Choosing a host for your website is one of the more difficult decisions a new business or blog will have to make. With a plethora of hosting options available, it can be hard to single out which host is right for you. While seeking recommendations, there is a good chance that the name HostGator popped up, but is HostGator a scam or a reliable host?
Hostgator Web Hosting Review
Name: HostGator
Website: www.HostGator.com
Cost: Starting from $3,95 per Month
Field: Domain Hosting Services
Overall Ranking: 93 Out of 100
HostGator is one of the best but doesn’t reach to the #1 place of domain hosts. My #1 recommendation is Wealthy Affiliate with ultimately fast hosting, SEO benefits, and other impressive features.
What Is HostGator? – 15-Year-Old Web Hosting Company
HostGator is a company based in Houston, Texas that offers a variety of web hosting services for websites. A Florida Atlantic University student named Brent Oxley founded HostGator on October 23, 2002. Despite being run out of his dorm room at first, the company surpassed 200,000 registered domains within 4 years of its creation.
Brent Oxley remained the owner of HostGator until June 2012 when he announced that Endurance International Group would be purchasing the company for $225 million. As of 2013, over 9 million domains used HostGator for their web hosting needs. A surprising fact is that they have lost of domains over the years to other providers like GoDaddy, Dyn – Oracle and Domain.com.
Anyhow, HostGator is still one of the leaders in the industry providing a superb service. Let’s dig a little bit deeper in what they are providing.
HostGator Products and Pricing
HostGator was created with the intention of giving web sites a stable and reliable server to operate on. Through the years, their offered products have expanded to web hosting, cloud hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, domains and more.
All of the plans offered by HostGator are split up into three categories and the names of the categories vary based on which service you are buying. The three names for the hosting service plans are Hatchling, Baby, and Business. They also offer dedicated hosting services if you really want to speed up your website and invest money into high-quality hosting.
Hatchling Plan
The hatchling plan is similar to the basic plans offered by other hosts. This plan includes a single domain, unmetered bandwidth, and one click installation for WordPress, Joomla, Wiki, and other platforms. This starting price for this plan is $3.95 per month.
Baby Plan
While still offering one click installation and unmetered bandwidth, the baby plan also offers the ability to host an unlimited number of domains. This plan works best for users that want to host several domains and its starting costs are $5.95 per month.
Business Plan
The business plan is the best value plan offered by HostGator. This plan offers everything included in the baby plan as well as a private SSL, private IP, and free Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service. The starting cost for the business plan is the same as the baby plan at $5.95 per month.
Although the word “business” is in the plan name, you do not need to be running a business to use this plan. If this plan fits what you need, buy it regardless if you are running a business.
How Does HostGator Work?
The way HostGator works varies based on your needs. If you already own a domain and are transferring hosting services to HostGator, you are required to fill out a transfer form that can be found on their website after you create an account.
If you purchased your domain name from HostGator, the only thing you will have to do is to upload your website. If you are using a service such as WordPress, HostGator offers one click installation in order to make this process as easy as possible.
After the domain name is registered with HostGator, you will be provided with links that you need to use in order to access your domain’s email account and cPanel account. Save these links because they are necessary in order to run your website.
Should any problems arise during this process, feel free to contact the customer service team at HostGator. HostGator has a knowledgeable customer service team that will work quickly to solve your problems.
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Is HostGator a Scam? – No, Read Here Why.
HostGator is not a scam. They have been one of the leaders in the web hosting industry for over 15 years and are one of the most popular hosting brands in existence. Better Business Bureau has credited the best rating A+ for HostGator which isn’t so easy to get.
Although you will get the services you pay for, HostGator is a bit more expensive than, for example, GoDaddy. That’s not to say that their prices aren’t reasonable since they do provide one of the most reliable servers available.
It is also important to remember that the price you signed up for is only their starting price. Once your initial contract ends, the renewal price nearly doubles. Although this is common practice in the industry, it is something to keep in mind. If you would like to get a host where price will not double, have a look at this service that I use myself.
