Founded in 2002, HostGator has been recognized as one of the most reputed web hosting providers, offering multiple kinds of hosting services. However, is this web host good enough for hosting blog? To make it clear, we started to host our blog with this company, and kept monitoring the blog closely. In addition, we have collected a pile of verified feedbacks to learn how other customers think about the service they got.
Based on our real hosting experience and the information we have collected, we have worked out a comprehensive review on the company's blog hosting from price, feature, usability, reliability, performance and technical support. In addition, we have made the ratings of this service from several aspects. Learn the details in below.
HostGtaor Blog Hosting Review
Website: http://www.hostgator.com/
Reputation
price
Feature
Performance
reliability
Support
Plans & Price
Having been in the industry for about 12 years, HostGator has been trusted by millions of webmasters around the world, offering 3 different shared plans to enable customers to choose the most proper one. The solutions are named as Hatchling, Baby and Business, priced at $3.96/mo, $6.36/mo and $10.36/mo with a 20% discount by default, but customers who subscribe the plans by using coupon
BWH25Percent
are able to get a 5% additional discount and cut the price down to $3.71/mo, $5.96/mo and $9.71/mo.
In addition, this company guarantees 45 days full money back and anytime prorated money back, which enables customers to ask for a full refund if they want to cancel their accounts in the first 45 days, and a prorated refund after this period. In this way, customers can put their money in safe. Moreover, this web host accepts both credit cards and PayPal, which ensures the purchase is secure and convenient.
HostGator Coupon Code Activation
Feature
Each of the plans HostGator provides for bloggers includes a number of features, such as unlimited disk space, monthly data transfer, sub domains, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, and POP3 email addresses. Besides, shared SSL is integrated in the solutions to encrypt the data when it is transferred over the Internet, which increases the security of the hosted blogs. Moreover, SSH is offered to ensure the security of remote management. More features are:
$100 Google advertising credits.
Instant & free setup.
4,500 free templates.
Automatic weekly off-site data backups.
PHP5, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python & Cron Jobs.
What's more, both Baby and Business include unlimited hosted domains and parked domains. Furthermore, Business plan comes with a free dedicated IP, private SSL, 1 toll-free phone number and anonymous FTP. If people who are using Baby plan or Hatchling plan want a dedicated IP, he/she has to pay for $2/mo.
Usability
HostGator adopts the latest cPanel that is well organized with most functionalities available via icons on the cPanel home page, which enables bloggers to locate and navigate the different features, even if they are unfamiliar with this control panel. In addition, the rich features included in cPanel enable them to manage every aspect related to their accounts and blogs effortlessly.
What's more, cPanel integrates with QuickInstall, an auto script installer, by default. This tool makes bloggers can install blogs with just a few clicks without spending the time in manually going through the complex installation process. In this way, bloggers, especially the ones with little hosting knowledge, are able to save a lot of time.
Reliability & performance
HostGator has been cooperating with SoftLayer for a few years, which allows its customers to utilize one of the world's best facilities to power their blogs. This company houses hundreds of 100% factory-tested SoftLayer data centers ranging from 22,000 to more than 78,000 square feet. These state-of-the-art data centers include industry-standard technology to ensure that all servers stay cool, secure and on service all the time.
In addition, all the data centers are equipped with redundant power, HVAC, and fire detection/suppression systems. Besides, HostGator system administrators are monitoring the data centers and servers 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, so that they are able to find and resolve any sudden issues before they affect the hosted blogs. All the first-class facilities achieved a good reliability.
Our monitoring result shows that in the past 6 months, the uptime of HostGator is 99.98%. Learn the detailed uptime information of this company of the past 30 days in the following statistics chart.
What's more, all the blogs hosted with HostGator are accessible via d fully meshed and redundant certified Cisco network and other 9 outstanding backbone and fiber providers, including Level3, MCI, AT&T/SBC, etc. Additionally, on-site technicians are monitoring and managing the network 24x7 to ensure fast hosting speed. Read the following chart to learn the real-time server response time of this company of the past 30 days.
Technical Support
Owning more than 200 support representatives, HostGator offers a high level of technical support through toll-free phone call, email and live chat. All the support staffs are professional, experienced and on-site 24x7, so that they are able to respond quickly and give instant assistance for customers to resolve problems efficiently.
Moreover, in the support portal, technicians and engineers have developed 500+ video tutorials and 680+ helpful articles to teach customers how to deal with common issues independently.
Summary
From all the aspects we have reviewed comprehensively, we can learn that HostGator does offer affordable, rich-featured, user-friendly, reliable and fast hosting service for people to host blogs. In addition, the Adwords vouchers integrated with the service enable bloggers to promote their blogs. Besides, the quality customer service makes customers can concentrate on their own business without any distraction. Therefore, HostGator blog hosting is deserved to be recommended to all bloggers.