HostGator Review

What Is HostGator?

Without a doubt, HostGator is among the most popular names in the industry, especially for US-based users.

Currently, it hosts about 10 million domain names, making it one of the biggest hosting providers in the world. Not bad for a company founded less than 20 years ago.

In the first ten years of its existence, the company built a very solid reputation which attracted the attention of EIG. The consecutive acquisition, as with so many things EIG touches, wasn’t entirely beneficial and brought about several massive outages early on in the Provo data center that affected BlueHost as well.

Still, HostGator recovered and improved upon its services. And while the standard shared hosting offering of the company is not all that impressive, the relatively new Cloud packages put HostGator once again in the mix of the best website hosting companies.

Keep in mind that the HostGator Cloud is more akin to shared hosting in terms of resources and control rather than advanced cloud solutions.

Still, the platform promises great speed, superb scalability, and seamless resource allocation among other perks to make account and site management a breeze.

But is it enough to consider HostGator as a serious contender for the best web host in 2021?

Let’s see what the numbers say in this detailed HostGator Cloud hosting review.

The Essentials – HostGator Uptime, Speed, Support

Uptime, speed, and quality support make or break a hosting provider.

1. Excellent Uptime – 99.95%

Uptime is easily the most important factor to consider when checking any web hosting review. Speed also matters a lot but a slow website still does some good; an offline page is an unmitigated disaster.

The company might not be ideal – you can see some of the HostGator problems further down – but its uptime is excellent.

HostGator has a 99.9% uptime guarantee and promises free hosting should this service-level agreement be breached.

Now, the terms of service stipulate that external monitoring systems cannot be used to measure uptime. Only the server logs are deemed reliable enough to be used in such cases.

That’s fair enough, as even the best monitoring tools are not foolproof, and HostGator has a built-in server uptime monitoring that can be accessed through the customer portal.

The Cloud HostGator is an upgraded version of the standard shared platform, and the upgrade is telling. It brings to the table two major perks: higher reliability and very accessible upgrades that can be purchased with a couple of clicks and equally easily disabled when no longer needed.

The advanced Cloud architecture allows real-time copying of any site and boosts its security manifold.

Average Uptime 2018 – 100%

Average Uptime 2019 – 99.99%

Average Uptime 2020 – 99.85%

Average Uptime 2021:

• January – 99.98%
• February – 100%

2. Average Speed

• Reasonable Response Time – 0.58s (12th)
• Reasonable Fully Loaded Time – 1.17s (11th)
• Questionable Under Certain Load – 9.23s (12th)

Loading speed is absolutely crucial for any successful venture online. A site that takes more than 4 seconds to load is abandoned by 74% of the users, while sluggish ecommerce websites are rarely visited again.

I test the TTFB (time to first byte), and the time it takes for a site to be loaded fully. The first metric reveals how quickly the server responds to a query. It is a good indicator of how speedy the hosting machine is.

The second measurement shows how long it takes before the site is visible and useful to the end-user. Doubtless, this is crucial as well.

In both categories, across three testing sites, HostGator Cloud hosting was impressive, clocking in the fastest response and the second-fastest time to load the home page of my basic WordPress site fully. In the following months, though, the response and load times crept up, degrading the average performance of HostGator.

I was truly impressed by this performance, but when I put my HostGator site under load, the server crumbled.

To clarify, I purchased the second out of three Cloud hosting plans HostGator has. It was doing reasonably well up until 30 virtual users, but then the struggle began.

In the end, the average response time with 50 virtual users became a massive 9.26 seconds. While the virtual users were fewer than 30, the Cloud server kept responding within 0.3-0.45 seconds, which is pretty good.

I have a WordPress site on HostGator WordPress Cloud (slightly more expensive optimized specifically for WordPress) and the Load Impact tests I run regularly show similar behavior: very decent backend response up until 30 users or so and then some serious lag. It is the slowest on average among all hosts reviewed by the Hosting Tribunal.

In all fairness, 30 concurrent users are not such a small number for a growing website, but I expected more from the medium HostGator web hosting offering.

Average response time 2018 – 0.60s

Average response time 2019 – 0.55s

Average response time 2020 – 0.54s

Average response time 2021:

• January – 0.64s
• February – 0.70s

Fully loaded page 2018 – 1.30s

Fully loaded page 2019 – 1.09s

Fully loaded page 2020 – 1.17s

Fully loaded page 2021:

• January – 1.20s
• February – 1.32s

Response under load 2018 – 9.30s

Response under load 2019 – 8.85s

Response under load 2020 – 9.58s

Response under load 2021:

• January – 9.54s
• February – 8.94s

3. HostGator Has Slow Support and Excellent Knowledge Base

I got in touch with the support team four times while preparing this in-depth review. Once over email, the other three times over chat. I was considering testing the 24/7 HostGator phone support too, but these four interactions were enough.

