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HostGator is a major hosting provider that boasts that they have a hosting plan for practically any customer. However, are they the right web hosting provider for you, especially compared to competitors like Bluehost?
In this HostGator hosting review, we’ll take an in-depth look at the company offerings, their pros and cons, the payment options, and some common questions before giving our final verdict.
As their name implies, HostGator is primarily a web hosting company. For those who aren’t familiar with these businesses, this means that they own and run servers that can host websites and related services. This ranges from housing a basic WordPress site to allow people to become a reseller as a HostGator business partner.
Our HostGator hosting review focuses on the services they offer.
Depending on your web hosting plan, you might share space on that server with multiple other sites. That’s common for smaller sites, but if you need something else, they can lease you practically any number of dedicated servers that you can run with almost no restrictions.
HostGator runs its servers out of a Tier 3 data center that holds the physical servers.
This is more than sufficient for most people’s needs. A Tier 4 data center, the only thing better, is a setup that has redundancy for every component and extreme fault tolerance. That is, frankly, better performance than most people or businesses need.
Ping times, which are also known as latency, is how long it takes for a request to go from a device to a server, then back again with the requested information. HostGator has a consistent ping time between 600 and 700 milliseconds, which is less than half of the time needed in years past. That’s a significant improvement for their server architecture.
This is important because a host’s speeds are one of the few things website owners can’t easily control. You can optimize a site as much as you want, but if the host is slow, the site will always be slow. HostGator’s speeds aren’t quite the fastest on the internet, but they’re more than good enough for most websites.
Most sites have functionally unlimited disk space and HostGator can add more to servers as necessary. People usually don’t need more than a few gigabytes at most, but the lack of tight limits on space is a feature that makes things much easier for people.
HostGator is a good choice for new website owners because it’s designed to be approachable and easy to understand. Coding websites have gotten significantly more complicated over time, to the point that many people now use builders instead of coding the websites directly.
They also offer several additional services for customers, including managed migration and support for getting sites set up. This isn’t technically an automated service because it often needs human involvement at some point, but it’s easier than migrating things yourself.
This is rather rare for a hosting service, at least among the cheaper plans. HostGator doesn’t have a fixed limit on the bandwidth your site can use. Instead, each hosting account is largely allowed as much data use as necessary, consistent with the style of the site.
Remember, HostGator will start asking questions if you begin using excessive amounts of data on a cheap plan. What defines an appropriate amount of resources depends on things like your company and the services you provide, but it’s hard to use enough traffic to meet these limits.
A better way to think of this is that HostGator has no specific limits on overall bandwidth usage, but extreme amounts of resource consumption for short periods can cause issues. It’s usually possible to alleviate any problems in this area by changing a few settings.
HostGator operates out of a Tier 3 data center, which means it has more than a 99.9% uptime guarantee for all of its plans. For context, this data center is allowed about 1.6 hours of downtime per year to perform maintenance and deal with emergency issues.
This isn’t as special as it sounds at first. Tier 3 data centers are quite common because many larger customers hesitate to accept the lower standards of Tier 1 and Tier 2 facilities. Tier 3 is where you get far more backups and reliability, and most people are willing to eat the extra cost there.
One potential point of concern here is that HostGator shares space in their data center with other companies. This isn’t a major risk because the facility still tightly controls who can go in and out. Furthermore, sharing the data center helps keep costs down. People with particularly tight security needs may want to consider alternatives.
HostGator promises 24/7/365 customer support. This is not the same thing as fast customer support because you may need to wait on hold to get help. However, it does mean that customer support is always available, regardless of when you have the issue.
We mentioned this above, but HostGator support occasionally has response times slower than some people prefer.
This is mainly an issue for businesses, although some companies can get priority support for faster resolution. Personal sites are usually fine even if they’re offline for a little while, making this more frustrating than genuinely problematic.
HostGator, in the past, has had some issues with overall site performance and server uptime. They’ve ironed out a lot of this by switching to proper Tier 3 data centers, but performance problems can happen if other people start eating up too much of any shared resources.
