As both HostGator and DreamHost are leading shared web hosting companies, many customers feel the choice between these 2 companies is not easy. This is the reason why we write the comparison of HostGator VS DreamHost. Note: this comparison is mainly concerning about their shared web hosting popularity, affordability, reliability, speed, and customer service.
To help readers know the main information of the shared hosting service of the 2 companies, we have worked out the following to table to show the ratings of their services. Proceed to learn the details.
Rating
Plan In Comparison
Hatchling
Baby
Happy Hosting
Reputation
Feature
Loading Speed
Reliability
Tech Support
Recommended For
Personal
Small Business
Small Business
Sales Now
30%
30%
34%
Starting At
$4.86/mo
$6.96/mo
$5.95/mo
How to Claim
Coupon
EUNGE30OFF
Coupon
EUNGE30OFF
–
HostGator Overview
Founded in 2002, HostGator is a well-known web hosting company that strives to provide fast and reliable hosting solutions at the budget-friendly prices, and to maintain the highest level of customer service and customer satisfaction. Until now, HostGator has hosted more than 8 million domains for nearly a million of customers from over 200 countries.
HostGator Advantages
Customers with HostGator shared web hosting can have an assortment of hosting options. HostGator offers 3 web hosting plans named as Hatchling, Baby, and Business plan, which meet different individual requirements from bloggers to large ecommerce site owners.
The domain names offered by HostGator is much more reliable than those offered by many other web hosts. As we all know, the DNS (domain name server) is the battery for the domain name, so the more powerful the DNS is, the more likely people will be able to see your site and send you email. Therefore, unlike most companies offering customers one or two domain servers – one main server, and one for backup, HostGator domain name is backed by six servers distributed around the U.S. with superior connectivity and reliability.
HostGator constantly provides their customers with a 20% discount, which reduces the price of shared web hosting to $5.566/mo. To be frank, this rate is fairly affordable to the majority of customers. However, in order to give more people the opportunity to try HostGator hosting services, the company has offered a coupon code EUNGE30OFF, which reduces the cost to $4.86/mo, already 30% off the original price.
The HostGator control panel is the widely used and respected cPanel, with which customers can enjoy a high level of control over their hosting experience, such as manage their FTP accounts, passwords, domain names and their web mail account, check the website statistics to obtain information about how many people visit their website, and install numerous scripts and applications.
The datacenters of HostGator are highly advanced in terms of technology and security, with which HostGator is able to provide reliable, fast and secure hosting solutions. As tested, the uptime is guaranteed to 99.9%, and the page loading speed is less than 1 second in the real world.
HostGator Disadvantages
HostGator Hatchling Plan is a little bit feature-limited, which allows only 1 site and 1 domain on 1 account. This plan, to be honest, is not suitable for customers with multiple websites, but is powerful enough for new bloggers setting up a simple personal blog site.
While there are a large number of web hosts in the market offering free domain name, HostGator still charges customers $12.95 for domain registration.
HostGator Coupon Code Activation
DreamHost Overview
Founded in 1997, DreamHost has a long track record in offering quality shared web hosting service. With DreamHost, customers can get instant provisioning after purchase, free domain name registration, the latest versions of PHP and MySQL database, unlimited domain hosting, and a large volume of server resources.
DreamHost Advantages
DreamHost is one of the most risk-free and worry-free web hosting companies, for it offers the longest money back period, which is up to 97 days. Therefore, customers can have the enough time to test the features and quality of DreamHost web hosting services.
DreamHost allows customers to host multiple domain names, with which customers can build a portfolio of websites without worrying about several hosting accounts.
DreamHost Disadvantages
DreamHost does not offer cPanel. Their self-built control panel, which is not user friendly, makes customers feel difficult to use.
Another disadvantage about DreamHost is their customer service. DreamHost does not offer telephone support for free. Only the customers who have paid extra $14.95/mo for the premium support service can be guaranteed the 100% availability of the support.
HostGator VS DreamHost – Price
DreamHost provides a unique shared web hosting package named as Happy Hosting whose price is starting at $8.95/mo that is available for a 2 years’ subscription. As for the 1-year billing cycle, the price is $9.95/mo.
By comparison, HostGator comes with 3 upgradeable packages including Hatchling, Baby and Business with the price starting at $5.95/mo. Now a 30% discount can be claimed for subscribers who sign up the services using the special coupon code. With the coupon code applied, the price can be reduced to $4.86/mo. Please check the following table to learn more detailed information.
Price
Plan In Comparison
Hatchling
Baby
Happy Hosting
Regularly
$6.95/mo
$9.95/mo
$8.95/mo
Discount
30% Off
30% Off
34% Off
Now
$4.86/mo
$6.96/mo
$4.95/mo
How to Claim
Coupon
EUNGE30OFF
Coupon
EUNGE30OFF
–
Obviously, the Hatchling plan of HostGator is a little bit cheaper than DreamHost. Moreover, we highly recommend customers going with HostGator 2-year plan. Although this means customers need to pay 2 years in one time, they can purchase starting at $4.86/mo, and there is no need to worry about the waste of money with HostGator 45 days money back guarantee.
HostGator VS DreamHost – Feature
All packages of the two companies come with unlimited resources including disk space, bandwidth, domain hosted, email accounts, MySQL databases and scripting languages such as PHP 5, Perl, Python, and Ruby on Rails. Besides, both of them feature 1-click software installer with which hundreds of open source projects can be installed with a few clicks. Since they have differences in other advanced features, we have made a clear table for reference in below.
Feature
Plan In Comparison
Hatchling
Baby
Happy Hosting
Disk Space
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Bandwidth
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Domians Allowed
1
Unlimited
Unlimited
Control Panel
cPanel
cPanel
Custom
1-Click Script Installer
Site Builder
PHP 5
Ruby on Rails
SSH
Money Back Guarantee
45 days
45 days
97 days
When it comes to the control panel, DreamHost develops a custom one which enables webmasters to access the billing information, configure accounts, create or modify the MySQL databases and so forth. By contrast, HostGator offers powerful assistance to its customers in the tedious administration of websites by utilizing cPanel as the control panel.
HostGator VS DreamHost – Page Loading Speed
DreamHost has been collaborating with a Los-Angeles-based collocation provider for data center services instead of operating its own data centers. Similarly, HostGator maximizes its uptime by housing dual quad high performance Dell servers in several top-notch data centers.
We have personally carried out a performance testing with a WordPress website hosted with both DreamHost and HostGator since June, 2013. As a result, the page loading speed of HostGator is much faster than that of DreamHost. Read the server response monitoring as following.
Technical Support
As two top-notch web hosting providers who are committed themselves in the field for more than a dozen of years, both companies provide 24/7 technical support that are available via phone, email and live chat. Furthermore, webmasters are capable of settling some common technical issues by resorting to the help of knowledgebase and forum.
Nonetheless, DreamHost only offers free Los Angeles-based email technical support. Thus, if webmasters need phone and live chat support, they can choose to purchase Premium Support with $9.95/mo. This support package consists of 3 phone callbacks and unlimited live chat.
Summary
We have found that both HostGator and DreamHost are reliable hosting providers. However, due to the fact that HostGator has surpassed DreamHost in terms of price, support and contorl panel, we think HostGator is a more recommendable choice for web hosting service.
The Comparison at Other Sites
These are comparison of HostGator VS DreamHost from other reputed sites also – for your reference,
BestHostingSearch – HostGator VS DreamHost
WhatsWP.com – HostGator VS DreamHost
TheHosting.Review – DreamHost VS HostGator
PHPMatters.com – DreamHost VS HostGator
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