While both Bluehost and HostGator provide excellent services, Bluehost emerges as the clear winner.
HostGator is a close second, but Bluehost’s low price and ease of use are the two factors that propelled this company to the top.
Bluehost vs HostGator
Bluehost is the most well-known web hosting service. Bluehost hosts over 2 million websites worldwide, making it the most popular service. Customer service is one of the reasons it is so well-liked by people all over the world.
Furthermore, Bluehost has a clean, modern, and user-friendly dashboard that provides access to all of the features included with Bluehost’s service. If this sounds like what you’re looking for, take advantage of Bluehost’s current promotion and sign up for hosting starting at $3.95 per month.
When it comes to scaling your business on a budget, HostGator is well-known. It is an excellent choice for those looking to launch their first website as well as those with small businesses. HostGator, in fact, is four times more scalable than its competitors.
Furthermore, it is two times faster, which is something that website owners greatly appreciate. They guarantee 99.9% uptime, which we appreciate. Furthermore, their customer service is excellent and works quickly to resolve any issues. If HostGator sounds like the right fit for you, sign up today for a monthly plan starting at just $2.75.
Pros and cons of Bluehost vs HostGator
Both Bluehost and HostGator were put through a thorough evaluation so that we could show you everything that each web hosting platform has to offer. Evaluate the positives and negatives of each option to find the one that works best for your business.
Pros of Bluehost
- Speed: The speed with which your site loads is a critical factor in its success. If people have to wait too long for it to load, they will leave and go to another page. This will also have an effect on your bounce rate. So, if you want to have a successful website that serves your clients and customers, you’ll need a hosting service with a fast loading speed. Bluehost does exactly that. Google recommends that sites load within 200ms, and Bluehost sites perform much faster than that.
- Customer support: When you require assistance, Bluehost provides several options. Bluehost provides phone support via a toll-free number, the ability to submit tickets, and live chat. And if you need help with account management, sales, or tech support, you can get it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. In addition, they provide assistance through social media. So, if Twitter is your thing, look to Bluehost’s Twitter for answers. If you want to see if you can find the answer without speaking with a person, Bluehost also has a support library with a variety of questions and detailed answers that can walk you through common problems.
- Free features: Some of the free features included in hosting plans appear to be fluff that you may not find useful. Bluehost, on the other hand, is an exception. The free features included in Bluehost plans are ones that you are interested in. These include free domains for an entire year, free CDN, and free SSL certificates. These are all essential components of your website, and they are included with all Bluehost plans. The free domain is only available for the first year, after which you must pay an annual fee to use the domain. The free CDN ensures that the servers collaborate to provide quick web loading and minimise delays. Furthermore, the free SSL certificate protects your website from potential hackers. This includes not only your information, but also any information entered by visitors to your website.
- Endorsed by WordPress: If you want to build your website on WordPress, you should probably use a hosting service that you know works well with WordPress. WordPress only recommends three hosting services out of the many available. Bluehost is one of those three companies. This is not surprising given that Bluehost is the most popular web hosting service on the market, but it does make things much easier for you when deciding on web hosting and which service is best for your WordPress website. In fact, Bluehost is at the top of WordPress’s list of recommended hosts, which says a lot.
- Security: When it comes to web hosting, security should not be taken lightly. It is critical that your web hosting service is one you can trust, as well as one that visitors to your website can trust. Bluehost offers a free shared SSL for plans that use a shared IP address. This secures all information on your website, including customer/client information such as credit card numbers and other personal information. Bluehost’s higher-level plans include CodeGuard Basic, which allows you to schedule automatic backups as often as you want – daily, weekly, or monthly. This is a fantastic feature because you should always have a backup of your site on hand in case something goes wrong. You can manually update all Bluehost plans via the cPanel. Though malware scans are not included with Bluehost plans, they are available as an add-on.
