HostGator Review 2024
Are you looking for a HostGator hosting review for 2024?
Well in this HostGator review 2024, we're going to show you everything that you need to know about HostGator.
So you can decide if they're the right hosting provider for you.
We're not going to waste your time with fluff content.
Instead, we're going to provide you value with the most important results from our live tests like the page load speed, uptime, and customer support quality.
We will also provide you with a screenshot, so you essentially get to test out HostGator without having to purchase it for yourself.
And lastly, we'll provide you with our honest recommendations on if or who should buy HostGator.
And after this HostGator review 2024, if you decided to make a web hosting purchase then consider purchasing it from the below link and get yourself a discount if it's available.
Pricing Review for HostGator Shared Hosting Plans 2024
Click on the link below and it'll take you to our special HostGator discount page where you will get the best discount HostGator is currently offering.
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We will be comparing their shared hosting plans, although HostGator does offer other types of hosting like Dedicated Hosting or VPS hosting.
So they can support you when your business grows and you are ready for an upgrade.
HostGator Shared Hosting Plans Review 2024
There are three shared hosting plans:
- Hatchling Plan
- Baby Plan
- Business Plan
With the hatchling tier, you are limited to just one website, however, the next two plans allow you to have unlimited websites.
The business plan which is their most expensive plan comes with a dedicated IP address, which the mid-tier Baby plan does not have.
This feature we don't think this is worth the extra money for shared hosting but if you need it you know it's there.
A great feature we like that HostGator provides and not many other hosting providers do is their free website transfer.
This is handy for someone moving their website over from another hosting provider as the HostGator support team will do this for you for free.
HostGator Missing Features
There are two main features that we believe are very standard for hosting providers which HostGator is missing.
The first is the automatic backup they don't provide this in any of their plans as we think it's a must-have feature.
And the second thing is the lack of speed optimization on their higher plans.
Usually or higher plans normally come with better speed optimization or custom cache plug-ins to boost up speed.
But HostGator does not provide this at all, so we see no value in choosing their most expensive plans here.
Which HostGator Plan Should You Choose?
That being said in terms of pricing we would only ever consider their Hatchling plan if you only need one website.
But if you require multiple websites then the baby plan should be more than enough for you.
Don't waste money on their business plan.
Should You Buy Domain Name from HostGator?
We have a problem with domain names that these hosting providers charge you, other reviewers won't tell you this and it annoys us.
So we're going, to be honest, and break this door down for you right now.
First, we don't suggest you buy any of your domain names from any hosting providers as they usually charge you much higher than a dedicated domain name provider.
Right now for HostGator even though the domain name is included for you for free for the first year.
You still have to pay $14.95 for the domain privacy which is a must-have for us as we don't want marketers emailing and calling us every day to offer their services.
And then every year after that you have to pay $17.95 for domain name renewal and $14.95 again for the domain name privacy renewal.
This total is around $33 every year which is ridiculous to us.
So what I recommend you do instead is to buy all your domain names from NameSilo or Namecheap.
And you can get your domain name from NameSilo for under $8.99 only with domain privacy included for free.
You can also get your domain name from Namecheap for under $8.88 only and also with domain privacy included for free.
The renewal cost for NameSilo is the same $8.99 and Namecheap costs you $12.98 to renew each year which is almost three times cheaper than HostGator.
So that is a no-brainer for us and we recommend you do the same.
How Long Should You Buy HostGator Plan?
HostGator comes with 6 different payment plans but you can see it's not worth doing anything under 12 months, as the monthly cost just doesn't make sense.
Obviously the longer the deal the cheaper it gets.
Generally, we would always suggest you buy the 36-month plan as you get the cheapest price and you will have no reason to leave once you have picked a great hosting provider that you're happy with.
Not saying HostGator is that yet they still have a lot of testing requirements to pass.
HostGator 45-Days Money Back Guarantee
Anyway, if you're not happy with HostGator at least they have a 45-day money-back guarantee.
