HostGator Rating
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There are many, many choices out there that can probably do the job well enough, but if you’re looking for the most possible bang for your buck, then you really might want to take a long, hard look at HostGator. (Chances are if you landed here through a search for HostGator reviews, then you’ve probably already hard a little of the buzz for yourself and have gotten curious.) HostGator is indeed one of the fastest growing web hosting services out there and once you get to know a little bit about it, it won’t be hard to see why. It’s really got quite a lot to bring to the table, even in comparison to some of the biggest heavy hitters in the business.
What Is HostGator?
HostGator is an independently owned and maintained web hosting company that was first created by Brent Oxley in 2002. Since that time, they’ve really been racking up their share of accolades in regards the web world. These include a long string of notable awards – over 25 last time we checked – as well as multiple write-ups and endorsements from heavy hitters in the industry. As we touched on above, they’ve already been giving larger, better known services a run for their money thanks to the quality of their product. What’s more, their dedication to providing bloggers, web entrepreneurs, and serious webmasters everywhere affordable hosting support they can really count on gives us every reason to think that their success will continue for many years to come.
We’ve been in the web game for quite a while now and in that amount of time, we’ve tried a number of different web hosting services – certainly enough of them to be able to form an educated opinion on which ones are worthwhile and which ones aren’t. HostGator is actually one of the best we’ve used so far, so this is one HostGator review you can take to the bank. If anything, it actually exceeded our expectations in many ways, even considering the positive buzz we’d been hearing about it prior to that. Here’s a little bit of what you can expect for yourself.
Uptime Rates That Are Out of This World
OK, let’s face it. No matter how awesome it is, every web hosting service is going to experience at least a little bit of downtime. No one likes it when their site goes down, but yeah. It’s an inevitable part of the web game that you just have to accept. The key to success lies in finding a service provider that provides you with the best uptime rates possible. HostGator is downright exceptional when it comes to uptime. In fact, it has a 99.9% uptime rate and that’s something that even some of the other top services can’t claim. This isn’t just hype either! That figure has actually been backed up by numerous studies that have been conducted over the years.
We personally have yet to experience an outage on one of our HostGator sites and we’ve had some of them online for years. In fact, we can’t even remember receiving a single 500 error… ever. This is despite the presence of multiple MySQL databases, shared databases, and a number of other factors that would normally have resulted in at least a handful of errors by now. Multiple processes running at a time doesn’t seem to put a crimp in HostGator’s stride either. Those of you who have been in the web game a long time know that if you run many processes at once, you’re bound to run into problems sooner or later… or at least that’s the case with other web hosting providers (for instance see our HostGator vs BlueHost or HostGator vs GoDaddy comparison). That doesn’t happen very often with HostGator at all, so if that’s a common problem for you, you might be an especially good candidate for this particular service.
What’s their secret, you ask? Well, to begin with, HostGator’s data centers are exclusively populated by Dual Xeon servers, which are pretty much the best, most reliable servers money can buy these days. These same data centers also connect to 10 different providers, so that increases the rate of uptime considerably. Those two factors alone leave very little room for error, so it’s clear that HostGator takes its dedication to quality seriously -- seriously enough to actually guarantee that 99.9% rate of uptime we mentioned to all of its customers. That’s pretty impressive as far as we’re concerned!
Manage Your Domains with Ease
HostGator’s management interface is one of the most user-friendly we’ve personally ever come across. This makes it a great pick for beginning webmasters and seasoned web veterans alike, so if you’ve been hesitating to set up a website of your own out of worry that the whole process is going to be too complicated to handle without enlisting the help of an experienced webmaster, HostGator is the service you’ve been looking for.
HostGator actually uses cPanel as its management interface and that’s known for being extremely easy to use. Adding multiple domains to your HostGator will be a piece of cake thanks to the way HostGator cPanel works through Fantastico to make the whole process simple as well. You’ll be able to set up new e-mail addresses, third party software applications, and lots, lots more, making it an absolute snap to make all of your websites everything you’d like them to be.
If you have a little more experience in the world of site management, then you probably already have your pet software applications the way that we all do. That being the case, you are naturally concerned as to whether or not HostGator can handle your top choices. Whether you prefer WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any of the other popular picks today, rest assured that you can install and manage them all with an insanely minimal amount of fuss through cPanel and HostGator.
