HostGator Review 2024 – Avoid at Any Cost!
HostGator Review Summary
HostGator continues to be the slowest hosting service by a mile. It has the slowest TTFB, which puts the overall load time on the higher side. Its uptime is 99.94%, with more than 66 outages in a year, one of the lowest uptime records among other hosts we’ve tested so far. It failed to pass our load test, where it got a timeout error, and the test didn’t go through fully. Again, it has got the slowest global TTFB. With all these poor performances, their support is not great either to host your websites. Overall, there are multiple superior solutions available, and you don’t need to choose HostGator for any reason.
HostGator Pros
HostGator Cons
Starts at $3.75/month
What is HostGator?
Started in 2002, HostGator is one of the oldest hosting companies. The service performs well and is suitable for hosting small and medium-sized sites. It is pretty affordable and easy to use. The web host comes with good features and has a few powerful add-ons, using which you can have an extremely reliable setup for your business.
HostGator Pricing
HostGator offers customers four plans, which have been classified based on the number of websites. Here are the plan details:
- Hatchling Plan: Single website, $2.75 per month.
- Baby Plan: Unlimited websites, $3.50 per month.
- Business Plan: Unlimited websites, $5.25 per month.
Certain features are standard in all plans:
- One-click WordPress installs
- Free WordPress/cPanel website transfer
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain for the first year
The best part is that all the plans are available for introductory prices, making them very affordable. One way to make the most of this introductory offer is to buy a plan for the maximum possible years. Selecting the Baby plan over the Hatchling plan would be wise because the Hatchling plan offers just one site support while the Baby plan supports unlimited sites.
HostGator Performance
TTFB
Regarding performance, the first obvious thing to check is the server response time. I hosted a site on the HostGator platform for testing purposes and have consistently monitored the service and several other hosting services.
My HostGator site recorded an average server response time of 620 ms, the slowest score among the 16 hosts we’ve tested this year.
Last 12 months average speed of HostGator:
- September 2024 average TTFB: 1220 ms
- August 2024 average TTFB: 1095 ms
- July 2024 average TTFB: 828 ms
- June 2024 average TTFB: 743 ms
- May 2024 average TTFB: 723 ms
- April 2024 average TTFB: 675 ms
- March 2024 average TTFB: 665 ms
- February 2024 average TTFB: 685 ms
- January 2024 average TTFB: 700 ms
- December 2023 average TTFB: 649 ms
- November 2023 average TTFB: 644 ms
Uptime
Uptime is one factor that hugely impacts a site’s success and ranking, so it should be taken very seriously.
When I tested the uptime of my HostGator site recently, it reflected an uptime of 99.94%. Again, HostGator recorded one of the lowest uptime scores.
Last 12 months average uptime of HostGator:
- September 2024 average uptime: 99.99%
- August 2024 average uptime: 99.99%
- July 2024 average uptime: 100%
- June 2024 average uptime: 100%
- May 2024 average uptime: 99.96%
- April 2024 average uptime: 99.98%
- March 2024 average uptime: 99.94%
- February 2024 average uptime: 100%
- January 2024 average uptime: 99.90%
- December 2023 average uptime: 100%
- November 2023 average uptime: 99.94%
Load Testing
I tested the load-handling ability of my HostGator site by sending 500 concurrent traffic to the site.
The test results showed that the site recorded 800 ms. Thus, HostGator starter plans can’t handle much traffic.
Global TTFB
The global TTFB test is an excellent performance test to determine the TTFB of hosting services across global locations.
I pinged my HostGator site from as many as 40 global locations, and the results were a bit disappointing. The service scored an average TTFB of 809 ms.
Core Web Vitals
User experience has become an essential factor for ranking these days. Before a site can deliver the best user experience to its visitors, it is necessary to find a hosting service with decent Core Web Vitals.
I have constantly been testing the Core Web Vitals of the various hosting services. As per my last Core Web Vital test, my HostGator site recorded a ‘Largest Contentful Paint’ of 931 ms, a ‘Total Blocking Time’ of 0 ms, and a ‘Cumulative Layout Shift’ of 0. Hence, you can count on HostGator in terms of user experience. If you plan to improve Largest Contentful Paint on WordPress site, this host is not for you.
HostGator Features
Affordable Pricing
HostGator is one of the hosting companies with the most affordable pricing. Customers can start for as low as $3.75 per month. However, the service comes with comparatively more resources than other hosting services in the same price range.
Free Email
HostGator also allows customers to create free email accounts. While many other hosting services have stopped offering this service for free, customers can still have it with HostGator. Besides, there is no limit on the number of email accounts users can create in HostGator.
Free Domain
HostGator provides customers with a free domain for the first year on all plans, which can also help customers save some money. Having a domain from the hosting service means you don’t have to configure the domain with the hosting since it will be automatically configured.
Unlimited sites
Another cool thing about the HostGator pricing is that all the higher plans have unlimited sites and capacity, unlike other hosting companies. This is helpful for those who may need to host multiple sites.
Control Panel
Since every aspect of the hosting account must be managed using the control panel, paying close attention to this feature is essential. HostGator comes with cPanel, which happens to be the most popular control panel, and those who have used cPanel with some other hosting services before will definitely have an advantage.
With a cPanel, you can add or remove domain names, install CMS like WordPress via Softaculous, manage backups and traffic logs, monitor resources such as bandwidth and disk space usage, and change PHP versions.
Security
Unfortunately, unlike other hosting companies, HostGator doesn’t offer free security features. The only way to protect yourself in HostGator is to choose one of the SiteLock plans for an additional price. SiteLock comes with a Daily malware scan and Automated malware removal.
Support
A reliable support service is beneficial when you are stuck with technical complexities. The HostGator support service comprises 24×7 live chat, phone, and tickets, alongside video tutorials. Even though customer service has improved over the years, you may sometimes experience longer waiting times.
Backups
Hosting a site without a proper backup is risky, and customers need to pay close attention to the backup policy of hosting services before choosing one. Even though HostGator has automated daily, weekly, and monthly backups in place, the host does it as a courtesy and is not guaranteed.
However, customers must pay an additional price to get these backup copies. Hence, HostGatorhase has a complete backup system; the only way to do this would be to have a third-party backup solution such as CodeGuard.
Conclusion
Is HostGator any good? No, as our test data shows, it is not suitable to host any kind of WordPress site due to its poor performance and uptime. The only good thing about HostGator is its affordable introductory pricing. However, there are more than ten hosting services we’ve tested that offer their services in the same price range but with superior performance and support.
Ask us about your hosting needs. We’ll match them to our performance data to find the best hosting for you.