Hostgator started its operation as a hosting company in 2002. It is currently owned by Endurance International Group which owns several other hosting companies such as Bluehost, JustHost, etc. GoDaddy came into existence in 1997. It is the largest domain registrar on the internet. Hostgator specializes in web hosting and it also sells domain names. GoDaddy specializes in domain names but it has also introduced many hosting plans. The hosting plans of both companies are affordable. Both firms have millions of customers.
Is GoDaddy a better hosting company than Hostgator or vice versa? What features do these two companies offer to their hosting users? Below, I’ve compared GoDaddy with Hostgator.
GoDaddy vs Hostgator: Which hosting company is better?
Support
GoDaddy and Hostgator offer two modes of real-time support – live chat and phone. You can dial the company’s phone number to raise a complaint or use the live chat tool to chat with the customer support executive. I have been a customer of both Hostgator and GoDaddy and have interacted with the support staff of both the firms a few times over a phone call and with their live chat interface. I was satisfied with the way the staff handled and fixed my issue.
Plans
Hostgator and GoDaddy offer three types of hosting services – shared, VPS, and dedicated. Here are plans and details of the various types of hosting these two firms offer:
GoDaddy has introduced four shared hosting plans – Starter, Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate. The Starter plan servers offer 512MB RAM, 30GB storage memory, and unlimited bandwidth. It supports 1 website only. The Economy plan ensures standard website performance (better than starter) and provides 100 GB storage memory and 512MB RAM. Like the Starter plan, it supports a single website. This plan is priced at 2.68 USD.
The GoDaddy Deluxe and Ultimate plans let users host unlimited sites. Website hosted on a Deluxe server will have “standard” performance and that hosted on Ultimate servers will have “increased” performance. Deluxe and Ultimate servers have 512MB and 1GB RAM respectively. The Ultimate hosting users will also get a premium SSL certificate worth 80 to 90 USD. The Deluxe plan is priced at 3.21 USD and the Ultimate plan costs 5.36 per month. Excluding the Starter plan, GoDaddy Economy, Deluxe and Ultime plan buyers will get a free domain and Free Processional Email ID.
Now let’s have a look at Hostgator’s offering!
HostGator has launched three shared hosting plans – Hatchling, Baby, and Business. The plans are priced at 2.75, 3.50, and 5.25 dollars per month. You can host a single site on a Hatchling server and unlimited sites on Baby and Business servers. Business plan users are offered a Positive SSL certificate, SEO tools, and a dedicated IP address. Unlike GoDaddy that has restricted RAM usage from 512MB to 1GB and limits the storage memory usage to N gigabytes, storage & bandwidth are unlimited in Hostgator shared hosting plans. Like GoDaddy, Hostgator provides a free email address and a domain to users who purchase one of its shared hosting plans. Hostgator is one step ahead of GoDaddy by offering a free domain + site transfer service.
Global data centers: Hostgator and GoDaddy have multiple data centers. Most servers of Hostgator are located in the USA. GoDaddy has data centers in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, and the US.
1-click setup: You can install WP and 140+ applications on the GoDaddy or Hostgator servers and activate an SSL certificate for your website with a few clicks of a button.
Scalability: If your site traffic increases, you may want to upgrade your shared hosting plan. Both hosting companies allow users to do so.
Intuitive CPanel: Without a Control Panel, it is difficult to manage the site and server unless you have knowledge of the server administration. Both hosts give users access to a user-friendly CPanel.
To be honest, whether users have a technical background or not, they may launch more sites in the future. Thus, let’s forget about the 1 website hosting plan of Hostgator and GoDaddy and concentrate on unlimited website hosting plans. Hostgator Baby plan, which costs 3.50 per month offers a free website transfer service. GoDaddy’s Deluxe plan is 0.2 dollars cheaper but it doesn’t provide a free site transfer service. Also, the website performance is standard. Hostgator doesn’t limit the site performance by restricting server resource usage. Hostgator Business plan provides a dedicated IP, access to its SEO tools, upgrade to positive SSL certificate, and free site transfer. GoDaddy only offers a Premium SSL certificate. Thus, Hostgator’s shared hosting plans are better compared to that of GoDaddy.
VPS (Virtual Private Server with full root access)
GoDaddy has introduced 4 VPS hosting plans. The plans offer 1 to 8 core CPU equipped servers. The 1 core VPS server of the company ships with 1GB of RAM and 20GB storage memory. It runs on Linux OS and costs 5.89 USD. The 2 core VPS server plan offers 100GB storage memory and 4GB of RAM. It is priced at 16.34 USD/month. The GoDaddy 4 core VPS server plan provides 8GB RAM and 200GB storage memory. It will cost you $35/month. The 8 core VPS server offers 400GB storage memory and 16GB RAM. It is priced around 71 dollars (per month).
