Over the last year, HostGator has had an average uptime of 99.98 percent. Even though they’re one of the biggest and oldest web hosting companies, they still have a good record.
This article outlines all you need to know about HostGator.
Watch the below video on HostGator:
It comes with unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free domain name for the first year, and a free SSL certificate. They also have great customer service. They were able to connect to a live chat right away and answer each question in a few seconds.
The bad news is that many extra services, like backups and security, will be added on as extra costs. After your first term is over, the renewal rates rise quickly.
Here’s a look at our hands-on test, which we used third-party data from Pingdom to show how well they did.
There are a lot of good things about using HostGator shared servers.
Now, HostGator’s uptime performance hasn’t been a big deal in the past few years. Even though we’ve been tracking for a year and a half now.
It was also quick and friendly. They will help you move your site to their service for free. Beginners will also like a lot of the options that are simple and easy to understand.
These are the main points:
1. 99.98 percent of the time, the system was up and running.
This is how HostGator has been for the last 12 months: They have had 99.98% uptime with less than two hours of downtime.
As another good thing, the company has an uptime promise. If they fall below 99.90% of the time, you can get one month of credit on your account.
This guarantee doesn’t include things like planned maintenance or hacks that can’t be foreseen, of course. As long as you do that within 30 days, they’ll give you the money back.
We’ve started to notice that a lot of other web hosts are now offering uptime guarantees. This means that all of their customers are better off. Competitors coming out and doing this raises the bar for everyone else in the field. If they make a promise, everyone else in the market has to either match it or risk falling behind.
December 2021: 99.94 percent. November 2021: 99.99 percent. October 2021: 99.99 percent. September 2021: 99.97 percent. August 2021: 99.99 percent. July 2021: 99.98 percent. June 2021: 99.99 percent. May 2021: 100%.
2. It took 660 ms to load.
We didn’t have any problems with our site being online with the help of HostGator’s servers over the last year.
However, what about the speed of their servers?
It took HostGator about 660 ms to load a page on average over the last year.
This isn’t the fastest speed we’ve seen, but it’s good enough to get a place in our “Pros” list. Furthermore, HostGator has made a lot of changes to how quickly its pages load. In the past, it took more than a second to load our site. Now, things are much faster.
Why is it important to have a fast loading time for a web page, though?
It has been shown that slow page loading times have a direct effect on your visitor’s experience. And that has an effect on your bottom line, too.
Some things you can do to make your site faster without having to change web hosts. But if your host is always slow, that means you’ll always be losing.
3. Helpful People
In the same way as other well-known providers like SiteGround and Dreamhost, HostGator has a knowledge base, phone, email, and live chat.
We tried out their live chat feature.
In less than two minutes, we asked a simple question about their shared hosting plans. We were connected to a customer service rep right away. A lot of the answers were quick and well-written.
4.there is a 45-day money back guarantee.
This is how HostGator feels about their service: They extend the industry-average 30 day money back guarantee by two weeks or so to 45 days.
So you can use them for a whole month and still get your money back if there are problems.
All shared, reseller, and VPS hosting plans come with a 45-day money-back guarantee.
It doesn’t apply to the fees HostGator charges for its dedicated servers, administrative fees, and fees for installing custom software, but it does apply to other fees. These caveats are common in the hosting industry after we’ve looked at a lot of terms of service.
Suppose your plan came with a free domain name. They’ll take the standard fee of $15.00 for the domain out of the refund money, so that’s how it works.
It’s not over yet. HostGator’s terms say that they can take up to 90 days to refund you. If you pay with a check, money order, Western Union payment, or bank wire transfer, you won’t get a refund.
People who start new plans or accounts can’t get refunds. So if you already signed up for one, and you’re canceling a renewal or second try, you won’t get anything in exchange for it.
All foreign currency refunds are done based on the U.S. Dollar exchange rate, and that’s it!
5. Site Security Features You Can Use.
HostGator’s shared hosting plans aren’t very fancy. You’re getting enough for one site, but not a lot more.
It’s good that they have a few extra safety features, like the ability to add SiteLock monitoring to your site. This service will run every day and look for any possible site breaches or hacks. When they find one, they will let you know right away.
They also have Spam Assassin on their email plans, which can help you keep spam from getting into your inbox in the first place.
SiteLock will cost you a little extra. It costs $1.99 a month, which is billed annually at $23.88.
We’ll talk about this more in the Cons.
Shared hosting plans have some drawbacks.
HostGator’s consistently high uptime was, to say the least, surprising (in a good way). We also like that they have a guarantee that their website will be up all the time.
They also have a beginner-friendly approach and great customer service, so there’s a lot to like about the service they offer.
Because we tried them out, we also ran into some problems. This is what we found:
1. There are a lot of extra fees for “True” backups, Gmail, and malware.
HostGator’s shared hosting plans are cheap, with introductory prices starting at just $2.75 a month for the first month (for 36 months).
Hatchling is their cheapest plan. It includes one domain name, one-click installations of apps like WordPress, Joomla, and many other popular apps that can be set up with just a few clicks, unlimited bandwidth, and a free SSL certificate. Basically, all of the things you need to make a full website.
As far as their default plans go, that’s about all they offer. It will cost you extra when it’s time to pay for all the extras, like site backups, Gmail, SiteLock Monitoring, and SEO tools.
When you look at the site, you see words like “available” that make you think the features are there. There are a lot of the best web hosts we’ve looked at, and you’ll see that many of them include these extras for free.
When you get to the very end of the process, when you have to enter your billing information, you’ll realize that all of these extra features will cost you extra money.
Gmail costs $5 a month or $60 a year for each user, which is what they usually charge. They also charge a lot of money for things like CodeGuard (to back up your site) and SiteLock (to keep it safe). If you run into problems with your site, they don’t even keep many older versions on file to help you fix them.
So even though the first plan seems cheap at first, it ends up costing a lot in the long run.
2. Price “Tricks” that are used in the industry.
If you want to pay more for your web hosting, HostGator does two things that are common in the business.
The first is advertising a low rate like $2.75 a month, only for you to find out that you’ll have to pay for three years in order to get it. It would cost $10.95 per month if you wanted to use the service for a whole month at once.
That’s just the start, though. Because on top of that, HostGator’s renewal prices go up a lot after your first plan ends.
Suppose you decide to keep that low rate for three years. You’ll be getting a good deal, for sure.
Having to renew your plan in three years is when things start to go wrong for you You’ll pay $6.95 a month for the same service at that point, which is more than double what you paid before.
Do we think HostGator is good?
Is that true? That’s not all.
HostGator’s shared hosting does have a lot of good things about it. The uptime has been good, as well as the speed. The service was good. It’s also easy to use because there are so many beginner-friendly options.
Even so, the extra price hikes make it too expensive for us to give it our full endorsement.
A few quick facts
* Is this domain? The first year.
There was a simple way to sign up.
* Money-Back: There is a 45-day money-back promise.
For example, if you buy a long-term plan, you won’t get the “initial” price. A lot of people are going to have to pay a lot more to stay in their homes. Also, there are extra costs for things like backups and malware monitoring, as well.
Upsells: There are a lot of them, and there are many of them.
* Account Activation: It can take up to 24 to 48 hours for your account to be set up.
* cPanel is the control panel and dashboard experience.
QuickInstall makes it easy to install popular apps and CMSs (like WordPress and Joomla) in just a few steps, so this is the first thing they help you do.