HostGator Review: Consider Its Pros and Cons Before Buying
With the advancement in technology, businesses need an online platform, either an e-commerce setup or a simple blog, to post their products, services, or updates. Either way, they need a web hosting service, and the fully-featured HostGator is an ideal choice.
But what makes it one of the top-ranked web hosting providers? Here is an unbiased HostGator review to shed some light on its performance.
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What Is HostGator?
Established in 2002, by Brent Oxley, HostGator offers web hosting services that allow consumers and businesses to post their webpage or website on the Internet. According to the ICANN ( Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), HostGator currently hosts approximately 8 million domains. Its headquarters are in Houston and Austin, Texas.
What Are the Benefits of Using the HostGator?
Fast and Stable Uptime
HostGator ranks among the best web hosting providers due to its excellent 99.99% uptime guarantee. It is possible to guarantee 100% uptime. Amazingly, the service offers one month’s credit on your account if their uptime drops below 99.90%, but unexpected hacks and planned maintenance are not included in this guarantee. To activate the credit, you need to submit a support ticket to the billing department within 30 days.
Reliable Customer Service
You can contact HostGator through live chat, email, and phone. Live chat support has a quick response rate, connecting to the service representative in around 15 seconds. HostGator staff seems well-trained, friendly, knowledgeable. With such a good support team, you are guaranteed quick, polite, and resourceful responses.
Money-Back Guarantee
The average refund policy in the industry is 30 days, but HostGator offers a money-back guarantee of 45 days on new accounts and plans due to the unwavering confidence they have in their services. With such a policy in place, you can get a full refund if any issues arise within the stipulated time. The guarantee applies to all reseller, VPS, and shared hosting packages, but it does not apply to dedicated servers as well as administrative and custom software installation fees.
Additional Security Features
Apart from being user-friendly for beginners, HostGator also prides itself on advanced security features such as SiteLock and Spam Assassin. The latter runs daily, monitoring your site for any possible hacks or breaches, while the former prevents spamming in your inbox.
Fairly Priced Plans
HostGator’s shared hosting plans, which include hatching plan, baby plan, and business plan, are fairly priced. The pricing varies between $10.95 for a one-month plan and $2.75/month for the 3-year plan, which renews at $6.95 monthly. The more time you commit to in advance, the cheaper your equivalent monthly fee will be, but three years is a huge commitment. Acceptable payment methods include PayPal and credit card.
What Are the Downsides of HostGator?
Like all the other web hosting services, HostGator also has a few issues. Here are some of the problems.
Slow Page Speed
HostGator’s servers are consistently slow, with an average page loading time of 1191ms over the last 2 years. The loading time is even slower for pages with dozens of high-resolution images and thousands of words. Slow page loading times impact the experience of your visitors negatively.
Hidden Charges
Apart from the features provided in the default plans, the web hosting company charges an extra fee for Gmail access, site backups, SiteLock security features, and search engine optimization (SEO) tools. For example, SiteLock and CodeGuard (to backup sites) cost $19.99 and $23.95 annually, respectively. So, while the initial plan seems inexpensive at first, it starts to become pretty pricey as you proceed.
Pricing Tricks
HostGator advertises a low rate of $2.75 per month, but you need to prepay for three years to enjoy it. Alternatively, you will be required to pay $10.95 monthly for the service. Unfortunately, after the 36 months, when renewing your subscription, the rate for the same plan jumps to $6.95 per month or $250.20 in total.
Is HostGator Right for You?
Undoubtedly, HostGator ranks among the best web hosting providers for good reasons. It boasts of quality reseller, VPS (virtual private sector), dedicated server packages, and cloud hosting, but its basic hosting plans make it second to none. The plans include unlimited storage, free domain, bandwidth, and an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, which is free. And these amazing features make it a recommendable option, but if your concern is in WordPress integration, then consider Bluehost.