I know you have had this question several times. Of course, you understand that HostGator is a good web hosting company. However, you might be thinking, ‘is HostGator good for WordPress?’ I know because any web host that doesn’t integrate well with WordPress isn’t on my recommended list.
That’s why I want to ask you, “What do you consider when choosing a web hosting company?”
Honestly, there are a lot of things to consider. They include:
Performance
Uptimes
Hosting features
Pricing plans
Security
User support
Ease of use
All these will determine the kind of web host suitable for you.
So, in this guide, we will be finding out whether HostGator can meet all the needs of a good web host based on those factors.
Let’s dive right in.
Is HostGator Good For WordPress? Secrets Finally Exposed
Is HostGator good for WordPress If you are looking for a good web host, I think that it's one of the best choices. Let’s study its hosting speed and other features
Product Brand: Hostgator
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: 0.00
Product In-Stock: InStock
4.3
HostGator overview
Founded in 2002, the company now hosts more than 10 million domains. That makes HostGator one of the most popular web hosting providers in the world. It’s now under Endurance International Group (EIG) We reviewed Bluehost, and it had only about 2 million domains. Thus, HostGator has more domains than Bluehost.
I can only say that the company has grown so fast due to its reliable hosting, excellent customer service, and flexible hosting plans. It now has over 850 employees in its data centres and headquarters in Houston, Texas.
Products and Types of Hosting it Offers to Businesses
HostGator offers a range of products to online business owners to build, manage, and grow their businesses:
A Website Builder
If you want to create your website really fast, the tool can help. You don’t need any tech skills to do it. Just input a few details, and you are good. It’s still under development, though.
I know there are web hosts such as SiteGround that offer the same feature, but let’s hope that HostGator will be much more powerful than the others.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
If you have a smaller website and need specific server configurations, a VPS shared hosting can do the trick. It’s a large server that has been divided into smaller sub-servers, with each hosting a particular website.
You only need $80 a month to have your VPS server on HostGator.
Dedicated Hosting
A dedicated server will cost you about $180 per month. However, since it’s powerful, you will not have traffic surges even if you get over 100,000 visitors per month on your business website. It will also allow you to host your resources on one powerful server without sharing it with anyone.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress is the most popular CMS. It harbors a ton of themes. Choose one premium theme to begin with.
My advice is that if you get a shared hosting optimized for WordPress, consider it. HostGator has that type of hosting. It starts from $12.95 per month for one site up to $81.95 per month.
HostGator Shared Hosting
I know you are familiar with this. It’s what most bloggers and businesses use because it comes with affordable prices. It’s basically hosting a ton of websites on a single server with no specific server configuration, as is the case for VPS. Since it’s affordable, many people start off with a shared hosting.
The HostGator shared web hosting plans begin from $8.95 per month to $16.95 per month.
Domain Registration and Hosting
HostGator also hosts your domains. You don’t need to have a domain names and web hosting company on different web hosts. Just input your preferred name in the search bar and purchase it. The price is around $15.55 per year, depending on the name and the extension (.com, .org, .gov).
As you can see, they will charge $14.95 for domain privacy for a year, which is relatively high. Namecheap is much more affordable than HostGator when shopping for a domain, but if you want all website elements in one place, go for the HostGator plan.
Cloud Hosting
HostGator also has cloud hosting plans, which is basically a network of connected hosting servers. So if one server is down for a reason, your website is automatically moved to the next available server. The plans begin from $10.95 a month (it’s a bit lower than other web hosts I know).
HostGator Hosting features
To answer the question is HostGator good for WordPress; let’s check out its hosting features:
Performance and Load Times
Your website load times have a lot to do with its search rankings. A fast-loading website will lead to a good user experience and hence higher search rankings.
A slow one will lead to a poor user experience and reduce rankings, traffic, and ultimately revenue.
How fast is a site hosted on HostGator?
Well, it’s not slow. Yet, it could be improved. For example, they no longer use the outdated PHP 5. Instead, they upgraded to a faster and more secured PHP 7 and SSD drives for shared hosting.
However, their response time isn’t at par with other web hosts such as SiteGround because they don’t seem to use HTTPS/2 or a custom caching system.