So you can get a full refund from them.
We also want to let you know that if you get this free domain name provided by them they will still charge you for that part as the domain name cannot be refunded.
So just be careful about that.
Additional Add-on Services
The next part is the additional add-on services, they pre-selected the SSL certificate and the site backup for you.
These two features you can get for free and most hosting providers should provide you this for free.
Anyway, so you gonna deselect both of them as you don't need them.
Completing the Purchase of HostGator Hosting
Once you're happy with your plan, just accept the terms of service and click checkout now.
And you can see the thank you message from them.
HostGator Pricing and Plans Overall Review 2024
The overall pricing score we would give HostGator is a 7 out of 10.
We took a few marks off as they don't offer a lot of features and their more expensive plans don't provide enough value to be worth the money.
Automatic backup is also not included in any of their plans which we think is important to have.
On the other hand, the price of their lower-tier options is very cheap and comparable to other cheaper hosting providers.
Plus they provide you with free site migration which is a really handy feature to have.
So we would say they are a cost-effective hosting provider.
Click Here to Visit HostGator Now
After Purchase Setup and Ease of Use Review for HostGator 2024
Right away from their home page, you can see it looks very easy to navigate with the custom interface compared to the cPanel that a lot of other hosting providers use.
But if you ever wanted to manage your site with Cpanel you can just click their button.
And it will take you to your normal Cpanel setup which you are used to.
It's that easy.
How to Install WordPress on HostGator?
Now let's see how easy it is to install and create your WordPress website, So follow the steps below:
1. So from your dashboard you click on Manage Package.
2. And it will take you to the domain name that you registered with HostGator.
One thing that's not good with HostGator is that present you with too many upgrade options look at all these options here these are all learned more and you go to upgrade right.
3. You go down further to the bottom and go to the one-click install.
4. And on the next page, click on WordPress.
5. Select your domain and click on next.
6. Fill out your information here to the terms of service.
7. And then click install now.
8. There is one extra step that you will have to do compared to installing it from a cPanel which is going to your email address and will sends you your password.
So to log in to your WordPress, you have to open your mail to get the password, and then you can log in.
So overall it's not as easy as other hosting providers' one-click installation because you have to go and check your email for the password.
But overall it's easy enough.
How to Create an Email Account on HostGator?
And now what about creating an email account.
So you think when you want to create an Email address you would click on the Email and Office section right.
Well, that's wrong because if you click on there they're going to take you to the paid options again they're going to try to upsell you to either a Microsoft or a G-suite account.
You have to pay monthly.
So to install it for free, then follow the steps below:
1. You need to go to hosting, then click on cPanel.
2. Then select Email accounts.
3. And enter your email address.
4. And click on create an account.
And you see the account has been created, so it's that simple once again.
This was easy to create but they are not quite upfront with trying to upsell you to make you pay for an email address.
HostGator After Purchase Setup and Ease of Use Overall Review 2021
Overall we would score HostGator an 8 out of 10 for setup and ease of use.
We like that it's simple to install your WordPress site and has the option to access the cPanel is also very handy for experienced WordPress users.
We did take two marks away from them because they don't guide you well when setting up a new domain name from another provider.
And they mislead you on things like setting up your free email address they tend to hide the free stuff and pack the interface with too many upgrades and ads because we think it is a well-designed backend.
Click Here to visit HostGator Site
HostGator Speed and Uptime Performance Review 2024
Below check out the full-speed test and uptime performance review of HostGator 2024.
Speed Test
So after we have installed the basic WordPress site we went ahead and tested out the speed of our website using GT Metrix.
The result is 1.7 seconds.
This is not looking promising but we won't judge them now as we have not optimized our website yet.
Now we would take it a step further and add some design elements to it to increase the page size.
We also going to install some free plugins to speed up the website.
First is WP Fastest Cache which is for speed optimization and the next one is the Short Pixel which is for image optimization.
