Hostgator Reviews (2024)

Hostgator Reviews (2024)

  • Unlimited Diskspace
  • Unlimited Bandwidth
  • Instant Provisioning
  • 1-click WordPress Install
  • CPANEL
  • Free Domain
  • 45 Day Money Back Guarantee

From $3.82/mth

View Hostgator Plans

Hostgator Reviews (2021)

Another host founded in a college dorm room, Hostgator are now part of the EIG group along with Arvixe, Site5 and Bluehost.

Hostgator Review

For our Hostgator review site we signed up for Hostgator’s Hatchling Planwhich is as cheap as you’ll find WordPress hosting from a major provider, starting at only $3.45/mth.

Hostgator Provisioning and Installation

Like Bluehost, the provisioning was instant and along with Cpanel they offer the usual installer so we had WordPress up and running in no time. The longest wait was for the DNS to update on our test domain to point at the Hostgator servers.

Hostgator Systems and Support

Also like Bluehost, Hostgator provides 24/7 chat and phone support which will be especially appealing to first time webmasters. Though the forums do have their fair share of complaints about Hostgator and their average user ranking is lower as a consequence.

Hostgator Load Test

Hostgator WordPress host review 2020

Once again, in our latest testing Hostgator’s performance in the Load Impact tests was strong. They started OK (but not exceptional) but their performance quickly improved even as the number of concurrent users on the site climbed with an average user load time <1 second right up to 100 concurrent users.

This month the performance was solid all the way through with their average pretty much flat at 0.643 seconds. We’ve not always been fans of Hostgator, but their performance in these tests is undeniably strong.

They miss out on a top recommendation however because their Pingdom test results (below) are not as strong as you might expect based on the Load Impact testing.

See rankings for all the WordPress hosting companies we tested.

Hostgator Page Speed & Uptime

HostgatorResult
YSlow Score82
West Coast Load Time1.98s
East Coast Load Time1.62s
Average Page Load Time1.80s
Hostgator Uptime99.98%

Hostgator scored 82 on the YSlow grade which is solid, but their average home page load time as recorded by Pingdom was a less impressive 1.80s. This is slower by almost a second compared to the last round of testing.

Frankly we were very surprised by this given the relatively strong showing by other EIG hosts which we believed to all be on the same centralized server infrastructure, so we are at a little bit of a loss to explain this.

Our Hostgator review site scored 99.98% uptime over the last period according to Pingdom.

We’ve also published a head to head comparison of Hostgator vs Bluehost.

Best WordPress Hosting

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About HostGator

HostGator is one of the bigger web hosting firms around today, hosting over 9 million sites at last count. It’s owned by Endurance International, which also owns Bluehost, HostMonster and a number of other web hosting companies.

Founded in 2002 by Florida college student Brent Oxley, HostGator was one of the first web hosting firms, in 2008, to emphasize green hosting and promise unlimited hosting services. Today the company is headquartered in Houston.

The company offers a low-priced basic monthly hosting plan, with as many add-ons available as clients wish to purchase. They also offer reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting options, as well as professional development and support staff services available to assist all clients for certain fees.

The company offers Weebly as a drag-and-drop site builder tool, and QuickInstall as an easy to use app installer. They can migrate existing content from other accounts to a HostGator platform and optimize it, and transfer domain name registrations for consolidation. It works well with WordPress, Joomla and other scripting options.

HostGator offers fairly standard 24/7 support via email, phone or chat for different prices, a 45-day complete satisfaction money back guarantee for new accounts and 99.9% uptime.

FAQ’s

What forms of payment does Hostgator accept?

Hostgator accepts MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Paypal, personal checks, money orders, cash, and bank transfers.

What control panel does Hostgator use?

cPanel is provided to all users at no additional cost. Resellers will also have access to Web Host Manager. Really, though, cPanel is the industry standard, and is the control panel of choice for most customers.

What if I need extra bandwidth or disk space?

If you require additional bandwidth or disk space, you can get it through their Upgrade Page to upgrade to a larger plan.

If you would like to purchase additional disk space or bandwidth, but don’t need a larger plan, or if you need more space than their highest plan offers, let them know and they’ll work something out.

Once I sign up for a Hostgator plan, can I upgrade?

Yes, you can upgrade at any time by filling out their upgrade form. It is free to upgrade and the only charge would be the price difference in the plan you upgrade to.

What’s the difference between a shared SSL and a private SSL?