GoDaddy doesn’t offer any type of control panel along with the above VPS plans. It sells CPanel/WHM as an add-on. You can purchase the WHM/CPanel addon while buying the 2/4/8 core processor VPS panel. The add-on will increase your VPS bill by 11.54 dollars/month. While buying the VPS plan, you can choose the OS you want to use. GoDaddy supports these three operating systems – Windows, Centos, and Ubuntu.
Hostgator offers three VPS hosting plans – Snappy 2000, Snappy 4000, and Snappy 8000. Snappy 2000 servers have 2GB RAM, 120 GB SSD, and a dual-core processor. Snappy 4000 servers have 4GB RAM and a 2-core processor along with 165GB SSD. The Snappy 8000 Hostgator VPS is equipped with 240GB storage, 8GB RAM, and a 4 core processor. Unlike GoDaddy, Hostgator gives its VPS hosting plan buyers access to the WHM tool free of cost.
Hostgator’s offering of WHM makes it a better option than GoDaddy.
Dedicated
GoDaddy’s dedicated servers are equipped with either AMD EPYC or Intel XEON-D/E processors. The company offers 4 dedicated hosting plans – DS-32, DS-64, DS-128, and DS-256. The DS-32 server features Intel XEON-D 3.0 GHz processor and 32GB RAM. It offers 8TB storage memory. DS-64 dedicated server contains an Intel XEON-E 4.5GHz processor and 64GB RAM. It also features 8TB storage space. GoDaddy DS-128 dedicated server has an AMD EPYC processor and 128GB RAM. It includes 16TB of storage memory. DS-256 dedicated server ships with a 2.9GHz AMD EPYC processor and 256GB RAM. It has 16TB of storage memory. The price of DS-32, DS64, DS-128, and DS-256 dedicated servers are 119, 150, 273, 365 USD per month.
Hostgator’s dedicated servers have up to 30GB RAM and they cost 89 to 140 dollars. The company has 3 dedicated hosting plans – Value, Power, and Enterprise. The Valuer server features 8GB RAM and Intel XEON-D processor. It ships with 1TB storage memory. The Power server contains an Intel XEON-D processor, 8-core processor, and 16GB RAM. It also comes with a 2TB HDD. The Enterprise dedicated server of Hostgator offers 30GB RAM, Intel XEON-D processor, 1TB HDD, and octa-core CPU.
Both Hostgator and GoDaddy support Windows, and Linux operating systems. Hostgator provides access to the WHM tool at no extra cost to the buyers of its dedicated hosting plan. GoDaddy users will have to manage their dedicated server via terminal unless they buy the CPanel/WHM add-on while buying the dedicated web hosting plan.
GoDaddy’s dedicated servers are not only powerful, their pricing is good considering the features the servers offer. Thus, GoDaddy dedicated server plans are better than that of Hostgator.
Taxes
The price of the various hosting plans we’ve shared doesn’t include the taxes. GoDaddy charges some taxes on each hosting plan I’ve shared above. The company will display the extra amount it will charge only on the payments page of GoDaddy (while checking out). Hostgator won’t surprise you with the taxes.
Payment methods
GoDaddy accepts payments the user makes with credit/debit card, PayPal, net banking, mobile wallet apps, etc. It also supports GoDaddy gift cards. You can purchase hosting, domains, and services from Hostgator with credit cards, debit cards, Paypal, checks, and wire transfers.
Uptime
Like other web hosting companies, Hostgator and GoDaddy have an uptime policy of 99.8 to 99.9%.
Money-back guarantee
Hostgator has an impressive money-back guarantee of 45-days. GoDaddy also ships a money-back guarantee with its hosting plans. You have to ask for a refund within 30 days of buying the hosting plan from GoDaddy.
My experience with GoDaddy
My first hosting company was GoDaddy. I had signed for the Economy hosting plan of the company in 2013 and used it for 5 to 6 months only. Why did I leave GoDaddy? GoDaddy creates a preview version of your site so that you see the changes you make it the site. Google indexed the preview URLs. Google considered the content on the preview DNS URLs as the original one and ranked it instead of ranking my site’s pages.
My Experience with Hostgator
I have used Hostgator’s VPS as well as a shared hosting service. I found the VPS plans of the company expensive when I found truly unmanaged cloud hosting service providers on the internet. Why did I start using unmanaged cloud hosting? Well, I can manage my server without anyone’s need. I can install WP, set up a firewall, install and manage database/web server, etc manually. So moving my sites to a cloud VPS service provider has saved me a lot of money. Hostgator’s shared hosting service is very reliable. It gave me what I wanted.. an uptime of 99.9%.
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