- Flexible plans: Bluehost’s various plan options are adaptable and cover nearly every possible requirement. If you start with a lower-tiered plan and discover that it isn’t sufficient for you, Bluehost makes it simple to upgrade to something more suitable. You won’t have to switch hosting providers because Bluehost can provide you with the plan you require. The best part about a plan upgrade or transition is that your site will not be down during the transition.
- Great uptime: Here’s a quick reminder if you’re not sure what uptime is or if you’ve forgotten. The amount of time your site is online is referred to as uptime. People cannot access your website if it is down. In other words, you want a high uptime so that you know your site is only being used to its full potential. Bluehost has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which means that your website will be up and running 99.9% of the time. This is a critical factor to consider when shopping for web hosting because you don’t want people having trouble accessing your website. If you upgrade to a VPS hosting plan with Bluehost, you can expect near-perfect uptime.
Areas of Bluehost needs to be improved(cons)
- Costly renewal: While we appreciate Bluehost’s low initial prices, which make it one of the most affordable options for web hosting, those prices rise significantly when you renew your subscription. This is fairly typical for a hosting provider to do, but keep in mind Bluehost’s significant price increases.
- Expensive migration: It will cost you money to transfer your website from another provider to Bluehost. It will cost you a lot of money. While both hosting services offer free server migration, Bluehost charges a hefty fee of $149.99. This allows you to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts, which is quite a lot, but at a high cost.
- No uptime guarantee: While Bluehost does have great uptime (99.9%), it is not guaranteed. That means that if your uptime drops below that 99.9%, Bluehost will not compensate you in any way. Other web hosting services such as DreamHost offer money in the case of downtime with your website, but Bluehost does not. An uptime guarantee is important and is something that Bluehost doesn’t offer.
Pros of HostGator
- Free features: Everyone enjoys freebies, and HostGator has some to offer. They include a free SSL certificate with the purchase of a hosting plan for all users and hosted domains in your account. This relieves you of the burden of obtaining an SSL certificate from a third-party site and installing it on your website. Furthermore, if you sign up for a 12, 24, or 36-month plan of HostGator Shared, WordPress, or Cloud hosting, you will receive a free domain for the first year. After the first year, you pay the regular domain renewal fee.
- Great cPanel: While cPanel is fairly standard for managing your hosting, the interface and usability of HostGator’s cPanel blow the competition out of the water. HostGator’s cPanel makes it incredibly simple to manage all aspects of your site from a single location.
- Uptime guarantee: As previously stated, uptime is a critical factor to consider when selecting web hosting. And HostGator not only provides a quick uptime speed, but also guarantees it. If your uptime falls below 99.9%, HostGator will credit you for an entire month.
- Free website transfer: If you want to move your website from another hosting provider to HostGator, you can do so for free. You can also do it quickly and easily. Simply select the plan that best meets your requirements and begin the free transfer.
Areas of HostGator needs to be improved(cons)
- Not so quick customer service: One of the things we like about HostGator is their excellent customer service, but it is not without its drawbacks. Despite the fact that their service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week via phone, chat, and email, responses are notoriously slow. If you’ve ever had a problem with your website, you know that the last thing you want to do is wait for someone to return your call. Other hosting companies do a much better job of providing timely customer service support.
- Only weekly backups: As previously stated, having a backup of your website is a must. And the backup should always be the most recent version of your website. That is not as simple with HostGator as it is with other hosting providers. HostGator only provides one backup per week, and if there is a problem, you must pay to restore the site.
- Standard features: Though HostGator provides a number of free unlimited features, many of them are standard and nothing to write home about.
Bottom Line
According to our research and experience, Bluehost is superior to HostGator. HostGator, on the other hand, is not far behind.
If you want a hosting provider that works well with WordPress and provides an easy-to-use platform for building and hosting your site, Bluehost is the best option.
If you want something with an uptime guarantee and a cPanel that will make managing your site a breeze, HostGator is the way to go. Furthermore, once your site outgrows the entry-level hosting plan, it’s very scalable.