Bluehost vs Hostgator Review, Choose the Best Hosting 2016

Successful websites are backed by good quality, professionally run hosting. There is simply no denying this, and if you’re looking to start a website for your business, or turn your blog into a business, or anything of the like, you’ll need to find the best hosting possible, and not waste your time with a company that doesn’t provide good value.

That being said, there are many good quality hosting services out there, and you still need to make sure that the service you choose meets all of your specific needs. Here we will be taking a thorough look at Bluehost vs Hostgator, going over what they offer, and helping you decide which will better suit your needs.

HOSTGATOR VS BLUEHOST

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

24/7 Bad Reports

24/7 Bad Reports

DOMAIN TRANSFER

Included

$149.99

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE

45 Days

30 Days

PAGE LOADING TIME

Below Industry Ave.

Below Industry Ave.

PRICE

Starts at $3.95/Month

Starts at $3.49/Month

SECURITY

Included Free

Included Free

SITE BACKUPS

Model Name

Value

UPSELLS

Many

Some

UPTIME

99.82%

99.94%

USER INTERFACE

User Friendly

User Friendly

Bluehost Hosting – What is Really Behind Their Popularity?

Bluehost is a popular choice, as proven by the 2 million websites they host. They are among the most popular choices, and the abundance of glowing reviews out there on the internet alone might entice you to sign right up, but there are some things you should consider first. If you were to do just a bit of research, you would find that Bluehost offers a very attractive and beneficial affiliate program for their members. Their payout per successful referral is $65.

That is a lot of money for simply convincing someone to sign up for a membership, wouldn’t you agree? It should come as no surprise then that there is not only a huge number of members, but a ton of extremely positive reviews out there, just begging you to sign up. The problem with these is that they are often biased and won’t compare Bluehost to any other service, which limits a reader’s ability to decide what is best for them and their specific business.

Here, we will take an objective and unbiased look at Bluehost and what they offer in relation to Hostgator, which is another popular choice when it comes to web hosting. Looking at Hostgator vs Bluehost should help you in deciding the best way to go for your website.

An Unbiased and Objective Look

One very important thing to consider when looking at hosting services is their uptime. This is the amount of time that your website is actually up for. Any host will experience some downtime here and there, but the less the better, of course. Based on reports from actual customers and users, the uptime is said to average out at around 99.94%. This is nothing to worry about necessarily, as that means that your site will still be up most of the time, however it comes in below the average uptime of many other services.

Something they do have going for them is the security options they offer, with many spam fighting tools as well as hotlink protection. Along with these security measures, they also offer some free add-ons with your account, such as CloudFare and Google Apps. Things like these can be very useful to have on hand.

Are They Really the Cheapest?

Aside from being endorsed by a ton of biased users looking for referral payouts, they are among the cheapest services, which is definitely a contributing factor in their popularity. There is a catch to their cheap prices, however, that not many will see on the surface. You can get your website hosting for $3.49/month if you sign up for the three-year plan. That means paying for three years of service, all at one time. Not only will this come to a hefty amount to fork over all at once, but it also means that you are committing to three years, which has risks of its own.

You can choose to go with a 12-month plan and only pay for one year at a time, but that will bring you up to $4.95/month, which still is a pretty low price. That being said, you should keep in mind that going with this plan will bring you up to $8.99/month upon renewal.

They are endorsed by WordPressthemselves however, which will automatically instill a sense of trust in a lot of people, what with WordPress being one of the most popular places to create your website or blog.

Some Drawbacks

One general drawback to Bluehost vs.others, is that their page loading times can be very slow. A website that loads slowly can really interrupt a user’s experience, not to mention the effect it can have on your websites ranking and authority. A negative experience for a visitor will cause them to simply leave, which also ultimately hurt your profit margins as there will belessbuys and customers sticking around on your site.

Another issue they seem to have, is with their customer support system. There have been a lot of negative experiences reported, including long wait times and unhelpful responses from the staff. One final thing to consider about Bluehost, is their domain transfer fee. Most services will transfer your domain for free, considering you are giving them your business however, Bluehost charges a whopping $149.99 simply to transfer your domain. Absolutely unreasonable if you ask me.

