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 was one of the oldest hosting companies. The service performs well and is suitable for hosting small and medium-sized sites. The service 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 out of this introductory offer is to buy a plan for the maximum number of 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
When it comes to 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 been consistently monitoring the service and several other hosting services.
My HostGator site recorded an average server response time of 620 ms, making it as the slowest score among 16 hosts we’ve tested in this year.
Uptime
Uptime is one factor that hugely impacts a site’s success and ranking, which is why it should be taken very seriously.
When I tested the uptime of my HostGator site recently, the site reflected an uptime of 99.94%. Again, HostGator recorded one of the lowest uptime score.
Load Testing
I tested the load-handling ability of my HostGator site by sending 500 concurrent traffic to the site.
As per the test results, the site recorded 800 ms. Going by the results, 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, with the service scoring 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 those hosting companies with the most affordable pricing, and customers can start for as low as $3.75 per month. However, the service comes with comparatively more resources than other hosting services for the same price range.
Free Email
HostGator also allows customers to create free email accounts. While many other hosting services have stopped providing customers with this service for free, customers can still have this service 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, and this would also help customers save some money. Besides, 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 has to be managed using the control panel, it is essential to pay close attention to this feature. 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 have an advantage for sure.
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 have free security features. The only way to go about security 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. As far as the HostGator support service goes, it 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 need to pay an additional price to get any of these backup copies. Hence, HostGatorhase has a complete backup system; the only way to go about this would be to have a third-party backup solution such as CodeGuard.
Conclusion
Is HostGator any good? No, HostGator is not suitable to host any kind of WordPress sites, due to their poor performance and uptime, as obtained from our test data. 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 service in the same price range but with superior performance and support.