If you want to bring your business online or want to start a blog, then it is very important to have a website for that.
But even before building a website, you need web hosting. Bluehost and HostGator are the most popular web hosting brands in the market.
But the question is which of these two is better and with which of these two you should start your website.
Let me tell you that we have multiple websites in different niches, and we regularly research different hosting brands with our team.
We are currently using the services of both Bluehost and HostGator. So if you are looking for honest reviews and comparisons of Bluehost and HostGator, you have come to the right place.
In this article, we will take an in-depth comparison of Bluehost vs HostGator and will also discuss their features, security, performance, support, pros, cons, hosting plans, prices, and much more in detail.
So let's start the Bluehost vs HostGator detailed comparison.
Bluehost vs HostGator: The Detailed Web Hosting Comparison
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| Bluehost vs HostGator: Which is the Top Web Host? |
Bluehost vs HostGator: A Quick Overview
About Bluehost: Bluehost is one of the oldest and most experienced hosting brands in the market, founded by Matt Heaton in the year 1996.
You can guess its popularity from the fact that Bluehost has hosted more than 2 million websites so far.
Whether you are a beginner, a small business owner, or a professional, Bluehost provides world-class hosting services to all.
The best part is that Bluehost provides all the services at very affordable prices. Overall, you can avail high-quality services at an affordable cost on Bluehost.
Currently, Bluehost is part of the Endurance International Group (EIG). EIG bought Bluehost in the year 2010.
About HostGator: HostGator is one of the leading hosting brands in the market, founded in the year 2002 by Brent Oxley.
It is a US-based web hosting brand, but it offers its hosting services in over 200 locations worldwide.
HostGator has also hosted more than 2 million websites till now and here you are also offered monthly hosting plans.
If you are looking for green hosting, HostGator is a good platform for that, as all your websites hosted here are eco-friendly.
Similar to Bluehost, HostGator is also a part of the EIG group and was acquired by EIG in 2012.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Features Comparison
Both Bluehost and HostGator offer useful features with their hosting services. So let's find out which one you should go with in terms of features.
Features of Bluehost
- 1 Free Domain Name
- Free SSL Certificate
- 24/7 Customer Support
- SSD Storage Space
- Free Marketing Credits worth $200
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Unlimited Email Accounts and Email Storage
- Unlimited Websites Installations
- Affordable Hosting Plans
- Free WordPress Migration
- Free CDN
- And more
Features of HostGator
- Single to Unlimited Websites Installations
- 1-click WordPress Installation
- Free Domain Name
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 10 GB to Unlimited Disk Space
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Free Website Builder
- Free Website & Domain Transfer
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Worth $600 Marketing Credits
- Free Unlimited Emails
- Free MySQL and Script Transfer
- Monthly Hosting Plans
- And more
Who is the Winner in terms of features? It's a Tie, as they offer similar features.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Security Features Comparison
Do you want to keep your website safe from any untoward incident? If yes, then before choosing a hosting brand make sure to consider their security features as well.
So let's take a look at some of the security features of Bluehost and HostGator.
Bluehost Security Features
- SSH Access - free
- SSL Certificate - free
- Two Factor Authentication - free
- Cloudflare CDN - free
- IP Blocker - free
- Hotlink Protection - free
- Password Protection Directories - free
- Domain Privacy + Protection - This is only offered for free with the Choice Plus plan and the Pro plan. If you want to take advantage of this security feature with other shared hosting plans then you have to pay $0.99 per month.
- Premium SSL Certificate (Positive SSL) - free with Pro Plan
- SiteLock Security Essential - This is an add-on security feature that is not offered for free with shared hosting. It costs $2.99 per month if you want to take advantage of it.
- Spam Expert - free with all plans (except Bluehost's basic plan)
- CodeGuard Basic - This is a backup protection security feature, through which automated backup is taken. This is only offered for free with the Choice Plus plan and the Pro plan. It costs $2.99 per month if you want to take advantage of it with their shared hosting plans.
HostGator Security Features
- Password Protection Directories - free with all hosting plans
- Prevent Spam with SpamAssassin - free with all hosting plans
- SSH Access - free with all hosting plans
- IP Deny Manager - free with all hosting plans
- 24/7 Server Monitoring - free with all hosting plans
- Hotlink Protection - free with all hosting plans
- SSL Certificate - free with all hosting plans
- SiteLock Essential - This is an add-on feature that costs $2.99 per month if you want to take advantage of this security feature with a shared hosting plan.
- Backup Protection powered by Codeguard - This is also an add-on feature that costs $2.00 per month if you want to take advantage of this feature with a shared hosting plan.
Who is the winner in terms of security features? Its Bluehost.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Customer Support Comparison
When you choose a hosting brand, then definitely pay attention to how good their customer support service is.
Whether you are a beginner or a professional website owner, you can face any issue related to your hosting at any time.
Let's find out below which one offers better customer service between Bluehost and HostGator.
Bluehost Customer Support
Bluehost's support team is always ready to assist its customers, as it provides 24/7 customer support service.
Here you can find options like live chat and phone support to connect with the support team.
