Hostgator was started by Brent Oxley in 2002 and is now one of the leading providers of Web Hosting Solutions. Started in a dorm room, the company is now one of the fastest growing private companies in America with over 2.5 domains hosted on their servers.
In December last year (2014), Brent Oxley sold Hostgator to EIG (Endurance International Group) for $225 million USD. Yes, Hostgator is now acquired by the EIG and guess what, their website finally got a new look. 🙂
Hostgator Web Hosting Review
My review is based on my own experience (9 years) and on other honest reviews on the internet forums and websites. I am running close to a hundred websites on various host and have been using Hostgator since 2006.
Performance
The first thing that anyone looks for in a web host is the performance. A Web Host that does not perform or do what it is expected to do is just waste. Ex: Installing and running WordPress, Joomla or other software without a problem.
In terms of performance, Hostgator Rocks.
So I give 4.5 ★★★★✰ for performance.
Reliability
Reliability can be in terms of – Website uptime and Data Security.
Reliability: Website Uptime
Hostgator claims to offer 99.9% uptime. Well, it has been quite true through my experience. I hardly had any outages (downtime) during my first 7 years with the Hostgator but a few months ago many of my sites went down for no reason and that too quite often.
Upon contacting the support, they said they were upgrading their servers because of which there are outages. I didn’t face any problem since then.
Reliability: Data Security
Downtime causes inconvenience and creates bad reputation on your site but what if you wake up in the morning and see your website just disappear? That’s a webmaster’s worst nightmare.
This is very rare in today’s time but still not impossible. It didn’t happen to me and haven’t heard any such hosting horror stories from any of my friends and acquaintances.
Overall I would have easily given a 4.5 ★★★★✰ for Reliability but because of my experiences a few months ago I would only give it a 4 ★★★★
Customer Support
The Customer support experience with Hostgator has not been as good as it was before but not bad either. Hostgator Customer support was awesome until lately. The support has deteriorated a bit since 2014, probably because they are growing.
The average wait time for the phone or chat support is 15 to 20 Minutes during peak times.
The support before a year or so have been excellent and the average wait time for the chat support was hardly 0 to 7 minutes.
Never the less, they are always ready to help and the overall response and experience has been good.
I would give 4 ★★★★✰ for Customer Support.
Features
Among many features, the few main features you should look for are
✔ Backup Service: Hostgator offers a convenient way to backup your entire site or database through their control panel.
✔ 24 Hour Customer Support: Hostgator has a 24/7 support team that you can contact anytime of the day or night.
✔ User Friendly Control Panel: Hostgator uses cPanel for Linux hosting and Plesk for Windows Hosting.
✔ 1 Click Install: Hostgator accounts come with Quickinstall and Fantastico to do this job.
✔ Scalability: Hostgator has the most basic plans to the high end Dedicated servers so if your site grows big and you need to move to a VPS or dedicated server, you are covered.
Also Read: What to Look For in a Web Hosting
I would give 4.5 ★★★★✰ for their great features.
Value for Money
Hostgator’s most basic and starting plan is called Hatching Plan and starts with $3.96/month for 3 year commit and $5.56/month for a 1 year commit where in you get Unlimited Space and Bandwidth alone with all the features mentioned above.
And if you use our coupon code shangrila9 you get additional $9.94 OFF So it’s definitely worth the money.
My rating: 4.5 ★★★★✰
Conclusion
The Good: User Friendly Control Panel, Unlimited Space & Bandwidth, $100 free adsense credit, Good plan options and cheap.
The Bad: Average Customer Support, Frequent Recent downtimes
And the Ugly: Their website and the Mascot.
TRIVIA: Though the company has seen a huge growth since its inception yet their some what ugly 750px wide website didn’t change much. See their site in 2002 and Jan 2015. But don’t go for the looks because this Gator is out for some serious business.
Hostgator Discount Coupons 2022
Coupon Code – shangrila25 will give you 25% OFF on your total bill amount
Coupon Code – shangrila9 will give you $9.95 OFF on your total bill amount
These coupons are applicable on all the Web Hosting plans on Hostgator.
If you have used hostgator before, feel free to leave a comment below and tell us your experience.
