Hostgator Review – How Reliable is Hostgator as a Shared Host?
Whenever you want to start a blog, what all things you prepare first? If I am starting, below are what I will look for
I hope you will agree to me on this (If, not please let me know in comments and we’ll include those in this post). At least for first three initially and 4th once the blog is set up. The main issues come when you are searching for the themes and web hosting. There are numerous of hosting and themes available and depending on your need you can select one. For theme selection, I’ll recommend you to check this article and in this post, I will discuss with you about one of the best hosting services available.
When it comes to web hosting, Hostgator is one of the very few names those come to mind. It is a well know, reliable and affordable hosting provider all across the globe. you might be check Bluehost is presently offering the Bluehost Coupons: a $4.95/month membership to Bluehost and every last bit of its awesome administrations (75% off of the first cost).
You may find some mixed review about Hostgator on the web, but as I mentioned earlier, depending on the need, you should select the web hosting companies. I am using Hostgator for one of my niche blogs since a couple of years, and it is working correctly. So this review about Hostgator is based on my personal experiences.
About Hostgator.com
Brent Oxley started Hostgator back in 2002 and is the current CEO of this company. The company claims that today it hosts more than 8 Million domains with more than 4 Lac customers from 200 different countries. These figures itself say everything about Hostgator as how reliable it is.
Hostgator offers many hosting plans but what I think is Shared hosting of Hostgator is best. And this is what you need for a new blog. At this much competitive price, Hostgator is providing impressive services. I will discuss services and plans later in this article.
The company provides three shared hosting services- Hatching, Baby and Business plans. These all varies depending upon the users, bandwidth and prices.
Other than these shared hosting, the company also provide reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Also, Hostgator affiliate plans are awesome and are among the top affiliate commission providers.
Features of Hostgator’s Shared Web Hosting
Hostgator web hosting provides many features at very affordable price range. Here I am going to discuss few major features of Hostgator.
Uptime and Reliability
I remember the time when I was on one local hosting provider, and my blog was in the auction. When any customer visits the blog to analyze, they find it down and finally in 7 days I was unable to sell that blog and lost my $29 as well on Flippa. This is what happens when you don’t have reliable hosting.
Today the very first thing that I look for in hosting company is the up-time. Whether the company provides 100% uptime or not. If not, no matter how good features it provide and how cheap it is, I am not going to buy.
Hostgator operates their data center from 4 leased facilities, all owned by The Planet, in Texas. UPS power supply, fire detection and 24/7 monitoring by in-house technical staff make sure of the security and safety for their 12,000 on-site. The company provides 100% up-time, and so you will not find your site down anytime. I tested on Pingdom and result was very close to 100.
Also, apart from guaranteed up-time, Hostgator takes the backup of your data every data and stores those in their data center. If, at any point in time, you need those data to be restored, the company will charge you $15. But if you have taken your backup, not charges apply then.
Control Panel
The control panel is something that now every hosting company provides. But again a user-friendly CP is very necessary for smooth operation especially if you are not much a technical personal. CP allows to keep everything at one place so that you can work smoothly.
For all Linux hosting plans, Hostgator includes CP 11 with different themes options. HG provides individual billing capability; customers can organize payments and download invoices.
Unlimited MySQL and POP3
You will find a majority of hosting providers provide a limited amount of databases like 200 or 300 and also POP3 but in case of Hostgator you will get unlimited MySQL databases and unlimited Pop3. This is one of the amazing offers I found because with these you can develop a complex site as well.
Upgrading
Usually when people start their site, they start with shared hosting. But as the site grows, shared hosting won’t be sufficient for you and you may want to move to managed hosting or VPS hosting. Hostgator’s plans have been designed in such a way that the moment you decide to upgrade you can do it without any glitches.
Technical Support and Customer Services
After sales support and technical support are a couple of terms those every company has to take care. Hostgator knows it very well, and so their dedicated teams will help you at any point of time. You may call them or main they and you can get instant support.
Hostgator offers 24×7 live chat support, an FAQ, email support, on-call support, and toll-free phone support (for US customers only). The support staff are very friendly and polite and most importantly they are well versed in the products and technologies. Just you let them know about your issues and be assured of resolution as sooner as possible. Most of the time they will resolve it at that moment itself and if the issue is something that needs time, be assured for a day or two.