As the name suggests, a shared SSL is a security certificate shared by multiple websites, it is used to secure multiple sites on the same IP address such as the case with shared hosting accounts.

A private SSL cert secures a single IP address. A shared ssl displays as https//ip/~yourusername/ A private ssl would display as https://www.yourdomain.com in the address bar.

What provate SSL certificates does Hostgator offer?

Hostgator sell Comodo 128 bit certificates for $75 a year and include free installation. Comodo SSL’s are trusted by over 99.3% of internet browsers (equal to Verisign and Thawte certificates). The only difference between one ssl type and another is the browser recognition.

The Comodo SSL certificates are among the highest browser recognition in the industry, including Netscape 4x and above, AOL 5 and above and Opera 5 and above and comes pre-installed with all Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS 8.5, Mac OS 9.x, Mac OS X operating systems.

Does Hostgator do add-on domains?

Yes, however you cannot create an add-on domain if your DNS hasn’t propagated to the server already. So after you change the site’s DNS you are trying to add you will need to wait 24-48 hours before attempting to create your add-on domain.

Hostgator Comparison & Alternatives

Rank Host Price Action
1 Siteground From $20.83/mth View Plans / Full Review
2 Siteground From $25.00/mth View Plans / Full Review
3 Siteground From $3.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
4 Bluehost From $2.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
5 GreenGeeks From $2.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
6 Arvixe From $7.00/mth View Plans / Full Review
7 Site5 From $4.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
8 iPage From $1.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
9 A2 Hosting From $3.92/mth View Plans / Full Review
10 Dreamhost From $7.95/mth View Plans / Full Review
11 Hostgator From $3.82/mth View Plans / Full Review
12 GoDaddy From $2.49/mth View Plans / Full Review
13 InMotion Hosting From $4.99/mth View Plans / Full Review
14 Web Hosting Hub From $4.99/mth View Plans / Full Review

Disclosure

This page contains affiliate links which means we earn a commission if you click through and signup. This is at no extra cost to you and helps us maintain this resource for all webmasters’ benefit. We own and pay for all the hosting accounts we use in our reviews and performance testing. Read our full disclosure statement here. Thanks for your support.

Real Hostgator Customer Reviews

9 reviews on “Hostgator Reviews (2024)

  1. khan says:

    Will try to make it beneficial for you. Start learning…
    HostGator is not as good as you see in the reviews as compare to BlueHost, MochaHost, etc. *Not Sponsored* these are more secure and provide good services, each and every thing that you need to make your online presence. And not too much difference in prices as you have to go with them and you have to use a shared server just like property but there is no reselling 🙁 [I never recommend you to purchase for 3 years]
    Let me explain the problems of hostgatarians…
    If you are facing any of the issue, it is normal, most of their users have same complaints. (UPVOTE it)
    You will be good with them if you are using the single domain with shared hosting hahah and they do backups only for 100000 inodes (aprox. MySQL® Disk Usage 450 MB & Disk Usage 5 GB while they claim unlimited space to trap you -> today learn more about their traps) if you go double, 200000 inodes, CS will redirect you to TOS that they do not allow more space, lol as you are trapped. Bear Them now!
    They provide you extra ordinary service for 45 days, why not, these days are money back guarantee days. After 45 days, now your time is started to plan to leave their services.
    If you grow and reach to 3 GB disk storage and ready to go with your websites then it is time to get 500 IS error when you need to update the data and need to kill the processes each time and it will take 3x time. If you contact to the customer support, they will ask you to upgrade your server to the dedicated one or to VPS (believe me you will not face these problems with blue or mocha) its normal with HG my friend learn more…
    After 3 months your website will be started to be infected by malwares and the email password will be started stolen. If you ask them to clean malwares that can be resolved by replacing the files…haha and they will recommend you to use sitelock (bcz they need commission) while making WP secure is so easy, you can have free and the best available plugins like wordfence. You can keep secure your site by scanning and by using it.
    About CSs all of their CS not knowledgeable, its ok, as in team, it is difficult to filter the team members, and interesting they will never redirect the chat to the related department as Bluehost CSs. And each CS has different statement and I was unable to find team work within them, worse reality. And they will make changes to your Purchase without getting permissions from you. If you are planning to go with HG, please must think about your time and investment and try to get short term services if you want to test on your behalf and I recommend you to choose the one, provides you shortterm service like Mocha… or go with the best one Blue by closing your eyes.

