Hosting Tutorial & Guide
HostGator VS GoDaddy - Shared Web Hosting Comparison
As both of HostGator and GoDaddy are world's leading companies dealing with online business, we have made a comprehensive comparison between their shared web hosting services based on price, features, ease of use, technology, reliability, performance and technical support. The detailed information should be a good reference for readers to choose which one to go with.Editorial & Customer Rating
Our editors have reviewed the 2 companies carefully on the value of their web hosting plans, control panel, uptime, speed and customer service, and then made ratings for their overall performance as well as the detailed aspects. At the same time, we have kept receiving real customer reviews for them which also include the personal ratings of their customers.The statistics show that HostGator has slightly surpassed GoDaddy in editorial rating and far exceeded its competitor in customer rating. Read the real ratings from our editors and the companies' customers.
| Rating |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Plan in Comparison | Hatchling | Economy |
| Price | ||
| Feature | ||
| Loading Speed | ||
| Uptime | ||
| Support | ||
| Customer Reviews | 321 | 22 |
| Customer Rating | ||
| Read More | HostGator Review | GoDaddy Review |
Background
HostGator is a large web hosting company with over 850 employees, 12,000 servers and 4 million customers. The company provides a series of unmatched services including shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting for all kinds of customers ranging from personal bloggers to enterprises. The goal of the company is to consistently enhance the online performance of customers' websites to help them achieve a quicker success.GoDaddy is a well-known domain registrar and web hosting provider that is recognized as the largest domain name registrar in the world. Since 1997, the company has been raised a large customer base by offering cheap and secure domain name solutions. As the focus is on the domain-related service, its web hosting service is not as good as some other famous companies.
Target Market
According to the backgrounds of HostGator and GoDaddy, we know they focus on different marketplace. GoDaddy pay most attention to the domain name registration while HostGator targets at web hosting solutions. So we personally conclude that GoDaddy is a good choice for domain registrants but HostGator is an ideal option for beginners, bloggers, and small to medium sized businesses who need web hosting solutions.Make sure you are their target customer at first. Otherwise, the whole comparison is no meaningful. As shared web hosting has the largest customer base, we compare them on shared web hosting mainly in below. Check out detailed information as following.
Price
There is one thing in common between the 2 companies – both of them have 3 shared web hosting plans suitable for the upgradable needs of different websites. Regularly, the price of HostGator plans starts from $6.95/mo, but as the company offers 45% discount for visitors using the exclusive coupon code HG45PERCENT, the effective price starts from only $3.82/mo.HostGator Promotional Link Activation
As for GoDaddy, the regular price of its plans starts from $9.99/mo. The company is carrying out limited-time promotions which allow visitors to enjoy up to 50% discount for a lower price starting from $4.99/mo.
For an increased purchase security, both of the 2 companies accept payment via PayPal and guarantee customers can have a refund in a certain period of time. What's different is that HostGator promises 45 days money back while its competitor guarantees 30 days.
Considering that comparing all of their plans are time-consuming, we have selected one package from each company for detailed price comparison. Read the following chart to know more about their price policies.
| Price | | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan in Comparison | Hatchling | Economy |
| Regular | $6.95/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Discount | 45% | 50% |
| Current | $3.82/mo | $4.99/mo |
| How to Claim | Promo Link | - |
Control Panel
In regards to the comparison between the 2 companies, control panel is a necessary part that needs to look into. GoDaddy once provided a custom control panel which allowed customers to check statistics, manage various accounts on their websites and install extensions and some other tools. The control panel was easy-to-use, but it had slow accessibility and takes much time to learn. Fortunately, the company has recently adopted cPanel.HostGator has been utilizing the most widely used cPanel as its control panel which features many functions. Creating databases, installing scripts and extensions, and managing domains can be done with ease in a few minutes. As there are many tutorials online, even newbies can quickly get used to this control panel.
Web Hosting Features
HostGator and GoDaddy have several features in common. For example, the primary plans of both companies allow hosting 1 website only, and the other 2 plans do not set limits on the number of domains. Besides, all their plans include unlimited bandwidth.However, when other resources are considered, HostGator wins over GoDaddy because it offers more disk space, database storage and email accounts. Other advantages of the former are:
- The 1-click installer QuickInstall supports more applications than GoDaddy installer.
- Users can access Ruby on Rails on the shared servers. GoDaddy once offered this feature, but it has discontinued the support.
- Free automatic backups are available for every user of HostGator, while GoDaddy charges additional fees.
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Hatchling | Economy |
| Hosted Domain | 1 | 1 |
| Disk Space | Unlimited | 100 GB |
| Email Addresses | Unlimited | 100 |
| FTP Accounts | Unlimited | 50 |
| MySQL Databases | Unlimited | 10 |
| Sub-Domains | Unlimited | 25 |
| SSH | ||
| Cron Job | ||
| Perl & Python | ||
| Ruby on Rails | ||
| Discounted Price | $3.82/mo | $4.99/mo |
| How to Claim | Promo Link | - |
Reliability
Just like most other web hosting providers, HostGator and GoDaddy offer uptime guarantees. In the shared hosting environment, the 99.9% uptime is not easy to be achieved, but according to user reviews and our monitoring, the two companies are capable of getting the promise fulfilled.To maintain the high reputation gained in the past years, HostGator is careful when selecting the data center providers. All of the data centers that the web host uses now feature redundant power supplies, a high level of security, advanced cooling, and 24x7 stuffing. The hardware is well configured and optimized, and all software is updated. Besides, the CDN ensures that even if there is a small trouble with your website, it is still accessible temporarily as the cached static content can serve some visitors' needs.
The uptime of HostGator shared hosting is great, averaging over 99.95% in 2015. Below are the records of the recent weeks.
GoDaddy has also done much to deliver good uptime. For instance, the company utilizes CloudLinux operating system, and maintains a security team that monitors servers and networks constantly. These measures have worked, because GoDaddy is also able to ensure over 99.9% uptime, which you can see in the following chart.
Performance
Both of the companies leverage first-rate Dell servers in their data centers. The data centers that HostGator is using are the world-class data centers. And the network services are from Cisco, AT&T, Level3, AboveNet and several other leading companies. With 24x7 monitoring of the network and data centers, the company delivers fast page loading speed that averages less than 1 second.GoDaddy has several data centers serving customers all over the world, too. The company has facilities in Arizona, Iowa, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and India, which are connected by nationwide fiber networks. Despite the fact, our WordPress site hosted with the Deluxe plan has a loading speed of more than 2 seconds on average.
As we have monitored the server response time of both the companies for about half a year, the result is as the following chart.
Technical Support
HostGator provides 24x7 US based technical support via email, live chat and phone. The company has a large support team with 500+ support staff with over 5 years' experience. In most cases, customers can get a response via live chat and phone within 60 seconds and a solution from email in 5 hours.GoDaddy offers 24x7 technical support, too. The difference is that this company doesn't support to ask for help via live chat. When customers have questions on their accounts, they can access to a support staff by calling at the toll-free number or sending emails.
Conclusion
Before coming to the conclusion, let's take a look at the 2 companies' advantages over each other in the aspect of web hosting service.GoDaddy's advantage
- The larger discounts for annual billing customers.
- the capability to purchase additional server resources.
HostGator's advantages
- A better reputation among customers.
- Faster server response speed and page loading speed.
- More means to access technical support and has shorter holding time.