HostGator Web Hosting Review 2023 | HostGator Pros and Cons

Jatin Kathuria December 21, 2022
Are you planning to host your website on HostGator? If yes, then first of all you must look at the HostGator review given in this article.

In this article, we will take an in-depth discussion of everything related to HostGator, including its features, plans, prices, strengths and weaknesses, and more.

We'll cover everything here so you can get answers to every question you have about HostGator.

Often the most difficult task for beginners is finding a web hosting service to host their website within budget.

You guys should not face any kind of difficulty in choosing the right web hosting service for you, that is why we are here sharing the HostGator review with you.

I hope that by the end of this article, you will be able to easily decide whether HostGator is the right choice for you or not.

So let's start HostGator Review.

Is HostGator Good for your Website? Complete Guide

HostGator Web Hosting Review | HostGator Pros and Cons
HostGator Web Hosting Review | HostGator Pros and Cons

What is HostGator? A Quick Overview

HostGator is one of the highly trusted hosting providers in the industry, considered one of the top 10 hosting providers.

The company is providing hosting services for the last 2 decades and was founded in the year 2002 by Brent Oxley.

HostGator started its journey on a very small scale and today it is considered to be the leading provider in the entire hosting industry.

Today HostGator has many international offices around the world and you can get tons of web hosting services like Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Cloud Hosting, and Reseller Hosting here.

HostGator has had many ups and downs throughout its journey, but each time the company has made multiple improvements.

Today the company has also won many awards from some of the leading brands due to its high-class services.

HostGator was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) in the year 2012. Major hosting brands like Bluehost, iPage, JustHost, and Domain.com are also part of EIG.

What makes HostGator better than other hosting providers is its unparalleled speed, great uptime, reliability, and flexibility.

HostGator has hosted over 2.5 million websites to date. Whether you're a beginner, running a small online business, or an established company, HostGator has something for you all.

Here you will find all the plans within your budget and you will get all the necessary features and resources that you expect.

So guys what are you waiting for? So let us now discuss in detail HostGator's hosting service.

What Features does HostGator offer with its Hosting Services?

What features does HostGator offer with its web hosting services? Let's take a look below:

  • Free Domain Name only for 1st year
  • Free SSL Certificate
  • Free Website & Domain Transfer
  • Free Website Builder
  • Free Email Account
  • Free MySQL transfer
  • 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
  • One-click WordPress Installation
  • Unmetered Bandwidth
  • Unlimited Disk Space
  • Multiple Ready To Use Templates
  • 24/7 Customer Support (Live Chat, Email, and Phone)
  • Access to cPanel
  • $100 Microsoft Advertising Credit
  • $500 Google Ads Credit
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Hotlink Protection
  • IP Deny Manager
  • Password Protected Directories
  • 24/7 Server Monitoring
  • And more

So as you can see above, HostGator offers a huge number of amazing features with its hosting plans. So are you ready to give HostGator a try?


Why should you choose HostGator for your website?

Here below we will tell you some reasons for choosing HostGator, after reading this you will be able to decide whether you should host your website on HostGator or not.

1) Affordable Web Hosting Plan and Pricing

The biggest advantage you will get on buying web hosting from HostGator is that here you get all the plans at extremely affordable prices.

For users who are on a budget, this is the best platform to start with. The shared web hosting plans here start from only $2.75 per month, which is much cheaper than its competitors.

HostGator offers a 1-month, 6-month, 1-year, and 3-year billing cycle on its shared web hosting plans.

You can also opt for monthly or 6 months payment plans if you don't want to be tied into a contract for a longer period.

Not many hosting providers offer monthly and 6-month billing options. But here at HostGator, you can take advantage of it.

2) Free Advertising Credits of $600

As we told you that HostGator's hosting plans are quite affordable, and here you also get another advantage as well.

HostGator gives you worth $600 of free marketing credits with their hosting plans, which means you can run paid ads on Google and Bing to promote your blog and website by using these credits.

Here you get $100 Microsoft Bing advertising credit and $500 Google Ads credit.

Whether you know it or not, you have to spend a lot of money to run advertisements to promote your website or online business. But here HostGator provides you ads credit absolutely free.

If we talk about its competitors, then either they do not offer free ad credits and if they do, then their cost is very high.

However, to take advantage of the free advertising credits on HostGator, you need to go with the Baby plan or the Business plan.