Apart from the above excellent offers, Hostgator also provides few others like automatic renewal and update announcements are included so you’ll always have your installations current. They provide one-click WordPress installation with some pre-installed themes and plugins.
If you go for their dedicated servers plan, you have the option to allocate individual Site Builder accounts and templates to your clients.
Plans and Pricing -How Affordable is Hostgator?
Hostgator offers a wide variety of hosting packages. For now I will talk about their shared hosting. In shared hosting, they provide three types of plans starting at just $3.96/month.
Hatchling Plan – Starting at $3.96/mo
Baby Plan – Starting at $6.36/month
Business Plan – Starting at $10.36/month
In all the above three plans, all the above features that we discussed are available.
Money Back Guarantee
In just $3.96 per month, Hostgator provides impressive features and services. But still due to any reason, if you are not satisfied with their services, you may cancel the order at any point of time within 45 days from the date of order.
Hostgator provides 45 days money back guarantee with no questions asked. You will get your money back in a couple of business days.
Please note money back is not applicable to dedicated servers. Only shared, VPS and managed hosting plans can enjoy money back guarantee.
Pros and Cons
By now you must have decided whether to go with Hostgator or not. So let me tell you some of the pros and cons of Hostgator hosting.
Pros
Cons
Recognitions
Hostgator has been one of the top hosting services providers since quite long time. They have a good number of the subscriber base. Below are few awards that Hostgator has received. To know more about reviews and awards, you may follow this link.
Conclusion
These were all about hostgator review. In my view, Hostgator is one of the best-shared hosting service providers, and if you are starting a site or want to move, you can give Hostgator a try. They offer some excellent features.
Are you going to try Hostgator? Or if you are an existing customer, do let us know your experience.
- A good theme
- 100% up-time and reliable hosting
- Good plugins
- Contents and Marketing
I hope you will agree to me on this (If, not please let me know in comments and we’ll include those in this post). At least for first three initially and 4th once the blog is set up. The main issues come when you are searching for the themes and web hosting. There are numerous of hosting and themes available and depending on your need you can select one. For theme selection, I’ll recommend you to check this article and in this post, I will discuss with you about one of the best hosting services available.
When it comes to web hosting, Hostgator is one of the very few names those come to mind. It is a well know, reliable and affordable hosting provider all across the globe. you might be check Bluehost is presently offering the Bluehost Coupons: a $4.95/month membership to Bluehost and every last bit of its awesome administrations (75% off of the first cost).
You may find some mixed review about Hostgator on the web, but as I mentioned earlier, depending on the need, you should select the web hosting companies. I am using Hostgator for one of my niche blogs since a couple of years, and it is working correctly. So this review about Hostgator is based on my personal experiences.
About Hostgator.com
Brent Oxley started Hostgator back in 2002 and is the current CEO of this company. The company claims that today it hosts more than 8 Million domains with more than 4 Lac customers from 200 different countries. These figures itself say everything about Hostgator as how reliable it is.
Hostgator offers many hosting plans but what I think is Shared hosting of Hostgator is best. And this is what you need for a new blog. At this much competitive price, Hostgator is providing impressive services. I will discuss services and plans later in this article.
The company provides three shared hosting services- Hatching, Baby and Business plans. These all varies depending upon the users, bandwidth and prices.
Other than these shared hosting, the company also provide reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Also, Hostgator affiliate plans are awesome and are among the top affiliate commission providers.
Features of Hostgator’s Shared Web Hosting
Hostgator web hosting provides many features at very affordable price range. Here I am going to discuss few major features of Hostgator.
Uptime and Reliability
I remember the time when I was on one local hosting provider, and my blog was in the auction. When any customer visits the blog to analyze, they find it down and finally in 7 days I was unable to sell that blog and lost my $29 as well on Flippa. This is what happens when you don’t have reliable hosting.
Today the very first thing that I look for in hosting company is the up-time. Whether the company provides 100% uptime or not. If not, no matter how good features it provide and how cheap it is, I am not going to buy.
