Hostgator is a privately owned web hosting company founded in 2002. According to Hostgator official claims, they provide hosting service for more than 1,000,000 websites and lead in hosting reseller accounts with over 20,000 resellers.

What’s good with Hostgator hosting?

Reliable server with guarnateed 99.9% uptime

Hostgator is running its own data center, also, it’s worth noting that every web hosting plan with Hostgator comes with a 45 day money back guarantee and 99.9% uptime guarantee. The deal is fully guaranteed by the company founder and CEO (Brent) himself .

Host unlimited domain

Hostgator is now offering 600GB of disk storage and 6,000GB bandwidth unlimited bandwidth and disk storage!. On top of that, you will get unlimited domain hosting with Hostgator. In short, this actually means that you can host ALL YOUR WEBSITES in just one single web hosting account with Hostgator.

Unlimited MySQL and POP3 email account

While most other hosting companies will only allow you to have a certain number of MySQL database, you get unlimited MySQL database with Hostgator. That’s quite an advantage if you’re planning to build a huge web application.

Room to grow

Hostgator offers shared, dedicated, reseller hosting. Along with the recently launched VPS hosting plans, Hostgator offer great rooms for website growth. This makes server switching and upgrading possible within Hostgator .

Environment Friendly

Lately Hostgator had turned green by powering and cooling their server using wind power.

Potential drawbacks with Hostgator

Some users might be not very happy with the price tag of Hostgator hosting. Without doubt, Hostgator is a little pricey compare to most other web host (about $1/mo extra compare to the average).

Hostgator Hosting Promotion

Hostgator hosting comes with tons of great addon features and promotions. From CPC marketing credits to discont for website templates – these promotions will definitely give a greater bang-for-the-bucks. In brief, here are the major promotions that come along when you signup with Hostgator hosting.

Free SiteBuilder	Free $50 Google Adwords credits
ChiliSoft ASP (Biz Hosting only)	Free 4,500 Site Templates

10-CheapWebhosting.com Says:

HostGator was founded in early 2002 in Boca Raton, Florida by Brent Oxley. It was started in his dorm room in college. Brent dropped out of college to pursue HostGator full time, and now its gone from a few dozen customers to over 150,000! Brent is now the president and chief executive officer of HostGator.

(Click Picture To Visit HostGator Website)

Homepage : http://www.hostgator.com Plan name : Baby 01 month plan : $9.95/month + $0 setup 24 month plan : $8.95/month 36 month plan : $7.95/month Disk Space : Unlimited! Bandwidth : Unlimited! Websites : Unlimited! Rating : HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

HostGator 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.

Hosting Plans

Unlike BlueHost and HostMonster which offer only 1 plan for everyone, HostGator is offering a full range of web hosting services with a lot of different plans. However, we are only interested in the Baby plan (Cute Baby Gator?) that comes with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and the ability to host unlimited websites.

There is a cheaper plan known as Hatchling but it is not recommended because it only allows you to host 1 website. The more expensive Business Plan includes extra features such as dedicated IP address, private SSL certificate, anonymous FTP connection and a toll-free number. Dedicated IP address and private SSL certificate are required if you plan to register for your own online merchant account to process credit card payments (You don’t need it if you are accepting PayPal payments). The toll-free is self-explanatory. The anonymous FTP connection is a useless feature that I don’t think you will need it.

Expensive Pricing?

The pricing for HostGator seems to be in the high side at $9.95/month, comparing to the standard $7.95 and even below $5 nowadays. But please take note that the biggest difference between HostGator and other web hosts is that they have no setup fees and no contracts!

If you want to sign up for a baby plan, you are not locked into 3 years at $5 a month. All other web hosts usually wants you to pay 1 year, 2 years or even 5 years upfront or they will charge you a high setup fee that is not refundable! With HostGator, you can just pay month to month without any setup fees. There is no contract bond.

As what Brent said, “We believe you shouldn’t hold a customer hostage on a hosting plan. If they don’t like our hosting they can leave anytime. And we tend to keep our customers for the long run. You can check our forums at forums.hostgator.com anytime for unfiltered customer reviews, the good and bad.”

