HostGator was founded in 2002 and currently hosts over nine million domains in 200 different countries. The company offers some of the best quality shared, VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting. Over 400,000 individuals and business owners are using HostGator as their web hosting provider and nearly 90% of its clients are satisfied with their web hosting.

When it comes to web hosting, HostGator provides its clients with a reliable and efficient service. With competitive pricing and extensive features, they are truly one of the top rated web hosting providers. Our complete and unbiased HostGator review will give you an idea if their web hosting is right for your website.

Plans and Pricing

HostGator has 3 shared web hosting plans to choose from. To make it fair across all of our reviews, the price is based on the 1 year term. All of their web hosting plans give you a free shared SSL certificate.

• The Hatchling Plan – This is their cheapest plan that costs $5.56 per month and entitles you to unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, and the ability to host one domain for every web hosting account purchase. You cannot purchase a private SSL certificate with this plan.
• The Baby Plan – Their baby plan costs $7.96 per month and entitles you to unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, and the ability to host unlimited domains. This plan gives you free bonus features including the ability to park unlimited domains and to set up a private SSL certificate.
• The Business Plan – This plan is one of their most advanced plans that ends up costing you $11.96 per month. The business plan entitles you to unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, and the ability to host unlimited domains. Their business plan goes above and beyond by giving you additional features such as unlimited domain parking, toll-free phone number, and a free private SSL certificate.

If you are looking for advanced web hosting and other services, HostGator has several other options including:

There isn’t anything you can hold back against HostGator when it comes to hosting features. You have everything you need to get your blog or website going.

Control Panel Interface and Ease of Use

With free instant hosting setup and cPanel interface, HostGator has to be one of the easiest hosting providers I have ever worked with. However, it’s not a perfect score because their free site builder can give beginners some confusion and problems. For us, it was a quick and easy way to build our site, but what’s easy for us might not be for others.

If you are new to the whole web hosting industry, cPanel is an absolute must have when comparing hosting providers. Why? It’s the easiest way to control and manage every aspect of your website. Although, some custom panels come very close to cPanel.

Website Building and Design Tools

Their site builder is packed with hundreds of free website templates. The site builder starts off by allowing you to choose the website you want to build and then moves onto the design section that gives you the option to choose one of their templates. After you select your design, you are given the option to add pages to your website such as about us, contact page, or a blog page. Once you finish that up, you are ready to publish you website and it is live to the public.

You can also upload your own templates and design your website using your own software. Overall, their site building tools are extremely valuable and easy to use.

Help and Support

Customer support is available 24/7 via phone, chat, and by creating a support ticket (pretty much email). There are tons of video tutorials and most common questions can be found in one of their forum posts. Their help and support is not the best but it’s decent. However, if you are one of those  people that pay late for their services, HostGator will suspend your service awfully fast. As with any service, you have to pay to use is so I do not know why people would pay late. Other than that, there is no other issues with HostGator.

Pros and Cons

✓All of their shared web hosting plans give you unlimited bandwidth and disk space.
✓HostGator runs on a cPanel control interface for easier navigation.
✓Their web hosting plans allow you to use their free site builder.
✓There are tons of scripts that can easily be installed.
✓HostGator has a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all of their shared web hosting.
✓They have a 45-day money back guarantee.
✓Their help and support is available 24/7.
✗Costs more as you upgrade plans.
✗Account suspension for late payments.

The Verdict – Is HostGator Good For Your Business?

We would recommend HostGator to any business or individuals running blogs and other type of websites. There are three shared hosting plans that can match most business budget needs. They even go above and beyond and give you a toll-free number with their business plan. If you decide to give HostGator a try and join the thousands of other people using their service, I suggest you to purchase hosting for at least a year or so to get the best deal.

Do you have anything to add to our HostGator review? Leave us a comment below!