We have been using Bluehost's services for a long time now and always get instant responses whenever we connect with the support team via live chat.
Though it has happened once or twice that we had to wait for 10 minutes to get a response, which is perfectly normal. Otherwise, Bluehost's support team always responds promptly.
Based on our experience, we have observed that Bluehost's support team is very knowledgeable and always speaks politely to their customers. Overall we are satisfied with Bluehost's customer service.
However, there are many other providers in the market that offer better customer support service than Bluehost, such as DreamHost, Hostinger, and WPX Hosting.
Apart from this, Bluehost also offers a huge knowledge base. Whenever we need to get any information about their service or platform, we first check the knowledge base.
HostGator Customer Support
HostGator also offers 24/7 customer support, but you also get email support, along with phone support and live chat. You don't get email support on Bluehost.
HostGator is given mixed reviews by many users in terms of customer support on the internet.
We are also using HostGator's services ourselves but we are not very impressed with their customer support.
The response time on live chat here is not good. Sometimes you may have to wait around 30 minutes to get a response, which has happened with us many times.
Although sometimes you may get a faster response, but the chances are less.
Although HostGator's customer support is decent, but Bluehost's is many times better than this in terms of customer support.
HostGator also offers a huge knowledge base (support portal) where you can find many articles related to their services. We are satisfied with HostGator's support portal.
Who is the winner in terms of Customer Support? Its Bluehost.
Bluehost vs HostMonster: Customer Rating
As a customer, whenever I buy a product from an eCommerce store like Amazon, eBay, etc., I make sure to check the customer ratings before making the payment.
Similarly, when you choose a hosting brand, be sure to check the ratings given by real customers.
So let's find out which one is better between Bluehost and HostGator in terms of customer rating.
Bluehost Customer Rating
As you can see in the screenshot, real users on Trustpilot have rated Bluehost 4.1 out of 5 stars.
moreover, 55% of users rated Bluehost's service as excellent while 34% of users rated it as bad.
HostGator Customer Rating
As you can see in the screenshot, real users on the Trustpilot have rated HostGator 4.2 out of 5 stars.
moreover, 50% of users rated Bluehost's service as excellent while 34% of users rated it as bad.
Who is the winner? As you can see, Bluehost and HostGator are giving tough competition to each other in terms of customer ratings. So there is a tie between the two.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Performance Comparison
Many users think that only by adding valuable content to their website, they can generate traffic and income.Although this is true, but it is not the whole truth. Only adding valuable content to the website will do nothing, but you will also have to pay more attention to the performance of the website.
Before choosing a web hosting you need to check what kind of uptime and response time (loading speed) your hosting brand offers.
If your hosting brand will offer better performance, then your website is much more likely to be ranked on search engines like Google, which also increases the chances of conversion and you can generate more and more revenue.
So let's find out which one offers better uptime and response time between Bluehost and HostGator.
Bluehost's Uptime and Response Time Result
As we have already told you in this article we have one website hosted on Bluehost, we have used the Sucuri Load Time Tester tool to check the loading speed of which.
You can see in the screenshot that our website hosted on Bluehost has a response time of 589 ms (0.589 sec), which is very good.
HostGator's Uptime and Response Time Result
Who is the Winner? Its Bluehost.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Hosting Plans and Pricing
So let us discuss the Shared Web Hosting plans and prices of Bluehost and HostGator below.Bluehost Shared Web Hosting Plans and Pricing
Bluehost offers four different tiers in its shared hosting plan, which are as follows:
1) Basic Plan: Recommended for Beginners. The cost of the basic plan starts at $2.95 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Host 1 Website
- 1 Free Domain
- Free SSL Certificate
- 10 GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 5 Emails Accounts
- Website Builder
- Malware Scanning
- And more
2) Plus Plan: Recommended for users who want to run multiple websites. The cost of the plus plan starts at $5.45 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Similar features to the Basic plan
- Host Unlimited Websites
- 20 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Free Marketing Credits worth $200
- 1 Spam Experts
- Unlimited Email Storage
- Unlimited SubDomains
- And more
3) Choice Plus Plan: Recommended for users who want more privacy and security. The cost of the choice plus plan starts at $5.45 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Here you get all the features of the Plus plan
- 40 GB SSD Storage
- Free Domain Privacy
- Free CodeGuard Basic (Automated Daily Backup) - only for 1st year
- And more
4) Pro Plan: Recommended for users who want more privacy, security, processing power, high server performance, and speed.
