HostGator Hosting Review: Features and Cons 2022

RAMI October 4, 2022

0 597 11 minutes read

HostGator: Every business needs a website, whether it’s a fully functional e-commerce setup or a simple blog to post daily updates. Either way, you need a web hosting service. The stacked HostGator is the best option, as it includes a feature-rich cloud, WordPress, a virtual private server (VPS), and dedicated server packages.

However, it is the company’s shared plans that stand out from their very crowded web hosting package. In fact, HostGator ‘s shared packages are so powerful that the service is our editors’ choice in that host subcategory.

About HostGator

HostGator is a Houston-based web hosting provider and was founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley. HostGator not only offers shared hosting but also offers cloud, VPS, reseller, dedicated web hosting, and even comes with a website builder. Today HostGator
is headquartered in Texas and they have over 1,000 employees who all help host over 2.5 million websites globally.

In 2012, HostGator was sold to Endurance International Group (EIG), which also owns several hosting industry giants like Bluehost, Hostmonster, Site5, etc.
Most of their servers are located in Provo, Utah, and Houston, Texas. You can also optionally activate Cloudflare which will route your content through 23 additional data centers around the world.

HostGator Features Overview

Each HostGator plan is packed with many useful features.

Storage and bandwidth

Every HostGator hosting plan offers unrestricted bandwidth and storage.

what does that mean?

This basically means that you can use unlimited bandwidth and storage space. However, it has to be with how far the hosting company can get. It would be a good idea to look at HostGator’s usage policy so you have information about the restrictions.

protection

HostGator offers a free SSL certificate that protects your website’s domains and encrypts communications between the server and your website’s visitors.
They also offer some additional security features such as the ability to add SiteLock monitoring to your site.

This service will run daily, looking for any potential site breaches or hacks, and letting you know right away when they find them. The only downside is that SiteLock will cost you quite a bit – $5.99 per month.
On top of that, they offer Spam Assassin in their email plans to help prevent spam from getting to your inbox in the first place.

Site Migration

If this is not your first site, and you are trying to move an existing site, HostGator supports you.
You will have 30 days after registration to contact us and have them help transfer any site files, databases, scripts, and even a domain name on your behalf.

This includes a full cPanel transfer. So if you happen to have multiple site installs (like subdomains for one large site), you’re covered.
All HostGator shared hosting plans come with a single site migration (or cPanel). Different plans, like distributors, for example, will have access to more (up to 30).
One free site migration is not much compared to some hosts. But it’s still better than nothing.

Money Back Guarantee

HostGator is so confident in its service that they’re extending the industry’s 30-day money-back policy by an additional two weeks or so to 45 days.
This means that you can use them for more than a full month and you can still get a refund of the purchase price if any issues arise.

This 45-day money-back guarantee applies to all shared, reseller, and VPS hosting packages.
The only catch is that this does not apply to HostGator’s dedicated servers, administrative fees, or installation fees for dedicated software. After combing through several Terms of Service documents, we’ve found that these warnings are fairly common in the hosting industry.

So, for example, if your plan includes a free domain name, they’ll deduct the standard $15.00 domain fee from the refund amount.
There are some other points that should be clarified. HostGator terms give them up to 90 days to actually issue a refund. No refunds will be given on checks, money orders, Western Union payments, or wire transfers either.

Refunds are only available for new plans or accounts. So if you pre-register for one, and cancel renewal or second attempt, you won’t get anything in return.
And last but not least, foreign exchange refunds are processed based on US dollar exchange rates.

Ease of use

HostGator is specially designed for novice bloggers or webmasters.
Their site is filled with tutorials, articulations, and more to help you navigate the mysterious world of DNS and data centers.

They also have additional features for beginners who are looking to build a site without the hassle of hiring other people to design, build, and manage everything.
Their website builder, Gator by HostGator, is one of the best we’ve reviewed. It comes with free hosting and a domain name, so you only need to purchase one account for all the essentials.

All of the customizable templates are very modern, to begin with, and you can easily customize their look by dragging and dropping each feature. You’ll also get site analytics and a free SSL certificate to help protect visitors’ personal data (such as their physical location). HostGator
uses cPanel as its own control panel. If you have previous experience with hosting, you should feel right at home, because cPanel is one of the most used control panels in the hosting industry.

Customer Support

Similar to other well-known providers like SiteGround and Dreamhost, HostGator provides a knowledge base and support via phone, email, and live chat.

Playback time

HostGator has posted an average uptime of 99.85% with over six hours of downtime over the past six months which is below the industry standard score.
The other good thing is that they have an uptime guarantee which states that if it drops below 99.90%, you can get 1-month credit on your account.

Obviously, any planned maintenance or unpredictable hacks are not considered in this guarantee. However, you will have to reach out and request the credit by submitting a support ticket to the billing department within 30 days.

We’ve recently started noticing quite a few other hosts popping up with uptime guarantees – and that means all clients win as a result. Competitors who go out and do so help raise the bar for the entire industry. It forces everyone else in the market to either match its guarantee and raise the standard for service or risk being left behind.

