A good web hosting plan is very vital for the success of any online business. The kind of hosting you get for your website will determine how fast your pages will load, the up vs down time ratio of your website and the security of your website.
There are many web hosting providers online and among them is Hostgator.
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 web hosting services.
History of HostGator web hosting
Hostgator is one of the best among popular hosting service providers online. You must have come across Hostgator 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 start in a similar manner.
From 2002 going forward, the company has provided a variety of services to more than 400,000 clients around the world, with over 8 million domains hosted.
Hostgator took off from Florida and expanded to relocate to Texas with an office in Austin in 2007.
HostGator parades many innovative hosting plans among which are these popular three, Hatchling, Baby, and Business hosting plans.
These plans 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/year.
• 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.
You can also get the following product as part of your plan including Google Adwords, Bing+ and Yahoo! WordPress, YP, and nextiva some are free while others require a fee.
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. This effort ensures the reliability of its services and 99.99 percent up time.
• Customer support services
Available customer reviews and ratings show that the customers of HostGator are relatively 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.
You will find the knowledge base 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 tech savvy, but I find HostGator’s cPanel very easy to navigate.
You will be able to do a lot like handle webmail, do backups and take care of most things relating to your website including your DNS settings. Whether you are on LINUX or Windows plans, you will have enough training to deal with issues that cropped up.
• Business policy
HostGator offers 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 protocol via 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 affordable.
Its Hatchling plan cost $3.95 per month; the Baby plan cost $5.95 per month while the Business plan cost $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.
What you will find attractive in HostGator’s hosting plans are the unlimited storage and bandwidths you get no matter what plan you choose.
As expected, 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 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 might be as a result of the expected challenges with speed, support and security associated with WordPress hosting but be rest assured that HostGator 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 plays a huge role in its popularity as a web hosting service provider, I want to agree with many reviewers that HostGator deserves the patronage it’s getting from the internet community.