You can't take advantage of free marketing credits if you go with the Hatchling plan (Basic plan).

3) Free SSL Certificate

SSL certificate is a very important factor in securing the connection to the website.

SSL certificate ensures the visitors accessing your website that their personal information like credit card details, sign-up details, passwords, or PINs are completely safe and secure here.

There was a time when HostGator used to charge separately for providing SSL certificates.

But now the good thing is that HostGator does not charge any fee for providing an SSL certificate which is free with all its hosting plans. It strengthens the security of your website.

4) Uptime Guarantee

Whenever we share information about any web hosting service provider, we ask our readers to pay attention to uptime and speed.

As these two play the most important role in the performance of your website.

Having your website live 24/7 for your visitors on the Internet is a sign of great uptime. Even a short period of downtime degrades the performance of your website.

HostGator boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee with all of its plans over its website. We used the Hrank tool to check HostGator's uptime.

HRANK is a website that regularly tracks the uptime and average response times of several web hosting services.

See HostGator's uptime result in the screenshot below:
HostGator Uptime

As we told you that HostGator offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee on its hosting plans, and you can see in the above screenshot that HostGator has an average uptime of 99.915% over the last 30 days, which is above 99.9%.

So you can definitely be worry-free about HostGator's uptime.


5) HostGator Loading Speed

Another important thing after uptime is loading speed. User experience gets affected due to slow loading speed, which also leads to a lower ranking of your website.

here we also took the help of the Hrank tool to check HostGator's loading speed.

See HostGator's average response time result in the screenshot below:
HostGator Loading Speed

You can see on the above screenshot that HostGator has an average response time of 1344 ms (1.34 seconds), which means the site takes about 1344 ms to fully load, which is a good sign.

If the loading speed of the website is less than 2 or 3 seconds then it does not affect the performance at all.

However, we found HostGator's loading speeds to be a bit slow compared to other leading hosting providers.

We used another tool (Sucuri Load Time Tester) to test HostGator's loading speed, where it has an average response time of 1376 ms (1.37 seconds).

Here you get great uptime and good loading speed at affordable prices.

6) Free Website Transfer

Currently, HostGator offers many such features for free of cost with its hosting plan, for which it used to charge separately earlier.

Yes, friends, we are talking about "website transfer" or "website migration". It is very easy to do website migration with HostGator.

If you are not happy with your current hosting provider and are planning to switch your website to HostGator, then you can avail of this facility absolutely free of cost.

Most of the hosting providers charge a separate fee for website transfer, as it is considered one of the costliest services, but here you can get it for free.

However, you have to keep in mind that when you buy a hosting plan after signing up on HostGator, you have to avail website transfer facility within 30 days.

If you ask the team to transfer the website after 30 days of purchasing the plan, you will pay for it separately. HostGator offers free website migration only on new accounts.

Please note that before migrating your website to HostGator, you need to fill out the "Request Migration Form".

7) Free Domain Transfer

Two main things are required to run a website – hosting and domain name. Actually, on HostGator, you get a free domain name with all hosting plans.

But if you already have a domain name, then HostGator also gives you the facility of free domain transfer.

However, HostGator only allows one domain name transfer for absolutely free, which is transferred via Launchpad.

To transfer a Domain Name on HostGator you have to contact their team. After which they will start the process of domain name transfer.

8) Easy To Use cPanel

It is often very difficult for newbies to manage cPanel as they have no idea about it. But you don't need any experience to use HostGator's cPanel.

HostGator offers an easy-to-use cPanel, which is completely user-friendly.

The best part is that everything is possible with just a 1-Click (single click) on cPanel.

Here, you are introduced to many applications like WordPress, Wiki, Joomla, Drupal, pHpBB, Magento, etc. You can access any hosting application with just one click.

If you want to start an online store on HostGator, you will also find many eCommerce software on cPanel such as Magento, ZenCart, PrestaShop, etc.


Things We Don't Like About HostGator

Above so far we have told you some of the reasons we really liked about HostGator and based on those reasons you can choose HostGator. 

there are some things that we didn't like about it. So what is that?

1) Renewal Prices are High

If you buy the HostGator plan with a 36-month billing cycle, you will get it much cheaper than other providers.

But if you renew the plan, you will have to pay almost double what you paid initially. Although the renewal prices are high, but it is still cheaper than the others.

2) No Automatic Site Backups

Having daily backups is very important for website security, but HostGator does not offer daily automatic backups on its shared hosting plans.

