Hostgator Hosting

HostGator Web Hosting Review 2017

In this review, we’ll take a look at the HostGator’s WordPress Cloud Hosting. HostGator is one of the most popular web hosts in existence and offers a variety of affordable plans.

Founded back in 2002 by Brent Oxley, a Florida Atlantic University student, HostGator quickly achieved rapid growth. By 2012, HostGator was large enough to get snapped up by hosting conglomerate Endurance International Group for a whopping $225 million.

Nowadays, HostGator has hundreds of thousands of customers and hosts millions of websites. They’re one of the largest and most popular hosts around, so you can bet we’ll take a deep look at them with real testing data.

Keep reading to learn more about HostGator’s features and get a look at our real-world testing data…

Overview of HostGator Cloud Hosting Features

Because HostGator’s Cloud WordPress Hosting is…well, in the cloud, you get a number of managed hosting features like:

• Built-in caching
• Built-in CDN
• Easy-to-use hosting interface
• Automatic backups with one-click restores
• Easy scalability in case you go viral
• Automatic malware removal
• One-click WordPress installs
• Free site migrations
• 24/7/365 support via phone, chat, and email

For the price point, it’s a very impressive feature list. But how do those features stack up when put to the test? Real-world testing data coming up next!

HostGator WordPress Cloud Hosting Performance – Real Testing Data

Despite its low price, HostGator’s WordPress Cloud Hosting performed quite impressively in our tests.

First, we tested Time to First Byte, a general measure of server responsiveness. Lower times are best. And boy was HostGator low. They clocked in at 0.05 seconds for Time to First Byte. That ranked first out of any host we tested, expensive managed hosts included.

Next, we looked at the average load time of our test site. Again, HostGator was impressive. On average, our test site loaded in just 1.70 seconds. This ranked 5th overall in our tests.The only four hosts which loaded our test site faster were much more expensive managed hosts.

Finally, we tested uptime. Did HostGator’s real-world uptime meet their guarantee? You betcha! In our test, our site experienced 99.995% uptime. With generous rounding, that could’ve been 100%. This uptime more than met their 99.9% guarantee and again was one of the best that we tested.

When you consider its price point, HostGator’s WordPress Cloud Hosting performed better than well!

HostGator Data Center Locations

Your data center is the actual physical location of the computers hosting your website. You want the data center hosting your site to be as close as possible to your target readers. Why? Because physical distance actually has an effect on page load time.

So where are HostGator’s data centers? They have one in Houston, TX and one in Provo, UT.

But because HostGator’s WordPress Cloud Hosting has a built-in CDN, the lack of European or Asia data centers doesn’t matter as much.

HostGator Technologies Used

As for actual hosting technologies used, HostGator supports both PHP 7 and HTTP/2. Without going into too much detail, both of these are the newest version of their respective technology, and both offer performance improvements over the older versions. So this is a definite bonus for HostGator!

They also offer a free shared SSL certificate for all hosting accounts, which is important because Google gives a ranking boost to websites using SSL certificates.

And of course, you get the built-in caching and CDN for improved performance.

HostGator Support and Documentation

As we mentioned, HostGator offers 24/7/365 support through three different contact channels: chat, phone, and ticket. We like that you can get someone on the phone if needed.

Higher priced shared plans even get their own dedicated toll-free number, which is a nice touch.

HostGator WordPress Cloud Hosting Plans Pricing

HostGator’s cloud plans are plenty competitive for the managed hosting industry. They currently offer three different pricing tiers:

Their Starter plan offers hosting for a single website with up to 100,000 monthly visitors. It starts at $5.95 per month.

Their Standard plan boosts the number of websites you can host two and gives you 200,000 visits per month. It starts at $7.95 per month.

Finally, their Business plan ups that to 5 websites and a comparative 500,000 visits per month. It starts at $9.95 per month.

HostGator VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated Plans

In addition to the cloud hosting plans we focused on, HostGator also offers VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated plans.

Their VPS plans start at $19.99 per month for 512MB RAM and 25GB storage.

Their reseller plans start at $24.95 per month for 50GB storage and 500GB bandwidth.

And finally, their dedicated plans start at $175 per month for 4GB RAM and 500GB storage.

Should You Choose HostGator WordPress Cloud Hosting Hosting?

Based on their pricing and our real-world tests, we highly recommend HostGator. Not only is it affordable, it blows other similarly priced hosts out of the water when it comes to speed and uptime.

If you’re considering HostGator WordPress Cloud Hosting, you should feel confident in pulling the trigger and signing up.