For starters, the wait time on chat is not that short.

The first time I engaged a sales representative to ask for clarifications about certain plan features. The agents needed some 4 minutes to pick up my chat request. That’s not horrible but is far from the best website hosts out there.

Then, my question was rather simple but had to ask it twice.

The first time I received a copy-paste of the info available on Hostgator.com and I was asking for clarification about it. The second time I asked I didn’t change the wording much. It seems that the agent simply read it more carefully and provided the answer I was looking for.

The second chat I started with the HostGator support was related to a technical issue. It was answered quickly, and the agent took his time to look into the problem I had (the built-in uptime monitor wasn’t working). He investigated for a while and escalated the issue to the system administrators for me.

This was nice, but the agent told me that I would be emailed the case details, to monitor the situation. I never received an email, and the case didn’t appear under my HostGator customer portal.

After another chat, I was told that the ticket is not logged under my account because it has been escalated, which didn’t make much sense. It still doesn’t.

Eventually, some four days later, I got an email saying that the system administrators are aware of the issue but cannot give me ETA about its resolution.

The last encounter I had with HostGator chat support was about changing the cPanel theme. See, HostGator Cloud has a customized cPanel theme, which is very pretty and functional, but it doesn’t allow you to switch to cPanel classics like Paper Lantern or x3. My chat request was hanging for over 15 minutes. At least the agent who finally addressed my issue was polite and swift.

My goal is to deliver a sincere, unbiased analysis of each host I examine, and must say that the HostGator customer service is erratic, at best.

This being said, I was happy to see that the knowledge base has improved a lot. The quality and quantity of resources have grown considerably since the last time I checked.

Now it is a very respectable self-help center.

The Pros of HostGator

HostGator is a friendly hosting company with many perks and quality services. Its Cloud platform is the perfect example.

1. Flexible Hosting

The Cloud setup is slightly more expensive than the shared HostGator web hosting offering, but you get what you pay for.

The modern servers are interconnected, which allows for quick resource allocation and great redundancy.

It is possible to get additional resources whenever needed. With the click of a button and a basic slider, you can ramp up your site’s CPU and RAM without actually switching to a larger plan. Similarly, when the extra power is no longer needed, you can remove it.

Such flexibility is excellent for sites that have occasional or seasonal spikes in traffic. Travel agencies, event organizers, conference centers, and ecommerce sites that run aggressive marketing campaigns will find the possibility to manage site resources quite handy, adding the necessary Umpf! when needed and returning to the default values when the visitor levels drop again.

Budget-friendly, hassle-free, and empowering, this is an awesome feature to have.

2. Good Statistics Right Out of the Box

The power to manage the resources of your site is only meaningful if you actually know what it consumes. The HostGator website hosting portal has this covered.

There you can see the amount of processing power and memory used by your pages at any given moment. Derived directly from the server, this statistical data is very accessible and easy to read.

At any given moment, you can check RAM usage, running processes, and CPU load. All these give a complete picture of what is happening at the backend of your website and help identify potential issues after installing updates and new plugins.

3. Intuitive Interface

The HostGator login area is as intuitive as ever. Billing, plan details, domain name management, and support are just a click away at all times.

Hands down, this is one of the most uncluttered and easy-to-use customer portals I have seen. It is in stark contrast with the likes of A2 Hosting, for instance, whose control panel is highly functional and well-designed, but the sheer amount of information that greets you upon login can be overwhelming.

Site management happens through the omnipresent cPanel. It is customized to match the HostGator color scheme and looks rather nice. Because of the styling, you cannot change the cPanel theme, but the layout allows for sufficient customization.

Just like the customer area, the HostGator cPanel prominently displays usage stats.

4. Superb Network Infrastructure

HostGator is ideal for US-based websites.

Its two data centers are located in Provo, Utah and Houston, Texas, where the company HQ is. It used to be in Florida, which might be some indication of where the brand name drew inspiration from.

All modern data centers are equipped with several layers of security, redundancy power generators, advanced cooling systems, strong physical security and HostGator‘s are no exception.

What makes them particularly impressive is the fact that the likes of Arista Networks, Juniper, Arbor, Brocade, and Cisco played a central role in designing and provisioning them. These are the biggest names in networking – security, physical infrastructure – and are a guarantee for a stable, quick, and future-proof network.

5. Potent Servers

Surprisingly, not many HostGator reviews mention this, but the company’s Cloud relies on serious computing power.