The biggest issue with HostGator is their advertised “unlimited hosting.” HostGator will temporarily suspend your account if you use over 25% of their system resources for more than 90 seconds or over 250,000 inodes. The good news is that your website will probably never reach that number. Nevertheless, it still shows that your “unlimited” hosting is not unlimited.
One great thing that I found in HostGator is that they provide Google AdWords and BingAds credits when you buy their plan. Have a look at the screenshot below from their website:
I often show my visitors also reviews from other users of products that I review. So next we will take a look at a few HostGator reviews made by their members.
HostGator Reviews – Lots of Satisfied Clients
As we know, HostGator is a huge company and they have hundreds of thousands of clients worldwide. It’s natural that they have both positive and negative reviews. There are literally thousands of reviews online. We will watch one of the most interesting, recent and helpful ones.
I know that if you are building your first website it can feel a bit overwhelming. I remember when I was creating my first website. I thought that it’s only for some nerds who know all IT-stuff very well. I knew a few people personally who were able to build websites and they felt like super-humans.
Nowadays I know that anyone can create a website even in 30 seconds. Have a look at my step-by-step instructions to get started fast.
Based on these reviews I can say that HostGator is doing a great job!
Conclusion – Is HostGator Worth It?
Probably the biggest reason why I am not using HostGator is that there is a better alternative called Wealthy Affiliate out there. HostGator offers great services and overall members have been more satisfied than with a huge GoDaddy. However, it’s hard to reach to the level that WA provides.
Wealthy Affiliate premium membership includes domain hosting up to 25 websites, 24/7/365 support, world-class training to make a living online (by the way, it WORKS), FREE SSL Certificate (to make your website faster and improve your Google rankings) and much more.
You may think that Wealthy Affiliate much cost much more than other providers because they provide all these great services and benefit. However, their price hasn’t risen during the last 14 years. In my opinion, that’s amazing!
Great benefits in WA is that you have an access to mentorship with successful online entrepreneurs. You will have my 1-on-1 support and many other people in the community are willing to help you further. By the way, you can start in Wealthy Affiliate for completely free. No credit card required. That’s how I did it when I first time tested their services more than 2 years ago.
I used their free services for 2 months and then bought the yearly membership which costs less than $1 per day.
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What domain hosting sites have you used yourself? Which one has been your favorite?
Have you ever experienced any challenges?
Let me know in the comments below and I will be more than happy to follow up with you.
Currently, I am paying $6.5 per month to host 10 websites. However, Hostgator’s baby plans offer unlimited domain hosting just for $4 a month. I have never tried Hostgator, and I want to try this.
However, before I use Hostgator, I want to make sure how much renewal charge I will have to pay. When I bought the hosting service from my current host, I paid less than $3 a month, however, the renewal charge doubled the hosting cost.
Hi Vinaya,
you have a very cheap domain host. What is your current host?
Yeah, it’s important to check the renewal prices because they may vary depending on the company. I like Wealthy Affiliate hosting because they provide everything in the same package and the price has been the same for 12 years.
I am with namecheap. I have registered most of my domains with namecheap and I have hosted about 10 websites with Namecheap (most of my websites are work in progress). My websites are blogs, affiliate stores, and online stores,
I am interested in wealthy affiliate hosting. Please tell us more about this.
Wealthy Affiliate hosting is included in the premium membership. It covers hosting up to 50 websites.
They give a free SSL, SiteSpeed feature that improves website’s speed (I noticed a boost in my Google rankings when they implemented this one) and spam blocker. Their support team has answered all my requests and usually I get help within a few minutes.
Heeey Roope! I also have a couple of WordPress sites and they are hosted by Justhost. Im satisfied with their service aside from the times that they experience downtime. After reading your review, I kinda want to switch hosts now.
The only thing that’s holding me back from changing hosts is that I don’t know how to transfer my websites. Haha! I think I’ll need the help of a professional if ever I would be getting a new host.
What do you think Roope? Should I push through with the host change? Or should I stick with my current web host?
