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Hostgator  is a privately owned company that was founded in the year 2002. Host gator provides reseller web hosting and shared hosting solutions. The website is instrumental in offering its services to over 400,000 websites on their shared and reseller plans.

It is a leading provider of reseller accounts and boasts of over 10,000 resellers who have chosen hostgator to provide the network, servers, and support required to launch a hosting business. The company seemingly holds a high rung and is well regarded in the web hosting community.

The company commenced its operation in 2002 and uses the Planet data center in Dallas Texas. Their servers are dual Xeons with 4GB memory and IDE Raid hard drives.

Hostgator Coupon Codes

There are many coupon codes with different name but all of them provides either a 20% discount for the initial order or the first month for $0.01. Use the 20% off coupon if you are signing up for 12 months and above. Use the first month free coupon if you plan to pay month to month.

The Good Points

I’ve been hosting websites at Hostgator long before I started this website and I still run a couple of websites with them at current time. With its quality service, the hosting company is growing fast and was named top in Texas for the recent Inc 5000 Awards.

Indeed they are one of the best hosting companies you can ever get and they are in my ‘A list’ and here are the keypoints of Hostgator’s success.

Hostgator is now my top choice of hosting. Hostgator hosting service is reliable, priced reasonable, environmental friendly, and best of all, their customer supports rocks!

  • Reliable server with guarnateed 99.9% uptime

Throughout the years Hostgator has never fail me as a reliable hosting service. I barely notice any downtime for my websites – while this was quite a surprise until I recently found out that Hostgator is running its own data center (huge plus point).

Also, it’s worth noting that every web hosting plan with Hostgator comes with a 45 day money back guarantee and 99.9% uptime guarantee. The deal is fully guaranteed by the company founder and CEO (Brent) himself – which is another huge plus point (responsible management team).

  • Host unlimited domain

Hostgator is now offering 600GB of disk storage and 6,000GB bandwidth unlimited bandwidth and disk storage!. On top of that, you will get unlimited domain hosting with Hostgator. In short, this actually means that you can host ALL YOUR WEBSITES in just one single web hosting account with Hostgator.

  • Unlimited MySQL and POP3 email account

While most other hosting companies will only allow you to have a certain number of MySQL database, you get unlimited (I repeat, unlimited!) MySQL database with Hostgator. That’s quite an advantage if you’re planning to build a huge web application.

  • Room to grow

Hostgator offers shared, dedicated, reseller hosting. Along with the recently launched VPS hosting plans, Hostgator offer great rooms for website growth. This makes server switching and upgrading possible within Hostgator – which in other words, huge money and time savings for you as the website owner.

  • Environment Friendly

Lately Hostgator had turned green by powering and cooling their server using wind power.

The Bad Point

Some users might be not very happy with the price tag of Hostgator hosting. Without doubt, Hostgator is a little pricey compare to most other web host (about $1/mo extra compare to the average).

In my opinion, however, this is absolutely okay as you get what you paid – quality web hosting server with top notch customer supports. Read further on the customer reviews and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Hosting Plans

Hostgator offers the following types of web hosting plans :

  • Shared
  • Reseller
  • Dedicated

Shared Plans

Customers have a many options to choose from under this plan and it comes with the Cpanel control panel. Quality services and support is offered 24/7 via phone, live chat, and an email ticket system. All their plans offer unlimited domain names (except hatchling) as well as a lot of bandwidth and disk space. Below are the options or plan categories available under this plan:

  • Hatchling:

Under this plan category, you get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth is offered. Other services include unlimited sub domains, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited POP3 accounts and 1 domain is also allowed. This service is priced at $4.95 a month

  • Baby:

This plan category offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth and you can host unlimited sites. Moreover, it offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $7.95 a month.

  • Business:

Under this category, customers get an access to unlimited disk space and bandwidth. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. You also get your own toll-free number absolutely free, in addition to a free dedicated IP as well as free private SSL. This service is priced at $12.95 per month.

Reseller Plans

HostGator’s reseller hosting plans come with the Cpanel (your customers or endusers control panel) and WHM (reseller control panels to create Cpanels for your customers or end users) control panels. Hostgator resellers have the flexibility to host unlimited sites. Quality services and support is offered 24/7 via phone, live chat, and an email ticket system. Besides offering unlimited domain names; the reseller account also offers free domain registry account (eNom domain reseller account), free hosting templates, a billing program, and much more. Below are the options or plan categories available under this plan:

  • Aluminum Reseller Plan:

Under this plan category, 24 GB of disk space and 250 GB of bandwidth is provided. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This reseller plan is priced at $24.95 per month.

