (99.99% compared with 99.9%, which amounts to being guaranteed service for around an extra eight hours per year). Depending on the nature of your business, this difference could be worth considering.

Furthermore, while HostGator has plenty to offer Australian consumers, they don’y have any servers located in Australia. This is not a problem if you’re targetting an international customer base, but it you’re a local outfit, seeking local customers, than its best to opt for a web hosting provider with server locations closer to Australia.

HostGator Web Hosting Services

As far as hosting options, HostGator offers many to choose from including VPS hosting, cloud hosting and dedicated hosting. Here’s a breakdown of the hosting options available and what each one is best suited for.

Types of hosting available for Australian businesses include:

• Shared hosting: Shared hosting means that you are using space on a server that is also used by other websites, and is the most popular plan for websites.
• Cloud hosting: With cloud hosting, you can use the resources of multiple servers instead of using one fixed to a single location.
• WordPress hosting: This type of hosting is optimised to use WordPress sites in the easiest and fastest way.
• VPS hosting: This type of hosting is best suited for website owners who want more flexibility in software installations and more freedom to send emails and stream media.
• Dedicated hosting: The most powerful type of hosting, this choice is suited to meet the requirements of large businesses. Dedicated hosting is best for businesses that have heavy traffic or a very popular site.
• Reseller hosting: This type of hosting is suited for website owners who want to sell hosting services for profit. This plan is suited for users who want to start their own web hosting company and white label HostGator’s products.

Reliability and Uptime

HostGator’s uptime is 99.9%, which is standard for web hosting businesses. This means that HostGator guarantees that service is available 99.9% of the time, which equates to around 8.76 hours of downtime per year. It is rare for web hosting services to guarantee a higher uptime (after all, no one can truly guarantee available service 100% of the time). However, some competitors, including Bluehost, ScalaHosting and Hostwinds, do guarantee 99.99% uptime, and that extra digit reduces the overall downtime per year to 52.56 minutes.

Speed and Performance

Overall, HostGator’s speed and performance are rated highly among users. However, some users did complain about slow load times.

Security

HostGator has security protection from DDoS attacks. HostGator’s additional server security and precautions are confidential. However, the security is set up to enable network-level flood protection.

For added security to individual websites, HostGator offers the feature SiteLock Security for $US5.99 per month. This feature scans your website for malware daily, automatically removes malware from your website and defends against malicious attacks.

Storage and Bandwidth

HostGator comes with unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth for all plans. For automated website backups, HostGator offers an add-on feature for $US4 per month, billed annually at $US47.95. The first year’s special promotion is $US2 per month (billed annually at $US23.95).

Customer Support

HostGator offers 24/7 live chat and email support to all customers. When Forbes Advisor connected with a live agent through chat, we were able to speak with someone within five minutes, and the agent was able to answer our question.