Conclusion

Overall, Bluehost is a decent choice for a smaller website that maybe isn’t so focused on the business side of things, and is more there for personal reasons or as a fun blog. They do have some things going for them, especially the endorsement from WordPress themselves, but their performance simply isn’t conducive to a large, growing business that is looking to offer real value and bring in a respectable profit. For a through analysis of Bluehost vs WordPress, check here

Hostgator Hosting – Lot of Love/Hate Relationships

Bluehost vs Hostgator

Hostgator is right up there with Bluehost when it comes to popularity level. Hostgator is an extremely recognizable name when it comes to the web hosting community. Why is that, though? Much like Bluehost, their popularity doesn’t necessarily 100 percent stem from their stellar and above-average hosting services. The reality is, Hostgator has a huge marketing budget compared to most others, which is why it’s become the one name everyone knows.

Hostgator has been around since 2002 and they host an extremely impressive 9 million websites. That is a lot of sites!

Hostgator offers a decent level of customer support. Maybe not the best in the business, but they are convenient in that support is available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and email. Short wait times and friendly, helpful responses from staff have been reported, while others have said they have not been helped at all. It may come down to the individual you end up dealing with.

Unlike Bluehost, Hostgator will happily help with transferring your current domain over to their hosting service, completely free of charge, as it should be. They also offer automated daily database backups and free malware removal on some of their more premium plans.

Very Beginner-Friendly

One of the most attractive things about Hostgator vs many others is the easy-to-use interface that is extremely beginner friendly. They also have a very long money-back guarantee, coming in at 45 days, so you have a lot of time to try them out and see if they are going to work for you long-term.

Along with an easy-to-understand interface, they offer seemingly endless FAQ pages, documents, and tutorials that can help you out quite a bit as you progress through setting up your first website. The great thing about this, is that you can do some troubleshooting on your own. Especially if this is your first time hosting a website, you may have a lot of issues and questions. While 24/7 support is great, it is probably easier for you if you can find some answers on your own.

Hostgator is Not Perfect

While Hostgator certainly has a lot going for it in several departments, there are some things that need improvement – starting with their uptime. As I mentioned before, uptime is among one of the most important things to consider as you want your website to be live and running as much as possible.

One user conducted a 12-month study on Hostgator and recorded the average uptime for each month. Some months looked great, while others… not so much. For the entire year-long period, the average uptime was 99.82%. This is pretty bad, considering the industry average is a solid 99.90%, and many web hosting services will guarantee you an uptime of 99.99%.

On top of their below-average uptimes, they have some problems in another very important area of website hosting, which is the page loading times. A similar problem to Bluehost, and one that can hurt a business significantly. Google actually factors loading times into deciding what pages to display on a search result. So if you’ve got a fantastic webpage that takes forever to load, no one will see it. If no one is seeing your pages, no one is buying your products or services, and so this is a huge consideration when running an online business.

Hostgator advertises free, instant backups included with their hosting, but that isn’t all it appears to be either. They are talking about the manual backups which are available in the control panel. While this is still useful, if you want automated backups to make your life easier and give you some true peace of mind while on your basic plan, it’ll cost an extra $15.95. This is not the end of the world, and it may be worth the extra cost if you have decided to go with Hostgator, the only thing is that most other services will offer automatic backups for free.

Tricky Pricing Structure

When it comes to Hostgator vs most others, their pricing plan is not unusual. It contains the usual deceptive tricks to make you think that they are much cheaper than they actually are. While not an uncommon practice in the web hosting industry, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

At a first glance, Hostgator advertises their services for $3.95/month, however, if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that that price is only available if you buy three years at once. If you would prefer to purchase only one year at a time, your price will jump up.

Another thing that isn’t made perfectly clear at first, is that this cheap price is only available for your first purchase. Once the term is up and it comes time to renew, the monthly price will jump up again.

Conclusion

Overall, when you look at Hostgator vs many others, the reality is that it just doesn’t measure up to expectations or industry standards. For being such a household name in web hosting, you would think that they would offer some better quality features, but that is simply not the case. Their impressive popularity comes from the massive marketing and advertising budget that they have, not from their mind-blowing quality and performance. That being said, it is budget friendly and may work for low-key, non-business websites or blogs.


So What’s the Verdict?

Bluehost vs Hostgator

At the end of the day, these are both very average web hosting services. They each have certain things about them that make them attractive, but neither provides an extremely stellar experience either. That being said, they are both fairly budget friendly and will probably work for a simple, low-maintenance website that isn’t necessarily looking to drive massive amounts of traffic.

Uptime and page loading times are not the only things you need to consider, but they are the backbone of your website, and you really should aspire to find a hosting company that will offer you at least the industry standard in both areas if you are looking to be very successful. The reality is too, that most companies will. If I had to pick between Bluehost vs Hostgator however, I would say that Bluehost is definitely the better choice overall.

 

Antonio Cerqueira