HostGator formed in 2002 when Brent Oxley started the company in his Florida dorm room. 

The company quickly grew into one of the most recognized names for providing VPS, shared, reseller and dedicated website hosting. Today, the parent company is Endurance International Group (EIG). 

The headquarters are in Houston, with another company presence in Austin, TX, as well as several international locations.

The most important things to consider inside my HostGator hosting plans review are factors that contribute to building a successful website, such as:

• Uptime
• Site speed
• Customer service
• Hosting plan that fits your needs

HostGator Provides Solid Uptime

HostGator consistently reports an uptime of 99.99%, which ranks right up there with any of the other top hosting options available on the market.

Hrank.com provides the uptime status for website hosts and here’s their current uptime report for HostGator:

Unlike many other hosts, this company gives you an interesting uptime guarantee. The guarantee provides you an extra month of credit if your uptime ever goes below 99.90%.

You need to keep track of this, of course. HostGator wants you to contact them with a support ticket within 30 days of site uptime dipping below the threshold. Hacking issues or planned maintenance don’t count either.

While many other companies won’t offer this type of guarantee, it has started to become a more regular occurrence as a few other hosting companies have come out with similar uptime guarantees.

This is a good thing, however, because it raises the bar across the industry and makes sure that your business is taken care of in the event that your site goes down.

Site Speed

You’ll benefit from competitive site speed if you choose a HostGator plan.

They’ve set up their server options to make sure that your visitors experience quality in this area.

Here are ways you can help make sure you don’t do anything to negatively impact the speed of your site’s pages:

• External media: Pay attention to whether embedded YouTube videos, for example, aren’t too large.
• Images: Resize images used on your website so that large images don’t slow down any pages.
• Ads: Using too many ads will slow down site speed.
• Theme: Choose a theme that doesn’t include bloated coding.
• Widgets: Some widgets have too much code and drag down page loading times.
• Code: Be careful about using CSS or HTML code that affects speed.

Keep in mind that site speed is vital for improved rankings. Especially since the June/July 2021 Google Web Vital Core Update, your site must have a fast loading time in order to keep its ranking ability. 

HostGator provides excellent website speed that helps you remain competitive in your niche.

HostGator Speed Test Result: GTmetrix

I found a couple websites hosted by HostGator (at the time of this writing, both of these sites are hosted on HostGator). Here is one of the results from GTmetrix.com:

HostGator Speed Test Result: Google Page Speed Insights

Quality HostGator Customer Support

Solid HostGator customer service in the form of live chat, phone and email support is available with a HostGator account.

Their live chat option is one of the quickest ways to get help. It’s not uncommon to get in contact with a customer service rep within 15 seconds after requesting a live chat session.

You’ll get your questions answered by knowledgeable representatives no matter which option you choose to use.

Phone and live chat options allow you to get help with issues ranging from:

• Control panel
• FTP
• Email
• Billing
• Sales

You can access a phone representative at the HostGator support number, which is (866) 96-GATOR. You’ll find 24/7/365 help there. 

If a live chat or phone rep can’t give you the answer you need right away, they’ll advise you to submit a support ticket so that the proper person can give you the best solution.

There is also a knowledge base available from HostGator that you can use to look up answers to questions in a DIY manner. The knowledge base is comprehensive and covers items such as:

• Billing
• Optimization
• Security
• Files
• DNS
• Hosting
• Domains
• cPanel
• Databases

Hosting Plans

You’ll have no problems finding the right hosting plan for your individual business needs.

HostGator packages are available with following types of hosting plans:

• HostGator shared hosting
• Cloud hosting
• HostGator WordPress hosting
• Reseller hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated hosting

Here’s some helpful information to aid you when deciding what type of hosting you need.

HostGator shared hosting is a quality choice when you’re building a basic website for a small business and don’t anticipate large traffic volumes for a while.

Cloud hosting is good when your website might experience peaks and valleys in traffic, such as when building out an ecommerce business.

Choose HostGator WordPress hosting when building your site on the WordPress platform.

Reseller hosting is a fit if you’re starting your very own hosting business.

VPS hosting is good when you’re building a basic site and don’t want to deal with the limitation of shared hosting.

Buy dedicated hosting when your website grows very large and you need extra security and customization.