Uptime
Your website needs to be online most of the time. Otherwise, a few seconds of downtime could lead to a huge loss of customers and business revenue.
Most hosting sites offer an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Most of the time, they do this to reduce competition and lower your risk of entry. However, they will always factor out time when there is maintenance and upgrade.
HostGator guarantees 99.99% of uptime, as well. In addition, they will refund you a one-month worth of credit if they go below 99.90% uptime. If you go through their Terms Of Service (TOS) well, you will find this guarantee.
Most of the research from marketers proved that the company honors that guarantee. So yes, they maintained an uptime of above 99.90% for 12 months.
Email Marketing and Email Hosting
You will need a professional email to run your business. Customers won’t trust an email from your current Gmail or outlook account. Email service providers are also more likely to mark it as spam.
HostGator hosts your email for free whenever you purchase any of their pricing plans. Yes, you can configure all these in a managed panel section of the client area.
If you want to create email lists based on different customer segments in your target audience, you can do up to 25 email lists.
You can also create auto-responders, forwarders, and a whole lot of other features. There is a Spam Assassin to keep spammers at bay.
Security Features
The web host doesn’t negotiate for the security of your website. They understand a website is an essential element of your business, which has to be protected.
Search engines easily flag a website without an SSL certificate as spam. Therefore, they offer free SSL certificates and SSH access. Customer can’t trust you either. That’s why an SSL certificate adds a security layer to your website and prevents stealing essential customer information like credit card data.
There is also a firewall, which protects your site from hacker attacks. SiteLock protects your website from viruses and malicious IP addresses, while the CodeGuard feature acts like insurance for your website. It backups your website daily and restore the data with a single click.
Pricing Packages
HostGator has several hosting packages. You can decide to go for VPS, WordPress hosting, dedicated server hosting, or shared hosting, which is quite affordable compared to other plans.
Since the shared hosting is what I recommend to you, let’s check out the three pricing packages:
Hatchling Plan
It’s the most basic plan here and costs $2.75 a month. It allows you to build a single website and a free domain with unmetered bandwidth. And if you want to install WordPress and access most of the themes there, you can do so with a single click.
It also comes with a free SSL certificate and a free website transfer if you have it on another web host.
Baby Plan
The baby plan costs $3.50 a month and allows you to add unlimited websites with a free domain included. And just like the first plan, it comes with a 1-click WordPress installation. In addition, it comes with a free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth.
Business plan
It’s the final plan and also the most expensive. It costs $5.25 per month and allows you to create unlimited websites, free positive SSL certificate, free dedicated IP, free domain included, free SEO tools, and unlimited bandwidth.
Remember, these are all introductory prices. Once you renew the plans for the second year, the prices will go up.
The Customer Service
Excellent customer support is essential if you migrate your site to HostGator or set up a new website. You will need their help.
That’s why HostGator has an active support staff 24/7. So yes, even in the wee hours, they will reply to you. To do this, they give you a range of options to contact them.
If you are on their website and want to get real-time answers, use the chatbot right at the bottom of the site. Just type in your query and wait for a few seconds before you see ’typing…’, But that’s only if you are logged in.
They also have an active forum and blog content, which serve as a knowledge base for answers to some queries you might have in mind.
And if you want to call them, the number is right there on the site. There will always be an agent to pick your call.
What I like about HostGator
HostGator is an excellent web host. Here are reasons why I would recommend the site to you:
- Their hosting is reliable
HostGator offers reliable hosting. They guarantee not going below 99.99%, which they don’t honour most of the time but refund a month-worth of credit if they go below 99.90%.
The downtimes are rare, though. I understand that sometimes the uptimes can be as low as 99.96%, but it doesn’t happen most of the time. So, don’t give it a lot of thought based on the reviews on the internet.
They also have a ton of hosting types to choose from, depending on your business needs. So, it’s worth a shot.
- Flexible payment plans
Each type of hosting has several hosting options to choose from. You don’t have to go for the business plan if you are just testing the waters.
Most people go for shared hosting plans. These, too, are categorized to get precisely the tools you need based on the level you are in your business.
The flexible payment plans give customers a menu of choices to choose from – something customers like.
