Review
Hostgator is hands down one of the easiest and most reliable hosts to work with. Hostgator hosts more than one million domains for over 150,000 clients, which accounts for approximately 1% of all internet traffic. Hostgator specializes in shared, dedicated and reseller accounts. It is the reseller account feature that has helped Hostgator to capture a large percentage of the hosting market, by making these reseller tools available to web developers and designers, as well as small business entrepreneurs.
| Hostgator Web Hosting Plans | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting Plan | Platform | Disk Space | Transfer | Email Accounts | Price |
| Hatchling | Linux or Windows | 350GB | 3000GB | Unlimited | $4.95 |
| Baby | Linux or Windows | 600GB | 6000GB | Unlimited | $7.95 |
| Swamp | Linux or Windows | 1000GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | $12.95 |
Hostgator Overview
Although HostGator is a relatively new hosting company, founded in 2002, it has amassed the distinction of being one of the fastest growing private companies in America as determined by Inc. Magazine in June 2008.
HostGator is now housed in a new (2007) 20,000 square foot office building in Houston, Texas with an increasing number of technical and support staff to manage the over 5,000 servers and 150,000 clients.
HostGator gets its name from when the hosting company first started with three servers at Florida Atlantic University (Gator mascot), out of CEO Brent Oxley's dorm room.
Features
HostGator is one of the VERY few hosting providers who can truly claim to be a green innovator in the industry, powering and cooling all of their shared and reseller servers by wind power generated by the State of Texas.
Each web hosting plan comes with the incredible Cpanel hosting software suite for easy domain and site management. Along side Cpanel you will also find 4,500 free HTML and Flash templates. Quickly create and edit a new website with just a few clicks of your mouse with one of these professional templates and your unlimited domain hosting ability.
Each account also comes stocked with Fantastico equipped with over 52 free scripts and applications to run on your site, in a sub directory, or in a sub domain. Applications include blogging software, CMS, forum software, image galleries, polls and even wiki tools and scripts - and many more!
You want power? HostGator gives you the backend to support all of your web hosting and web site desires. Span fighting and bandwidth stealing tools like IP Deny Manager, Hotlink Protection and Custom Error Pages are just a few of the great items they have up their sleeves for you to take advantage of - free!
Even the cheapest hosting plan comes with shared SSL, an agora cart, osCommerce and ZenCart. Complete access to server/site logs and built in visitor statistics packages. Choose between AWStats and Webalizer to track hot traffic data and analyze your SEO efforts by seeing your traffic spikes and dips graphically.
Customer Support
Most problems you might ever encounter with a HostGator account will be able to be handled through the Cpanel admin pages, and the billing administration area at Hostgator.com.
If you do require technical, billing or general support, get instant access to a human by using the Live Web Hosting Support Chat. Most questions can be addressed using this browser-based chat tool in conjunction with your Cpanel and billing pages. If you prefer, HostGator also has an online ticketing system and basic email submission for technical issues.
Another great feature of HostGator's plans is the payment options. You can select to pay your invoices monthly using a debit or credit card, or PayPal. If you would like to forgo the hassle of logging in and paying each month, you can easily set up automatic payments through a credit or debit card, or set up a PayPal Subscription and let the billing go on auto-pilot. Receive email confirmations with each successful charge or payment, and never worry about an interruption in service. HostGator provides about two weeks grace period before acting on late payments.
