#3 Web Hosting - HostGator Review

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. This site is proudly hosted by HostGator!

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.

I have a written a longer post to explain the differences between the Hatchling, Baby and Business Plan in details.

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 "freemonth" 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.

SNOWMAN - 20% discount for initial order

Order Type	Normal Price	After 20% Discount
12 Month	$119.40	$95.52
24 Month	$214.80	$171.20
36 Month	$286.20	$228.96

FREEMONTH - First month for 1 cent only.

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