Bluehost Vs HostGator
It’s hard to choose between Bluehost and HostGator for web hosting, but we think Bluehost is the best choice for most people.
These are two of the most well-known names in the business of hosting websites.
They are also very similar in the features they offer to website owners of all skill levels, from beginners to experts.
As website managers ourselves, we know a lot about comparing and contrasting the features of different web hosting companies to find the ones that give each site the tools it needs most. This was an almost perfect match! We looked at features like uptime, managed hosting, traffic volume, and customer support when comparing Bluehost and HostGator.
Bluehost won out over HostGator in the end in a few key areas, such as traffic volume, speed, and hosting plans for big websites and businesses that need more space. Read our comparison chart to find out what each hosting company does best.
Bluehost Pros and Cons
Pros
- Reliable uptime
- High-level security features
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Easy for beginners
- CPU protection
- Free domain
- Excellent storage space
Cons
- Lacks pricing flexibility
- Costly upgrades
- US-only servers
- Customer service needs improvement
HostGator Pros and Cons
Pros
- Affordable, flexible pricing
- Several data centers
- Guaranteed 99.9% uptime
- Responsive customer support
- Free domain
- One-click app installation
- Simple interface
Cons
- Expensive renewals
- One standard backup
- Customer service upsells
- Pricey for large sites
Site Uptime: Tie
One of the most important things to look for in a web hosting company is how often your site is available. People who visit your site expect it to be there when they need it.
What happens when someone goes to your site to find the answer to their question but can’t get to it? They’ll go somewhere else, and depending on the goal of your website, you could lose traffic, leads, or sales.
Bluehost and HostGator are two of the best web hosts when it comes to keeping your site online.
With its 99.9% uptime guarantee, HostGator is one of several companies that promise uptime. And HostGator will give you a free month of hosting if their uptime drops below 99.9% at any time during that month.
Bluehost doesn’t offer a guarantee of uptime like many other hosting services. But its reliability is on par with that of companies like HostGator that offer uptime guarantees. Bluehost’s servers are up at least 99.9% of the time each month, so they don’t need a guarantee.
Site Speed: Bluehost
A site that takes too long to load can drive people away faster than almost anything else.
People usually only want to wait a few seconds for a page to load. They will also expect your site to be easy to use.
No hosting company has servers that are always perfect and always fast. Instead, we put more emphasis on consistent speeds than on fast speeds for a few months out of the year.
Bluehost and HostGator are pretty close when it comes to speed, but Bluehost’s loading speeds are usually faster and more consistent. Bluehost’s speeds have slowed down a bit recently, but the average response time over the past nine months has been 692 ms, so that’s still what you can expect.
Even though HostGator is doing better than usual right now, its average response time is still 731 ms.
At first glance, that’s not a big difference, but when you look at the wide range of numbers (798, 836, 738, and 659 ms) from one month to the next, you can see that its speeds aren’t as consistent as Bluehost’s. Bluehost’s speeds for the same months are 724, 628, 670, and 655 ms, which is much more stable.
Bluehost December 2020 speeds
HostGator December 2020 speeds
Customer Support: HostGator Both Bluehost and HostGator have full support systems to help customers with any questions, concerns, or problems they have with their hosting or other services. Each company has customer service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as a knowledge base with answers and tutorials for common questions and problems.
Bluehost and HostGator are pretty close when it comes to customer service, but HostGator has a slight edge because it is more responsive and works harder to solve problems as quickly as possible. You might have to wait a few minutes in a phone or live chat queue before you get a response, but once your session starts, you can expect to get an answer or problem solved quickly.
Customers also like HostGator’s peer support forums, which are a feature that stands out. Hop on to ask a question that people in the community who know the answer can answer. You might even get a faster answer there than if you called customer service, especially for small problems like making your site more secure or asking about web design.
Traffic Volume: Bluehost
Even people with small websites need to think about how many people visit them. One day, your site might get bigger and need more bandwidth to handle a steady flow of traffic without affecting how well it works or how users feel about it.
Both Bluehost and HostGator offer unlimited bandwidth, which means that if you use a lot of it, you won’t be cut off or charged extra. But if there is a lot of traffic, your speeds may slow down so as not to slow down the servers.
Choose a virtual private server (VPS), a dedicated server, or a WordPress hosting plan to avoid slower speeds that could hurt your traffic. Again, these options are available from both companies, but Bluehost’s plans are some of the best.
With a WordPress site and Bluehost’s optimised starter WordPress plan, your website can get up to 450,000 visits per month. With a similar plan on HostGator, you can get 100,000 visitors per month.
Bluehost’s standard VPS hosting plan that doesn’t include WordPress can also handle up to 450,000 visits per month. Even the best HostGator VPS plan, Snappy 4000, falls short with an average of 360,000 visits per month.
HostGator’s price is:
When it comes to web hosting, there is no one size that fits all. Different people and businesses have different hosting needs, so most web hosting companies make their plans flexible so they can meet those needs.
HostGator has some of the cheapest plans and gives you a lot of freedom so you can grow at your own pace. For as little as $2.75/month for shared hosting and $4.95/month for individual hosting, you get unlimited bandwidth, one-click WordPress installations, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain when you sign up for at least 12 months.
