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Hostgator hosting plans begin from as little as $2.75 per month, but can scale up into the hundreds of dollars for dedicated hosting tiers. In this guide, we’ll explain which plan may be best for your needs, and how to get the best HostGator deal.
The tiers vary in cost, with a higher price tag netting you more storage, website domains, features, or support options. Despite this, our expert testers found HostGator to be one of the best cheap web hosting providers on the market.
Discounts and deals are available, as well, though you should check the fine print to ensure you know how much you’ll be paying when you renew your plan: HostGator regularly sells its plans at 40-50% off for the first 12-36 months, which can make for a big surprise when you renew at their original prices.
We’ve included the best deals in our table below, which covers all the plans, tiers, and non-discounted pricing options available from HostGator.
Plan name | Starting Price | Type | Plan Verdict | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | | | | ||||||
Hatchling | Baby | Business | Snappy 2000 | Snappy 4000 | Snappy 8000 | Value | Power | Enterprise | Hatchling | Baby | Business | Starter | Standard | Business |
$2.75 | $3.95 | $5.95 | $19.95 | $29.95 | $39.95 | $89.98 | $119.98 | $139.99 | $4.95 | $6.57 | $9.95 | $5.95 | $7.95 | $9.95 |
Shared | Shared | Shared | VPS | VPS | VPS | Dedicated | Dedicated | Dedicated | Cloud | Cloud | Cloud | WordPress | WordPress | WordPress |
Very affordable plan, even for a starter | Popular middle-of-the-road plan for medium-sized businesses | Large business plan with lots of free add-ons | Affordable start plan for VPS hosting | Recommended middle ground plan for any business | Reserved for large companies with pressing hosting needs | Great price for dedicated hosting | Flexible plan that won’t break the bank | Robust plan only for large businesses | Fast, affordable way to launch a website | Great plan for multiple sites | More secure plan with added SEO tools | Starter plan for one, low traffic site | Mid-tier option with room for growth | Expensive plan, only covers 3 sites though |
Which HostGator Plan Is Best?
There are a variety of types of hosting plans, all aimed at those with differing needs. HostGator offers all five of the major hosting plans, and each plan comes with multiple tiers.
The plan differences are mostly defined by your website’s relationship with the physical server that hosts it. If you shared the server with other sites, you’re using shared hosting; If you have a server all to yourself, you’re using dedicated hosting; if you get a defined section of the server for your site, you’re using VPS hosting. You can also shared multiple servers under a cloud hosting plan. Finally, there’s a WordPress hosting plan, which is a little different from the rest: It’s essentially just cloud hosting, but with additional help from the popular WordPress website creation software, which provides ready-made templates and plugins.
You don’t really need to remember all that, however. Here’s what’s really relevant:
- Shared Hosting – cheapest, but the least powerful; best for small websites
- VPS Hosting – good for medium-sized or growing business websites
- Dedicated Hosting – most powerful and most expensive; best for bigger website
- Cloud Hosting – relatively inexpensive but dependable option for mid-size websites
- WordPress Hosting – the hands-off option, best for website newbies
If you’re eager to learn more about the ins and outs of web hosting prices (as well as take a look at HostGator’s competition), feel free to check out Tech.co’s full guide to web hosting costs.
HostGator Shared Hosting
Shared hosting plans mean you’ll save the most money, but since you’ll be shared the physical server your site is hosted on, your site might occasionally run slowly or even stop functioning entirely. However, HostGator proved to have the most up time in Tech.co’s tests, meaning that its shared hosting plans are more likely to keep your website continuously functioning than its competitors’ plans. It’s tough to argue with those results.
All three HostGator shared hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate and unmetered bandwidth, but none of them include free domains or free site backups. For a detailed look at the differences between shared hosting tiers, check out the graph below.
Plan name | Starting Price | Money back guarantee | Sites included | Monthly Visitor Limit | Disk Space | Plan Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hatchling | Baby | Business | |||||
$2.75 | $3.95 | $5.95 | |||||
45 Days | 45 Days | 45 Days | |||||
1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||
240,000 | 240,000 | 240,000 | |||||
Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||
Very affordable plan, even for a starter | Popular middle-of-the-road plan for medium-sized businesses | Large business plan with lots of free add-ons |
HostGator VPS Hosting
Medium-sized businesses that hope to grow their online presence can’t rely entirely on the less-dependable shared hosting, but shouldn’t pay through the nose for dedicated hosting: VPS hosting is the best option for them.
Here are the three HostGator VPS plan tiers, the benefits they offer, and the prices they’ll cost you. Free backups and two IP addresses are available at all tiers.
