Hostgator Review

Apr 15, 2011 by Hostorian    3 Comments    Posted under: Web Hosting Reviews

HostGator Web Hosting Ratings

A top rated web host — highly recommended!
Click here to visit HostGator’s official website

Summary

HostGator is one of the largest, if not the largest, hosting company available to consumers. They boast about having 7,000 servers under their management, which supports the over two million domains hosted by HostGator. Those two million domains account for 1% of the world’s Internet traffic.

Quick Facts About HostGator

• HostGator was founded in a dorm room in 2002, and now has 225,000 customers
• 90% of HostGator customers are happy with the services
• Web Hosting Services: Hatchling Plan ($4.95/month), Baby Plan ($7.95), Business Plan ($12.95)
• Phone: 800.866.9642867

Products and Services by HostGator

Being one of the most popular hosting companies out there allows HostGator to provide some great deals to the consumers. Their hosting packages include a lot of extras to go with prices slightly higher than other companies. Their Hatchling Package offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth, unlimited sub-domains, unlimited MySQL Databases (for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.), and unlimited email accounts. All that and more for less than $5.00 a month. Their Baby and Business packages upgrade those services to include unlimited domain names, and the Business package includes your own toll-free phone number.

All hosting packages come with a 45 day money back guarantee, $100 credit towards Google Adwords, support for all major coding/scripting languages (Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python), support for three types of shopping cart software (osCommerce, ZenCart, Cube Cart), and use cPanel as the control panel for everything. In addition, they have lots of quick install options for software (for shopping carts, blogs, forums, etc.)

Hostorian’s Review of HostGator Web Hosting

HostGator’s Performance

HostGator offers a 99.9% guarantee for uptime, and also has an automatic weekly off-site data backup for all hosting plans.

HostGator’s Features

HostGator has become one of the best hosting companies by simply offering a lot of value for the price you pay. They do offer a lot with the plans, so here are some more features not mentioned already: they include a free SiteBuilder and SiteStudio website building tools, free website/domain/MySQL/Script transfer from another provider, website statistics, web based file manager, unlimited auto-responders for email, full IMAP support with email, and Spam Assassin to kill off unwanted email before it reaches you.

Support and Customer Care by HostGator

Support for HostGator has almost as many options as their hosting packages. They offer free 24/7 support, 365 days a year with their phone, email, and live chat systems. They also monitor the servers 24/7/365. In addition, there is a online support portal with over 500 videos, and 700+ articles to browse through. You will certainly be able to find an answer in the wealth of information they offer.

Pros

• Offers great choices for software to get your website operational right away.
• Excellent customer service, and current customers rate it a 5/5.
• Offers more bang for your buck than most competition out there.

Cons

• No discounts for repeating customers.
• Multiple sites/packages are under one account – may be annoying for people operating sites for clients
• Slightly more expensive than other sites, but offers more services.

Actual Customer Reviews of HostGator

“I just wanted to write a quick note to let ya’ll (<—Texas slang) know how much I appreciate finally finding a host that has more than enough features for my needs and excellent educational offerings. This is my third host and I haven’t even felt a twinge of that sinking-feeling-what-have-I-done that I felt within a day or so of the other hosts. I have learned so much just from the forums and tutorials! So, thank you to all! I look forward to learning and building my business with you!” – DaniK

“So then, why am I making the change? First, I heard good things about HostGator, and I wanted to consolidate everything. Secondly, the HostGator package is solid and has more to offer. Lastly, and most important of all, is the richness of their customer support. I can get customer support when I want it, how I want it — chat, email, phone. “ – Reb

“Overall, I like HostGator. They are waaaay better than the previous host I had. That company started off great, but got to 60%+ downtime. I never have that problem with HG. My two big hang ups with HG are:
1. new customers get a 20% discount, while loyal customers get nothing except the bill at the end of their term; and
2. no elgg support or hosting on their shared/reseller hosting. Other than that, they are great.” – LC

Verdict of this HostGator Review

HostGator is one of the most referred hosting sites on the Internet today. It is very difficult to miss their banner ads on a lot of blogs. All of this publicity is warranted as HostGator is a very solid hosting company.

With a variety of software options to choose from, you can take your website in any direction you would choose. What helps with that decision is the ability to play around with their catalog of free website templates. You are sure to find something you can work with amongst the 4,500 templates available. If you need assistance in getting that site up and running, the HostGator support staff will help you right away – several reviewers noted wait times of less than half an hour when sending in questions by email. If you would rather try to solve the issue on your own, the video tutorials and knowledge base in the forum will guide you down the right path.

For a newcomer wanting to start a blog, or an experienced pro wanting to host multiple sites, HostGator becomes a great choice for you to use. They are constantly updating their software and servers, offer automatic backups for your security, and make the setup dead simple.

I have not experienced or read many bad things about HostGator, so overall I would rate it a 4.8/5.

Click here to visit HostGator’s official website.

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