The cost of the pro plan starts at $13.95 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Here you get all the features of the Choice Plus plan
- 100 GB SSD Storage
- CodeGuard Basic - free for a lifetime
- 2 Spam Experts
- Premium SSL Certificate (Positive SSL)
- And more
Bluehost also offers other hosting services too, which are as follows:
- WordPress Hosting: starts at $2.95/mo
- WP Pro (Managed WordPress Hosting): starts at $19.95/mo
- VPS Hosting: starts at $19.99/mo
- Dedicated Hosting: starts at $79.99/mo
HostGator Shared Web Hosting Plans and Pricing
HostGator offers three different tiers in its shared hosting plan, which are as follows:
1) Hatchling Plan: Recommended for Beginners. The cost of the hatchling plan starts at $2.75 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Host 1 Website
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 1 Free Domain
- 10 GB of Disk Space
- Free Website Builder
- Free Unlimited Emails
- And more
2) Baby Plan: Ideal for users who wants to install multiple websites. The cost of the Baby plan starts at $3.50 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Here you get all the features of the Hatchling plan
- Host up to 5 Websites
- 40 GB of Disk Space
- Unlimited Addon / Parked Domains
- Free Marketing Credits worth $600
- And more
3) Business Plan: Users who are looking for a premium shared hosting plan or want faster page load times can go with the Business plan.
The cost of the Business plan starts at $5.25 per month. With this hosting plan you will get the following features:
- Here you get all the features of the Baby plan
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Websites Installations
- Cloudflare CDN
- Free Upgrade to Positive SSL
- Free Dedicated IP
- Free SEO Tools
- Professional Website Migration Services
- And more
HostGator also offers other hosting services too, which are as follows:
- WordPress Hosting: starts at $5.95/mo
- Cloud Hosting: starts at $4.95/mo
- Windows Hosting: starts at $4.76/mo
- VPS Hosting: starts at $23.95/mo
- Dedicated Hosting: starts at $89.98/mo
- Reseller Hosting: starts at $19.95/mo
Bluehost vs HostGator: Pros and Cons
Let us now discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Bluehost vs HostGator.
Pros of Bluehost (Good)
- You do not need to pay any amount for domain registration as Bluehost provides a free domain name for 1 year with all hosting plans.
- Bluehost offers a free website migration facility, which is a useful and money-saving deal for users who are not satisfied with their existing hosting and want to migrate their website to Bluehost.
- Bluehost is a very trusted hosting brand, which WordPress itself recommends to users on its official website “wordpress.org”.
- Here you are offered unlimited email accounts and email storage with all plans except the Basic plan
- Here you can make your website completely secure for your visitors by getting an SSL certificate absolutely free with every hosting plan.
- Bluehost's customer support service is amazing. You can get your problems resolved by experts 24/7 via live chat and phone support. Here you get the minimum hold time, which is less than 1 minute.
- If you are in any doubt regarding Bluehost's services, then here your money is safe for 30 days as Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cons of Bluehost (Bad)
- A backup facility is very essential to keep website data safe. But Bluehost does not offer this feature for free with Basic and Plus plans
- Bluehost uses upselling tactic at the time of billing. Be sure to remove add-on features that are of no use to you before making any payment.
Pros of HostGator (Good)
- HostGator offers WordPress website transfer, domain transfer, cPanel transfer, MySQL transfer, and script transfer absolutely free.
- Your money on HostGator is safe for 30 days, and you can use their services for 30 days without any worries. HostGator offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- HostGator offers free Google Ads credits worth $500 and Bing Ads credits worth $100. You can use these marketing credits to promote your website
- If you don't have a domain name then you don't need to pay any amount to buy it, as HostGator provides 1 domain name absolutely free for 1 year with each hosting plan.
- Here you take advantage of a free SSL certificate on each plan, giving your customers the confidence that your website is completely secure for them to browse through.
- HostGator offers cPanel. Even if you are a beginner, you can easily use cPanel and manage your hosting account without any particular guidance.
- You can use live chat, phone support, and email support to connect with experts on HostGator. It offers 24/7 customer support service.
Cons of HostGator (Bad)
- HostGator also offers monthly hosting plans, but the prices are very expensive
- The customer support service is not good as compared to Bluehost.
Final Verdict on Bluehost vs HostGator
So as you can see, in this comparison between Bluehost vs HostGator, we have discussed both in detail, from features to performance to plans and pricing.
In some cases, Bluehost has won, and in some cases HostGator. Both have been giving tough competition to each other.
However, it is up to you to decide what your requirement is. If you want better customer support and performance, Bluehost is the best.
On the other hand, HostGator is the best if you want great features at an affordable price.
As we told you that we are using the services of both. In such a situation, if you ask us for a suggestion to choose one of these two, then we recommend Bluehost. This is because we are more satisfied with Bluehost than HostGator.
So what do you think about Bluehost vs HostGator, do let us know by commenting in the comment box below
Also Read:
- Bluehost Review - Is it the Best Web Hosting for Your Site?
- HostGator Web Hosting Review | HostGator Pros and Cons
- Bluehost VPS Review: Is It Good Over Shared Hosting?
- Which Bluehost Plan is Best for Bloggers and Beginners
- Bluehost vs GoDaddy Comparison: Which is the Best?
- Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers
- Best Bluehost Alternatives: Based on Real Testing
- HostMonster vs HostGator: Which is the Best Web Host?
- HostGator vs Hostinger: Which is the Best Web Host?
- HostGator vs GoDaddy: Which is the Best Web Host?
- Best HostGator Alternatives: Based on Real Testing
- HostGator vs DreamHost Comparison: Which is the Best?
- Bluehost vs HostMonster: Which is the Best Web Host?
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