For you to succeed in your online business, you need to start with a good web host. This review will help you make the crucial decision of choosing affordable web hosting services you will not regret as you grow your online business. We will be discussing HostGator com web hosting service. First, let’s get to meet the company.
History of HostGator com
Hostgator com is one of the best hosting company for every business. The company is among popular hosting services you must have come across in your search for a good host for your website.
It was founded by Brent Oxley when he was a student in 2002. People familiar with internet business will not be surprised by the way HostGator was founded as many internet businesses started in like manner.
From 2002 going forward, the company today boasts of more than 400,000 clients in around 200 countries with over 8 million domains hosted. The company took off from Florida and expanded to relocate to Texas with an office in Austin in 2007.
HostGator started on a solid note by pitching its tent with the best resources in the field which avails it the best support to deliver top-notch web hosting services known today.
If anything to learn from a fledgling company is the innovation that has continued to be the hallmark of its achievements. HostGator com parades many innovative products among which are the popular three including Hatchling, Baby, and Business hosting plans that give different customers a good place to start their web hosting dreams.
The following are various services you will get from HostGator:
• Domain registration. You can buy all the major domain extensions from HostGator at $15 per annum.
• SSL Certificates. Security is an essential matter in online business especially if you deal with credit card information or any payment system information on your website. It costs from $10 to acquire.
• Script installation. For anyone needing script installation and finding it tough to accomplish, HostGator will handle it from $25 per script; some could cost more.
• Urchin Stats. You can get this third-party software from HostGator if you can’t run Google Analytics on your site.
As with HostGator’s plan you can get the following product as part of your plan including Google Adwords, Bing+ and Yahoo! WordPress, YP, and nextiva some are free while some attract some premium fees.
If you need the best hosting and domain service provider, HostGator has made its mark in the industry and has been roundly awarded and recognized for its leading role in the industry.
On the Better Business Bureau Rating site, HostGator has an A+ rating making it sit comfortably among the best in the world. This review is aimed at unearthing the true position of things regarding the viability of the company in domain hosting services.
We will examine the viability of HostGator service along the following criteria:
• Service reliability/uptime
As said earlier, HostGator provides some of the best resources the industry can offer. For this reason, its services is always among the best and most dependable hosting services.
What anyone wants in hosting service is the guarantee their server will not go down and be unavailable due to technical reasons such as lack of power supply and other unforeseen reasons.
Our investigation shows that the company hosts their data center in 4 leased facilities owned by The Planet located in Texas. Other mission critical services are also on hand to ensure the reliability of its services and 99.99 percent uptime.
• Customer support services
Available customer reviews and rating records show that HostGator customers are happy because of the holistic customer support services put in place to meet customer needs.
There is 24/7 live chat, toll-free phone call for US clients, FAQ that takes care of most customer questions. HostGator is always available and responsive to its customer needs.
As a customer, you are not walking alone. You will find the knowledgebase and forum useful for your needs. Part of many knowledge base materials are tutorial videos that discuss technical issues to help you fix any issue you might have.
• Usability
I consider myself not too fast a learner and handling technicality matters is not my ideal online job, but I find HostGator cPanel very easy to navigate and solve issues that may arise.
You will be able to do a lot like handle webmail, do backups and take care of most things relating to your website including HANDLING your DNS settings. Whether you are on LINUX or Windows plans, you will have enough training to deal with any issue that cropped up.
• Business policy
HostGator is a go to provider when looking for the best web hosting service for business as their terms of sales are quite good. They offer a money back guarantee that allows you to cancel any plan if you do not like what you see.
HostGator lets you cancel within 45 days and get a full refund if you feel the service falls short of your expectations.
Although you will not get back your admin and installation fees, the plan cost will be fully refunded if you use the company’s cancellation provision protocol through its online form. Your cancellation request will be sorted out within two business days. But note that you need to use the procedure for cancellation and not just send them an email requesting to cancel.
• Price offer
HostGator prices for its various plans may not be the cheapest but it is certainly affordable.
Its Hatchling plan goes for $3.95 per month; Baby plan stands at $5.95 per month while the Business plan goes for $5.95 per month. Note that cloud hosting is more expensive than shared hosting. Cloud hatchling is $4.95, Baby is $5.95, and Business is $8.95 per month respectively.
The plans have features unique to them and may be the reason to make your choice.
What you will find attractive in HostGator’s hosting plan are the unlimited storage and bandwidths you get no matter what plan you choose. Expectedly, each plan also serves different categories of customers with the Hatchling plan ideal for starters in online business.
You should also note that the first subscription often comes with discount and expect to pay more when renewing your service. For this reason, you should consider making more years of initial subscription.
• Customer satisfaction
A lot of bloggers use HostGator, and they are among the most informed and hard to please customers online because they know what they want. For this category of customers to give feedback on a service means they got what they expect.
After reading so many positive reviews about HostGator from this category of customers, I do not doubt the quality of service to expect from HostGator. Of course, I am unaware of paid reviews, but when you stay online long enough, you should be able to know what is real from fake reviews.
Although doing your due diligence is required before buying a hosting plan, you can still trust a few people when they recommend a service. I know you can succeed in fooling a few people sometimes, but you cannot fool everyone all the time.
HostGator WordPress optimized hosting
Given WordPress’ popularity today, you will most likely want a WordPress hosted site. HostGator do offer optimized WordPress hosting plans at fairly higher prices than the shared hosting plan.
The price difference must have been because of the expected challenges with speed, support and security associated with WordPress hosting but be rest assured that HostGator com is highly experienced in managing WordPress hosting for millions of sites.
Below are some Pros & Cons we found reviewing HostGator
Pros:
• Reliable hosting with 99.99 percent uptime
• Extremely fast loading time
• Generous cancellation offer
• Relaxed billing periods
• Migration is free
Cons
• Up selling disturbances
• Does not offer free domain
Bottom line
Overall, HostGator offers a robust hosting plan that competes favorably with other providers. Although its aggressive advertisement makes it one of the most popular hosting services on the internet, I want to agree with most reviewers that HostGator deserves the patronage it’s getting from the internet community.
If you are considering the best web hosting for business, think HostGator.
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