  • Copper Reseller Plan:

The copper reseller plan offers its customers 40 GB of disk space and 350 GB of bandwidth. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $34.95 per month.

  • Silver Reseller Plan:

60 GB of disk space and 500 GB of bandwidth is offered under this particular plan. The silver reseller plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $49.95 per month.

  • Gold Reseller Plan:

80 GB of disk space and 600 GB of bandwidth is offered under this plan category. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $74.95 per month.

  • Diamond Reseller Plan:

100 GB of disk space and 700 GB of bandwidth is offered under this plan category. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $99.95 per month.

Dedicated Plans

The plan includes complete server management as well as a control panel with every server. The best part of a dedicated server is that you can customize it to suit your requirements and get the most out of the plan. Moreover, you get to choose which operating system you want to run which include Red Hat Linux 9.0, RHEL3, RHEL4, CentOS, or FreeBSD. Any aspect can also be upgraded such as memory or disk drives. Below are the options or plan categories available under this plan:

  • Unmanged Dedicated:

This plan category offers 25 GB of disk space and 500 GB of bandwidth. The plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $74.95 per month.

Hostgator Linux Dedicated Servers

  • Basic Linux Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Intel Xeon 3040 (Dual Core). The plan offers a bandwidth of 1500 GB, 250 GB hard drive, DDR Memory of 1 GB RAM. The server comes with tha latest cpanel, upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. The datacenter location is in Texas, U.S.A. This service is priced at $174 per month. This server is ideal for those with a few large websites that aren’t that memory intensive. Generally even the slowest CPU is more than capable for most websites. A server would generally require more RAM before it needs a CPU upgrade. However, the Basic server has a dual core Xeon server, making it able to multi-task quite nicely.

  • Standard Linux Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Intel Xeon 3040 (Dual Core). The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 2×80gb SATA. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $219 per month. Having two CPU cores on a state of the art processor setup like the Basic server will enable this server to multitask quite well. The main advantage would be the 4 GB RAM over the Basic server.s 1 GB RAM. Also this server comes with two 250 GB drives (twice of the Basic server) which we can setup as a backup drive upon request (one drive backs up to the other). This is quickly becoming our most popular selling server just on account of the increased RAM.

  • Elite Linux Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Dual Xeon 2.8. The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 2×73gb SCSI. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $279 per month. Intel processor with quad cores running are great for multitasking, and the 4 GB of RAM will really help on memory intensive sites or sites with large databases. The two 500 GB drives can be set up so the primary drive does an automatic daily backup to the secondary drive which ensures that your sites’ data is still available in case a drive were to fail or server information gets lost or deleted. This server also has 1,000 GB more bandwidth than the Basic or Standard server.

  • Pro Linux Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Dual-Core 3060 Conroe. The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 4×500gb SATA II RAID10. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $374 per month. This server is actually a super fast Intel Xeon Quad Core 3360 with 8 GB of RAM (insane) and dual 500 GB hard drives. This server might be the most expensive, but it’s by far our least profitable, and the best deal in terms reliability, performance, and redundancy. If you are looking to host many sites, with the best possible uptime. Or if you’d like to use this as a pure work horse this is the server you want.

Hostgator Windows Dedicated Servers

  • Basic Windows Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz. The plan offers a bandwidth of 1500 GB and a hard drive of 80 GB, SATA. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $174 per month. This server is ideal for those with a few large websites that aren’t that memory intensive. Generally even the slowest CPU is more than capable for most websites. A server would generally need more RAM before it needs a CPU upgrade.

  • Standard Windows Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is a Dual Xeon 2.4. The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 2×80gb SATA. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $219 per month. Having two CPU cores on a state of the art processor setup will enable this server to multitask much easier with anything CPU intensive. An example of when this would be very useful is when a site’s logs are being processed for stats on the server and webpages are still being accesed. Websites that are bandwidth intensive will have more room to grow with 1,500 GB of data transfer with the Standard server setup.

  • Elite Windows Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Dual Xeon 2.8. The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 2×73gb SCSI. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $279 per month. Two Intel Xeon processors running at 2.4 Ghz are great for multitasking, and the 2 GB of RAM will really help on memory intensive sites or sites with large databases. The two 80 GB drives can be set up so the primary drive does an automatic daily backup to the secondary drive which ensures that your sites’ data is still available in case a drive were to fail or server information gets lost or deleted. Honestly though, although some buyers prefer this tested CPU, we recommend the standard dedicated server.s CPU power with the Dual Core setup as every benchmark show it to outperform the Elite.s Dual Xeons. Get this server if your script is memory intensive. If it.s not, save the money and go with the Standard.