HostGator pricing and plans

plans	Hatchling Plan	Baby Plan	Business Plan
Pricing	$2.75 per month Renewing at $6.95 per month	$3.50/month renewable at $9.95/month	$5.25/month to renew at $14.95/month
Websites	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	not calculated	not calculated	not calculated
storage	not calculated	not calculated	not calculated
Email accounts	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Other Features	–	• Unlimited additional fields	• Dedicated IP • Free Positive SSL Upgrade • Free SEO Tools

Prices and plans

Shared web hosting

HostGator offers Linux or Windows-based shared hosting packages that give small and medium-sized businesses room to grow. Offers Hatchling plan (starting at $10.95 per month, or $3.95 per month with an annual plan)

Unlimited disk space, monthly data transfers, databases, and email addresses, as well as support for a single domain and third-party applications such as content management systems and e-commerce platforms. Child Plan (starting at $11.95/month, or $5.00/month with an annual plan)

Depend on Hatchling Offer by adding unlimited domains. The Business Premium plan (starting at $16.95 per month, or $7.95 per month with an annual plan) includes highly specialized options, such as a toll-free number for your business and a private SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.

HostGator’s rich shared hosting packages offer unlimited storage, email, and monthly databases that give the business plenty of room to grow. In short, it’s the best service we’ve reviewed for shared hosting packages. As a result, HostGator is our Editors’ Choice for Shared Web Hosting Services.

VPS Web Hosting

VPS hosting is for people who want more server horsepower than shared hosting. VPS hosting also sees many sites living on a server, although there are far fewer than you’ll find on a shared hosting server. You will pay more for a VPS server, but you get more server power in return.

HostGator offers three tiers of Linux-based VPS hosting. If you need more power, expect a high volume of traffic, or have specific compliance requirements that prevent you from using shared servers (but don’t want to pay dedicated server rates), these are good options to consider.

The simplest VPS plan, Snappy 2000 (starting at $29.95 per month, or $23.95 per month with an annual commitment), provides 2GB of RAM, 120GB of SSD disk space, and unlimited email and monthly data transfers. Snappy 4000 mid-tier packages (starting at $59.95/month, or $34.95/month with a 1-year plan),

It is based on Snappy with 4GB of RAM and 165GB of SSD storage. The most advanced plan, Snappy 8000 (starting at $119.95 per month, or $59.95 per month with an annual deal), offers 8GB of RAM and 240GB of SSD storage. The plans are flexible, but not quite as rounded as Hostwinds, our Editors’ Choice for VPS Hosting.

Hostwinds has wallet-friendly and well-rounded VPS offerings starting at $16.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, 1TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email.

Plans go for $574 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. Hostwinds’ VPS plans also have a Windows option, something HostGator doesn’t offer.

Dedicated web hosting

Dedicated hosting is a powerful form of web hosting that sees your site located on a server in itself. As a result, this expensive hosting is also the most powerful. If you are expecting a lot of traffic, this is what your website should support.

HostGator‘s dedicated server packages start at the value level (starting at $189 per month, or $109 per month with an annual plan). With value, you get 8GB of RAM, 1TB of hard drive storage, unlimited email, and monthly data transfers.

Building on the value is Power Server (starting at $249 per month, or $139 per month with an annual plan), which includes 16GB of RAM and 2TB of HDD storage (or 512GB of SSD storage). The high-end Enterprise Server (starting at $289 per month, or $159 per month with an annual plan) has 30GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.

HostGator dedicated servers come in Linux and Windows flavors, which are not as popular as you might think; Linux tends to dominate the domain. In fact, HostGator is one of the few web hosts we tested with good results and offers both operating systems. Even DreamHost, one of our favorite hosting services, lacks dedicated Windows-based servers. However, Hostgator is not the Editors’ Choice for dedicated hosting. This address goes to AccuWeb.

AccuWeb has an impressive feature set. Dedicated hosting packages (starting at $105 per month) can be outfitted with up to 2TB of storage, a whopping 512GB of RAM, and 50TB of monthly data transfers. Servers come in either Linux or Windows flavors as well.

However, HostGator’s dedicated hosting offerings are nothing to sneeze at. Check them out if you need dedicated hosting with high-capacity SSD storage.

Cloud web hosting

HostGator, like many of the other web hosts PCMag has reviewed over the years, also offers cloud hosting. With cloud hosting, the resources your site needs to function are shared across multiple servers. the benefits? You can scale resources in real-time since your site is not limited by physical server limitations.

HostGator’s cloud hosting service – unlike DreamHost, co-editors’ choice of the category – is only available via the Linux platform; If you want Windows, you should look elsewhere. With that said, HostGator has attractive cloud hosting plans that deserve your attention.