HostGator Shared Hosting Plans

Shared hosting is the most affordable way to go and a great option when you’re starting out. Your site shares hosting resources with other websites. You have three options to choose from:

• Hatchling plan: Unmetered disk space and bandwidth, 1 domain, free SSL certificate and backup capability.
• Baby plan: Everything offered in the Hatchling plan plus unlimited domains.
• Business plan: Everything offered in the Baby plan plus a free dedicated IP.

It’s important that you get a free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate because this protects sensitive data transferred between your site and its visitors. It’s also a part of the Google SEO ranking factors.

Cloud Hosting Plans

The cloud hosting plans use the same name as the shared HostGator plans (Hatchling, Baby and Business) and have very similar features. They cost a little more, however, because you’ll have access to multiple servers for improved site performance.

You’re still sharing server resources with cloud hosting but you gain more control and management when compared to shared hosting plans.

The cloud hosting options add in CPU cores and memory.

More memory means that your site will perform better when site traffic increases. CPU is the central processing unit that keeps the server running things smoothly for your website. Your site can handle more data based on the number of CPU cores you pay for.

WordPress Hosting Plans From HostGator

If you are ready to get started with a serious blog or website and want to create it using WordPress, then you could consider these plans.

• Starter plan: Unmetered disk space, 100,000 visits per month, 1 site, free domain, free SSL, free backups, 1 GB backup storage, automatic malware removal and automatic WordPress updates.
• Standard plan: Everything in the Starter plan except that you get 200,000 visits per month, 2 sites and 2GB backup storage.
• Business plan: Everything in the Starter plan except that you get 500,000 visits per month, 3 sites and 3GB backup storage.

Each of these plans provides free website migration if you need to transfer an existing WP site over to HostGator.

Basically, you need to make your choice between these three plans based on how many sites you need to host and how much traffic you generate.

Reseller Plans

It’s highly unlikely that you need a reseller plan. You’ll need this only if you’re running your very own website hosting business. Just in case, here are the options from HostGator:

• Aluminum plan: 60GB disk space/600GB bandwidth
• Copper plan: 90GB disk space/900GB bandwidth.
• Silver plan: 140GB disk space/1400GB bandwidth

HostGator VPS Plans

VPS stands for virtual private server. VPS hosting provides an option where you share your hosting with a smaller number of websites. It’s more reliable and faster than normal shared hosting.

HostGator provides three options for VPS:

• Snappy 2000 plan: 2 CPU cores, 2GB of RAM, 120GB disk space, 1.5TB bandwidth.
• Snappy 4000 plan: 2 CPU cores, 4GB of RAM, 165GB disk space and 2TB bandwidth.
• Snappy 8000 plan: 4 CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 240GB disk space and 3TB bandwidth.

Each of the above VPS plans gives you:

• Unlimited domains
• Free SSL
• Free backups
• 2 dedicated IP addresses

Dedicated Hosting Plans From HostGator

This is the most expensive type of hosting because you get your very own server all to yourself. This is the highest level of site security, speed and performance.

HostGator has the these three dedicated hosting options:

• Value Server plan: 4 CPU cores and 8GB RAM
• Power Server plan: 8 CPU cores and 16GB RAM
• Enterprise Server plan: 8 CPU cores and 30GB RAM

Each of these options gives you unmetered bandwidth, free SSL and either three (Value plan), four (Power plan) or five (Enterprise plan) dedicated IP addresses.

45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

HostGator provides a guarantee that is 15 days longer than the industry standard 30-day guarantee.

This gives you an advantage because you can use their services for a full month and then still take your time to make sure you’ve made the best possible hosting decision for your business.

Their 45-day money-back guarantee doesn’t include their dedicated plans, install fees or administrative fees. However, these exclusions are quite common across all website hosts.

You should know that HostGator reserves the right to issue your refund up to 90 days after the request is made. As well, they don’t issue refunds if you order via money order, check, wire transfers or Western Union payments. Make sure you place your original order on a credit card.

As well, you need to know that the guarantee only applies to new accounts or plans. You can’t place an order, request a refund and then ask for a refund again if you open an account at a later date.

HostGator Testimonials

Hearing from HostGator customers who love how the hosting company helps their business is probably one of the most important aspects of any HostGator review to consider.

Final Thoughts on HostGator Review

I hope you enjoyed my HostGator review. The bottom line with HostGator is that you can’t go wrong by choosing the plan that fits your business and helps to get you up and running.