There are a ton of hosting providers out there and the REAL truth is that they are not all that different from each other.
It’s those small little details that have a need to be looked at. A simple thing such as finding out where the datacenter of a certain hosting provider is located can serve as a decision making factor and help you determine if it’s the right solution for you or not.
It turns out that your geographic location in the world strongly influences your website’s performance in terms of speed and efficiency.
Should you utilize WordPress hosting with HostGator? Find out everything about Hostgator in this in-depth review.
By the time you go through this post, you will know for sure if this is the right hosting solution for you and if not, you will be introduced to different hosting providers that might be more suitable for you. Remember, it’s all in those small little details.
There are a lot of hostgator.com review websites out there that praise Hostgator like it’s the most perfect hosting provider that exists on the entire internet. Don’t get me wrong, that MIGHT be true for some people.
On the other hand, many hostgator.com review websites truly are genuine with the intent to HELP people find their solution, rather than just pushing a product to someone and saying how great it is.
There is no perfect hosting provider that can suit everyone’s needs. This is one of those things that tend to vary from person to person, I can say that people usually fall into two categories when it comes down to it.
Depending on a lot of things such as your website’s niche or type and in MOST cases your site is is:
1. A blog post type of Website.
2. eCommerce Website/Online store.
Yes, there many other types of websites out there but in general it all comes down to one or both of these types.
Let’s start by pointing out the fact that most reviews out there say a lot of good things about Hostgator’s overall uptime server performance.
Hostgator hosts more than +10 million websites on the world wide web and a large percentage of those people are based in the USA.
While the MAJORITY of Hostgator users are satisfied and happy with their purchase, that’s not the case for some people that are using or have tried this hosting provider outside the USA.
In other words, if you are outside this geographic location you may experience a slow response rate and/or server downtime.
It’s best to find if your hosting provider has datacentres that are as close to you as possible.
For example, if you are from India then you should use Hostgator India as they have data centers there.
The silver lining here is that all pricing plans with Hostgator come with a 45-day money-back guarantee.
This gives you plenty of time to find out if this service works for you and your website and if not, make use of the risk-free refund policy
Let’s find out more about Hostgator, its options and features.
One of The Best Hostgator Reviews in 2019
Let’s start by presenting everything that’s included within one of the most genuine Hostgator reviews, then we will find out what people are saying about this hosting provider and what kind of websites does it serve best.
Often times people are concerned with the security features of their hosting provider of choice.
If it’s not secure and does not have protection against malware, spam or any other type of malicious software that can cause your website to experience difficulties which leads to loss of traffic and revenue.
Let’s find out exactly how secure is Hostagot from similar threats.
Is Hostgator Secure?
In terms of website protection and detection of threats, HostGator truly has that in mind with their every price plan.
They have features that look for threats and malware such as SiteLock. 
This software runs daily checks on your website to make sure that no threat has been left undetected and safely removed.
They make sure that every automated bot attack is blocked. Another thing that’s worth mentioning is their web application firewall. the firewall blocks, filters, and monitors HTTP traffic to and from a web application.
In other words, it serves as a safe passage and data transfer between servers. The downside to all of this is that they will charge you additional fees for Security Features, so keep that in mind.
On top of that, if your website gets violated due to a breach through your passwords, Hostgator cannot do anything for you with their general service security.
Overall, if you are willing to pay a small additional fee to secure your website, you can be sure that their Security Structure is top of the game.
Is HostGator Shared Hosting?
Yes, one of HostGator’s plans includes a shared hosting. This is the best option for small and recently launched websites in terms of price and quality.
As you grow your website and reach more traffic, you can always upgrade your hosting plan to better suit your website’s needs and performance.
As a free bonus, Hostgator makes it extremely easy to migrate your website to another hosting server.
This means that you can transfer everything within your website, all the data, scripts and domain names.
All your subdomains that are associated with this website can be safely transferred too, fast and easy.
With HostGator, you can get help from the customer support team and let them handle everything involved in the migration of your online property.
Keep in mind that you might want to migrate your site within 30 days of signing up.
After that period is over you may not be entitled to this bonus feature anymore. A cPanel transfer is included too.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is short for control panel and it’s the interface that you will use to manage your web hosting accounts.
In other words, it makes it easier for you to create, and structure your website.
cPanel is extremely popular for all types of hosting services including, shared hosting, VPS and Dedicated servers. It’s all included and handled inside Hostgator.
Let’s find out more about Hostgator’s site management dashboard.
Site Management within Hostgator
When you create a website with Hostgator you will also receive instant access to its site management dashboard.
Inside you can fully optimize and control your webspace. This is where you will get access to the free one-click cPanel installation and some upselling features such as CodeGuard Backup.
What this means is that for an extra fee you can safely back up your websites and all their data in the unlikely event of losing your online property.
They do, however, provide free website mirroring. This gives you multiple versions of your website on different servers.
Hosting Plans at Hostgator
When it comes to shared hosting, HostGator has three plans to choose from.
With the hatchling plan you can get up to one domain with the one click install option, unmetered bandwidth free SSL certificate and a single free domain. Prices start at $2.75
With the baby plan in action you have access to unlimited domains with one click install option, unmetered bandwidth free SSL certificate and a free domain. Prices start from $3.95
With this plan you will get everything that’s inside the other plans plus a free upgrade to positive SSL certificate, free dedicated IP address, some free SEO tools and a free domain. Prices start from $5.95
Their VPS Servers have all the necessary resources of a dedicated hosting but at a cheaper price.
