Editor’s note: Website development using Wordpress is a great decision. However, you need to have a reliable web hosting as you can’t have a powerful website hosted on a poor server. Well, in this post we will talk about Hostgator and Godaddy, the two renowned names in web hosting industry. Not only will we focus on factors like speed, uptime, security but also user interface, reliability and pricing. Stay tuned to find out which one to go with.
There are several points to consider while selecting a good web host for taking your wordpress website.
Things like amount of storage or bandwidth that you will get, the number of domains or subdomains, operating system choices, uptime, page loading speed of your website etc.
Apart from that, other services like email accounts, refund and data backup policy, usability, tech support, and round-the-clock customer support are equally important.
Godaddy and Hostgator are two of the top web-host giants, that provide shared hosting for running online businesses.
While Godaddy was known to be web’s no.1 domain name registrar for a long time, Hostgator is considered to be the best host to grow with.
Though both offer similar features and services, they are different in many aspects.
Starts at $2.75/month*. Offers ample website hosting options, guaranteed 99% uptime, free SSL, easy WordPress installs along with a free domain for a year.
Hostgator Vs Godaddy
In this post, we are going to review these two services – Hostgator vs Godaddy. Let’s see how they compare with each other.
Speed Test
The performance and speed of a site go hand-in-hand and it’s most annoying when the site that you are trying to access takes ages to load.
Slow loading websites degrade in performance, lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings.
Though the speed of a site is influenced by a number of reasons, it also depends upon the capacity of web hosts to offer faster servers, and the way they manage their resources on a shared server.
We performed few tests using pingdom to calculate the page-loading speed for a couple of websites, that were either hosted by Hostgator or Godaddy.
Related : Best CDN Providers To Speed Up a Website
Hostgator speed test was good. Hostgator hosted websites loaded much faster than the ones on Godaddy.
Uptime
Next, we will talk about Uptime in our Godaddy vs Hostgator comparison.
Uptime is one of the most important components of a good web host. Typically it is the amount of time that a server has ‘stayed up and running’, and is often measured in percentage.
For example, if a site is down for 1 whole day during the entire month (or 30 days) – the uptime would be 96.667% , or if it’s down for 5 mins – then it’s 99.99%, and for just 3 secs – the uptime would be 99.9999%. In other words, more number of ‘Nines’ in a number means better Uptime.
You Might Find It Useful : Siteground vs Bluehost For Magento Hosting
Hostgator guarantees an uptime of 99.9% and has been consistently delivering it too – even during the extreme traffic scenarios.
And incase they fall short of this offered uptime rating, they issue you an entire month’s credit !
Starts at $2.75/month*. Offers ample website hosting options, guaranteed 99% uptime, free SSL, easy WordPress installs along with a free domain for a year.
Godaddy Uptime stands at 99.9% as well, but as the load on their server increases, their ‘downtime percentage’ increases too.
Apart from that, if they fail to deliver 99.9% uptime – they end up crediting a mere 5% of your monthly hosting fee for that month.
OS & Processors
Hostgator runs on CentOS Linux x86 and uses Dual Xeon E5520 2.26 GHz Quad Core Processors for all its webhosting, reseller, and VPS accounts.
Godaddy offers both Linux and Windows as hosting account OS options, and uses Type 1x Xeon E3-1220-v3 Processors.
Interesting Read : Best Wordpress Hosting For Non-profits
Storage & Data Backup
Disk space is where all the elements that make up a website like files, images, videos, emails etc., are stored. The larger the space, the more scope for the website to scale.
Hostgator provides unlimited disk space for all of its plans, whereas Godaddy provides it only for its higher plans (Deluxe and Ultimate). The storage is limited to 100GB for Godaddy’ Economy plan.
Both Hostgator and Godaddy provide automatic data backup, that runs once a week and overwrites any of the previous backups. However with Godaddy, it is a paid service – which means you will be charged $1.99/ mo to restore your files.
Also, if you wish to ‘create your own backup file’, HostGator will charge $25 fee to complete a restore request of your file.
User Interface
Both Hostgator and Godaddy offer simple control panels with one-click script installers – that makes it easy to manage all the hosting accounts from one centralized place.
While Hostgator offers the latest and user friendly cPanel theme for Linux hosting; Godaddy offers their own customized cPanel theme, which has a very different interface and would need time to get used to.
Starts at $2.75/month*. Offers ample website hosting options, guaranteed 99% uptime, free SSL, easy WordPress installs along with a free domain for a year.
Godaddy also gives you a choice of using Plesk, (the second best option to cPanel) which works on both Linux and Windows.
Worth Reading : Magento Hosting Reviews – What You Need To Know
Pricing & Refund Policy
Hostgator has three subscription plans –
- Starter – $5.95/month – 1 site, 100000 visitors a month
- Standard – $7.95/month – 2 sites, 200000 visitors a month
- Business – $9.95/month – 3 sites, 500000 visitors a month
Hostgator refund policy is of 45 days. If you don’t like it, cancel your account within this time. See the terms here.
Godaddy Wordpress hosting has 4 plans:
- Basic – $4.99/month – 1 site, 25000 visitors a month
- Deluxe – $7.99/month – 1 site, 100000 visitors a month
- Ultimate – $9.99/month – 1-2 sites, 400000 visitors a month
- Pro 5+ – $24.99/month – 5-50 sites, 800000 visitors a month
Godaddy has 30 days refund policy for Annual Plans, and 48 hours refund policy for Monthly Plans (all plans with less than a 1-year term).
Customer Support
The customer-support experience ranges from person to person, and both Godaddy and Hostgator offer excellent customer support.
Hostgator provides 24X7 telephonic and live chat support. They also have emails and ticketing system that you can use to lodge your concern, and they are very responsive towards all your grievances.
Starts at $2.75/month*. Offers ample website hosting options, guaranteed 99% uptime, free SSL, easy WordPress installs along with a free domain for a year.
Godaddy on the other hand, also offers 24×7 US-based telephonic support with a current wait time of 6-8 mins.
But they are launching call centers in several countries to improve their response time. They too have ticket system, email as well as live chat.
Apart from that, both Hostgator and Godaddy provide a huge knowledge bank consisting of articles, tutorials etc., but then GoDaddy’s website is kind of hard to navigate.
You Might Want To Read : Best Godaddy Alternatives
Godaddy vs Hostgator – Final Verdict
Wondering which is better Godaddy or Hostgator?
The above comparisons give us a clear understanding that Hostgator is better than Godaddy in almost every aspect of web hosting.
However, if you are looking for additional services or cheaper plans or even hosting for Windows, then Godaddy seems to be a better choice.