However, as this review will show, there’s more to consider than low prices, seemingly generous allowances, and brand name recognition when it comes to choosing a web host.
Below, we not only explore the features you get access to with their shared hosting, but also what kind of loading times and other types of performance levels you can expect when paying just a few dollars a month for one of their entry-level plans.
By the time you’ve read our evaluation of their features, checked the data from our Pingdom site speed monitoring and seen the performance results from our Load Impact tests, you’ll have all of the information you’ll need to decide whether or not HostGator is the right host for your website.
Let’s dive in…
About HostGator
According to their marketing materials, HostGator are one of the world’s ten largest web hosting companies.
They’ve hosted more than 8 million domains, and have more than 850 employees to support their customers around the clock. In fact, as their shared plans include 24/7/365 access to their support staff — via live chat, email and telephone — if support is a top priority, then HostGator could be the company for you.
That being said, when it comes to value for money, HostGator, on paper at least, are hard to beat. So, with that in mind, let’s start by looking at how much the shared hosting plans from HostGator cost.
HostGator Pricing
If affordability is one of your key criteria when choosing a web host, HostGator have some very appealingly priced shared hosting plans:
- Hatchling: Starting at $2.75 (and up to $10.95) a month for one website.
- Baby: Starting at $3.95 (and up to $11.95) a month for unlimited websites.
- Business: Starting at $5.95 (and up to $16.95) a month for unlimited websites and access to additional tools.
All plans include a free SSL certificate that you can easily apply to your website via the account dashboard. There’s a 45-day money-back guarantee in place, too, giving you time to try this service without financial risk.
You can also get a free transfer of a WordPress website and/or a cPanel website and account to HostGator, and if you pay for 12 months or longer upfront you’ll get a free domain name registration — something that could save you around $10. If you want domain privacy, though, you’ll have to pay $14.95 a year for that, so it may make more financial sense to purchase your domain separately.
We’ll cover the other features and what you get access to on these plans throughout the rest of this review.
HOW DOES THE HOSTGATOR PRICING WORK?
As you can see, the prices of the plans vary because a discount is applied to a customer’s first invoice. Also, the more months of hosting you pay for upfront, the greater the discount you’ll receive.
As you can pay for up to 36 months in advance, it’s possible to lock in the promotional rate for up to three years. However, the downside of this is that, after the 45-day money-back guarantee period, you’re locked into a contract that could be up to three years long.
When you renew your plan, or you decide to pay for fewer months upfront, you’ll pay a higher rate. This non-promotional rate could be as high as the amount in the brackets above, depending on how many months you pay for in advance when renewing.
While this is a bit confusing, the HostGator website has the full details of the pricing rates of the shared plans.
Another eye-catching detail of the HostGator plans is that, unlike some other popular shared hosting providers, there are no storage, bandwidth or page view limits or allowances. Instead, according to the marketing information, everything is unlimited to ensure your website is able to grow as large and as popular as it can.
0 Comments