HOSTGATOR VS DREAMHOST
Choosing the right web hosting company from the start will save you a lot of time and money. Hostgator and DreamHost are two top web hosting companies on the internet. This article aims to provide a side by side comparison on the two web hosting companies.
Reputation
Hostgator was established in the year of 2002 by a student of Florida Atlantic University called Brent Oxley. Within 4 years, Hostgator has hosted over 200,000 websites. It reached 9 million websites by 2014. Hostgator has a headquarter in Houston, Texas. DreamHost was founded by 4 persons in 1996. The founders of DreamHost are Dallas Berthune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez, and Sage Weil. Up to date, Dream Host hosts over 1.5 million domains. Both web hosting companies have existed for more than one decade. Hostgator is more popular than Dream Host as they host more websites.
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Web Hosting Services
Hostgator offers three levels of shared hosting plans including Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan and Business plan. The Hatchling plan only allow one domain while the other two plans allow unlimited domains. Hostgator hosting plan starts from $4.86 per month to $10.46 per month. This pricing is for 36 months. Hostgator offers discount of up to $60% every now and then. You can sign up for their newsletter to get news on discount. DreamHost only provides one level of shared hosting plan.
Hostgator shared hosting plans start from $4.86 per month to $10.46 per month. DreamHost shared hosting plan starts at $8.95 per month for 2 year plan. The price for the 1 year of hosting is $9.95 per month. The monthly pricing for DreamHost shared hosting is $10.95. DreamHost does not charge any setup fee. Each hosting plan comes with a free domain name with free WhoIS privacy protection. Both Hostgator and DreamHost offers unlimited hard disk space, and bandwidth.
Control Panel
Hostgator offers cPanel as the standard control panel for their shared hosting plans. Cpanel provides all the apps you need for performing basic website maintenance. They have provided a lot of video tutorials on cPanel in the knowledgebase center. Hostgator does provide a live demo for the cPanel control panel.
DreamHost offers a proprietary control panel instead of cPanel. The web based control panel does not have some features that are available in cPanel. They do not provide any demo tour for their web based control panel.
Customer Support
Hostgator offers 24/7/365 customer support through telephone, live chat and ticket system. Their live chat session is the fastest way to reach them. When you are on live chat, they let you know how long you have to wait until you are connected to a representative. Hostgator provides toll free telephone support so it is free to call their customer service representative.
DreamHost offers customer support through live chat and email web form. Their live chat is only for queries about sales. They do not include telephone customer support in their web hosting services. They would charge you a monthly fee if you need to contact them through technical live chat and telephone support. Both Hostgator and DreamHost have discussion forums. You can post your issue on the discussion forum to get attention from the customer support team instantly.
Loading Speed and Uptime
Hostgator provides an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Hostgator promised to credit you back the hosting fee of that month if you can prove to them that their uptime falls short of 99.9%. DreamHost offers an uptime guarantee of 100%. They offer refunds in the form of credit that is equal to 1 day of free hosting for every 1 hour of downtime. DreamHost will offer refund for up to 10% of the prepaid hosting fee. Although DreamHost provides 100% uptime, its server is not as fast as Hostgator. Websites hosted on Hostgator tends to load faster than websites hosted on DreamHost.
Servers
Hostgator’s servers are more stable and seldom experience down times. The performance of DreamHost servers are not as stable as Hostgator as the uptime tends to fluctuate from time to time. Both Hostgator and DreamHost use powerful servers. Hostgator use intel Dual Xeon servers while DreamHost uses AMD Phenom X4 processors.
Money Back Guarantee
Hostgator offers an unconditional 45 days money back guarantee if you cancel the hosting within 45 days. If you cancel the hosting after 45 days, they may consider to repay you for the hosting time you did not use. DreamHost offers a 97 days money back guarantee. You must pay the hosting with either a credit card or Google Wallet to be qualified for the refund. Payment made via bank wire, Western Union and money orders will not be refunded. To get the refund, you must submit a cancellation request within a period of 97 days.
Hostgator vs Dreamhost – Which one is better?
As you can see, Hostgator is better than DreamHost in terms of pricing, security, control panel and customer support. If you are someone who does not like using cPanel, DreamHost is your best choice.
