HostGator Hosting Review
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Founded in 2002 in Boca Raton, Florida by Brent Oxley, HostGator has already gained a good reputation as a trustworthy hosting service provider with over 2,500,000 hosted domains.
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It was ranked by Inc. Magazine in 2008 to be the 21st fastest growing private company in America, second fastest growing private company in the “Business service” sector and the fastest growing private company in the state of Texas.
Host Gator Hosting Plans
In comparison with such well-known hosting providers as BlueHost and HostMonster, the HostGator offers a wide range of web hosting services that are available within various plans. Thus, you can choose among three different plans such as Hatchling, Baby Plan and Business Plan. All of them are created in accordance with different preferences and needs.
Thus, Hatchling is the cheapest plan offered and it allows you to host 1 website only. It can be appropriate for the beginners who start with a small site to develop.
As you have already guessed, Business Plan is the most expensive one with more features provided. It includes dedicated IP address, anonymous FTP connection, private SSL certificate and a toll-free number. Dedicated IP address and private SSL certificate is necessary if you are going to register for your own online merchant account to process credit card payments. This feature is not required if you accept PayPal payments.
Baby Plan is a good combination of price and all the necessary features to create eye-catching website without problem and sending not a lot of time. Here are all the plans compared in order to make the whole picture clear.
Host Gator Pricing
These are the prices depending on the number of months you are going to use the service of this web hosting provider. There is no contract for all of them and you are also offered 45 day money back guarantee.
- Hatchling plan
- $8.95/month for 1 month
- $6.95/month for 12-month plan
- $5.95/month for 24-month plan
- $4.95/month for 36-month plan
- Baby plan
- $9.95/month for 1 month
- $9.95/month for 12-month plan
- $8.95/month for 24-month plan
- $7.95/month for 36-month plan
- Business plan
- $14.95/month for 1 month
- $14.95/month for 12-month plan
- $13.95/month for 24-month plan
- $12.95/month for 36-month plan
HostGator Web Hosting Features
| Web Hosting Packages | |||
| Plans | Hatchling | Baby | Business |
| Disk Space | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Bandwidth | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Domains Allowed | 1 | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Your Own Toll-Free Number |  |
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| Free Dedicated IP | |
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| Free Private SSL | |
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| Site Builder | |
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| 24×7 Support | |
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| Instant Backups | |
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| No Contract! | |
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| 99.9% Uptime Guarantee | |
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| 45 Day Money Back Guarantee | |
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| Google Adwards | $100 Credit | $100 Credit | $100 Credit |
| Free / Instant Setup | |
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| Domain / FTP Features | |||
| Addon / Parked Domains | |
UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Anonymous FTP | |
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| Sub Domains | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| FTP Accounts | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Supported Web Hosting Features | |||
| WordPress Hosting | |
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| MySQL Databases | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| CGI | |
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| Fast CGI | |
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| PHP 5 | |
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| Ruby On Rails | |
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| SSH | |
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| Perl | |
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| Python | |
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| SSI | |
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| Cron | |
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| FrontPage | |
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| Curl | |
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| GD 2 | |
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| Image Magick | |
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| Streaming Audio/Video | |
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| Free Module Installation | |
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| E-mail Hosting | |||
| POP3 Accounts | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED | UNLIMITED |
| Web Mail | |
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| E-mail Alias | |
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| Auto Responders | |
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| Mailing Lists | |
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| Catch Alls | |
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| Spam Assassin | |
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| Mail Forwarding | |
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| IMAP Support | |
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| SMTP | |
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| Control Panel Features | |||
| Fantastico | |
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| Soholaunch | |
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| Hotlink Protection | |
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| IP Deny Manager | |
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| Custom Error Pages | |
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| Instant Blogs | |
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| Instant Portals | |
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| Instant PHPnuke | |
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| Instant Forums | |
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| Instant Guestbook | |
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| Instant Counter | |
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| Instant FormMail | |
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| Redirect URL | |
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| Web Based File Manager | |
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| PW Protected Directories | |
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| phpMyAdmin | |
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| Website / Ftp Statistics | |||
| AWStats (Real Time Updates) | |
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| Webalizer | |
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| Raw Log Manager | |
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| Referrer Logs | |
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| Error Logs | |
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| E-Commerce Features | |||
| Your Own Toll-ree Number | |
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FREE |
| Private SSL Allowed | |
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Included |
| Dedicated IP | |
$2.00/Monthly | FREE |
| Shared SSL | |
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| osCommerce | |
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| ZenCart | |
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| Cube Cart | |
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Host Unlimited Websites within 1 Hosting Account. One of the first things to consider while choosing a hosting provider is disk space and bandwidth as well as uptime guarantee. HostGator offers you unlimited disk space and bandwidth for any web hosting plan you are going to order. However, unlimited domains within 1 host account feature is not available for Hatchling plan that allows you to develop one site only. 99.9% uptime guarantee is another feature to consider and make sure that your web host is fast and reliable.
CPanel Control Panel. CPanel is a speed, simple-to-use control panel with all the necessary features for developing a great website. Such add-on as Fantastico makes this control panel really user-friendly. With its help you can install about 48 scripts on your CPanel control panel that your site work perfectly as well as look impressive. Fantastico allows you to install automatically such scripts as instant shopping carts, forums, blogs, portals, mailing lists, picture galleries and many more. CPanel is a perfect solution for beginners as well as for experienced web developers.
HostGator Programming and Database Features
If you need to store some data such as a shopping list or client records you should have a database for it. Thus, you need a database management system in order to add, access, process and edit data in your databases and HostGator offers you unlimited MySQL databases with phpMyAdmin access. This web hosting provider also supports such programming languages as PHP 5, CGI, Perl, Fast CGI, Python, Ruby on Rails, SSI. In case you don’t have much experience in web site developing, you can use FrontPage extensions web hosting to create your site.
HostGator “How To” Tutorials Video Tutorials
HostGator offers you useful video tutorials that help you learn more about the necessary things to manage your sites. Visiting this page support.hostgator.com you can find “how to tips” concerning CPanel, Plesk, FTP, Webmail, osCommerce and other important things to consider.
It should be noted that HostGator provides you with demo versions of CPanel control panel and a free Site Builder. Thus, you can preview them before making an order and find out how many features you are provided with. It is a great opportunity for beginners to learn more about the whole process of site building. Toolbars are easy to navigate and you also can try to create a website in demo version. Just try before making a choice to find out whether you really like it.
Host Gator Customer Support
HostGator provides professional customer support that is available 24/7. You can contact them via email, live chat, phone or forums. The answers concerning various topics can be found on the corresponding web page of customer support. However, if something is not clear you can call using free phone numbers.
Host Gator 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
As a company that is confident in the quality of services provided, HostGator offers you 45 day money back guarantee. Thus, you have enough time to check whether you really like this web hosting company and try all the features to find out whether all of them are so necessary for you. Just make your own opinion and decide.
Someone can say that prices offered by HostGator are quite expensive, however with the opportunity to pay monthly with no contract required this offer can be rather affordable. What is more, HostGator tries to provide the best service possible, because you pay monthly and it seems that you can leave any time. But maybe if you learn all pros and cons properly before making a choice you will not change for another web hosting provider in the future.