HostGator Shared Hosting Review

There are few hosting companies that are very popular among new blogger and small business owners. HostGator is one of the well known providers of affordable and easy to set up shared hosting plan. HostGator web hosting plans aims for low-maintenance websites, such as personal blogs or small e-commerce stores with fewer products. Smaller websites don’t require much resource to operate; so shared server plans are adequate. Keeping that in mind, let us deep dive into HostGator shared hosting plans before you decide to purchase.  

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HostGator Shared Hosting Plans

There are different shared plans for clients:

Hatchling Plan

Hatchling Plan is the cheapest shared hosting plan from HostGator, which is suitable for people who are quite new to web hosting. It’s also cheaper than starter plans of Squarespace and GoDaddy. For people who want to save money and on a budget then HostGator hatching plan should be an option with the lowest price of $2.75 per month.

You are allowed to have unlimited subdomains with a single domain with free SSL certificate. It includes one-click installation interface to quickly install WordPress and other content management systems. It’s interesting to know that the hatching plan provides unmetered bandwidth and disk space. However, this could be a bit misleading, because you will be warned if you use storage space and data bandwidth excessively.

Baby Plan

Baby plan is a scale up to the next level, compared to the hatchling plan. The only difference from hatching plan is that baby plan offers unlimited domain names. This plan will cost you around $3.95 per month. 

Business Plan

Compared to hatching plan, you can get dedicated IP address and private SSL certificate with business plan. This allows business owners to accept payments and starts an e-commerce store. Many hosting providers only give shared SSL certificates and private SSL certificates have to be bought separately. So, it is definitely quite rare to find an affordable business plan that includes private SSL. Business plan also offers free SEO tools to optimize your site for search engines.

In addition the three basic shared hosting plans, HostGator also offers bunch of other plans. 

VPS Plan

With VPS or Virtual Private Servers, users can get complete control over the hosting environment. It is designed for advanced users who want to get root access to their server. You can install custom scripts or software with VPS hosting. However, non-managed VPS can be quite challenging to maintain. You can choose fully managed VPS servers which include cPanel for easier management. HostGator shared VPS plan may cost your from $29.95 to $49.95.

Optimized WordPress Shared Hosting Plan

Many people use WordPress, because it’s easy to install and manage. HostGator is hosting a million of WordPress based websites. If you plan to use WordPress, then you can go for the optimized plan. It’s slightly more expensive than regular shared hosting plans costing from $5.95 to $9.95 per month depending on the plan you choose.

• Optimized WordPress Hosting plan is 2.5 times faster than shared plan.
• Robust functionality, secure environment and scalable cloud hosting.
• The platform makes it very easy to manage database, files and email accounts.
• Daily scanning of spyware and malware using the latest definition update.

Other Factors

There are also other crucial factors when consider using hosting plan from HostGator.

• HostGator offers almost 99% uptime with reasonably good speed.
• You can transfer one website from other hosting company to HostGator, within 30 days of starting a shared account. HostGator will transfer your website for free which includes cPanel, email accounts, all sub domains and configurations. However, VPS plans can get unlimited transfers.
• HostGator is known for excellent security features. The system is protected by a good firewall, so your sensitive data will be in secure hands. Firewalls are crucial to shield your hosting against DDoS attacks and viruses.
• An account gets at least free scanning every six months to prevent any infection. The frequency of the scheduled virus scanning can be higher by choosing more comprehensive plans.
• HostGator introduced a free website builder with all plans.

Restrictions with HostGator Hosting

However, there are some issues to know when using HostGator service. The system will warn clients if they use more than 25 percent of the system resources for an extended period of time. HostGator may terminate the service, if you continue to use system resources excessively. But most of the time, resources usage is minimal if you have personal WordPress websites or a small ecommerce store.

Another thing to remember on all discounted price is that renewal price will be much more than the initial offer price you see on the website. So, you will get better deals by signing up for a longer contract like 36 months.