When it comes to hosting, it can be a serious challenge choosing the best one, simply because there are so many options to choose from. This Hostgator hosting review is going to cover all of the major factors concerning hosting:
- Reliability/Downtime
- Ease of use
- Support
- Pricing
- Speed/Size
Name: Hostgator
Website:www.hostgator.com
Price:From $3.96/month
Overall Rank: 98 out of 100
My Hostgator Hosting Review – Product Overview
People often get confused as to what exactly hosting is. Essentially, it is the place where a website lives. A domain name, such as www.humanproofdesigns.com tells your web browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc) where to go to find the website.
Without hosting, there can be no website files stored, and no website.
Hostgator is a giant in the hosting world. Ask anybody to name the top web hosting companies and Hostgator will be one of the first, if not THE first, that gets mentioned. Let's read on to find out exactly WHY they are the kings of web hosting.
The Good And The Bad
The Good:
- Excellent record. Servers going down is almost unheard of, sites experience very little downtime.
- Equally excellent support. Unlike some services, the support staff are very clear, polite, and efficient.
- Competitive pricing. Despite being the first choice of the Internet, they don't charge outrageous prices.
- Clear and Understandable. Beginners should be able to manage fine, and if not, the support is excellent.
The Bad:
- Uninspiring homepage. Sometimes doesn't give the impression of a huge company.
- Can Be Overwhelming. If you are a complete newbie you might feel scared when you first join (but remember the support is excellent).
Hostgator Tools & Training
First, the tools.
Hostgator comes with control panel, and all the other standard features that you might expect. Additionally, you can access “quick install” menus that let you install WordPress et al with the click of a button. Everything you need is split into relevant sections (setting up email addresses and so on).
You get unlimited disk space and bandwidth too, so don't worry about your site becoming “full”. The days of slow sites and exceeded bandwidth are a thing of the past with Hostgator.
See more about the Hostgator tools below.
Training.
Hostgator does give some basic training and if you ever need to learn more about something, there are links and tutorials to follow. Failing that, if you really get stuck, just send support a message and they will get back to you.
Hostgator Support
It's widely know that Hostgator has excellent support. I've already mentioned it a couple of times myself. I must admit when I first used their service I needed to contact support with a few questions for things that I didn't quite understand (I was too impatient to figure it out for myself).
What I loved about my response was that not only did it answer my question, it answered it in more detail than I expected.
They were pretty much covering all basis and options with their answers, which was way beyond what you would get from other support services.
Some support I've received from other companies in the past didn't even understand my question. Hostgator got my questions right on the head.
Hostgator Pricing
The pricing really depends on how many months you buy in one go. If you buy yourself just a single month, it is going to cost more than if you buy a full year. Only you will really know your budget and how much you will need, but I would have thought a 6 month subscription is the best way to start out.
To view the pricing in full, visit the hostgator site now.
***Bonus! Use my coupon codes and get a discount.***
I've got a couple of coupon codes for you to use here. Choose whichever one works out best for you.
For $10 off, enter
HUMANPROOF10
for 25% off enter
HUMANPROOF25
My Final Opinion Of Hostgator
I host all my sites at Hostgator and it is going to remain that way for the foreseeable future. I've never had any issues with their services or pricing, and their motto “We eat up our competition” is something I agree that they do.
They are a practical “no nonsense” service that might not have much “wow factor” when you first arrive at their site, but once you sample their services, you'll soon find the “wow”.
Hostgator At A Glance
Name: Hostgator
Website: www.hostgator.com
Price: From $3.96 /month
Overall Score: 98 out of 100
Sign Up Now
Hostgator service is great. As you said their live chat problem solving is excellent. I have had only one problem with the customer service which was also sorted out within the same day
Glad to hear another +1 vote for HG.
Have not used hostgator before but I will be sure to check them out if I ever decide to move. I am currently hosting on Wealthy Affiliate and Bluehost. I have been with BH for a few years and have always found their support very quick and useful.
I do think it is slightly more expensive than HG but I just kept re-subscribing. I have an unlimited service so I can add as many sites as I want or need and I don’t think there are limits although I haven’t really searched it out.
Nice review it seems a good deal for anyone starting out.
Yeah I’ve heard OK things about bluehost too. I seem to remember they had a stability issue towards the end of 2012 though?
Hello Mark….
I too once had some sites hosted on WA…..the reason I did not use WA for hosting Schooling Fish is that if I want to leave WA I will have to move my site…..not to say I am leaving at the moment…but perhaps in time I will….I have had one site moved and I had to get some help to do it…..so just in case I do have to jump out of WA for a period of time…I will still be ok with the hosting….
Another good thing about Hostgator is that they all get free migration within 30 days of creating the account, so if you DO ever move, that makes life a lot easier.
I use Hostgator and am happy with their service. It’s really nice to have 24/7 live support, and they do a million times better with customer service than Fatcow (which I used before). My only complaint is that they say “unlimited hosting”, but you are only unlimited in terms of amount of data stored. You are limited to the number of inodes you have, which is 250k I think. An inode is created each time you put a file on your site, ie a picture, document, or code. For a couple websites, you definitely won’t hit the limit, but if you plan on having 50 websites (yes, I do), then you’ll need a VPS package.
Anyway, I’ve since upgraded to VPS and am happy with it.
Regardless, Cpanel may look daunting to newbies, but once you find your email client, forwarders, and quick setup for WordPress you can pretty much ignore everything else and be happy IMO.
Even then, there are some great walk through tutorials to help you understand cpanel.
I think most people will be happy with a “baby” plan, although yes, the more serious ones will want something bigger. Human Proof Designs uses dedicated, which makes creating and storing all these sites a lot easier. Shared hosting is fine for most people’s needs though.
Do you recommend any other hosting sites besides Hostgator? It seems you hold this company in high regard.
There are so many to choose from and a lot of them are good. Hostgator just happen to be, in my opinion, top of the pile.
I used Hostgator and they were great, I had nothing but great service from them….and their support was just great also…
Agreed they are a superp company….
Alas I have moved to another for the moment….but Hostgator is still a top hosting company….I will return to use their services again….when the need arises…
Which company do you use now? How come you moved?
I have switched to namecheap….I switched because it was a new site and a new beginning and I just wanted to change the old to something new…
Even the switch was a bit of a challenge as I did a few things wrong…but I find namecheap to be as good as hostgator was support and all…..so it all worked out good…
Sometimes a change is good for moral…:)
Tim
Yeah, as I said below, there are other places that work well and Namecheap isn’t a bad option either. I’ve had some experience with namecheap hosting by helping clients who use it, but I did find it to be a slightly skinny version of Hostgator and felt myself missing the HG dashboard etc.
As an update: I recently had to use the live chat support within hostgator to get a question solved. I waited 2 mins (It gave me a nice “estimated wait time” too, and then had the problem solved within 5 more mins.
Excellent and very helpful (and incredibly knowledgeable) staff.