The Cloud Hatchling plan (starting at $12.95 per month, or $7.95 per year with a yearly plan) comes with 2GB of RAM, unlimited email, monthly data transfers, and storage. From there, Cloud Baby adds (starting at $13.95/month, or $9.95/month with an annual plan)

Unlimited bands, raise the RAM to 4 GB. At the top of the offering is Cloud Business (starting at $19.95 a month, or $11.95 a month with an annual plan), which includes 6GB of RAM and a dedicated IP address.

1 & 1 Ionos, other co-editors choice for cloud hosting, is designed for enterprise-grade businesses. You’ll find 16-core CPUs, servers with 48GB of RAM, and other high-end specs. You can greatly customize your package as well.

WordPress Hosting

HostGator allows you to install a WordPress Content Management System (CMS) on any of its servers, but the web host also offers three levels of managed and pre-installed WordPress web hosting: Starter, Standard, and Business.

Starter (starting at $14.95 per month, or $7.95 per month with an annual plan) offers 100,000 visits per month, the ability to host just one WordPress site, 50GB of storage, and unlimited email. Standard (starting at $20.95, or $9.95 per month with an annual plan) brings things up to two WordPress sites,

200,000 monthly visits, and 150 GB of disk space. The business (starting at $27.95 per month, or $11.95 with a yearly plan) gives three WordPress sites, 500,000 monthly visits, and unlimited storage. All plans come with a page cache and an optimized WordPress hosting environment. However, A2, Bluehost, and WP Engine—our co-editor’s picks for WordPress hosting—best HostGator with slightly more powerful packages. Please check out these reviews to dig deeper into their WordPress offering.

It’s easy to set up WordPress on HostGator even if you don’t go the managed WordPress route. The client portal has an option called Quick Links that opens an interface dedicated to installing third-party applications. There is also a handy shortcut called Get started with WordPress Today that leads to the Quick Links interface.

Building a website powered by HostGator

HostGator sends a starter email with links to all the resources you’ll need to build a website because the interface takes a little getting used to. HostGator has a billing login link at the top of their site that leads to their customer portal, where all payment information, details about your plan, and add-on purchase options are listed.

This page contains tabs at the top for account and domain management. The Hosting tab is where you see the actual dashboard with website and app builders, website stats, and more. The introductory email also has a direct link to the control panel, but it looks different than what you’ll get with the hosting tab, which makes the experience a bit confusing at first.

HostGator has many options for creating a website, including HostGator’s excellent and easy-to-use Gator website builder. The drag-and-drop functionality allows me to quickly create an engaging page complete with slideshows, contact forms, social media links, and more in no time. You can also install WordPress or CMS platforms

Others like Drupal, b2evolutions, Joomla, Mambo, and Tiki, to name a few. The File Manager tool allows you to manually upload files to the server to create the website in this way. The tool is better than the basic FTP client because you can edit files directly or use a built-in HTML editor.

HostGator provides you with a free domain name if you sign up for at least 12 months of cloud, shared, or WordPress hosting – dedicated and VPS hosting is not eligible. This isn’t an unusual feature in the web hosting space, but it’s a nice touch. However, there

Two caveats. The no-cost period lasts for one year, and the requested domain must end with .com, .org, or .net extensions. If you already own a domain name ending with one of the extensions mentioned above, HostGator will move it to a server for free. If you want to learn more about site building, check out our best courses to learn how to build websites and how to build a blog.

web hosting reseller

If you’re looking to get into the web hosting business, but don’t want to deal with infrastructure issues, check out HostGator‘s reseller hosting packages.

Plans, starting at $19.95 per month, include unlimited email across the board. The aluminum, copper, and silver plans are both Linux and Windows, but HostGator doesn’t provide them with unlimited storage and monthly data transfers per tier, as Editors’ Choice reseller Hostwinds does with its offerings. On the plus side, HostGator allows you to apply your own branding to the servers you rent, and also offers 24/7 tech support.

e-commerce tools

HostGator offers the Mojo Marketplace, which contains email marketing tools like DaDa Mail (starting at $34.95/year), a program that lets you send email newsletters to your subscriber list. Quick Links also has eCommerce packages, including Magento, phpCOIN, SugarCRM, and ZenCart.

Creating a store with the new tool is easy and straightforward. You can select a theme, add products, prices, and images, and choose your preferred payment and shipping methods. If you plan to use your website to sell products, HostGator offers several excellent options.

HostGator Pros and Cons

Here are the pros and cons we found during our HostGator Review. Before making the final decision of choosing to sign up with them, make sure that you agree with the negatives.

Positives	Negatives
Suitable speed (688 ms)	Higher renewal rates
Free SSL Certificate + Domain Name (for the first year)	Backups, SEO tools, and SiteLock cost extra
45-day money-back guarantee	Poor uptime (99.85%)
good customer support
Monthly plan option
Comes with a website builder

Pros and Cons

We recommend HostGator, but there are better options to choose from. HostGator
shared hosting offers a lot of benefits. Speed has been solid, customer service is good, and they have improved their uptime. The abundance of beginner-friendly options also makes it easy to use.

However, the additional price hikes make getting a 100% recommendation very expensive.