This is, obviously, much less of an issue for anyone renting dedicated servers. In those cases, you have no true competition, so any issues with site performance are probably in the coding and the software, not the hardware or its internet connection.
The move to Tier 3 data centers helps a lot with this. They have backups for essentially everything, so while you may experience the occasional problem, they can fix hardware issues quickly.
HostGator charges a fee ($25 at the time of this review) to either restore data from a backup or copy the material to restore it yourself. That’s not a huge amount of money, but given how largely automated the process is, it could stand to be a lot cheaper.
Many competitors include features like these in their standard plans, with no extra fees required. HostGator is something of an outlier in this regard.
Some people prefer this setup because they can pick and choose which services to have, and that can mean a lower cost over time. Other people dislike this because it means the price for the full service is much higher than the website suggests.
HostGator is a shared hosting service that provides courtesy backups, and that’s good. However, those backups only work well for smaller sites. While they have functionally unlimited storage, any shared web hosting site of more than 10 gigabytes, or over 100,000 inodes, might not get an automatic backup.
You can use the HostGator cPanel system to create some backups, but again, that’s limited at best. Ultimately, this is a major problem for some companies with large amounts of content on servers.
The one good thing here is that most servers function on a RAID 1 setup, which mirrors data on two hard drives to help prevent problems from drive failure. That’s not the same as having an off-site backup, but it’s far better than having nothing at all.
HostGator’s pricing varies heavily depending on your plan. They’re mainly a budget-focused hosting company, emphasizing low fees for relatively small sites. Frankly, they’re not a good choice for creating a huge media site like YouTube, which requires far more resources than HostGator’s users can access.
Most of HostGator’s prices also rise after the first term of the plan and will go up later. The site itself clarifies the discount, with introductory prices usually being 50%-75% off. In other words, many of these costs will more than double later. The same thing often happens with competitors like Bluehost, so make sure you read the fine print.
This is HostGator’s basic hosting plan, where you share space on one of their servers with as many other people as HostGator finds reasonable. The lowest plan covers a single website, including a free SSL certificate and a domain to go with it, as well as one-click WordPress installation and cPanel site transfers for experienced users.
Unlike some other companies, HostGator offers unmetered bandwidth on even the cheapest plans they offer. Most of this has to do with the power and performance of their servers, and the exact limits are outlined in their Terms of Service. Broadly, you won’t have a problem as long as the amount of data and bandwidth you use is normal for your business or type of website.
HostGator does not define specific limits for data and bandwidth in their Acceptable Use Policy, except for the note that activities cannot consume resources in ways that affect their network’s performance.
Shared hosting can seem like a bad decision for some businesses, but the truth is that most company websites don’t come anywhere close to needing all of one server’s resources. Remember, everyone else has to follow these same rules.
For context, most servers can handle about a hundred requests from visitors per second, and some can handle over a thousand if the requests are simple enough. Most websites don’t have enough simultaneous traffic to impede a server over extended periods.
Higher levels of the shared hosting plans include unlimited domains and, at the business level, useful upgrades like additional SEO tools, a dedicated IP address, and improved SSL content. A shared hosting plan at HostGator is a good choice for nearly any small website.
Prices for shared hosting start at $2.75/month for the introductory plan. This is the lowest-cost plan HostGator offers, and it’s suitable for one website that already exists. It includes a free transfer for WordPress/cPanel sites, but you may need help for other sorts of transfers.
The mid-tier plan increases to $3.50/month but allows for unlimited websites. This is otherwise the same as their introductory plan and a good choice for people who want a host for several sites but don’t need other help.
The Business tier is the last option for shared hosting, and it’s good for small businesses that don’t need to store sensitive information or run stores. This plan is about $5.25/month but includes additional security measures and SEO tools to help performance.
All versions of their shared hosting include basics like an SSL certificate for better site security. You can also get a free domain here.
