HostGator Reviews

HostGator is well suited for small businesses and personal use. We have a small public school district, so I can't speak to large applications, but it is perfectly priced and managed for our size.

Support for us is rarely needed, which speaks to the stability and ease of use of the service. However, on rare occasion, we've needed support. It has been responsive and helpful. The online chat feature with a real support agent is a key reason for that.

HostGator for email, domain and website hosting--delightful, 100% satisfied! Have always had ample capacity for company email needs, features work well. I have used it off and on for several organizations since 2011.

HostGator website building is fairly straightforward, although I wouldn't recommend it for first-time web designing. The pluses on the HostGator website builder: great-looking themes, adequate webpage capacity, really cool scrolling capabilities, which trends well now. Easier than building a WordPress website from scratch, which can also be done for free in HostGator. I'd say it's limited compared to feature-rich WP, but it designs as nicely as Wix.

When setting up the account and getting started, we needed direct support on a number of occasions. It was pretty good. Phone and email support were generally better than online chat support but got needed help. But what's important is that direct support is always available to us. The only thing that keeps me from giving a higher rating is that a few times we were given a sales pitch to go with one of the other HostGator-supported web designing software as if there was an internal competitive sales challenge going on (and maybe there was). Felt like a diversion.

For shared hosting, HostGator is perfect for those with enough technical knowledge to work through simple problems. The problems aren't due to the host. It's just that you may end up waiting for support if it's needed. For small low-load websites, it works well, but shared hosting can be a little slow with larger sites on Wordpress, WooCommerce, and a few plugins. Again, it will all work; it just may lag slightly.

While you will get support from HostGator, it seems to be a different level from 8-10 years ago. It may take 15-20 minutes to get someone on chat, and unless you follow up, I've found followup email support to take a couple of days. If you stick with it, though, you will get support, and I've never had a problem they couldn't help with.

HostGator seems to be geared toward bigger companies. The smaller lighter web packages do not have a lot of value added features, and they do not allow you to add them À la carte. They pretty much force you to take a higher priced package in order to get some of the features that other web hosts we previously used offered free.

They have an extensive knowledge base, and when I run into an issue that they have not posted about, it is easy to get in touch with somebody who can help me with my question. They offer multiple points of contact and are very responsive—which, in the rare event I have an issue with my service, is critical.

HostGator is a great hosting option for small- to medium-sized websites. We had our websites hosted with HostGator and have had very few problems. HostGator was easy to navigate.

Customer service was good. Plenty of information out there. They helped set up and any issues that came around.

HostGator is cheap and will host your website and the users of your email. However, we did run into some issues over the years.

They sold us SiteLock, which is supposed to be an extra layer of security. We had it for a while, when our site was hacked. When I called HostGator they said that the SiteLock plan we had wasn't the right one to protect you, so they tried to upsell me on more SiteLock. This was very frustrating, as our site was down due to hacking and we were seen as a sales opportunity instead of clients who needed help.

It turned out during this time that the basic backup that was included with HostGator was not going to work to get us back up. The problem is that it backs up once per week, and overwrites whatever was there before. So, it had backed up after the hack. After that we decided to get their premium backup plan.

HostGator is good if you only need the most basic of services, unless you are willing to pay for the add-ons, and you might not even be aware of the add-ons until there's a problem.

If you want simple hosting with MySQL and PHP functionality or Wordpress/Joomla hosting, HostGator is a good solution. But this is not a managed hosting provider meaning that you have a lot responsibility to manage your own website.

HostGator is good for small scale, run-of-the-mill site hosting with low to medium traffic (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.). Even their "unlimited" plan won't handle the traffic a major app needs, and you're better off using a more elastic service to host your app. But if all you need is a vanilla website for your store/small business/etc? They're not bad.

As a reseller for HostGator, I am always recommending my hosting solution to clients, potential and current. While HostGator is good for some people as a standalone, it's not how we are working with them.

It's well suited if you want a reasonable price (and can commit to a year), a fairly easy to navigate control panel and friendly support. Maybe companies needing faster uptime display and page loading times should look elsewhere. While not our top priority, we realize speed is factored into Google SEO ranking. Time delays can stunt your profits.

HostGator is well suited to those on a smaller budget and or those who can provide their own in-house tech support. It is not suitable for the tech-illiterate who need more than just simple basic hosting for a small site.

If you are looking for a reputable hosting provider with a proven track record, then HostGator is going to be a good choice. Also HostGator is very good if you're not so technical. Their dashboard, even though it is a bit slow, is pretty self-explanatory. They have add-on upsells everywhere, but if that doesn't bother you, then it is going to be a good choice.

HostGator is a proven hosting company. They aren't having people sell their product as an affiliate. They hardly ever go down and if they do they are right back up or solving the issue in a timely manner. "New" and "startup" hosting sites are so unpredictable and go down way more than HostGator. We will always be customers of HostGator.

Packages are great for hosting several sites.

HostGator is okay for small websites that require no customer service at all. I have realized having support with hosting is just as important as having a fair price. With HostGator it's cheap, and you really do get what you pay for.

If you need hosting for clients it has a fantastic business account. Comes with unlimited emails. Great host 1-3 sites for clients.

HostGator would not be a great fit for high volume, or high performance WordPress based sites. For this reason, we now use GoDaddy for entry level client work, and WPEngine for more advanced projects.

I think HostGator is appropriate for a small business or a personal website. In my several years of experience I don't have a strong level of confidence in using them for a larger-scale website with ecommerce capabilities or heavy database dependencies. I think of HostGator as being better suited for basic brochure-style or promotional websites with fairly static content.