HostGator Review

HostGator Features

Founded in 2002 and based in Houston, HostGator has experienced rapid growth and established itself as one of the leaders in its industry.

Affordable Plans

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited Disk Space

24/7 Support

45 Days Money Back Guarantee

HostGator stands head and shoulders above other hosting providers simply by way of their wide range of plans that have something to suit everyone. Unlike other hosting providers in the industry, rather than narrowing their services to basic shared hosting plans for the budget-minded, HostGator are committed to meeting the most advanced of needs. Their 2015 hosting plans on offer include:

Basic shared hosting plans

Linux and Windows dedicated servers

Reseller hosting plans

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting

Windows / ASP hosting

All of HostGator's plans are competitively priced and offer excellent value for money, not to mention they're made all the more affordable thanks to HostGator's budget-friendly month-by-month payment option. So whether you're just starting out or are an established webmaster, monthly payments are the perfect solution for better cash flow management.

Furthermore, HostGator allows you to upgrade or downgrade your hosting plan at any time to suit your changing needs.

Shared Hosting

You can expect all the standard features of a shared hosting plan with HostGator such as unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Two of their shared hosting plans include unlimited domains, sub-domains and parked domains. Furthermore, all HostGator's plans include the ever popular cPanel back-end which means even the newest of webmasters can create a well configured website with ease.

With HostGator you can rest assured you'll have all the must-have applications at your fingertips, such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla to name but a few. For those with eCommerce needs - shopping carts and private SSL haven't been forgotten either.

For less than $5 a month you can get started with a shared hosting plan that includes unlimited disk space and bandwidth, 99.9 percent uptime, MySQL databases, email accounts, along with a robust library of scripts all at the ready to install.

Unlimited domains and domain parking are extras included in the popular Baby Plan. Upgrading to the very affordable Business Plan sees you gaining a dedicated IP address and toll-free phone number. Finally, to round out HostGator's value-for-money ethos, you'll receive a $100 Adwords voucher to kick off your online advertising campaign.

Green Hosting

HostGator are an environmentally conscious company that invests in renewable energy credits. Relying on wind energy to power and cool their servers, it's plain to see that HostGator have a genuine interest in caring for the environment.

Uptime & Performance

Serving almost half a million customers via twelve thousand individual servers, the performance of HostGator's servers is of paramount importance to its continued success.

When tested by Pingdom, the uptime average was 99.99 percent and response time an astounding 0.247 seconds. Daily backups and around the clock monitoring of their servers is part and parcel of HostGator's commitment to delivering outstanding uptime performance.

Performance is one of the most important factors to take into consideration when choosing a web-hosting provider. To that end, we decided to undertake performance testing of our own on the page load time of the HostGator homepage.

HostGator Results:

Homepage is loaded in 2.4 seconds

Homepage is fully loaded in 4.2 seconds

(Test server region: Dallas, USA. Connection: Cable (5/1 Mbps, 30ms). Date: 11 August 2013)

Money Back Guarantee

For your total peace of mind, HostGator offer a no-nonsense 45-day money back guarantee for new hosting accounts. Moreover, HostGator’s month-by-month plans can be cancelled at any time without penalty.

Features

Managing your website from behind the scenes is made easy with the intuitively arranged cPanel interface. You'll find shortcuts conveniently organized into like categories with the all important support and billing options located at the top of the window within easy reach. Automatic renewal and update announcements are included so you'll always have your installations current.

The convenient Software and Services section enables easy installation of utilities, and the more advanced users will enjoy having access to Perl, PHP and the Ruby on Rails libraries. In addition, the QuickInstall menu includes dozens more software options.

Picture gallery software, social networking, blogs, forums, eCommerce and CMS options are all included in the comprehensive cPanel menu options. Applications such as WordPress, PrestaShop and Drupal 7 can all be installed in a matter of minutes with just a couple of clicks.

The included SiteBuilder app affords for both simple and complex websites to be built without special coding skills, while editing instruments and pre-configured templates provide users with the flexibility to create customized and fully functional web pages in only a matter of minutes.

What's more is, for search engine optimization you can sign up with Attracta directly through the control panel. From there you can redeem your Adwords coupon and begin sending pay-per-click traffic to your new website as soon as it's up and running.

HostGator's comprehensive set of webmaster tools makes getting your site set up and running a fairly straightforward process, however, should you need assistance the support team is always on standby.

Unlimited MySQL and POP3

The majority of web hosting providers limit the number of MySQL databases and POP3 email accounts allowed, however, with HostGator they're both unlimited, which is a major benefit for anyone who plans to build large and complex websites.

Upgrading

Since HostGator offers everything from the most basic shared hosting account through to a dedicated server, upgrading your account when you need increased resources has never been easier. Each hosting plan has been designed so that as you grow your site you can easily shift gears to the required level. These well thought out plans mean that you'll never have to pay for features you don't need, and most importantly your site will never outgrow HostGator's capabilities.

Technical Support

Support is HostGator's specialty and none more so than "technical" support. With support team members at the ready 24/7, any technical issues you need solved can be addressed quickly. Whether it's email, phone or live chat, you can rest assured that you will get the support you need. Along with the help forum and an online support ticket system, HostGator also provide a library of helpful video tutorials and articles.

The support staff are always friendly and polite and most importantly extremely knowledgeable. You can expect to be talked through solutions to any technical issues that arise, and any problems to be remedied completely. Although all the support channels offer excellent service, the live chat option is known to be the quickest path to resolving issues.

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