The heart of this is the HostGator website builder. This system uses AI-based development to help create basic site designs suitable for most needs without forcing you to wade through hundreds of premade templates. The system even has a variety of images and some customization options to help personalize things.
This option is useful for people who need it but has a few flaws that make it hard to recommend to everyone. Here’s why.
The Gator website builder is impressively easy to use, especially if you need something besides a WordPress hosting plan. However, since the AI is designed to try and understand the best industry practices, you’ll probably end up with something that looks a lot like your competitors’ sites instead of something uniquely yours.
In short, the question is how much time and funding you can put into making a great site. For what it’s worth, HostGator offers priority support and appointment booking for stores running through their builder, and that’s a critical feature. Regular site owners with no special needs don’t require that help and will probably do fine with the builder itself.
HostGator charges a little more for building websites. They include a free SSL certificate here, and while hosting is ostensibly a free part of the package, it’s more accurate to say that’s just a part of the higher price.
The introductory price is $3.84 and includes the site builder itself, three email campaigns, and an online store with up to three products. This is essentially the very definition of a small business site, but the costs are low enough that you can pay it off if you’re getting any sales at all.
The regular version of the website builder plan is $5.99/month but allows more email campaigns, ten products in the store, and appointment booking. This is also where you start getting priority support if you need help.
The business tier is $9.22/month but allows for unlimited products in your store and has no transaction fees.
Regardless of tier, this is a business-oriented section ideal for people who want to sell things. It’s not quite as good for regular, non-store sites. Like the regular hosting plan, the website builder option comes with a free domain.
As of 2021, WordPress is the platform of choice for almost 40% of the entire internet. That is a mind-bogglingly huge percent of the internet, so it’s no surprise that a web hosting option like HostGator has dedicated support for sites running it.
HostGator splits its WordPress plans into three categories. These are based mainly on the number of sites available and the number of visits you get per month, with the starter plan supporting up to 100,000 visitors.
That may not sound like much, but most regular websites don’t need to worry about exceeding this cap. Realistically, you’d probably need tens of thousands of visitors, followers, or potential customers each month to exceed these limits.
The standard and business plans are similar to the basic WordPress hosting offer, but with additional sites at each level and a higher cap on the number of visitors. The business plan supports up to 500,000 visitors per month and a maximum of three websites.
HostGator also offers several gigabytes of backups for important data. (Don’t value that too highly. A gigabyte of storage space costs about two cents, so even several gigs of storage cost almost nothing.)
However, just hosting WordPress sites isn’t a reason to consider HostGator, specifically. Almost any web host you can find can handle WordPress sites.
While you can host WordPress sites on a regularly shared domain, the dedicated WordPress hosting options come with far more help and support for these sites.
The plan starts at $5.95/month for one site, increasing to $7.95/month for two sites or $9.95/month for three sites. Note that you may need to talk to their customer support if you want more than three sites. A free domain is included in this plan.
VPS hosting is where HostGator offers professional-level services. This is more than any regular user or casual small business needs, but it’s a good choice for companies with serious data needs. That includes higher-traffic businesses, companies with heavy app or email needs, and people who need test environments.
VPS hosting is also ideal for processes like gaming, which often need to handle requests from dozens or hundreds of people at a time with the lowest possible delay. Modern web-based games have surprisingly high-performance requirements, so servers capable of handling those can deal with almost anything else a business needs.
HostGator allows for plenty of scaling on their VPS systems, allocating additional storage space, CPU performance, or RAM on request. This functionally provides the performance of a dedicated server at a much lower price point.
VPS options here include 120 GB or more of disk space on SSD drives, which are significantly faster than the hard drives regular servers use. It’s not quite as fast as a RAM-based system, but this is more than adequate for most businesses.
Outside of their regular hosting options like script installers and site development tools, HostGator also offers weekly off-site hosting as part of their VPS hosting option. They have functionally unlimited disk space for this purpose, and it’s included complimentary with the service.
The off-site part is the real value of this support. Even under the worst disasters people can think of, it’s highly unlikely that off-site backups will be damaged or destroyed at the same time. The chances of that happening without human intent behind it are literally astronomical.
