HostGator review: A solid choice for web hosting

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• User-friendly control panel and a free website builder
• Great uptime
• Many feature plans, providing flexibility for various needs
• Quick and thorough support

Cons

• Lack of transparency in pricing, hiding renewal fees until checkout
• Confusing features page
• Video tutorials haven’t been active for over a year

Our Verdict

HostGator is a reliable web hosting company with competitive pricing and a user-friendly setup process. However, it’s not as transparent as its competitors regarding renewal fees and feature details. It offers a wide range of hosting plans with decent features and a free website builder. Their support is responsive and helpful, and they have a comprehensive knowledge base. Overall, HostGator is a solid choice for hosting your website.

Best Prices Today: HostGator

With over two decades of experience under its belt, HostGator has become a household name in the web hosting industry, especially in the Shared Hosting area. HostGator’s uptime is unmatched, and the service offers decent features at an affordable price across its various plans. However, the company isn’t as transparent about its fees as Bluehost or InMotion Hosting.

HostGator: Pricing

HostGator offers various hosting plans with different features and pricing options to suit various needs and budgets. Like its competitors, it offers a large discount for your first-time payment. 

One of the biggest annoyances about how HostGator handles this compared to Bluehost or InMotion Hosting is that it hides the renewal fee. Where the competition is explicit about their pricing on their respective plan pages, HostGator doesn’t show the renewal fee until you’re at checkout—and it’s in very tiny print.

Regardless of this major flaw, HostGator’s pricing is still competitive. It doesn’t offer discounts for its one-month and six-month offerings for the Shared Hosting plans, but you can get a nice discount ranging from 60 percent to 73 percent for the one-year and three-year offerings.

Here’s a breakdown of HostGator’s pricing and subscription tiers for the Shared Hosting package.

Marshall Gunnell / Foundry

HostGator also offers a Dedicated Server package for those running small- to medium-sized business. The prices are much more expensive than the Shared Hosting plans, but the performance makes it worth it. There are also more flexible subscription plans for Dedicated Server subscribers. These prices are just a starting point, but they can change a bit depending on which operating system and hard drive type you select.

Marshall Gunnell / Foundry

HostGator’s Shared Hosting prices are pretty standard, while their Dedicated Server packages may be seen as a bit pricier than the competition—though it does offer more subscription plans to meet various needs.

HostGator: Setup

HostGator’s setup process is about as easy as it gets. HostGator offers a user-friendly control panel that makes it easy to manage your website and hosting account.

In the control panel, or cPanel, you’ll find a range of tools and features that you can use to manage your website. These include tools for creating email accounts, installing apps like WordPress, and managing your website’s files and databases.

One of the great things about HostGator is that it offers a free website builder that you can use to create your site without any coding experience. This builder is a drag-and-drop tool that makes it easy to create professional-looking websites with little to no experience.

Customer support is always quick to assist you, whether you call or use the live chat service. If you prefer to figure things out yourself, HostGator has some helpful content on getting started, as well as a complete knowledge base that covers any other issues you may be facing. It also offers a decent library of video tutorials, though that hasn’t been active for over a year.

HostGator: Features

HostGator offers a competitive feature set across even its most basic plans. Regardless of your experience level and needs, HostGator likely has what you need for a reasonable price. Depending on which plan you subscribe to, you can expect things like unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certificates, domain transfers, and more.

As with its pricing pages, though, HostGator makes it difficult to understand what you really get. For example, notice how in the “Top features” tab on the plan comparison page, it shows the Hatchling Plan as offering “Chat Only” support.

Marshall Gunnell / Foundry

But if you switch to the “Support” tab on the same page, which gives more details about the support the plans offer, it states that you get 24/7 live chat and phone support across each plan, including the Hatchling Plan.

Marshall Gunnell / Foundry

These conflicts make things a bit confusing for potential customers, and could dissuade them from using the service all together. But, if you’re not deterred by the inconsistencies on the official site, here’s what HostGator claims comes with each plan.