HostGator's Site Backup feature is powered by CodeGuard and is an add-on feature. If you want to back up your website data on a daily basis, you'll need to pay an additional $2 per month for CodeGuard.

This premium feature will help you to get daily automated website backups for your files and databases with 1-click restoration. Thus, it keeps all your website data safe and secure.

3) Customer Support is Not Much Impressive

HostGator provides 24/7 customer service via phone support, live chat, email support, and social media.

They run multiple help centers across the world so that you can contact the team via phone and live chat.

However, I am not very impressed with the customer support service of HostGator as you may have to wait a long time at times to get a response from the support team via live chat.

However, sometimes the responses you get from the team are not very satisfactory.

Although, it is not the case every time, but if we compare the customer support of HostGator with other leading web host providers, it is definitely lacking.

The good thing is, HostGator also offers a knowledge base (support portal) and blog section on their website, where you will find in-depth articles related to your customer's problem - cPanel, email, database, DNS, domain, security, customer portal, etc. Plus, here you will find tons of video tutorials.

What are the Pros and Cons of HostGator Web Hosting Service?

So let's have a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of HostGator below:

Pros of HostGator (Good)

  • Here you get 1 free Domain Name for the first year. (After the completion of one year, you will have to renew the domain at a regular rate.)
  • HostGator offers you a free SSL Certificate.
  • Here you get a 30-day money-back guarantee on all the plans. If you are not satisfied with the service, you can cancel the plan within 30 days and get a refund.
  • HostGator provides you the facility of free website transfer (only 1 website)
  • Here you get Unmetered Bandwidth with all shared hosting plans.
  • HostGator offers a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, which is great.
  •  If you don't want to get into longer-term bonds, you can opt for HostGator's 1-month or 6-month billing options. Though it will be a bit costly, but you can avail of the plan without being bound by any contract.
  • Here you get a free Website Builder with Drag-and-Drop Editor.
  • HostGator offers 24/7 Customer Support Service (via phone, live chat, and email).
  • HostGator provides you with cPanel, where you can easily manage all the resources related to your account in one place.

Cons of HostGator (Bad)

  • You will have to pay extra for the daily automatic backup facility as it is an add-on premium feature.
  • Some paid add-ons are automatically added to your billing amount at checkout. Be sure to check this before making the payment.


HostGator's Customer Ratings and Reviews

Let's find out what ratings and reviews real customers give to HostGator. Check below:
HostGator's Customer Ratings and Reviews
As you can see over 2900 real users on Trustpilot have rated HostGator.

Real users rated HostGator 4.1 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, and 54% of users rated it 5 stars, which is not really bad.

HostGator Shared Web Hosting Plans & Pricing

HostGator offers three different tiers on its Shared Web Hosting plan, which are as follows:
  • Hatchling Plan
  • Baby Plan
  • Business Plan
HostGator Shared Web Hosting Plans & Pricing

1) Hatchling Plan

This is the basic and cheapest plan of HostGator. This is especially for the newbies, who want to start their own blog and website.

The Hatchling plan starts at $2.75 per month with a 36-month billing cycle. This plan allows you to host 1 website with 10 GB of disk space and a free domain name.

2. Baby Plan

This is the most popular and best-selling plan from HostGator's shared web hosting.

The baby plan starts at $3.50 per month with a 36-month billing cycle.

With this plan, you are allowed to host up to 5 websites with 40 GB of Disk Space. Plus, you will also get free marketing credits worth $600. Apart from this, you will get similar features to the Hatchling plan.

3. Business Plan

If you are looking for advanced features and fast loading speeds, then the HostGator Business plan is perfect for you.

With this plan, you are allowed to host unlimited websites with unmetered disk space.

Here you get many additional premium features like Free Dedicated IP, Free Upgrade to Positive SSL upgrade, Free SEO Tools, Cloudflare CDN, Professional Website Migration Services, and many more.

If you buy SEO tools separately, then you have to spend a lot of money every year for that. But here HostGator is providing it to you for free on its business plan.

The business plan starts at $5.25 per month with a 36-month billing cycle.

Do you like any of HostGator's Shared Hosting Plans mentioned above? If yes, then get your preferred HostGator Shared Hosting plan from the link given below.

Click here to launch your website on HostGator

What other Hosting Plans does HostGator offers?

