HostGator has been in business since 2002 and offers a wide array of web hosting services. Now I gonna show you the best pros and cons of HostGator for every hosting plan. Following our list of qualified web hosts is the most popular HostGator of all time, the sexiest and brightest web hosting service among them all. There are three levels of shared hosting plans that all come with cPanel and can be used for blogging up to business sites.
Hostgator is the best-shared hosting option for new blogs. Their price starts at $2.75 a month, which is one of the lowest. As someone looking for cheap web hosting, Hostgator is a passive option. There are many web hosting companies out there and each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
I mostly work with WordPress web hosting, and in terms of the best hosting, several companies provide top hosting for a WordPress blog. I will also share some specific features that help make Hostgator so popular and well-rated. Of course, we’ll list the HostGator pros and cons with all the details you need to know about such a popular web host. But when it comes to quality and features, Hostgator has many advantages and disadvantages over other web hosts.
Read our HostGator review, where we help you get an overview of the hosting features, Pros, and Cons of this popular budget host.
HostGator’s hosting plans include Linux- and Windows-based shared hosting, dedicated server hosting with a choice of Windows or Linux OS, WordPress optimized hosting, cloud hosting, best VPS hosting and reseller hosting with a simple white label.
The results of our tests are actually quite amazing, but good things come to those who wait and at the end of this review you will wait for our verdict.
Contents
What products does HostGator offer of pros and cons?
Almost everything hosting related, that’s why their catalog can be confusing at times.
1] Domain names can be purchased at HostGator, although they aren’t a leading domain name registrar. For the first year, a .com domain costs $12.95, but upon renewal, you’ll be charged $17.99 – there are indeed cheaper options like Namecheap.
2] Their shared hosting plans are meant for small and medium projects that don’t get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. Most likely the one you should get, at least to start with. Their prices go from $8.95 to $16.95.
3] WordPress hosting: For those looking for a shared hosting that’s optimized for WordPress. These go from $12.95 for one site, all the way up to $81.95 per month.
4] VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. These are great for smaller and medium sites that need a particular server configuration (e.g. need to use a different programming language). VPS plans at HostGator start at $19.95 per month.
5] If your project gets tens of thousands of visitors per month or needs a powerful server, you’d probably be better off with a dedicated server. You’ll have your own server and won’t share its resources with anyone else.
6] You can think of cloud hosting as a network of connected servers, meaning your website won’t only be hosted on one server but several. Resources (e.g. more memory or CPU) can be added or removed according to your needs. At HostGator cloud hosting starts (too cheap?) at $10.95 a month.
7] On top of these, they also offer a website builder called Gator for users looking to create their own website easily – no technical knowledge required. Although it’s not a bad product, it’s still under development and other site builders offer more at similar prices.
Pros and cons of HostGator: overall review
After reviewing HostGator, we can recommend it to host bloggers and website owners who want the best in the shared web hosting industry. That being said, the price of Hostgator hosting is not cheap, but it is expensive, above all, it is a good quality hosting that you can use for WordPress or any other CMS.
HostGator has a good eCommerce hosting plan that comes with free, professional email accounts and premium SSL for free domain registration for the first year. Let’s know about the HostGator best web hosting pros and cons on our reviews.
Pros
1] Fast server response time
The content of your website significantly affects the page load time. For example, if your website has a lot of images, it will increase the page load time. This affects your server’s speed test results. We wanted to see how fast the HostGator server actually responds. 
To test this, we used a tool called BitCacha. It works differently from other website speed testing tools. Instead of loading the content, it only checks the response time of the server. HostGator managed to perform really well in Sao Paolo, Sydney, and Japan, all hitting response times below 205 ms.
They fixed in Singapore and London (221 ms) but fell a little further back to 717 ms in Bangalore. 190 ms with the global average, HostGator from us Have earned themselves an A!
2] 99.9% guaranteed uptime!
There is a standard for any reliable hosting “Your website may never go down due to hosting issues.” I have heard mixed reviews about Hostgator Uptime, fortunately, my experience with Hostgator shared hosting packages has been enjoyable. Uptime is something that not only guarantees the credibility and availability of your site but also makes your audience feel secure.
To support HostGator’s excellent services, we’ve taken some data from a recent study. Downtime can be seriously detrimental to a site! This will make you lose potential sales. And worse – it will lower your site in Google ranking.
So yes, the downtime is a really big no-no in the industry, so we’re glad that Hostgator’s plan comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. HostGator provides satisfactory load time with speeds of 22 to 940ms depending on the location of the browser.
However, with Hostgator’s reputation for having strong uptime, we don’t think we’ll ever have to use their credit. That being said, there are some conditions of the guarantee that we are not really happy with, but more on that later in the cons section.
3] Super user friendly- pros and cons
Hostgator using cPanel is one of the easiest hosting panels I’ve seen. With their bright colors, they are the only UI that is really pleasing to the eye. And not only that – they’ve made it extremely easy to navigate through the client login page!
You can still access cPanel from the Hostgator Dashboard, but you don’t have to use it with a new advanced Hostgator dashboard.
Everything is intuitively placed, all the important links and buttons are located in a place that naturally catches the eye, making the whole experience as user-friendly as possible. Hostgator is one of the few web hosting companies that will allow you to access SSH.