Each plan also comes with a free domain for the first year, but only if you subscribe to 12 months or more. The Baby plan comes with a $500 Google Ad spend match credit and $100 Microsoft Advertising credit, which is a fantastic deal if you’re looking to get the word out about your new site.

Overall, HostGator provides decent features, especially with its Business plan. Hopefully the website will be updated to make things a bit easier to understand what’s offered, and at what price.

HostGator: Backup and security

HostGator offers a few options that ensure the safety of your website and its data. One of the primary backup options they provide is CodeGuard, a cloud-based backup solution that takes daily automatic backups of your website’s data. CodeGuard also offers features like website monitoring, malware detection, and easy restore options. 

This feature is essential for businesses, but it’s not free. You’ll need to fork out between $2.75 to $8.33 per month, depending on which CodeGaurd plan you go with. If this is a bit out of your budget, HostGator also provides weekly backup options for its customers, but this isn’t recommended for businesses. These backups are stored on a separate server, which provides added security to your website’s data, but it only keeps one backup. Once a new backup is made, the old one is deleted.

HostGator also offers SiteLock, a powerful security tool that helps protect your website from malware and other cyber threats. SiteLock performs daily scans of your website and alerts you in case of any security issues. It also provides a firewall and other security features to prevent attacks on your website. Like the backup offerings, SiteLock isn’t free, and you can expect to pay between $5.99 to $24.99 per month, depending on the plan you go with.

HostGator: Reliability

HostGator guarantees a 99.9 percent uptime for its hosting services, which means that your website will be up and running almost all the time. This level of uptime is essential for businesses or individuals who rely on their website for generating leads, sales, or revenue. Downtime = money lost.

HostGator has multiple data centers located around the U.S., which helps ensure that your website’s data is stored securely and that your website is easily accessible to visitors from different regions.

We ran a website hosted by HostGator for roughly 15 months and experienced no major outages and very little downtime. As you would expect running a website on a shared server, there were moments where the site would run slow when we had large spikes of traffic, but this issue can be fixed by using a dedicated server. Overall, HostGator provided a reliable web hosting service with high uptime.

HostGator: Customer support

HostGator offers customer support through various channels, including phone, email, and live chat. Its customer support team is available 24/7, which means that you can get help with any issues or questions you may have at any time. If you need immediate help, the live chat service is the way to go.

Confusingly, as mentioned above, it was unclear if phone support was available for Hatchling Plan subscribers, as there is conflicting content on the site. We reached out to Support for confirmation, and they confirmed that phone support is available for all plans.

Marshall Gunnell / Foundry

HostGator also offers a ticketing system where you can submit a support request, and the support team will get back to you within 24 to 48 hours. This ticketing system is helpful for non-urgent issues or if you prefer to communicate via email.

Finally, HostGator provides a fruitful knowledge base with detailed articles and tutorials on various topics related to web hosting. This knowledge base is accessible through the website and can help you troubleshoot common issues or learn more about web hosting.

Overall, HostGator offers comprehensive customer support through various channels, is quick to reply, and is always helpful in providing support, regardless of what you may be struggling with.

Should you use HostGator web hosting?

HostGator is a great choice for hosting your website, offering a range of hosting plans with different pricing options to suit various needs and budgets. 

The pricing is competitive, with discounts available for one-year and three-year offerings. However, one major flaw is that HostGator hides the renewal fee until checkout, unlike its competitors who display it transparently on their pricing pages. 

HostGator’s setup process is user-friendly, with a free website builder, cPanel, and a range of tools and features to manage your website. It offers 24/7 live chat and phone support, with helpful content on getting started and a complete knowledge base that covers any issues you may face. 

HostGator also offers a competitive feature set, but its presentation of features can be confusing for potential customers. Despite this, HostGator remains a solid choice for those looking for reliable web hosting.