HostGator Review [2021] 🔥 Best Web Hosting Provider? (Live Demo, Speed Test & Recommendation)

In this HostGator review, I’m going to show you  everything that you need to know about HostGator   before deciding if they’re the right hosting  provider for you. I will provide you with the   most comprehensive review where i will break down  the pricing structure and show you how to get the   best deal currently available with hostgator i  will guide you through the entire sign up process   and judge how easy their platform is
to use i  will then grade their performance based on page   load speed and uptime from the hostgator plan  that i purchased lastly i will provide you with   the pros and cons and my honest recommendation  if or who should buy hostgator at the end of this   video i will give you a very special offer if you  decide to pick up hostgator through my link below   i will give you my six figure blogger course for  free and a way of saying
thank you in this course   i show you how to set up your wordpress website  the right way how to adjust and tweak settings   for optimal website performance and how to start  driving traffic and make money from your site   now let’s get straight into this review click on  the link in the description or type this into your   browser it’ll take you to my special hostgator  discount page where you will get the best discount   hostgator
is currently offering and if you put in  the promo code.com dollar at the checkout page you   will get an extra discount too i will be comparing  their shared hosting plans although hostgator does   offer other types of hosting like dedicated  hosting or vps hosting so they can support you   when your business grows and you are ready for  an upgrade there are three shared hosting plans   with the hatchling tier you are limited to
just  one website however the next two plans allow you   to have unlimited websites the business plan  which is their most expensive plan comes with   a dedicated ip address which the mid-tier baby  plan does not have this feature i don’t think   is worth the extra money for shared hosting  but if you really need it you know it’s there   a great feature i really like which hostgator  provides and not many other hosting provider
does   is their free website transfer this is really  handy for someone moving their website over   from another hosting provider as hostgator  support team will do this for you for free   there’s two main features that i believe are very  standard for hosting provider which hostgator is   missing the first is their automatic backup  they don’t provide this in any of their plans   as i think it’s a must have feature and the second 
thing is the lack of speed optimization on their   higher plans usually all higher plans normally  come with the better speed optimization or custom   cache plug-ins to boost up speed but hostgator  does not provide this at all so i really see no   value in choosing their most expensive plans here  that being said in terms of pricing i would only   ever consider their hatching plan if you only need  one website but if you require
multiple websites   then the baby plan should be more than enough  for you don’t waste money on their business plan   so now i will choose their hatchling plan for this  tutorial to test them out now let’s talk about   domain names i really have a problem with domain  names that these hosting providers charge you   other youtubers won’t tell you this and it really  annoys me so i’m going to be honest and break this   door down for
you right now first i really don’t  suggest you buy any of your domain names from   any hosting providers as they usually charge you  much higher than a dedicated domain name provider   right now for hostgator even though the domain  name is included for you for free for the first   year you still have to pay 14.95 for the domain  privacy which is a must-have for me as i don’t   want marketers emailing and calling me every  day to
offer their services and then every   year after that you have to pay 17.95 for domain  name renewal and 14.95 again for the domain name   privacy renewal this total is around 33 every  year which is ridiculous to me what i recommend   you do instead is buy all your domain names from  namecheap.com i use them for all my domain names   and you can get your domain name for under  nine dollars for your first year with the   domain
privacy included for free and it will only  cost you 12.98 to renew each year which is almost   three times cheaper than hostgator so that is a  no-brainer for me and i recommend you do the same   if you need help with getting your domain from  namecheap then you can check out this video here   where i guide you through step by step how to do  it hostgator comes with 6 different payment plans   but you can clearly see it’s not worth
doing  anything under 12 months as the monthly cost   just doesn’t make sense obviously the longer the  deal the cheaper it gets generally i would always   suggest you to buy the 36 month plan as you get  the cheapest price and you will have no reason to   leave once you have picked a great hosting  provider that you’re happy with not saying   hostgator is that yet they still have a lot of  testing requirements to pass but if you’re
not   happy with hostgator at least they have a 45 day  money back guarantee so you can get a full refund   from them i also want to let you know that if you  get this free domain name provided by them they   will still charge you for that part as the domain  name cannot be refunded so just be careful on that   the next part is the additional add-on services  they pre-selected the ssl certificate and the   site back up for you these
two features you  can get for free and most hosting providers   should provide you this for free anyway so i’m  gonna deselect both of them as you don’t need it   quick note here if you type in my coupon  code dot com dollar into this field and click   validate you will get an extra discount on your  plan with hostgator so that is a good little bonus   to have once you’re happy with your plan just  accept the terms of service and