What this means is if they want to make money, they have to make sure they provide the best service to their customers everyday single day because the customers can leave anytime!

They also have a longer 45 day money back guarantee instead of a standard 30 day money back guarantee with no questions asked. And they promise to process your refund in just 1 working day! For them, customer is the boss.

Try 1 Month For 1 Cent Only!

What’s more interesting is that Brent actually decided to let you try them out for 1 month for only $0.01! ONE CENT! I repeat, ONE CENT! All you have to do is to use the coupon code “GetFreeMonth” when you order, it will take off $9.94 from the total as shown above. You don’t even need to wait for money back if you decided not to host with them. Simply cancel your account before the auto renewal date (30 days) and your risk is just ONE CENT!

By giving this offer, you and I know that they are really very confident with their business!

Customer Support

They provide 24/7 support, through tickets/email, chat, phone and forums. Their building is staffed every day of the year at all times of the day and night. You will usually find a ticket replied back to within minutes. Major issues will be handled right on the spot by their administrators.

As Brent said, “Support is most likely the number one thing we do right and it’s what keeps our customers, and brings back a majority of those that leave for another host. You will never call HostGator and get an answering machine!”

They also have no outsourced support at all, everything is done in house. You won’t end up talking to an Indian.

Control Panel

They are also using our favorite CPanel control panel which we have introduced in our LunarPages review (read it to learn more). CPanel is also used by HostMonster and BlueHost. CPanel beats the other control panels in terms of speed, features, and user friendliness. My advice to you is to always make the CPanel control panel your first choice. Your hosting experience relies heavily on what control panel you are using. Unlike other hosts who never provide you with the demo of their control panel, HostGator makes the demo available to you! Their custom CPanel theme is so beautiful that I am sure you will love it at first sight. Try it now – Demo Link.

They Will Help You To Move Your Site

While most web hosts will not promise you anything on moving your site to them, HostGator actually takes 1 step further and promise to help you in moving your site. While this is really a tedious task, at least you won’t need to manually download your files from the old host and upload it to HostGator. This is quite painful since most of us have a slow internet connection. They will help you to migrate your existing files and existing databases from your old host which will save you a lot of time and effort. If you want, you can also move your domain name to them and they will renew it for you for another year for FREE. They might even help you in changing the configuration files for popular scripts such as WordPress or Joomla to point to your new databases. But for other configuration and debuging, I believe you have to do it yourself. But I am sure they are already doing a lot more than other web hosts. Maybe it is true that how much you pay is how much you get. How do you expect a free web host or a $1.95/month host can do this for you?

Datacenter

All of their servers are located out of The Planet datacenter based in Texas. They have been with them since 2002 and they are their largest customer having the most servers located at the datacenter comparing to other web hosts.

These world-class datacenters contain top of the line technology to ensure that servers stay cool, secure, and up at all times. The datacenters feature redundant power, HVAC, and fire detection systems, and are monitored 24/7 by both HostGator and The Planet’s Network Operation Centers.

130% Green

HostGator has purchased certified Renewable Energy Credits (REC) representing 130% of the electricity used to power and cool all their servers. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) allow any customer, anywhere in the country to support renewable energy generation.  For every REC purchased, one megawatt-hour (MWh, or 1000 kilowatt-hours) of renewable electricity is generated and delivered to the power grid.

Management & Employees

HostGator management team are made up of employees who have been with the company since early 2005 and 2006. All of them work directly at HostGator Office in Houston, Texas.  HostGator has over 150 employees, with a large amount of industry veterans from the hosting field. Not only that they are able to retain their customers for a long time, they are also able to retain their staff for a long time, showing that they are really a well run business.

Conclusion

The pricing might seems a little bit expensive but since you don’t need to pay a lump-sump up front, it becomes very affordable. And because you are paying monthly, you can leave anytime without worrying about your up-front payments because there isn’t any. And because of this arrangement, HostGator has to make sure they deliver the best service to you in order to make you stay! And they have been doing very well for the last few years making your investment in them almost assured.

