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Several years ago, I was really dissatisfied with my GoDaddy WordPress Hosting, and moved many of my small websites to HostGator.

First off – I’m so happy I switched. I was definitely worth the transition.

But now that I’ve been using HostGator for several years (and setup several websites using WordPress) – I’ve got a full pros and cons list of using HostGator that would’ve been useful to know before signing up.

So let’s dive into my HostGator review. They aren’t the best fit for everyone, but here’s what I’ve liked/disliked as a customer. If you want other options, be sure to check out Conclusion.

Pros of HostGator Shared Web Hosting

#1 Price

With shared hosting plans – you are really talking about a buck here and a penny there – but nevertheless, HostGator really stood out – especially when I factored in their features (like unlimited everything for their Baby Plan).

Their default discount is 20% off the first year – but you can use this link to get a 45% discount. So the Baby Plan was $4.86/mo.  Next year, it’s only going to pop up to $7.63/mo.

Get 45% off HostGator here.

They have a Hatchling Plan that’s even cheaper(!) if you only need 1 domain.

After shopping around – I found several places like FatCow, iPage and Bluehost (all are Endurance brands focused on different market segments) that had an occasional better promo – but always had either higher long-term prices, not as good features, or higher price per site costs than HostGator.

So yeah – price was a huge pro for me with HostGator – especially the fact that they offer monthly pricing without a 12 month lock-in – and allow so many small sites to live on the same account.

#2 Good Service + Uptime

HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime (which is 8 downtime hours per year). So far – I haven’t had any. HostGator has had its issues in the past though (notably in August 2013). That’s compared to GoDaddy – which guarantees the same thing, and I had documented 8 hours in 1 month (not to mention the recent DNS hack). When a post of mine went viral – HostGator handled more than 12,000 new sessions on my server within an hour just fine.

Speaking of DNS – that was the topic of one of my couple interactions with the HostGator support staff.

HostGator promises 24 x 7 x 365 service – and they actually delivered. I was transferring a development site from my HostGator to my client’s host – and was having a technical problem (turned out to be a misstep I had taken) at 2am.

I logged in on chat – and yep, got my questions answered right away. Fabulous.

When I setup my account – I was also really impressed with HostGator’s How-To guide on moving your WordPress website from one host to another. The guide actually served as my reference in my video tutorial on the same topic.

#3 Transfer Service + QuickInstall

Don’t want to transfer your website manually?

HostGator has a pretty incredible service where they will transfer your entire website for you.

Yup. You just give them the info after you sign up, give their techs a couple hours and bam! your site is on HostGator. Really cool.

Don’t have a website yet – and just want to 1-click install WordPress without fooling with a manual install?

HostGator has that. In fact, here’s their video tutorial on how to 1-click WordPress Install…

#4 Unlimited Everything

HostGator’s plans offer unlimited everything, except the Hatchling Plan, which offers unlimited everything, but caps your domain names at 1.

This is a big deal. Unlimited databases means that you can have pretty much as many WordPress installs as you want.

Unlimited domains (on Baby and Business plans) means you can have literally unlimited websites on 1 plan (my websites cost cents, not dollars to host because I have so many on 1 plan).

Unlimited bandwidth means that you can scale, and not worry about # of visitors (although every shared host is going to crash if you get on the front page of CNN, and millions all come at once).

And then there are unlimited subdomains and FTP accounts – so you can give secure access to any number of people.

It’s a pretty awesome feature set.

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#5 cPanel

cPanel is the software that runs your server’s backend. It’s what you login to when you want to install a website, etc.

Using cPanel is a huge pro – because it’s open-source (no company owns it), and is sort of the industry standard, so it has tons of documentation, and your can get help anywhere on the Internet in addition to HostGator.

It’s a huge difference from GoDaddy (and 1&1, and other big-time hosts) that have proprietary backends.

They are a bit easier to use, but you are totally dependent on them for support – and they can be very limiting and frustrating in what you can and cannot do. For example, until very recently – you could’t edit file permissions via FTP with GoDaddy. Really annoying and time consuming if you are designing a website.

cPanel is a big plus – not to mention that the WordPress user manual often just assumes that you are running cPanel.

If you are curious – here’s what the HostGator cPanel looks like. It has tons of options, but it also put the most used ones front and center (e.g. note the giant WordPress icon at the top).

#6 Not The Dirt, Dirt Cheapest

As I said in the Pros – HostGator was the cheapest in value and long-term price.

That said – if you want to save 1 or 2 dollars per year, you can get a promo at Web Hosting Hub (Web Hosting Hub review) or their sister company iPage, which is pretty good (and super-cheap too), even though it’s not a hosting company first and foremost. The same goes with GoDaddy (this promo will get you $1.99/mo for 1 year)

#7 Pricey In-House Domains

Speaking of domain companies, HostGator sells domain name, and even offers them directly through cPanel.

But they are pretty pricey – $15/yr for .com

It’s kind of annoying. But that’s normal, HostGator is a hosting company, not a domain company.

And since HostGator uses cPanel, it’s super easy to direct your DNS to HostGator (you just type in your HostGator nameservers over where your domain is registered and poof, it’s done).

I use NameCheap for domains and Google for email anyway.

#8 Not As Many Goodies

HostGator gives you $100 in AdWords credit and a 45-day guarantee in addition to a pretty awesome site builder.

Other hosting companies give away cool stuff like Yahoo, Flickr, and Fotolia ad credits. HostGator needs to get on the business development scene.

Not a huge deal, but still worth noting.

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