With HostGator, you can easily navigate through client logins and set up your site in no time, thanks to their UX designers!
4] Provide free SSL & Free website migration
Not all site hosting providers offer a premium quality SSL certificate for your blog, completely free. HostGator provides Comodo SSL for all users and their hosted domains, so there is no need to worry about encryption between the website and the web browser the user is using.
Note that this is a domain SS which means, if you use them, it is not for subdomains, therefore, if you need SSL for all your subdomains and ecommerce for business verification, you will need a paid version of SSL but it Hall is better and more professional with a green bar.
When it comes to moving a blog from one host to another, it can be a pain for newbies who know nothing about FTP and WordPress directories.
The same thing applies with all other CMS and apps, file transfer can take a few hours and hopefully everything will work fine. However, if you choose HostGator, their technicians will take all the files from your site to their server for free.
5] Site builder & 1 click installs
HostGator’s built-in site builder manages both, allowing you to quickly choose a template, customize it to your heart’s content, and get it ready in just a few hours. They’ve got a really professional-looking theme, and once you choose the one you like, you can personalize it with widgets, features, a search bar or whatever you like.
The downside is that site builders aren’t usually optimized for speed, so there’s a trade-off for convenience!
You can enjoy 1-click installs, which makes your favorite apps extremely fast and incredibly convenient! All you have to do is click on the app you want, select the directory you want to install it in and press the install button – HostGator will pre-configure everything else for you!
6] Money-back guarantee- pros and cons
Like many other web hosts, HostGator has a money-back guarantee. This is a good feature that every web host should offer. HostGator has a 45-day money-back guarantee policy, if you are not happy with their services you can cancel within that time and get a full refund. Some other web hosts only offer a one month trial, however, this allows you to extend that time and test things further.
7] Very responsive customer service
HostGator offers one of the best customer services in the industry and customers can contact the support team 24/7 via phone, live chat support and ticket-based email support. If you are starting a website for the first time, you must appreciate Hostgator’s customer support.
For general questions and issues, you can use HostGator’s email support, which is always available, social media support on Facebook, Twitter, Google+. Hostgator support Inside your hosting dashboard, you will find their support portal.
This portal helps you find quick answers based on your knowledge of hundreds of articles and video tutorials. Compared to other hosting services, I would rate Hostgator’s customer support as 4/5. HostGator also offers a forum where you can ask questions and answer questions raised by other web host users. I researched different hosting levels and got excellent customer support experience.
Cons
1] Lack of dedicated motion features
Although HostGator performs much better than its own, (it’s not easy to get A + rank from us!) We can’t help but wonder how much better they could be if we tried to include some speed features like NGINX server. Set up or 1-click system optimization!
At the moment, the only way to optimize and squeeze all the juice from the server is to manually tweak and install the plugin, which takes time and skill – which most business owners may not always have.
2] No free daily backups- Pros and cons
It should be in every blog, daily backup is an essential feature in today’s web hosting and security industry. But if you host with HostGator, you don’t get a backup guarantee because they have one backup every week, however, you can’t restore the site unless you pay for it.
3] Hosting server downtime
We’ve noticed a lot of downtime with EIG companies and HostGator is one of them. In terms of server response time, there are many issues and shared hosting expects server response time of more than one second which slows down the tool.
Also, if you monitor site uptime with popular tools like Pingdom, you will find lots of redlines representing the total downtime of the domain.
Depending on the number of hateful domains there and many other factors, if there is a domain that uses excessive CPU and RAM, it can overload and down the servers for a minute or more. So, if you really care about the uptime of the site and you want to control everything, choose a VPS instead.
Pros & Cons of HostGator
Pros – Why Choose HostGator?
Here are the main reasons why HostGator is still a great choice in 2018:
- Linux- and Windows-based plans both available with shared and dedicated servers;
- 99.9% uptime guarantee;
- 45-day money-back guarantee;
- Plesk & cPanel control panels;
- Free migration service;
- Courtesy off-site backups;
- Free advertising offers;
- 24/7 support.
HostGator’s hosting plan variety coupled with powerful tools and features make them a strong choice for 2018. Their low introductory rates and user-friendly features appeal to beginners and businesses on a shoestring budget.
Cons – What’s Bad About HostGator?
HostGator is a versatile web host with hosting plans across the entire hosting spectrum, yet there are some small drawbacks to consider:
- Long commitment periods – discounted prices are only available if you commit to HostGator for a few years;
- No Windows-based VPS hosting;
- No free domain registration.
Although most budget hosts offer free domain registration for one year, HostGator decided to forgo free domain registration in favor of offering other important freebies like free website transfer or free weekly backups.
Conclusion of pros ans cons
In HostGator, all hosting types are represented by different packages designed for different hosting requirements.
HostGator has a generous hosting offer complete with lots of free and powerful site-building and developer tools. The Hostgator also offers some Windows-based hosting plans which is a great plus.
HostGator is especially suitable for new and small businesses who are still learning the ins and outs of web hosting. HostGator’s shared plans are designed to help you make a strong start and easily grow your online business.
If this article is helpful for you then share your experience on the comment section!