HostGator has become one of the better known web hosts in the industry by being themselves. Though nothing they do is completely spectacular or unbelievable, they do what they should do. That is, HostGator actually answers their phones, replies to their emails, responds to live chat requests, doesn’t rip you off, and provides quality hosting. It’s actually quite sad that most hosts can’t seem to get these things right, but it’s great for HostGator as they’ve banked on it and it’s translated into success.
At first glance, HostGator is not too impressive. They have a fairly generic web site, a logo with a fairly lame slogan - “we eat up the competition” (the alligator in the logo is eating the “H”) (sorry HostGator), ordinary copy on their text, an apparent lack of updates on their site, a pretty standard ModernBill setup, cPanel, and basically everything an average web host has.
However, that’s the beauty of HostGator. They don’t have too many bells and whistles, marketing ploys, or anything of the sort. What you see is what you get and it’s that simple. HostGator’s terms of service is pretty standard, as is their order process. Marketing isn’t shoved down your throat at every page and billing is simple. The order process takes about 5 minutes and HostGator accepts both credit cards and PayPal (which is always nice), as well as debit cards.
HostGator offers some other services such as web design, merchant services, domain registration, SSL certificates (which at $75 each, are overpriced), and script installation. They outline all of their upgrades quite clearly in the Addons section of the Support Center, which is always nice.
The actual HostGator control panel is cPanel. There is absolutely nothing that I can tell that is different than any other standard installation of cPanel. It has the standard mail and database features. Speed was good. Everything worked fine and installation of the scripts I tried worked just fine.
Pros
Good support, easy to contact, competitive pricing, plenty of features with
cPanel, straight forward
Cons
Not too many free addons or extra features, no Web 2.0 technology support
Bottomline
HostGator is a solid hosting company that provides excellent support and competitive pricing without too many frills or marketing ploys.
Hi, I've been a webmaster for many years and have experience with many of the top web hosting providers out there. I have thoroughly reviewed and rated the
I have hosted sites on hostgator for a few years now and my experience has been excellent. I am currently hosted on their swamp plan, and love the unlimited domains offered. I currently host the majority of my sites on this account and can add more whenever I want at no additional charge. Uptime has always been superb, and in years I have been hosted there, I have only noticed one or two periods of downtime that lasted only a few minutes.
Support for hostgator is also excellent. They always have people on live support to assist you with technical or billing problems. They have always worked with me until I have resolved technical issues I was having and made sure that I knew what I was doing when installing things, etc. They also use cPanel for their control panel, which is very easy to use.
I honestly can’t think of many things wrong with hostgator. Their prices are a bit higher than some other hosts, but their quality is definitely better than most other hosts out there. They will make up for this slightly higher price with increased uptime and better support. Hostgator has been the best host I have ever used for shared hosting and I would recommend them to anyone.