HostGator vs. SiteGround

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.

Incentivized

If you've got a WordPress site and are unhappy with the performance, support or price of your current hosting service, SiteGround is well worth checking out as it excels in all those areas. From a single one-off blog, to more robust hosting packages, they offer a range of options that are well-suited to any budget or service need. Everybody, from noobs to experienced developers needs support from time to time, and SiteGround's team is the best I've seen. Not only are they easy to communicate with and highly proficient to solve any issue I've thrown their way, they're also easy to reach with multiple access options with minimal wait times.

Incentivized

• The pricing is a big feature for this hosting company
• Every three years when the hosting contract is coming to an end, they offer a reduced fee to upgrade your server plan, which is more cost effective than renewing at the regular rate for whatever plan you're currently using.
• The customer service workers are professional and friendly.

• You get a number of page views as a guide to your bandwidth, and a fixed amount of disk space on the server. So you know what you have to work with. No hazy promises of “unlimited” resources.
• If you pay more, you’re allocated a server with fewer accounts, so there’s less chance you’ll be slowed down by your neighbors.
• Its self-help material is pretty good — close to InMotion Hosting for knowledgebase quality.
• SiteGround tackles slow speeds from all angles, using SSD storage, Nginx, SuperCacher, CloudFlare CDN, and HHVM.

Incentivized

• Support could be better, it takes a long time to connect with somebody
• You need to pay extra for a backup you can rely on
• SiteLock is sold separately, but did not help when we were hacked
• Site seems to slow down from time to time

Incentivized

• Business model and clarity about prices after the second year
• Server Performance when it's stressed or under a big volume of traffic
• Upgrading model. Sometimes I felt like it was mandatory to update and pay more for basic needs, even with low traffic volumes

Incentivized

Because we have in house technical support to compensate the lack of quality HostGator tech support, and because the price continues to be affordable the business is likely to continue using HostGator. They provide what the business needs and we have in house support to maintain it.

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.

Incentivized

I don't feel stress about the website and emails hosted with SiteGround. I like the customer/tech support, the agents are always polite and ready to find a solution. My websites are secure and has a free SSL certificate - I can get on with my business. The boost in speed to the webpage loads is a big bonus especially when designing and developing websites online. They also provide tips and how to videos on various topics which is valuable learning tool.

Incentivized

I prefer HostGator over GoDaddy. HostGator does have better and more reliable customer support, and the user interface and user experience are overall much more friendly and easier to use. GoDaddy does have downtime associated with their hosting in my experience, but I have not experienced that with HostGator.

Incentivized

I used Namescheap in the past. I believe Namescheap is a big company compared to SiteGround, as big as godaddy. I think because of that, you get what you expect. Good services, but maybe more costly and you have to pay for everything as extra. Email $5, SSL $10, CDN $10 etc In my opinion, SiteGround actually has packages that make sense for wordpress hosting. If my website gets a lot of traction in the future, I will need to upgrade from the current plan and maybe move away from SiteGround.

• Usage of resale options easily quadrupled the money I was spending on HostGator
• Trust in the host has to be earned, and HostGator has not retained that for me -- it will be a while before I feel confident in their uptime again
• Overall, HG has been a positive impact on my business as a web developer

Incentivized

• All the sites I've set up at SiteGround are performing faster than they did at their previous hosting provider. This yields a superior customer experience and higher Google/SEO rankings.
• Their service has been rock solid, necessitating little support (which is admittedly less than ideal for my support business, but a boon for my clients bottom line) and zero downtime.
• Easy to get new sites up and running, which speeds creation of new businesses and rapid deployment of conceptual campaigns.

Incentivized