Ready to launch the website you’ve been thinking about for years? Check out this Hostgator review to help you get started.
Running an online business requires fast, reliable hosting services.
How though do you sort through the hundreds of available hosts to find the best one for your needs?
You have to compare the price, uptime, domain restrictions, and available bandwidth for your needs while also properly optimizing your content to rank well.
Today’s HostGator review will go over the different plans they offer and what kind of services each plan gives you.
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HostGator Review: Plan Levels
There are several different service types offered by HostGator, each with different plan names and types of services. For each type of hosting there are at least three different plan levels available.
The first tier can be considered the introductory level and provides basic services at a very affordable price. It has different names depending on what plan type you’re looking at, from Hatchling, Starter, Snappy 200, and Basic.
The second tier has entry level business services that allow you to run a small business web presence. Depending on what type of service you’re looking at you’ll receive different levels of domain assistance, bandwidth, and start-up help. This tier includes plans like Snappy 4000, Standard Plan, and Baby plan.
The third tier is the top level in all but one of HostGator’s product offerings. It provides you with much more comprehensive services including VoIP services, higher RAM, increased bandwidth, and more views per month.
This tier is called things like Business plan, Elite Plan, and Snappy 8000.
The final tier is only available for dedicated hosting customers. Known as the Pro plan, it gives you total control over a high-end server with substantial processing power and storage.
Web Hosting
Web hosting is the basic service provided by HostGator. It gives you a domain name, an email server, MySQL database access, and a guarantee of 99.9% uptime.
The basic tier of this hosting type only includes a single domain but does allow you unlimited emails and unmetered bandwidth on your site. The second tier improves upon this by giving you access to unlimited domains as well as all the benefits provided by the first tier.
This means that you can host as many domains as you want under a single account. The third and highest tier gives you all these benefits and adds in private SSL encryption, a dedicated IP address, and VoIP phone service.
Cloud Hosting
Unlike standard web hosting cloud hosting gives you a guaranteed amount of processing power for your sites. This gives you faster speeds and greater reliability overall.
The first tier plan provides you with two gigs of RAM, a two core CPU, and a single allowable domain. This is a great place to start out if you find your small website occasionally suffering from slowdowns on standard hosting.
HostGator also provides you with free migration, one-click install, 24/7 support, and round the clock server monitoring.
The second tier effectively doubles your site’s guaranteed processing power and allows you to manage unlimited domains. This is a good place for businesses with a robust web presence that doesn’t require significant resources.
The final tier includes six gigs of Ram, a six-core CPU, and private SSL certificates. You’ll also receive a dedicated IP and a VoIP phone number.
WordPress Hosting
If you run a successful WordPress blog HostGator is a great place to host it. They offer three different tiers depending on how many blogs you have, how busy they are, and how much content you have hosted.
All accounts come with a free customizable dashboard, automatic malware removal, global CDN, and automatic backups of all your content.
The first service tier allows you to host one site with up to 25 thousand visits per month. You’ll be able to backup core resources up to one GB and store other materials up to 50 GB.
The second tier, called the Standard plan, allows two sites with up to 200 thousand visits per month. You’ll also be able to backup and store twice as much data as with the first plan.
The final tier allows you three different sites, 300 thousand visits per month, and up to three GB of backup data. Most enticingly of all, it allows you unlimited storage.
VPS Hosting
If you want to have total control over how your site is hosted but don’t need a dedicated server, VPS hosting may be for you. It creates a virtual server in the cloud and gives you full root access.
A VPS server prevents any other user from accidentally coming into contact with your files. You have a dedicated operating system and can perform system restarts whenever is convenient for you.
The VPS tier gives you two GB of RAM, a two core CPU, 120 GB of disk space, and up to 1.5 TB of bandwidth. The second tier provides you with twice the RAM and gives you marginal improvements to all other factors.
The final tier is significantly faster. It gives you eight GB of Ram, a four-core CPU, 240 GB of disk space, and fully three TB of bandwidth.
Dedicated Hosting
If you’re running a very large or high traffic website a dedicated server is probably the best way to host it. It gives you your own personal server without the headaches that come from maintaining one.
This type of plan does require more technical sophistication than more basic hosting plans. It is an entire server that you have total control over. It allows you to upload anything you like to it and have a dedicated pathway for all your site’s traffic.
This is also the only hosting plan on HostGator that has four different tiers. The first tier gives you a server with four GB of RAM, a two core CPU, a .5 TB disk, and 10 TB of bandwidth.
The next tier still gives you four GB of RAM but doubles both your CPU and disk size while also adding an additional five TB of bandwidth.
The third tier doubles your RAM and gives you 20 TB of available bandwidth. You maintain your previous CPU and disk size.
The last tier, known as the Pro plan, gives you a full 16 GB of RAM and 25 TB of bandwidth to work with.
Focus On Your Needs and Budget
Choosing the right hosting service comes down to what you need for your site and how much you can spend. Our HostGator review shows that there are many different ways you can host your site. Figure out how much traffic you need to support and go from there.
If you liked this article and want to find out more useful online business information, check out some of our other articles here.