All servers come with SSDs and run on 32-core AMD Opteron™ Processor 6376 or Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v3. They also have 4 RAID 1s across.

The technical mumbo-jumbo probably doesn’t mean much but suffice to say that these are some powerful machines.

A quick look at the different hosting plans (below) reveals just how much power you can expect from each product. While the information is not displayed in the greatest detail possible, it is there.

6. Tempting Introductory Prices

In a typical web hosting fashion, the company attracts new customers with very low fees. The HostGator pricing goes up after the initial period is over.

You can get a site running for as low as $2.75/mo on the shared HostGator web hosting platform, should you commit for three years. The Hatchling Cloud goes for $4.95 for the same period, no extras included.

In practically every hosting review I must clarify that it is standard practice for hosting companies to advertise very low prices to make people click on their plans. HostGator at least puts an asterisk next to each mouth-watering offer to indicate that there is more to the deal.

Mind, the initial discount, in reality, is an automatically applied HostGator coupon, so even if you find a good deal elsewhere online the discount would likely be the same.

7. WordPress Optimization and Caching

All Cloud plans come with Mojo Marketplace, Google Analytics, and several other perks. The most noteworthy one is the Varnish server caching, which is preinstalled (had to disable it manually to get fair test results) and delivers very good speed.

Mojo Marketplace is a somewhat common feature among the best WordPress hosts because it adds a lot of value to your WordPress site, while server-side caching is always a nice thing to have, especially when using content management systems.

My favorite WordPress perk is the fact that Google Analytics is ready to use as its setup can be a hurdle for inexperienced users.

The managed WordPress solution is lined up for testing as a part of the future series of HostGator reviews, here on the Hosting Tribunal.

8. Freebies

HostGator rewards new customers with a decent marketing budget. $100 worth of Google AdWords can be yours after you spend actual $25 in AdWords.

It might not sound like a lot, but once you get your site up and running, these ad credits can help with visibility big time. If used strategically and in conjunction with good SEO practices, they can help you gain decent exposure.

Also, all Cloud plans receive a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, while the Business Cloud is supplied with a dedicated IP address too.

Additionally, the company has a 45-day money-back guarantee, which is longer than the industry standard of 30 days.

The Cons of HostGator

HostGator is far from perfect. I touched upon some of the areas that separate HostGator from the very best website hosting providers. Chief among them is the sluggish support team, but there are several other complaints about HostGator that must be mentioned.

1. Misleading Marketing Language

Correct me if I am wrong, but I’ve come to believe that tricky marketing language is endemic to all hosts under the umbrella of EIG.

In the case of HostGator Cloud hosting, the most glaring misdirection is in the plan presentation.

The plan details advertise resources promptly like 2 CPU cores and 2 GB RAM. Without any further investigation, you might conclude that these two processor cores and gigs of accessible memory would be for you to use as you please. It would be a very logical conclusion, indeed; as if the information is out there to make you think exactly this.

I can guarantee you that not everyone checks everything meticulously and with the care need to, say, make a detailed, unbiased review of the host. On top of that, the way this information is laid out seems inconspicuous enough to take it at face value.

However, if you expand the plan details, you will see a clarification stating that these are not dedicated but shared resources. In other words, these are server specs and not plan specs.

I checked with the HostGator sales team to confirm this as the wording is as vague as it gets, but the sales agent, after being asked twice, confirmed that the advertised values are server resources your Cloud site would have access to. Together with an unknown number of other sites.

On a server with a few hundred websites these numbers don’t look that impressive, do they?

I guess that’s the whole point of such fishy wording. It is a blatant marketing trick that is in stark contrast with the likes of Scalahosting and SiteGround, who provide detailed lists of the dedicated resources each plan has.

While knowing the basic server resources is nice, it doesn’t really give valuable info on a personal level.

The way HostGator presents the numbers is fishy. I was baffled that none of the 2021 HostGator reviews I saw mentioned this.

2. Slow Customer Portal

Earlier in this HostGator Cloud review, I mentioned how awesome the customer portal is. It is uncluttered and very easy to use, but it has one major flaw: it is slow.

Switching between tabs takes seconds and often browsing the options under the same tab is much slower than it should be.

The sluggishness hardly is a dealbreaker, but it is annoying all the same.

3. Slow Account Setup

I purchased the plan necessary for this impartial hosting review with the fastest payment method available, namely, credit card. The payment was cleared instantly, but then I had to wait more than 40 minutes for my service to become available.

Again, that’s not a dealbreaker, but it makes you wonder why an automatic process would take so long. After all, the plan I bought is the most popular one, according to HostGator’s website.