There are currently over 50 different web scripts supported and counting actually, so HostGator gives you plenty of room to grow, evolve, and explore new interfaces if you desire. We tend to favor WordPress and Drupal ourselves, but from what I hear, all of the supported options work right out of the box without any sort of hassle, so put your fears about not being able to manage everything efficiently to bed. It’s most likely going to be a lot easier than with anything similar you’ve dealt with so far.
The Best Possible Level of Customer Care
We know what you’re thinking now. How’s HostGator’s customer service? After all, who among us hasn’t found a product that was wonderful in every way… until you got to the point where you were really in need of a little customer support and couldn’t actually get any that amounted to any much. A lot of companies are like that – providers of a stellar service, but terrible when it comes to the area of proper customer support.
That type of inconsistency isn’t something you have to worry about with HostGator. If there’s anything about their service that can be possibly said to parallel the quality of their actual service, then it’s their attention to detail in regards to customer service. To begin with, it is a 24/7 service, so whatever time of the day or night, you’ll have access to a qualified professional who can really help you with whatever the problem is. You actually get to talk to a real, live person, too. None of this automated garbage or confusing FAQ run-arounds that you might be used to from other hosting providers – just your choice of fast-response live chat or a voice-to-voice interaction over the phone.
I’m not much of a phone person myself, so I’ve personally used the live chat option a number of times in regards to a variety of issues and I’ve never come away from the experience anything less than impressed with my experience. This isn’t one of those deals where the service provider just claims that they employ “experts” to handle their customer service department without really being able to deliver either. Trust me when I say I know when a customer service rep doesn’t know what they’re talking about… and HostGator’s people really know their stuff. I have yet to come up with a question they can’t answer. Some colleagues of mine have used the phone option and they were equally impressed with that.
Use HostGator Coupon Codes and Get a Stellar Deal
We know what you’re thinking now. How much is a service like this going to set you back? After all, no one’s exactly made of money in this day and age. Well, actually it’s not going to be as much as you’re probably thinking. HostGator’s prices are actually pretty competitive when you compare their rates to the competition. This is especially the case if you use the right HostGator coupon codes to take advantage of the deepest HostGator discounts available. The thing is HostGator knows that it’s got something special that it’s bringing to the table, so they really have no problem giving you some pretty sweet deals to make sure you give it a try for yourself.
How much you’ll pay for HostGator is naturally dependent on which of their several service plans you select for yourself and your website. Their “hatchling plan” will set you back about $8.95 per month or $83.40 or so for an entire year, for instance. Their “baby” plan and full-fledged business plans are $9.95 per month and $14.95 per month respectively. With an applicable HostGator coupon code, you can actually give any of these a try for a mere penny a month. Yes, you read that right… a penny! That’s a price any of us can live with here in the 21st century, right?
If that’s not enough of an incentive to try it on for size, then you really ought to know that HostGator has a solid 100% money-back guarantee in place. That means you have nothing whatsoever to lose in giving it a try. The worst thing that happens is it’s not for you and you wasted a little bit of your time. That’s it! If you’re not completely satisfied with your HostGator web hosting service after 45 days, then you get your money back – no questions asked!
The Up and Coming Hosting Service of the Century
We understand that you might be skeptical in regards to an independent web hosting provider being able to provide a level of service that actually rivals the bigger dogs out there on the scene. We certainly were!
However, once we gave HostGator a chance to prove itself – and how could we not with an ironclad money-back guarantee like theirs in place – we were seriously impressed and trust me. We’ve been in the web business a long, long time and we are very hard to impress.
At this point, I would even say that I actually consider myself to be spoiled for all other web hosting service providers, seriously. I can’t recommend HostGator highly enough and I consider their attention to quality, customer service, and superior services for reasonable prices that actually fit into my budget to set them well ahead of anything else out there on the market. I plan on building a handful of new sites in the year to come, actually, and I definitely plan on hosting every last one of them with HostGator. I feel more than confident in recommending that any other web entrepreneur, blogger, or web merchant who is serious about what they’re building to do the same.
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