click checkout now   the overall pricing score i would give hostgator  is a 7 out of 10. i took a few marks off as they   don’t offer a lot of features and their more  expensive plans don’t provide enough value to   be worth the money automatic backup is also not  included in any of their plans which i think is   really important to have on the other hand the  price of their lower tier options are very cheap   and comparable to
other cheaper hosting providers  plus they provide you with free site migration   which is a really handy feature to have so i would  say they are a cost effective hosting provider   overall but the big question is how well do they  perform on my speed test keep watching to find out   after purchase setup and ease of use you’re  probably wondering what hostgator’s back end   actually look like and would like to know  how easy it is
to install and manage your   wordpress website right i will now show you  just that right away from their home page   you can see it looks very easy to navigate with  the custom interface compared to the c panel that   a lot of other hosting providers use but if you  ever wanted to manage your site with cpanel you   can just click this button and it will take you  to your normal cpanel setup which you are used to   it’s that easy
now let’s see how easy it is to  install and create our own wordpress website so   from your dashboard you click on manage package  and it will take you to the domain name that you   registered with hostgator one thing that’s  not good with hostgator is they present you   with too many upgrade options look at all these  options here these are all learn more and you go   to upgrade right so i don’t like that at all the  main real
estate on your dashboard or your hosting   dashboard should be of all the tools that you can  actually use to build your website properly you go   down further to the bottom here and go to the one  click install and it will take you to this page   here you click on wordpress select your domain  click on next fill out your information here   agree to the terms of service and then click  install now there is one extra step that you  
have to do compared to installing it from a  cpanel which is go to your email address and   they will send you your password so i’m just going  to click on the admin url put my information in and click on login and now i’m in the back end  so overall it’s not as easy as other hosting   providers one-click installation because you  have to go and check your email for the password   but overall it’s easy enough and now what about 
creating an email account let’s see how easy that   is so you think when you want to create an email  address you would click on the email and office   section right well that’s wrong because if you  click on there they’re going to take you to the   paid options again they’re going to try to upsell  you to either a microsoft or a g suite account   which you have to pay monthly so to install it  for free you need to go to hosting click
on cpanel   then select email accounts and enter in your  email address and click on create account and   you see the account has been created so it’s  that simple once again this was easy to create   but they are not quite upfront with trying to  upsell you to make you pay for an email address   overall i would score hostgator an 8 out of 10  for setup and ease of use i really like that   it’s simple to install your wordpress site
and  having the option to access the cpanel is also   very handy for experienced wordpress users i did  take two marks away from them because they don’t   guide you well when setting up a new domain name  from another provider and they mislead you on   things like setting up your free email address  they tend to hide the free stuff and pack the   interface with too many upgrades and ads because  i think it is a really well designed
backend   speed and uptime performance tests so after i  have installed the basic wordpress site i went   ahead and tested out the speed of the bare bones  website using gt metrics the result is 1.7 seconds   this is not looking promising but i won’t judge  them now as i have not optimized their website yet   now i would take it a step further and add some  design elements to it to increase the page size   and don’t worry if you’re
overwhelmed looking  at this my course that i will provide you for   supporting the channel will guide you through this  step by step i am also going to install some free   plugins to speed up the website the first is wp  fastest cache this is for the speed optimization   and the next one is the short pixel which  is for image optimization and lastly i will   install the free cloudflare app which will also  increase your website
performance with their cdn   now overall this will make it a fairer test  because it will make it more comparable to what   you would do in real life one quick note i need  to mention to you is if you install wordpress   with hostgator you can’t install anything above  5.0 because hostgator does not run the latest   php version which for me is not good enough  the speed is now 3.9 seconds which is too slow   for me hostgator has
turned out to be one of the  slowest hosting providers i have tested out so far   google also recommends a site to load in under  three seconds so hostgator also missed this mark   by a fair way i have also been monitoring the  stability performance of hostgator with uptime   robot and i can report that their uptime for  the last 30 days is only 99.895 percent this is   way below my standard of 99.95 percent uptime  and even
hostgator’s own uptime guarantee of   99.9 i was very disappointed with this result and  hostgator has really dropped the ball on this one   overall i would rate hostgator speed and uptime  performance only a 4 out of 10. i took 4 marks   away for massively failing the speed test and  two marks for failing their own uptime guarantee   it is a pretty simple fail here and there’s not  much else to say about it here’s a quick
question   for you what is your current page load speed and  who is your hosting provider let me know in the   comment section below support hostgator provides  24 7 customer support through email live chat and   phone support i will test them out by asking them  these three different questions on the live chat   one i will tell them that i have been infected  by a virus on my website and asked for their help   two i will ask them a