All HostGator hosting plans are quite affordable compared to their competitors. Here you will get many hosting services in your budget. So let's take a look at other hosting plans of HostGator:
HostGator Web Hosting Plans

Cloud Hosting from HostGator

Cloud hosting is the best option if the traffic on your website is increasing rapidly.

Here your website is hosted on multiple sets of servers, thereby eliminating the possibility of server downtime.

Along with this, you also get faster speed here. HostGator's cloud hosting is very affordable and much better.

HostGator offers 3 tiers on its cloud hosting plan, which are as follows:
  • Hatchling Cloud - $4.95 per month with a 36-month billing option (Single Domain, 2 GB RAM, and 2 Cores CPU)
  • Baby Cloud - $6.57 per month with a 36-month billing option (Unlimited Domains, 4 GB RAM, and 4 Cores CPU)
  • Business Cloud - $9.95 per month with a 36-month billing option (Unlimited Domains, 6 GB RAM, 6 Cores CPU, Positive SSL, Dedicated IP, and SEO Tools)

WordPress Hosting from HostGator

WordPress is the world's largest Content Management System (CMS) platform. This plan is for users who want to host their websites on WordPress.

Here too you have to share your resources with other users, but here the security of your WordPress website gets stronger. Plus you are also given the facility of daily automatic backup.

HostGator offers 3 tiers on its WordPress hosting plan, which are as follows:
  • Starter Plan - $5.95 per month with a 36-month payment plan (1 website, 1 GB Backups, free migration for 1 site, and can handle up to 100K visits per month)
  • Standard Plan - $7.95 per month with a 36-month payment plan (2 websites, 2 GB Backups, free migration for up to 2 sites, and can handle up to 200K visits per month)
  • Business Plan - $9.95 per month with a 36-month payment plan (3 websites, 3 GB Backups, free migration for up to 3 sites, and can handle up to 500K visits per month)

VPS Hosting from HostGator

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is ideal for users who wants to come out of the limitations of shared web hosting, and get more flexibility and control over their servers.

Here you get similar resources as dedicated hosting, but it is a much cheaper hosting than dedicated hosting.

HostGator offers 3 tiers on its VPS hosting plan, which are as follows:
  • Snappy 2000 Plan - $23.95 per month with a 12-month billing cycle (2 GB RAM, 2 Cores CPU,120 GB SSD Storage, and 2 Dedicated IPs)
  • Snappy 4000 Plan - $34.95 per month with a 12-month billing cycle (4 GB RAM, 2 Cores CPU, 165 GB SSD Storage, and 2 Dedicated IPs)
  • Snappy 8000 Plan - $59.95 per month with a 12-month billing cycle (8 GB RAM, 4 Cores CPU, 240 GB SSD Storage, and 2 Dedicated IPs)

Dedicated Hosting from HostGator

This plan is ideal for users who want to host their websites on a dedicated server instead of sharing their hosting resources with anyone.

Here you get full flexibility and control over your server and resources. HostGator offers Semi-managed and Managed dedicated hosting plans.

Semi-Managed plans start at $85.22 per month with a 36-month- billing option.

While Managed plans start at $89.98 per month with a 36-month- billing option. 


Reseller Hosting from HostGator

This plan is for users who are web designers or web developers and sell hosting to their clients.

HostGator offers 3 tiers on its Reseller hosting plan, which are as follows:
  • Aluminum Plan - $19.95 per month with a 36-month billing option (60 GB Disk Space, 600 GB Bandwidth, and Unlimited Websites)
  • Copper Plan - $24.95 per month with a 36-month billing option (90 GB Disk Space, 900 GB Bandwidth, and Unlimited Websites)
  • Silver Plan - $24.95 per month with a 36-month billing option (140 GB Disk Space, 1400 GB Bandwidth, and Unlimited Websites)


Final Verdict on HostGator Review

Here, we have tried our best to cover every little thing about HostGator.

We have tried HostGator web hosting ourselves before reviewing it, based on which we can say that it is one of the best web hosting services for newbies.

If you are looking for a web hosting service that is economical and also provides maximum features, then HostGator is a good option for that.

HostGator is the best platform to start your website and blog with shared web hosting, which is also within your budget.

HostGator is not only suitable for beginners, but people who run small websites can also host their websites on HostGator's shared web hosting.

So what are your thoughts about this in-depth review of the HostGator mentioned above, do let us know your opinion in the comment box below.

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