Some web hosting companies don’t offer services like that, so this is an area where HostGator stands out from the crowd. The inclusion of two dedicated IP addresses instead of one is a nice touch, too.
VPS hosting is also highly scalable with this web host. HostGator can enable a new server in seconds from their available stock, allocating processing power and performance as needed to grow with your site. This is faster and easier than getting an entirely new server set up.
HostGator’s VPS dedicated hosting service starts at $19.95/month for a virtual server with a 120GB SSD drive, a 2-core CPU, and 2 GB of RAM. It also has a much bigger discount than usual, so you can expect the price to shoot up significantly after your first hosting period.
The second tier increases the price to $29.95/month, but also increases the hard drive to 165 GB and doubles the RAM for a total of 4 GB.
The highest tier is the same as the others, but $39.95/month gives you a 240 GB SSD drive and 8 GB of RAM on a 4 core CPU, which is more than enough for most needs.
This is the most powerful hosting option that HostGator offers and also the only dedicated hosting. Their servers start with a full terabyte of disk space minimum, plus generous amounts of RAM, unmetered bandwidth, and your choice of Windows or Linux operating systems. Personal servers are also great for uptime, especially if you need to rent several of them.
Dedicated servers are significantly more powerful and also more expensive than a virtual private server. This option gives you the hardware and the software you need, with essentially full control over all aspects of the server’s operations. These come with IP-based firewalls, data center protection from DDoS attacks, and controls like cPanel for installing whatever you want.
Otherwise, the same principles that apply to VPS systems apply to dedicated servers. This is significantly more than what any regular site or business needs to function.
However, HostGator doesn’t mention that if you need a dedicated server, you probably need several of them. In that respect, the listed price (starting at $89.98/month as an introductory offer) is a bit of a distraction from reality.
If you need enough bandwidth and processing power to require an entire dedicated server, your needs are probably high enough to require several more of these servers, too. Few people buy just one server. You also need to consider whether it makes sense to buy the servers outright and host them yourself or if it’s easier just to pay the monthly costs.
Either way, HostGator’s dedicated servers are a powerful choice for anyone with extreme needs like running large applications or hosting online games.
Unsurprisingly, this is the most expensive option. Whether you’re looking for a WordPress cloud hosting plan or a hosting package with enough muscle for serious needs, this is the only place to look for maximum performance.
Costs start at $89.98/month for a 1 TB hard drive with 8 GB of RAM and a 4 core/8 thread processor, scaling up to $119.89/month for twice the hard drive space (or half as much on SSD), RAM, and CPU performance, or $139.99/month for a 1 TB SSD drive, 30 GB of RAM, and the same other stats as the previous tier.
Note that getting a whole server usually doesn’t include things like a free SSL. That’s something you’ll need to install separately for your web hosting needs.
Here are some common questions people have about HostGator.
HostGator compares favorably to most of the competition, but it isn’t so uniquely special that it’s fundamentally a better choice than other good options. For more information on this, see our other web host reviews.
HostGator does have an AI-powered website building tool. This is suitable for basic sites and stores, but it’s not the same as hiring a professional developer to code a unique site.
They’ve been in business since around 2002 and have extensive experience hosting different types of sites. They’re not as good for heavily media-focused sites but can handle regular sites and stores with no trouble.
Yes, HostGator is a good choice for hosting a WordPress site. They have additional security and support that many other hosting providers don’t.
HostGator has a 45-day money-back guarantee for hosting fees on most of its plans. They’re mainly a budget company, so this isn’t a ton of money, but it’s a nice gesture towards user-friendliness. It’s also much longer than many of their competitors, who usually have guarantees ranging from 7 to 30 days.
HostGator is an impressive web hosting service. While it’s not the largest in the business, it generally has solid uptime and reasonable costs for personal users and small businesses. Large companies may find the prices for dedicated hosting a little steep, though.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a good choice for most users, and you can feel reasonably confident when getting hosting services from them.