  2. Mike M says:

    I am a small business owner who has just recently delved into the digital landscape to go in with the times. I have some extra time and I also wanted to learn the ropes of setting up a site. Hostgator was a suggested hosting provider for novices and I would agree! Not that I’ve tried others but navigating their platform was pretty easy. Also I don’t expect a lot of visitors per month so shared hosting fits the bill already for me.

  3. Amanda says:

    I got on with them because of the 45 day money back guarantee if all hell broke loose and things didn’t make sense on my site. Those guarantees are important for me because I don’t want to waste my money on a service that doesn’t provide as advertised. Thankfully, I did not have to use that option and I am 6 months in with Hostgator. I am only using their basic package, my site doesn’t gain a lot of visitors as my business is very local in nature so the likely visitors are well.. locals in my area. I did not find the need to contact with Customer Support as I was able to figure things out on my own nor did any hurdles appear. I definitely recommend them!

  4. Dean says:

    I’ve only just signed up with HostGator. So needless to say I was a bit clueless with features. My reason for signing up was to use HostGator as a host for my WordPress. When I started, I made a silly error but couldn’t figure out why I was getting errors when I wanted to access my WordPress admin page. After speaking to William L on HostGators amazing Live Tech Support, my problem was solved in a matter on minutes and saved me a lot of frustration!
    Let’s hope that my experience with company continues to be of a high standard!

  5. Andy Schlei says:

    I’ve been using HostGator for over 10 years. Uptime has been excellent with very few outages. The web hosting features are good and it is easy to install software and manage the site. My only minor complaint would be that response time on support tickets has gotten slow in the last year.

  6. Josh says:

    I’ve been hosting with HostGator on two websites for the past couple of years. At first, their support was terrible. I had a technical issue with my website and was told that they were only trained in walking someone through setting up WordPress for the first time, and if I wanted more support than that, I had to pay for a dedicated server. Finding their number was impossible (and they still try to push you to submit a ticket instead of calling/chatting, which I don’t like because ticket response time is way too long), so I finally found a way to chat to support. I told them I wanted to cancel my service, and instead of trying to retain me as a customer, they told me to cancel my service and provided me a link to do it. Didn’t make me feel like a valued customer.

    A couple of days after I submitted my cancellation request, I got a phone call from HostGator. I spoke to someone who was very apologetic for what happened and offered me a couple of months of hosting for free on both of my websites. Because of that customer service rep, I decided to stay and not deal with the hassle of moving to another host.

    I continued to host my sites with them for about a year, and just last month I had a billing issue with one of my hosting plans, which resulted in my plan getting suspended. Site was down. I panicked. I chatted support, and in less than 10 minutes I was credited for the billing issue and my site was live again.

    They’ve made HUGE improvements in customer service, and I’m glad they realized they needed to focus on that. I’m very happy to be a customer of a company that truly cares about providing excellent service, and I hope it continues to stay this way.

    However, I do pay quite a bit per month to host two websites, and didn’t realize that the price I originally signed up for was a “promotional price” for 12 months. For the amount of traffic and bandwidth my tiny sites use, and being on the cheapest plan they offer, I don’t feel the monthly price is worth the plan I’m currently on.

    So, in closing, I’d say they’ve improved over the past year, but proceed with caution and prepare for the cost of your hosting plan to raise after a certain amount of time without warning.

  7. I recently had an issue with a plug in that crashed my site. I couldn’t log in or access the site as an admin to fix it – I was freaking out! Working with Hostgator support and going through the CPanel they guided me through the steps to turn off that plug in and regain access. They were very patient with me and stayed online until the issue was fixed. I have basic tech skills so was extremely grateful for the awesome support.

  8. Sasha Trusty says:

    Any time I contact host gator I have a great experience. Then customer service is great and the employees are very well versed in their job. They’re respectful and very attentive to my needs. Also, the wait time is okay. Sometimes long, but the most part not too long and you get treated well. Kudos to their team for being so awesome. No complaints so far. Keep this up and I’ll be a customer for a long time.

  9. John says:

    I have used hostgator since 2010, I have to say very easy to use their control panel, customer services are very friendly and very helpful, it’s very useful to have a live chat feature for customer services too, very simple billing service is boom, I can honestly say, that, at this moment in time I can’t see a reason to use anyone else for hosting my site…

    Thank you Hostgator!

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