This plan is ideal for larger websites that get a decent amount of traffic on a regular basis.
With multiple layers of network security, they ensure that the servers are running smoothly and efficiently at all times even through high peak moments.
The dedicated server plans are the most expensive ones. They provide you with a dedicated server that is focused entirely on maintaining the performance of your website.
In other words, it ensures that it has everything in place to provide the optimum server speed and performance level to massive websites that get a lot of traffic on a consistent basis.
Pro’s and Con’s of Hostgator
Pro: Their platform is very user-friendly as is suitable for beginners. There are a lot of tutorials and videos explaining how everything works and how you can build and design your website by yourself fast and easy with the site builder Gator.
The downside is that it costs extra. It’s as easy as it can get with a drag and drop feature that can help you customize your site in a way of your choosing.
You will learn about site analytics and will get a FREE SSL Certificate.
This certificate ensures that all the data of your website’s visitors are kept safe and secure and it’s a good overall trust factor.
Pro: There is a build-in eCommerce plan with everything that you would need to create, customize and manage an online store. You don’t need to worry about any additional plugins or tools because it’s all there for you.
Pro: Hostgator has a track record of 99.9% server uptime which is quite good compared to other hosting providers out there. On top of that, they have a guarantee that if they fail with their uptime performance and your website experiences issues because of that you can get one month’s worth of credits towards your account.
In other words, they will pay you if you are using a shared or reseller server and it falls below the 99.9% server uptime guarantee.
Pro: A 45-day guarantee is at place with all purchases inside Hostgator. This gives you a really great opportunity to test out how everything works and if for any reason you’re not satisfied, you can always get an instant refund, hassle-free.
Pro: With Hostgator, you have the flexibility to choose between monthly or yearly billing. That is not the case with some hosting providers and they charge a fixed yearly sum. This is a great thing as it gives you more freedom and you don’t have to commit yourself for a full year if you don’t want to.
Pro: Free Website transfer and complete migration service. If you decide to migrate to or from Hastgotar within a month from signing up, they will take care of it for you, absolutely free of charge.
This will definitely make it easier for you to move around servers without worrying about any issues that might come along the process.
Con: Hostgator does not give you a free domain, a similar hosting provider called BlueHost, provides you with a free domain for every kind of hosting service.
Con: Just like any other hosting provider out there, it’s important to find out where your hosting provider of choice has their datacenters located and compare it with your geographic location in the world.
Otherwise, you risk running into issues such as slow server response time and slow loading and overall website speed.
Con: There are a lot of upsells along the way and you might end up buying into additional features, tools, and plugins which you will probably end up needing at some point.
It’s important to remember this when making your final decision. They also have some great additional bonus features like Email accounts, SiteLock Monitoring, and SEO tools but they all cost extra.
If you are interested in a hosting provider that has all the necessary tools and equipment to create, design and launch a fully optimized ready to go SEO website for free, then check out this Hosting Service Here.
Con: If you are outside of the USA, you run a higher risk of experiencing slow response time. You will still get compensated if they fail to meet their guarantee of 99.9% server uptime.
What are people saying about Hostgator?
Given the fact that so many millions of websites out there use Hostgator as their hosting provider, it’s safe to say that not everyone will have a great experience in terms of performance.
If you are using a USA based datacenter for all your server hosting needs and live on the other side of the globe, odds are that your overall website perormance will be LESS than that of someone living in the USA and using the same hosting servers as you.
In other words, if you live in France, it would be better to chose to a hosting provider with datacenters that are reletevely close or at least not that far away.
If we take uk.truspilot.com for instance, we can see that most reviews there are negative towards Hostgator and most people are complaining about their server speed time performance.
It also seems like in the past their customer support service was not very good but in recent time this has changed.
Even within trustpilot you see how they reply to each and every customer review and are definitely trying to improve the quality of their customer service and support.
People also mention that if you want to use the fully discounted hosting rate for $2.95/Month you would need to prepay for three years upfront and you don’t really realise this untill you are already at the checkout.
Who Is It For Really?
Hostgator is the perfect hosting solution for new websites, blog sites, and eCommerce stores.
Like most hosting providers, there are additional fees for extra services like malware protection. If you want to pay for a hosting service on a monthly basis, the prices start from $10.95 and go up from there.
Now that you are aware of the additional fees you can make your decision based on that.
The great thing about Hostgator is that they have a 45-day refund policy so if you end up being let down by them for any reason, you get your money back easily.
Conclusion
To summarise everything, Hostgator is a popular hosting provider and is widely used in the US.
They have data centers all over the world including in India. Before choosing your hosting provider make sure that it has a data center somewhere near your geographic location or you might run the risk of experiencing a slow response time which can negatively impact your traffic and revenue.
If you are willing to spend extra on upsells for bonus features, security measures, and tools that will help you grow your business, then Hostgator is definitely worth checking out especially because of their 45-day money-back refund policy and their promise of keeping a %99.99 server uptime or you will be compensated.
In other words, you can check out this hosting provider for a month and see how it performs and if you don’t like it, just get your money back easily.