And lastly, we will install the free Cloudflare app which will also increase your website performance with their CDN.
Now overall this will make it a fairer test because it will make it more comparable to what you would do in real life.
One quick note we need to mention to you is if you install WordPress with HostGator you can't install anything above 5.0.
Because HostGator does not run the latest PHP version which for us is not good enough.
The speed is now 3.9 seconds.
Which is too slow, for us HostGator has turned out to be one of the slowest hosting providers we have tested out so far.
Google also recommends a site to load in under 3 seconds so HostGator also missed this mark in a fairway.
HostGator Uptime Performance Test
We have also been monitoring the stability performance of HostGator with Uptime Robot.
And we can report that their uptime for the last 30 days is only 99.895 percent.
This is way below our standard of 99.95 percent uptime and even HostGator's uptime guarantee of 99.9%.
We were very disappointed with this result and HostGator has dropped the ball on this one.
HostGator Speed and Uptime Performance Overall
Overall we would rate HostGator's speed and uptime performance only a 5 out of 10.
We took 5 marks away for massively failing the speed test and for failing their uptime guarantee.
It is a pretty simple fail here and there's not much else to say about it.
HostGator Customer Supports Review 2024
HostGator provides 24/7 customer support through email, live chat, and phone support.
We tested them out by asking them these three different questions:
Questions Asked
1. On the live chat, we told them that we have been infected by a virus on our website and asked for their help.
2. Two we asked them a quick question about their domain name renewal costs but we made sure to choose the wrong question category.
3. Three we asked them if they could do us a favor and install an SSL certificate and Cloudflare for us.
Results
1. For the first question they told us that it would cost extra and we needed to buy the add-on package for them to remove it.
They were willing to help locate the malware when we asked for that specifically which was helpful however their downfall was that it took almost 30 minutes of waiting time.
So we were disappointed with the HostGator support team.
2. For the second question they were able to provide us with the right answers here but they were not straightforward and had to clarify a few times and overall it took almost 20 minutes to sort the whole thing out.
3. Lastly they tried to just give us links to steps for installing Cloudflare instead of trying to guide us step by step like we originally asked and by the way the instructions were not custom ones made by HostGator
It was just the website linked from Cloudflare itself.
Customer Supports Different Time Test
With regards to their response time, we contacted them at three different times of the day to make sure we get an overall average and not just the biased fast response time during their off-peak hours.
So the three times were 11 and a half minutes and the next two were both 50 seconds.
The average of those three times turns out to be around four and a half minute wait which is more than acceptable.
We think anything under five minutes is great so good work to HostGator on that part.
HostGator Customer Support Overall
Overall we would have to score HostGator supports a 6 out of 10.
We would say their support was average it was nothing great but it wasn't the worst either.
They had a decent response time but the quality of the support was lacking in terms of support teams.
Pros and Cons of HostGator
Now let's take a look at of Pros and Cons of HostGator.
Pros
- Simple and easy-to-use Dashboard.
- You can access cPanel.
- Decent response time from support.
- 45-Days money-back guarantee.
- Free site migration.
Cons
- Hide free options and show upgrades and ads.
- Page load speed is slow 3.9 seconds.
- Uptime performance is not good.
- Customer support is not knowledgeable.
- Automatic backup is not included.
HostGator Honest Recommendation
So this is the full HostGator review 2024.
Overall we have given HostGator an average score of 6 out of 10.
They have a decent price with a clean and easy-to-navigate user interface.
So this is our recommendation for you whether you're a beginner-advanced user looking for a cheap hosting provider with a customized user interface.
If you don't care about performance then we believe HostGator can be considered.
However if speed performance matters to you at all then we don't think HostGator is the right option for you, you can check out this click here.
Now if you are ready to make a HostGator hosting purchase then consider purchasing it from the below link and get yourself a discount if it's available.
Click Here To Get HostGator at a Discount Now
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