There is a plan for everyone, including WordPress, shared, VPS, cloud, dedicated, and reseller plans. If you want your site to grow quickly, you might want to start with the Baby Cloud plan, which gives you unlimited domains and subdomains, 4 GB of available RAM, and unlimited storage and bandwidth. It is designed to be flexible and scalable.
The prices at Bluehost are good, but not quite as low as those at HostGator. Most importantly, HostGator has more options for pricing. You can choose to pay in 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, or 36-month chunks, whereas Bluehost only gives you options for 12, 24, and 36-month payments. HostGator lets you try a new web host for a short time if that’s all you want to do. Be aware, though, that 1-month and 3-month plans cost a lot more than long-term plans.
HostGator also has a 45-day money-back guarantee. If you aren’t happy with your order, you can cancel it within the first 45 calendar days and get your money back. Bluehost lets you do the same for 30 days, but those extra 15 days can help you test out all of your plan’s features.
Also, it’s important to know that both companies have special prices for the first time you buy from them. After that time, your price goes up to the regular renewal rate, which is much higher than the introductory price. When it comes to shared hosting, HostGator’s starting and regular prices are usually lower than Bluehost’s.
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Migration Features: HostGator Both Bluehost and HostGator give new customers one free migration of their WordPress website from its current location on the web to their new host.
The free service for Bluehost customers ends there. Bluehost charges $149.99 for any additional site transfers that use a platform other than WordPress. This includes moving up to five websites and 20 email accounts. Bluehost also doesn’t help with site migrations for VPS or dedicated hosting accounts, which are not shared hosting sites.
HostGator not only lets WordPress accounts move for free, but it also gives shared and cloud accounts one free transfer, resellers 30 free transfers, and VPS and dedicated hosting accounts unlimited free transfers.
HostGator is a managed web host.
Managed hosting is an important thing to think about if you don’t know much about websites or want to free up some time. Your hosting company will help you deal with server problems, updates, setup, and other administrative tasks when you need it.
Bluehost’s fully managed WordPress plans do this well. If you sign up for a WordPress plan, you’ll get a dashboard that works for everything WordPress, custom security and speed, WordPress installations, and general WordPress maintenance.
These services are also part of HostGator’s WordPress plans. But it goes even further by offering fully managed plans for shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated hosting that don’t include WordPress.
HostGator’s fully managed support includes things like installing packages, improving speed, setting up email, managing backups, and setting up a firewall. You can also set up Google Workspace, update software, and set up DNS setups with it.
Virtual Private Servers: Bluehost
We’ve already said that a VPS is better than shared hosting for sites that get a lot of traffic. Bluehost is the clear winner when it comes to how well a VPS plan handles traffic, whether you have a WordPress site or not.
Bluehost also offers a few other benefits to VPS owners. Plans come with 2–4 CPU cores, 2–8 GB RAM, and up to 120 GB of storage. The Ultimate plan, which is the most expensive, gives users 3 TB of bandwidth. All of the storage is on solid-state drives (SSD), which means that you can load things quickly.
Even though HostGator’s plans offer unlimited bandwidth and more SSD storage space, the price goes up a lot when the plan is renewed. When you renew for a year, Bluehost’s cheapest VPS plan costs $24.99/month, but HostGator’s introductory plan costs almost $80/month when you renew for a year. The Ultimate plan from Bluehost can be renewed for another year for a slightly higher price of $83.99/month.
Dedicated Hosting: Bluehost
When you choose dedicated hosting, flexibility is very important. You shouldn’t feel stuck with a plan that everyone says will work. Having scalability add-ons lets you change your plans to fit your needs. The dedicated hosting plans from Bluehost give you a lot to start with, but they also give you options so you can get exactly what you need.
For example, if the regular SSD SAN storage amounts aren’t enough for you but everything else in your plan works, you can add up to 4 TB of extra storage for $50-$400/month. Add-ons from Bluehost include expert mail filtering, domain privacy, SiteLock, and an extra dedicated IP. HostGator also has a few add-ons, but compared to Bluehost, it doesn’t have as many.
WordPress Hosting: Bluehost
WordPress sites do best when they have hosting plans that are built for speed and have code that is easy to read and understand. The managed WordPress plans from HostGator and Bluehost include free installation, free site migrations, an optimised control panel, and advanced security.
But Bluehost, along with SiteGround and DreamHost, is one of the companies that WordPress itself recommends. Bluehost’s WordPress plans are fully managed by platform experts who will take care of any problems that come up with your site.
Bluehost even has an Ecommerce plan for online shops with secure payment gateways, the ability to add unlimited products, the ability to review products, and other WooCommerce features.
Final Verdict
From this comparison, it’s easy to see that both Bluehost and HostGator have a lot to offer. They both have a variety of hosting plans to choose from and a wide range of features, so you can get a cheap site that can grow with you or a powerful plan that can handle a lot of traffic and storage.
Still, Bluehost is the best choice. You can’t go wrong with Bluehost’s managed WordPress plans if you have a WordPress site. And with other sites, you’ll get a high number of visitors, reliable speeds and uptime, and great ability to grow.