HostGator Hosting Company Review
Here is another hosting plan review that will, I hope, help you make a more informed choice as to which hosting provider to choose. I would, of course, like to remind you that I also offer hosting here on Charlotte Web Development, but before you make the final decision, it is best to research all your options. And that is what this article is here to help you do! Personally, I have not used HostGator to host any of my sites with, so what I know about it, I learned from those who have.
HostGator Company Overview
HostGator was started in 2002 by Brent Oxley, the current President and CEO. The company is based in Houston, Texas and is currently a market leader in web hosting, with over 5,000 servers, on which they offer shared web hosting, VPS and dedicated web hosting. In addition to hosting, they also provide the service of domain registration, and they currently manage over one million domains. HostGator is truly a global company, with clients in over 170 countries. They offer 24/7 customer support, and if their technical support staff can’t solve your problem, you can ask them to forward your query directly to the CEO, a service dubbed, “VIP attention from Brent.”
In addition to web hosting, they also offer the so-called reseller hosting, which is in high demand at this time. The success of this venture is mainly due to the fact that it is very easy to set up and launch a reseller program with HostGator. On the whole, HostGator claims a 99.9% server uptime, while all their plans also feature a generous money back guarantee.
HostGator is the winner of many hosting awards, while they also claim to be a very environmentally conscious company, using renewable energy to power and cool their servers and investing in wind farms as their energy source.
What People Are Saying
Since I do not use this hosting provider, I took a poll among those who do. Here is what people had to say about HostGator:
“I highly recommend HostGator. I’ve been using them for years. Fast service, better than great uptime, inexpensive, good equipment.”
- Rob Saurini
“I’ve also had some good experiences with HostGator’s service.”
“I am a HostGator user and it is a very good service.”
-Vinodh Sen Ethirajulu
Why Choose HostGator
On hosting review websites like whoishostingthis.com and hostjury.com, HostGator has received some very high scores. The users who have written these reviews are all very satisfied with the service provided by HostGator, especially in terms of uptime, ease of use, availability of support and reliability. Users report a near 100% uptime and are generally very satisfied with the ticketing system, which seems to work as advertised.
There do not seem to be that many negative reviews at all, though most users only recommend it to host a personal website or blog with, and not for anything more demanding. Also, while they do offer unlimited space and bandwidth, they do not offer unlimited resources, which does, in the end, put a limit to how many domains you can host with them. HostGator does, however, offer so many different hosting plans and subplans that a solution for everyone can doubtlessly be found.
The Bottom Line
HostGator is reliable, cheap and perhaps the perfect choice if what you need is hosting for your blog, or a small personal site. As Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com points out, HostGator is a great choice if you are looking for affordable and reliable hosting for your niche websites. He does, however, warn that once your business takes off, you will need to upgrade your hosting as well.
So, the bottom line with HostGator is that it is a great choice for someone who is either just starting out in the online marketing business, or simply needs affordable and reliable hosting for their personal blog or website. If this is you, then look no further than HostGator. If however you predict that your business will soon grow, you are perhaps better off finding a provider with a more robust dedicated hosting plan, such MediaTemple.
Other companies that have a similar hosting plan to that offered by HostGator, are BlueHost and GoDaddy, so you might want to read up on those before making your decision.
HostGator Hosting Features and Prices
Below you will find the basic features and prices of the hosting solutions offered by HostGator. Since hosting companies change their equipment and technology often, you should also check these out on the HostGator website, before making any final decisions. However, just to be thorough, here is the list of HostGator hosting offers:
Basic Shared Hosting
HostGator offers these plans form $4.95 a month, and they include:
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free SiteBuilder
- Easy Control Panel
- 4,500 Free Website Templates
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
- 24/7/365 Technical Support
Reseller Plans
These start at $24.95 a month and include:
- UNLIMITED Domains
- UNLIMITED Sub Domains
- UNLIMITED Email Accounts
- UNLIMITED MySQL Databases
- UNLIMITED FTP Accounts
- FREE Site Builder Software
- PRIVATE Name Servers
- FREE Billing Databases
- FREE Domain Reseller Account
- 4,500 Free Website Templates
- Free Enom Domain Reseller Account
- 22+ Languages Available
VPS Hosting Plans
HostGator offers several levels of these, starting at $19.95 a month. They all include:
Software Specifications:
- CentOS Linux with Full Root Access (64-bit with 32-bit Compatibility)
- Optional cPanel with WHM Control Panel (cPanel Demo | WHM Demo)
- Apache Web Server
- Supports: MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python (Django), Ruby (on Rails), FFMpeg
- Secured VPS with free IPTables Firewall
- Manage your VPS with Virtuozzo Power Panel
- Ability to install and customize applications
- Seamless kernel upgrades utilizing KSplice Uptrack
Hardware Specifications:
- Dell PowerEdge Servers
- Fully Customized Hardware Specs
- Dual Nehalem CPUs (16 Hyperthreaded cores)
- Fault Tolerant RAID-10 Disk Array with Enterprise Drives
- DDR3 ECC RAM
Dedicated Server Hosting
These start at $174 a month and include generous disk space, RAM size and bandwidth. With this plan you get everything that is featured with the other HostGator hosting plans, while you can also, through your server, create unlimited domains and subdomains, email addresses, MySQL databases and more. There is something for everyone here, so for a full list of features check out the HostGator website.