quick question about their  domain name renewal costs but i made sure to   choose the wrong question category 3. i asked  them if they could do me a favor and install   an ssl certificate and cloudflare for me as i am  a complete newbie and have no idea how to do this   and here are the results for the first question  they told me that it would cost extra and i needed   to buy the add-on package for them to remove it  they were
willing to help locate the malware when   i asked for that specifically which was helpful  however their downfall was that it took almost   30 minutes of waiting time and at the end of the  conversation the support staff told me that he   is forwarded to a specialist and he will scan and  send this report separately later i expected that   after waiting for 30 minutes i would get the  report already so i was really disappointed  
with hostgator support team for that for the  second question they were able to provide me   with the right answers here but they were not  straightforward and had to clarify a few times   and overall it took almost 20 minutes to sort the  whole thing out from start to finish so i think   it was a bit too long there too for the third  question they were willing to help here with   no hesitation but seemed they misunderstood a few 
things they repeated some information twice even   though i had already answered the question and  lastly they tried to just give me links to steps   for installing cloudflare instead of trying to  guide me step by step like i originally asked and   by the way the instructions were not a custom one  made by hostgator it was just the website linked   from cloudflare itself with regards to their  response time i contacted them at three
different   times of the day to make sure i get an overall  average and not just the bias fast response time   during their off-peak hours so the three times  were 11 and a half minutes and the next two were   both 50 seconds the average of those three times  turns out to be around four and a half minute wait   which is definitely more than acceptable i think  anything under five minutes is great so good work   to hostgate on that
part overall i would have  to score hostgators support a six out of ten   i would say their support was average it was  nothing great but it wasn’t the worst either   they had a decent response time but the quality of  the support was lacking in terms of support teams   level of knowledge and know-how so what do you  think of all the stats and figures from my testing   so far do you like the level of detail if so make  sure to like
my video and subscribe to my channel   so you don’t miss out on future content i release  every single week just like this features cons so   let me first start off with the cons the biggest  issue i have with hostgator is their website speed   it is very slow compared to other hosting  providers in the same budget category   at 3.9 seconds load time it’s just too slow  and i would never use this for my own websites   the next con
was their uptime this was also very  poor as i always expected a hosting provider   to have a minimum of 99.95 uptime to be worth  considering hostgator missed this by a long shot   and even failed their own 99.9 guarantee they only  managed to achieve 99.895 percent uptime which is   nowhere near good enough the next con is they only  have two server locations which are both located   in the united states so for anyone with their
main  source of traffic coming from anywhere else in   the world the website speed will be much too slow  and hostgator would probably not be suited to you   automatic backup is a very important feature and  this is something that hostgator also lacks which   is not good enough nowadays every decent hosting  provider is expected to have this plain and simple   you really can’t underestimate how critical  this feature is for your
website next thing is   their support staff technical knowledge this was  lacking and they were not able to provide a level   of service compared to other hosting providers  i’ve tested the last one isn’t a big deal for some   but they just annoyed me a bit with always trying  to upsell and making it hard to find free options   like for installing the wordpress site and setting  up an email address which i showed you previously  
features pro the first pro is that hostgator offer  free website migration this means that hostgator   will move your website from your existing provider  to them for free when you sign up with them   you simply just have to open a ticket fill  out the form and their technical support team   will take care of it for you not many shared  hosting providers offer this to you for free   so kudos to hostgator the second biggest pro is an 
intuitive backend system which i believe is much   easier to navigate and use than cpanel but they  also have that option for you if you require this   may not be a big deal for someone who has been  building websites for a while but it is a big plus   for beginners just starting out overall i have  given hostgator an average score of 6 out of 10.   apart from the pricing the free website migration  and the nice user interface
hostgator under   deliver on a lot of things for me i believe  they used to be great a few years back but   they are not there anymore maybe it’s something  to do with being owned by eig but i will leave   that topic alone in this unbiased review they are  not a reliable hosting provider as they perform   really poorly in the uptime tests and their  speed does not reach google’s recommendations   so i really cannot recommend this
hosting provider  to you i believe there are much better options out   there for a similar price range on the market this  is a quick note regarding my bonus offer to you   if you decide to pick up hostgator through my  link then simply just send me your full receipt to   bonus dot com dollar dot com and i’ll send you  back the access to my bonus course right away it’s   that simple now i think picking the right hosting  provider is
such a crucial step of starting your   business so if after watching this review you  agree with me that hostgator is probably not   the right option for you then come along with  me to this video where i show you my number one   hosting alternative that i have personally tested  and used myself so i’ll see you in that next video