Plan name | Starting Price | Money back guarantee | Available RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Allowed Domains/Websites | CPU Cores | Plan Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Snappy 2000 | Snappy 4000 | Snappy 8000 | |||||||
$19.95 | $29.95 | $39.95 | |||||||
45 Days | 45 Days | 45 Days | |||||||
2GB | 4GB | 8GB | |||||||
120GB | 165GB | 240GB | |||||||
1.5TB | 2TB | 3TB | |||||||
Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||||
2 | 2 | 4 | |||||||
Affordable start plan for VPS hosting | Recommended middle ground plan for any business | Reserved for large companies with pressing hosting needs |
HostGator Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting: Sure, it’ll cost more, but it’s definitely the most cost-effective route for a huge company with a lot of online data and a lot of traffic.
HostGator offers two server locations for their dedicated hosting plans, both of which are U.S.-based, and it supports both Linux and Windows OS. Here are the features and costs that each tier comes with.
Plan name | Starting Price | Available RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | CPU Cores | Up Time Performance | Plan Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | ||||||
Value | Power | Enterprise | ||||||
$89.98 | $119.98 | $139.99 | ||||||
8 GB | 16 GB | 30 GB | ||||||
1 TB HDD | 2 TB HDD or 512 GB SSD | 1 TB SSD | ||||||
Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | ||||||
2 core / 8 thread | 8 core / 16 thread | 8 core / 16 thread | ||||||
99.99 | 99.99 | 99.99 | ||||||
Great price for dedicated hosting | Flexible plan that won’t break the bank | Robust plan only for large businesses |
HostGator Cloud Hosting
Unlike some cloud hosting providers, HostGator won’t give you the option to tailor the server cluster to your exact RAM, CPU, or storage needs. You’ll pay a fixed rate rather than an hourly one, as well. In other words, the three tiers you see are all that you can get.
Here are the three HostGator cloud hosting plan tiers, with a little more data about the benefits and costs of each.
Plan name | Starting Price | Free domain | SSL Certificate An SSL Certificate allows for more secure connections from a server to a browser | Sites included | Dedicated IP Addresses | Storage | CPU Cores | Up Time Performance | Plan Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | ||||||||
Hatchling | Baby | Business | ||||||||
$4.95 | $6.57 | $9.95 | ||||||||
| | | ||||||||
| | | ||||||||
1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | ||||||||
1 | ||||||||||
2 GB | 4 GB | 6 GB | ||||||||
2 | 4 | 6 | ||||||||
99.99 | 99.99 | 99.99 | ||||||||
Fast, affordable way to launch a website | Great plan for multiple sites | More secure plan with added SEO tools |
HostGator WordPress Hosting
If you don’t have a lot of experience with web hosting, coding, or running any IT programs, never fear: WordPress hosting is probably for you. The plans will host your website on a cloud-based server cluster and deliver your website through the WordPress software, which lets you pick your favorite front-end template out from thousands of options, making your site easy to access and update.
Take a look at each of HostGator’s three WordPress hosting plans here to get a good idea of what each of them offers at which price point.
Plan name | Starting Price | Free domain | SSL Certificate An SSL Certificate allows for more secure connections from a server to a browser | Sites included | Storage | Bandwidth | Up Time Performance | Plan Verdict | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | |||||||
Starter | Standard | Business | |||||||
$5.95 | $7.95 | $9.95 | |||||||
| | | |||||||
| | | |||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | |||||||
1 GB | 2 GB | 3 GB | |||||||
Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered | |||||||
99.99 | 99.99 | 99.99 | |||||||
Starter plan for one, low traffic site | Mid-tier option with room for growth | Expensive plan, only covers 3 sites though |
HostGator Review Summary
Founded in (where else?) Florida in 2002, HostGator is one of a handful of well-known and respected web hosting brands operating today. It has a strong reputation for good reason: Its offers great service and a high quality across the board.
In our testing, we found that HostGator performed better than any other top brands when it came to up time (the amount of time that websites hosted on HostGator stayed online and functional). HostGator’s 99.99% up time makes them the most dependable hosting service on the market today. Their range of plans and their storage space are also highlights.
We have a few quibbles, as a few additional features could be included in a few plans, and the pricing can be a little higher than it needs to be, but HostGator is definitely a strong contender in web hosting. Here’s our full review, which details their five different plans, their features, and how much it all costs. Also, don’t forget to check out the special HostGator deals so you can get a great price right off the bat.
HostGator provides a good service for plenty of reasons, but the biggest one is worth highlighting: They're dependable, keeping their hosted websites available and functional online more consistently than their competitors, according to Tech.co's tests. Their range of plans and tiers, their strong support team, and their good storage options all make HostGator a recommended web hosting service, even if its pricing and feature set leave a little to be desired.
Verdict – Should You Use HostGator?
Yes, HostGator is a strong contender in the web hosting world. It offers great storage options, a solid 24/7 support team, and a wide range of plans and tiers. Best of all, their website up time is 99.99%, meaning your website will stay functional and working almost all the time. They’re not perfect (features are a little limited, and they’re a bit pricier than a few of their competitors), but they’ll definitely serve you well.
If you’re interested in checking out HostGator for yourself, make sure to take advantage of the regular HostGator deals so you can get the best price on a web hosting provider that works for you.
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