Hi Lindbergh,
changing the host isn’t a big deal. There are numerous professional tutorials on the Internet how you can do that. Here is, for example, the post where Kyle teaches how to set up the Wealthy Affiliate hosting. You will also get immediate help in the comments section if there are some parts in the tutorial that you didn’t understand.
I am not very familiar with Justhost yet and I think it’s not one of the biggest domain hosts. I will take a closer look at it.
-Roope
I first discovered HostGator a few year ago and it to be honest i found that it was not for me. They do offer some a great service and the initial contract is very appealing but i found that you are truly on your own and need to figure things out for yourself. They do have customer service and will help you but there is not community of individuals who are going through the same tests as you to aide you along the way.
But, when i discovered Wealthy Affiliate my whole life changed for the better. I became apart of a community of over 800k like minded people who are all willing to help. Wealthy Affiliate gives you access to training that will get you where you want to be in life. If you want to be successful than you really need a blueprint to follow. More than that is you need to be able to raise your hand and ask question from people who truly know what they are talking about.
With the premium subscription you can host something like 25 website. Wealthy Affiliate makes great use of WordPress which in my opinion is the most professional looking layout around. You also get something like 4k themes to choose from so there is no need to purchase a theme and that can cost something like $50.00
All in all Wealthy Affiliate is something to take a serious look at and the best part is that it’s free to use and host with some limitations. But you can still get going and see what it is like to own and operate and even make money.
Great article and thank you for sharing !
Hi Justin,
I can totally agree with you on what you are saying about Wealthy Affiliate. It’s great to be a part of a community who is going to the same direction with you = online success. First of all, I got an opportunity to learn how to make money online with Wealthy Affiliate. Then I was close to giving up but this wonderful community kept me going and here I am today, doing stronger than ever with my online business. The income has risen every month during this year and most likely it will keep on continuing in the future.
I have experienced the same what you are saying about HostGator with some other services. It’s a bit frustrating to contact the support that doesn’t really answer your questions.
WA support answers always in a few minutes with a helpful answer.
-Roope
I tried HostGator a few years ago and was very dissatisfied with their support. I don’t remember the issue now but I do recall that their help sucked. I ended up leaving because of it.
Hi Ben,
thanks for sharing your experience. Probably that’s the reason why their popularity hasn’t grown over the years. Good support is a vital part for a hosting service and if it doesn’t work, it really motivates to move to another service provider.
-Roope
I have read several reviews for HostGator now and it seems that they are a good host. I might check them out if I ever have any problems with my current hosting service. The prices look really good as well, I mean the business plan that they have seems a good deal especially considering it includes private SSL and IP.
The only issue is I couldn’t find their prices for after the first term. That was the one thing that put me off GoDaddy, their prices are ridiculously high after the first term. Hopefully HostGator does not have similar high prices.
Hi Kingcool,
you are right that it’s important to see what kind of prices they have after the first term. With GoDaddy prices grow so much as you said.
Why wouldn’t you take Wealthy Affiliate domain hosting? I have used it already for two years and it works like a charm. Their support team is always willing to solve all possible issues. You will also get tons of other helpful material when joining. Their step-by-step training has taught me and thousands of other people how to make money online.
I have got to know many people who started in Wealthy Affiliate without any prior knowledge and nowadays they are making + $10,000/month. I have to work still to achieve that kind of income but I will get there over the time course.
-Roope
It is hard to beat Wealthy Affiliate, however host gator definitely has the moves. A buddy of mine used them 3 or 4 years ago and said it was solid. It is interesting how fast the company grew in four years since its inception.
Either way, I am glad that there are other sites offering competition, monopoly’s are no fun and lead the user being out of mind.
Hi Joe,
Host Gator has for sure a great product and a service and it’s good that they are giving their own value to the marketplace.
Wealthy Affiliate package is definitely superior to Host Gator. If one only needs a domain host and nothing else, I think then Host Gator could be more reasonable.
-Roope