  • Pro Windows Dedicated Server:

There are no set up charges for this plan category and the processor provided is Dual-Core 3060 Conroe. The plan offers a bandwidth of 2500 GB and a hard drive of 4×500gb SATA II RAID10. Upto 5 IP addresses are allowed and the plan offers unlimited domains, sub domains, FTP accounts and POP3 accounts. This service is priced at $374 per month.Don’t let the 3120 name confuse you. The Intel Xeon 3120 cpu is actually a Quad cpu core processor capable of multitasking and is the perfect chip for servers with heavy traffic. This server might be the most expensive, but it’s by far our least profitable, and the best deal in terms reliability, performance, and redundancy. If you are looking to host many sites, with the best possible uptime. Or if you’d like to use this as a pure work horse this is the server you want.

Customer Support

They provide 24/7 support, through tickets/email, chat, phone and forums. Their building is staffed every day of the year at all times of the day and night. You will usually find a ticket replied back to within minutes. Major issues will be handled right on the spot by their administrators.

As Brent said, “Support is most likely the number one thing we do right and it’s what keeps our customers, and brings back a majority of those that leave for another host. You will never call HostGator and get an answering machine!”

They also have no outsourced support at all, everything is done in house. You won’t end up talking to an Indian.

Control Panel

They are also using our favorite CPanel control panel which we have introduced in our LunarPages review (read it to learn more). CPanel is also used by HostMonster and BlueHost. CPanel beats the other control panels in terms of speed, features, and user friendliness. My advice to you is to always make the CPanel control panel your first choice. Your hosting experience relies heavily on what control panel you are using. Unlike other hosts who never provide you with the demo of their control panel, HostGator makes the demo available to you! Their custom CPanel theme is so beautiful that I am sure you will love it at first sight.

They Will Help You To Move Your Site

While most web hosts will not promise you anything on moving your site to them, HostGator actually takes 1 step further and promise to help you in moving your site. While this is really a tedious task, at least you won’t need to manually download your files from the old host and upload it to HostGator. This is quite painful since most of us have a slow internet connection. They will help you to migrate your existing files and existing databases from your old host which will save you a lot of time and effort.

If you want, you can also move your domain name to them and they will renew it for you for another year for FREE. They might even help you in changing the configuration files for popular scripts such as Wordpress or Joomla to point to your new databases. But for other configuration and debuging, I believe you have to do it yourself. But I am sure they are already doing a lot more than other web hosts. Maybe it is true that how much you pay is how much you get. How do you expect a free web host or a $1.95/month host can do this for you?

Datacenter

All of their servers are located out of The Planet datacenter based in Texas. They have been with them since 2002 and they are their largest customer having the most servers located at the datacenter comparing to other web hosts.

These world-class datacenters contain top of the line technology to ensure that servers stay cool, secure, and up at all times. The datacenters feature redundant power, HVAC, and fire detection systems, and are monitored 24/7 by both HostGator and The Planet’s Network Operation Centers.

130% Green

HostGator has purchased certified Renewable Energy Credits (REC) representing 130% of the electricity used to power and cool all their servers. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) allow any customer, anywhere in the country to support renewable energy generation.  For every REC purchased, one megawatt-hour (MWh, or 1000 kilowatt-hours) of renewable electricity is generated and delivered to the power grid.

Hostgator Uptime Review

The Gator hosting uptime hit over 99.9% in my record.

Seriously, my years of experience with Hostgator tells me that they are great but I never knew they were this good! I started tracking their server after setting up this blog and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I see the numbers – 99.93% server uptime – for a $7.95/mo shared server! Isn’t that maginficient?

For your reference, image on the right shows Hostgator server uptime for the past 7 days.

Conclusion

Hostgator offers three different hosting pakcages, known as Hatchling, Baby, and Swamp. Each hosting plan has different features and we will be reviewing the most popular hosting plan here, which is the ‘Baby Plan’. From the features table, you can see that Hostgator hosting plan (Baby) is slightly expensive ($1 extra if compare to average price) however you’ll get what you’re paying for.

Not many hosting companies are willing to offer unlimited MySQL connection as this will eat up server resources – however this is not the case with Hostgator. In case cost is a big issue for you, try out Hostgator’s Hatchling Plan where you get hosting with Hostgator in a cheaper price ($4.95/mo).

Hostgator is highly recommended – especially if you are looking for a reliable web host or a reseller hosting account.

Click Here to Visit Hostgator Official Site