Coupon Codes Summary

There are many coupon codes with different name but all of them provides either a 20% discount for the initial order or the first month for $0.01. Use the 20% off coupon if you are signing up for 12 months and above. Use the first month free coupon if you plan to pay month to month.

Spring – 20% discount for initial order

GetFreeMonth – First month for 1 cent only.

b2Evolution.net Says:

General

HostGator is an independent hosting company created by Brent Oxley. Today they are one of the world’s 10 largest hosting companies, but despite the growth, he still takes personal involvement in customer satisfaction and will often handle concerns personally.

• Customers: 100,000 +
• Hosted domains: 1,000,000 +
• Created: 2002
• CEO: Brent Oxley

User experience

Follow up:

• Control panel: cPanel
• Fantastico Deluxe – Up to date
• We were able to perform up to 6 simultaneous FTP upload which makes sites updates fast and easy.

Customer support

If there is one thing Hostgator is known for, it is their customer support. Most of their clients can attest to the efficience of Hostgator’s support services. If you have a question or need help regarding their hosting services, they are able to respond fast, sometimes in just 10 minutes, and provide thorough and reliable answers.  Their customer support is very easy to reach either by email, online chat or telephone.

Customer satisfaction & Guarantees

Hostgator is known for their guaranteed 99.9% up-time. Their servers are fast and efficient. Their clients barely notice any downtime at all. Potential customers and current clients would also be pleased to know that Hostgator manages their own data center. This means that they are in control of their servers and could efficiently manage their system.

Hostgator is so confident about their services that they offer a 45-day money back guarantee on all their web hosting plans, should you not be satisfied with their services. The company founder himself, back-ups this guarantee.

Another distinctive feature that makes clients choose HostGator is being able to pay monthly.

Overall, customers feedback shows they are generally satisfied with HostGator.

• Money back guarantee: 45 days
• Uptime Guarantee: 99.9%

Technical specs

* PHP version: 5.2.5 — Up to date. * MySQL version: 5.0.45 — Up to date. * GD library: 2.0.34 — Up to date.

(Section updated on May 1st, 08)

Security

HostGator is running mod_suPHP and there is strong isolation between user accounts. SFTP is not available. Overall security is good.

Hosting Plans

Hostgator offers different web-hosting plans depending on your needs. Current package plans are  Hatchling, Baby & Business. The Hatchling plan is geared for individuals who only need hosting for one domain. If you plan on expanding or already own multiple websites, the Baby plan may be more suitable for you. If you’re starting a business, then you should definitely be looking at the Business plan.

Each of these plans offer a package that is reasonable enough for your web hosting needs.  ALL  these plans come with UNLIMITED disk space and bandwidth. In addition, Hostgator also offers unlimited MySQL databases  and POP3 email accounts. Hostgator is definitely desirable, especially if you’re planning on establishing a huge web application.

	Hatchling	Baby	Swamp
Monthly fee (× 1 mo)	$8.95	$9.95	$14.95
Monthly fee (× 6 mo)	-	$9.95	$14.95
Monthly fee (× 12 mo)	$6.95	$9.95	$14.95
Monthly fee (× 24 mo)	$5.95	$8.95	$13.95
Monthly fee (× 36 mo)	$4.95	$7.95	$12.95
Disk space	350 GB	600 GB	1,000 GB
Transfer (monthly)	3 TB	6 TB	Unlimited
Included domain name	0	0	0
Domains per account	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
MySQL databases	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
b2evo auto install	yes	yes	yes

HostGator is one of the few hosts allowing you to pay monthly without being tied in into a long term contact.

Conclusion

Hostgator may be slightly more expensive than some of their competitors, and they may not offer as many free add-ons or additional features as some others do. However, do you really need those?

On the other hand, HostGator provides top-notch service in terms of server up-time and lets you pay monthly with no long term contract. Add to this guaranteed 99.9% up-time and world class customer support. All this definitely makes Hostgator a serious option to consider when looking for a new web-hosting provider.