Hostgator operates their data center from 4 leased facilities, all owned by The Planet, in Texas. UPS power supply, fire detection and 24/7 monitoring by in-house technical staff make sure of the security and safety for their 12,000 on-site. The company provides 100% up-time, and so you will not find your site down anytime. I tested on Pingdom and result was very close to 100.
Also, apart from guaranteed up-time, Hostgator takes the backup of your data every data and stores those in their data center. If, at any point in time, you need those data to be restored, the company will charge you $15. But if you have taken your backup, not charges apply then.
Control Panel
The control panel is something that now every hosting company provides. But again a user-friendly CP is very necessary for smooth operation especially if you are not much a technical personal. CP allows to keep everything at one place so that you can work smoothly.
For all Linux hosting plans, Hostgator includes CP 11 with different themes options. HG provides individual billing capability; customers can organize payments and download invoices.
Unlimited MySQL and POP3
You will find a majority of hosting providers provide a limited amount of databases like 200 or 300 and also POP3 but in case of Hostgator you will get unlimited MySQL databases and unlimited Pop3. This is one of the amazing offers I found because with these you can develop a complex site as well.
Upgrading
Usually when people start their site, they start with shared hosting. But as the site grows, shared hosting won’t be sufficient for you and you may want to move to managed hosting or VPS hosting. Hostgator’s plans have been designed in such a way that the moment you decide to upgrade you can do it without any glitches.
Technical Support and Customer Services
After sales support and technical support are a couple of terms those every company has to take care. Hostgator knows it very well, and so their dedicated teams will help you at any point of time. You may call them or main they and you can get instant support.
Hostgator offers 24×7 live chat support, an FAQ, email support, on-call support, and toll-free phone support (for US customers only). The support staff are very friendly and polite and most importantly they are well versed in the products and technologies. Just you let them know about your issues and be assured of resolution as sooner as possible. Most of the time they will resolve it at that moment itself and if the issue is something that needs time, be assured for a day or two.
Apart from the above excellent offers, Hostgator also provides few others like automatic renewal and update announcements are included so you’ll always have your installations current. They provide one-click WordPress installation with some pre-installed themes and plugins.
If you go for their dedicated servers plan, you have the option to allocate individual Site Builder accounts and templates to your clients.
Plans and Pricing -How Affordable is Hostgator?
Hostgator offers a wide variety of hosting packages. For now I will talk about their shared hosting. In shared hosting, they provide three types of plans starting at just $3.96/month.
Hatchling Plan – Starting at $3.96/mo
- Single domain
- Unlimited Subdomain
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Shared SSL certificate
Baby Plan – Starting at $6.36/month
- Unlimited domains
- Unlimited sub-domain
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Shared SSL certificate
Business Plan – Starting at $10.36/month
- Unlimited domains
- Unlimited sub-domain
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- FREE private SSL & IP
- FREE Toll-Free Number
In all the above three plans, all the above features that we discussed are available.
Money Back Guarantee
In just $3.96 per month, Hostgator provides impressive features and services. But still due to any reason, if you are not satisfied with their services, you may cancel the order at any point of time within 45 days from the date of order.
Hostgator provides 45 days money back guarantee with no questions asked. You will get your money back in a couple of business days.
Please note money back is not applicable to dedicated servers. Only shared, VPS and managed hosting plans can enjoy money back guarantee.
Pros and Cons
By now you must have decided whether to go with Hostgator or not. So let me tell you some of the pros and cons of Hostgator hosting.
Pros
- Well established company
- Excellent uptime and very reliable
- 24×7 support
- Cheap hosting plans
- 45 days money back guarantee
Cons
- No free domain (you can’t say exactly this is negative, but many company offers free domain)
- Somewhat expensive domain registration
- Weekly server backups. Many companies provide daily backup. But you can take daily backup either manually or with the help of plugins.
Recognitions
Hostgator has been one of the top hosting services providers since quite long time. They have a good number of the subscriber base. Below are few awards that Hostgator has received. To know more about reviews and awards, you may follow this link.
Conclusion
These were all about hostgator review. In my view, Hostgator is one of the best-shared hosting service providers, and if you are starting a site or want to move, you can give Hostgator a try. They offer some excellent features.
Are you going to try Hostgator? Or if you are an existing customer, do let us know your experience.
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