HostGator is one of the most reliable world-class hosting providers with several hosting plans, features, good customer support, and affordable pricing. HostGator Shared Hosting is one of their shared web hosting package that contains three hosting plans. They have been providing web hosting services to customers since 2002 and host more than 2 million sites.
Bloggers, site owners, and users of various professions create new WordPress site to start their businesses online. This needs a hosting environment, besides domains, themes, plugins, and other add-on services. Is HostGator shared hosting best for you if you just want to start a blog, create a store, or launch a digital project? To know its hosting features, type of plans, pricing, flexibility, and user-friendliness, you should dive deep into it.
You can’t say what HostGator Shared Hosting provides in their hosting plans to their customers, how they deal in with their customers and when you should choose their hosting package until you have practical experience with their products. Knowing each of these is better for you provided that you want to launch a digital project, make a site or sell a product or course online. Go through the article till the end and you can justify how good it is for you and others.
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HostGator Shared Hosting Features
Let’s know what features HostGator Shared Hosting includes in their shared plans. They offer excellent features in storage, bandwidth, customer support, and backups and you can install WordPress in one 1-Click.
Storage and Bandwidth: Storage and bandwidth are important factors that you should take into account while choosing a web host. The company provides unmetered storage and unlimited bandwidth in every shared hosting plan. The disk space and bandwidth that they offer to their customers are specially tailored and aimed at meeting your traffic demand. What they offer at shared hosting in bandwidth and storage is sufficient if you run a normal or a small website.
Free Domain: In each shared hosting plan, HostGator offers a free domain for the first year. After the end of the first year, you will be charged the normal cost that every domain registrant has to pay to renew the registered domain. But to grab the free domain offer, you must sign up and pay for a minimum period of 12, 24 or 36 months—-Whichever is best and applicable for you.
Free SSL: Do you want to use SSL? Of course, to encrypt data processed and passed to and from the clients and the web servers, you have to install and activate the Secure Socket Layer Certificate. Choosing HostGator Shared Hosting lets you issue and run SSL on your server. You can get it at no cost. No need to buy. However, if you want to buy an SSL and install it on your server, then you have the option to do that. But they offer Free SSL.
1-Click WordPress Install: Building a site needs website builder software or you can do that with professional site developers but it is costly. If you choose shared hosting at HostGator, you can install and activate WordPress—The open-source software which lets you build and customize your site. They offer you to install it. Don’t know how to install WordPress? It is quite easy. 1-Click WordPress Install lets you install the software with ease. If you face any trouble during the installation of the software, their customer support team is ready to help you.
Free HostGator Website Builder: While you choose a shared hosting plan at HostGator, you can use their website builder free of cost, to build your site with layouts. The website builder lets you build your site with several design layouts of your choice.
Free Website and Domain Transfer: HostGator shared hosting plans offer Website transfer and domain transfer, too, at no cost. Transferring a site may cost you $39 to $80, while domain transfer costs about $10-15. But they transfer both your domain and website from other hosts to their servers, free of cost. It is a great plus point for transferring sites which you can avail of if you need to migrate your site from another host to HostGator.
45-Days Money Back Guarantee: They give you 45-day money-back guarantee to their customers. What does it mean? Have you understood? Customer satisfaction is their top priority. If you purchase a basic plan at their hosting service and want to cancel your plan owing to dissatisfaction or other certain causes, you can do that but you have to make it within the period of 45 days. Note that they will give you back money worth your basic hosting only, no money will be given back for add-on products and services.
Good Customer Support: How is their customer support? They give you the best customer support as quickly as possible. You can fix your issues through Live Chat, Email, and Phone Calls. They have knowledge-based articles, videos, and tutorials.
Security and Uptime: HostGator Shared Hosting gives you 99.9% uptime. The servers they run try to make your site stay up. If you want to make your site more secure, you can use SiteLock which prevents malware, and threats and detects vulnerabilities.
CodeGuard is another add-on service that you can use to schedule a backup of your site but it is a paid service. For advanced users, they can provide IPv6 and SEO Tools. HostGator Shared Hosting does not include these advanced features but if needed, you can purchase these add-on services.
What Are the HostGator Shared Hosting Plans?
Many readers ask what are the shared hosting plans at HostGator web hosting. So, I am going to give you a detail of their shared plans and packages. The features I have outlined above belong to almost all the shared plans that they provide though they may vary a bit, from plan to plan.
Are you too curious to know what the plans they have? Ok, I have picked up their shared plans. Go through the following points to know what each plan offers.
HostGator shared hosting plans have three types of plans:
- Hatchling Plan
- Baby Plan and
- Business Plan
HostGator Hatchling Plan
The Hatchling plan is their basic plan in shared hosting which starts at $2.95/month. The plan starts with flexibility in choosing the length of the period. You can select it for 12, 24, or 36 months—-Whichever you choose depends on you. Choosing for a longer period saves money, as it gives you more discount.
What does the Hatchling plan HostGator offer? It gives you:
- Free domain for the first year which you can get registered at no cost from your account during signup.
- Unmetered disk space and bandwidth.
- Free SSL certificate.
- Unlimited Subdomains.
- cPanel is included for better accessibility and control.
- One-click WordPress Installs.
- 45-Days money-back guarantee.
- Customer support in the form of 24/364 with Live Chat, Call, and Email. Also, there are knowledge-based articles and tutorials.
They will help you if you find any problem during the setting up of your site.
HostGator Baby Plan
HostGator Shared Hosting also provides the Baby Plan with a lot of features to host your site on their servers. This plan, too, gives you the option to choose the term length for a period of 12, 24, or 36 months. I recommend choosing for a longer period to have more discount.
What does HostGator Baby Plan offer? It includes the following features:
- Hosting unlimited websites.
- Free domain registration for the first year.
- Unmetered storage and bandwidth.
- Free SSL Certificate.
- One-click WordPress Installs.
- Free cPanel or WordPress website transfer.
At HostGator Shared Hosting, the baby plan starts $3.50/month, for a period of 36 months. If needed, you can pay for 24 or 12 months.
HostGator Business Plan
HostGator Business plan is the highest plan in their hosting package of shared plans. The starts at $ 5.25/month with introductory offers. What features do the Business plan HostGator offer?
This plan comes with:
- Hosting Unlimited websites.
- Free domain hosting(Domain registration) for the first year.
- One-click WordPress Installs.
- Free SSL Certificate.
- Unmetered bandwidth and storage to mitigate traffic demand.
The other advanced features this plan includes are:
- Free upgrade to positive SSL.
- Free Dedicated IP.
- Free SEO Tools.
Free upgrade to positive SSL is a great feature that most eCommerce sites need. It adds a trust seal to your site.
The Free SEO Tools too are a great option to use to boost your site’s ranking, drive more traffic to it and make your site SEO-friendly. It is worth a whopping $50/year, which you get for free.
Also, you get a free domain for the first year if you sign up for a minimum period of 12 months. Free dedicated IP that is best for security and traffic handling.
If you ask me which HostGator Shared Hosting Plan is best for customers, I shall say the Business plan is best because it gives you more advanced features in comparison with the Hatchling plan and the Baby plan.
With the Hatchling plan, you can host only one website while the Baby plan and the Business plan let you install unlimited websites. However, you can choose the Hatchling plan to start a site, as a beginner. At the initial stage, you don’t need much storage and bandwidth. So, I can conclude that the Hatchling plan is a good option to pick up for the beginner who just wants to get started.
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