- They will transfer your website for free
It’s a nerve-wracking task transferring a website from one web host to another. Believe me, I tried doing this a few years ago, and it proved to be a tussle. That’s why the job is better left to experts.
With HostGator, however, you have nothing to worry about because they will do it for you for free. Just give them the details of your web host and wait for a few minutes. After that, they will transfer all your files and data to your new web host.
Remember, other web hosts, charge up to $180 to do the same task that HostGator does for free.
- It’s easy to use
HostGator is geared towards new webmasters with inadequate technical skills even to move the needle. If you don’t want to hire someone to build a website for you, use their website builder feature and have the site up and running in a few minutes.
They also have templates. That means half of the work has been done for you. Select a template and proceed to edit it to match your brand colors and message.
But don’t worry if the dashboard looks a bit confusing. There are a ton of video tutorials to walk you through the whole process.
And for e-commerce store owners, there is an all-in-one solution for that. You can set up a website with payment processors and plugins you need. They have also partnered with MOJO marketplace to offer you premium themes and graphics.
What I don’t like about HostGator
There are also things that HostGator can do better.
- Upsells
HostGator has a lot of upsells on its funnel. On your signup process, they have extra fees for extra services meant to enhance the performance and security of your site.
If you don’t tick the box to add these features, they will upsell most of these to you. They are necessary features. But if you don’t need them at that moment, there is no need to purchase them.
- Extra fees for a ton of additional services
It would be okay if all the features were in the bundle. However, HostGator will charge you $25 for each backup restore request. I understand that you don’t have to restore the backups every other time, but other web hosts offer this for free, making it feel pricey.
There are also other features such as malware removal or monitoring that will require some extra payment. In general, HostGator can do well to balance all these.
Apart from those few issues, HostGator is a great web host.
Let’s Answer A Few FAQs
Let’s delve into a few common questions people ask on the internet a lot regarding HostGator.
Bluehost vs HostGator: Which One is better?
We talked a lot about Bluehost here [link]. And one thing that sticks between the two is that both of them are popular web hosting companies.
Bluehost offers a wide range of web and domain hosting, domain registration, and emails. They have a solid support team and guarantee excellent uptimes of not less than 99.99%. Of course, that’s basically what any other web host says, but sometimes they go below that.
Bluehost is among the three companies recommended by WordPress. That means it integrates well with WordPress. You can also build a website and Install WordPress with a single click when it comes to HostGator.
But one thing I like about HostGator is the website transfer process. While Bluehost charges $149.99 to transfer up to 5 sites, 20 email accounts, and other files, HostGators does it for FREE. How cool is that?
The pricing also differs, and so do the features in each pricing plan. There aren’t a lot of differences between these two web hosts, though. So, just study their pricing plans and features before taking the dive.
Is HostGator Good for WordPress?
Yes, it’s good. HostGator offers hosting for WordPress websites and blogs for better content management. The pricing starts from $5.95 a month and allows up to 100,000 a month plus 1GB of backups. The standard plan costs $7.95, while the business plan costs $9.95 a month.
If you purchase any of the shared hosting packages, it’s way more affordable. However, you will be sharing a single server with multiple websites. They also allow the installation of WordPress after accessing the c-panel. It’s merely a one-click install.
Do HostGator Offer Refunds and Guarantees?
Yes, it does. Most SaaS companies offer this type of guarantee to lower the risk of entry and attract customers. HostGator is not left behind either. Actually, it provides a 45-day money-back guarantee.
So, if you sign up and feel that HostGator isn’t offering the kind of hosting you expected, just request a refund, and they will gladly do so.
However, I’m sure you will like the excellent web hosting service that the company offers. Therefore, I recommend it to anyone who wants web hosting for a limited budget.
Begin your 45-days free trial today. Sign up for the hatchling plan, to begin with, and set the ball rolling.
Affiliate Disclaimer: I hope you liked our Is HostGator Good For WordPress review. Please note that some of the links inside this article may be affiliate links to HostGator. That means that if you click on one of the links and sign up, I may be compensated for it. If you do happen to click, we appreciate it! Any money we make keeps this site running smoothly and allows us to keep writing these high-quality reviews.
