Review of HostGator: Best Web Host Overall

HostGator.com took out our BEST HOST OVERALL award without much effort. This is why I consider HostGator to be the best choice for your hosting:

Huge, reliable company with years of experience
Outstanding uptime record
Fanatical technical support
Honest TOS and generous limits on “unlimited” items
They can accomodate any size website
Positive user experience

Summary

HostGator has an excellent choice of plans for a reasonable price. Price difference for the longest contract period (3 years) vs. monthly billing is reasonable (I always tend to like monthly billing as opposed to a contract term, but you do get a better price with fixed contract). Their customer satisfaction and support are excellent, and the features, reliability and technical quality are top notch.

Price: 92
Features: 99
Speed: 99
Uptime: 98
Reliability: 98
Customer support: 95
Customer experience: 95
TOTAL: 97

Detailed overview

Unlimited Stuff
  • Hosted Domains (except on Hatchling Plan)
  • E-mail Accounts
  • Bandwidth
  • FTP accounts
  • MySQL databases
  • Subdomains
  • Disk space
True Limits
  • 250,000 inodes, no backup for over 100,000 inodes
  • 25% of server CPU and/or resources for over 90 seconds
  • 20GB disk space removed from backup schedule
  • Bandwidth allowance depending on plan
Free Stuff
  • Your own toll-free number (for business plan only)
  • $50 credit for Google Adwords
  • Free dedicated IP (for business plan only)
  • Free private SSL (for business plan only)
  • Shared SSL
  • Free website templates
  • Free domain, file, database and script transfer if you are coming from another host
Hosting platforms
  • Linux
  • Windows for dedicated servers
Control panel
  • cPanel
Technical support 24/7 Phone, Email and Live
Contract term
  • Cheapest: Hatchling plan 48 months / $4.95
  • Most expensive: Business plan monthly $14.95
Customer experience roundup Based on various user reviews, HostGator fares very well indeed. The few negative reviews seem to refer to specific one-off instances, rather than systematic problems. If you purchase your domain name through them, you are likely to pay too much, but if you have been reading this site, you wouldn’t be buying a domain name from your host, now would you :-P . Their use policy is fair, and most of the time you will get a warning if you exceed your usage limits. HostGator support is responsive, fast and honest.
Uptime
  • Claim: 99.9%
  • True: 99.976%
Features All you could ever want from a host
Plans HostGator is one of the largest hosting companies around. There is a plethora of choices from basic shared hosting to dedicated servers. That means that they can grow with you pretty much to all the way.
Price
  • Hatchling plan: $4.95 / month / 36 months, $8.95 / month
  • Baby plan: $7.95 / month / 36 months, $9.95 / month
  • Business plan: $12.95 / 36 months, $14.95 / month

The plans have reasonable differences in their restrictions. I would recommend the Baby Plan. Available contract lengths are 36, 24, 12 and 1 month.
Guarantees
  • 99.9% uptime
  • 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
Technical quality Excellent
Email services Choice of 3 different mail solutions
Warnings
  • Suspension policy on resource overuse
  • Linux hosting only for shared plans

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