HOSTGATOR VS GODADDY
Hostgator and GoDaddy are the two top web hosting companies recommended by famous bloggers and internet marketers on the internet. Founded in 1999, GoDaddy is older than Hostgator by 3 years but their web hosting support is not as reliable as Hostgator. Although Hostgator enters into the web hosting industry later, they host more sites than GoDaddy. Hostgator regularly carries out promotion so you can expect discounts on their web hosting plans from time to time. Hostgator has more than 500 employees. The following is a comparison between Hostgator and GoDaddy.
Uptime and Server Response Time
Both Hostgator and GoDaddy guarantee an uptime of 99.9%. The server performance of Hostgator is solid and consistent whereas GoDaddy server will start to slow down after some time. Sites hosted on Hostgator took about half a second to load while sites hosted on GoDaddy took slightly more than 1 second to load. A recent survey showed that Hostgator’s server also have faster response time compared to GoDaddy.
Control Panel
All Hostgator shared hosting plans include cPanel, which is the most popular type of control panel for this type of hosting. It comes packed with all the necessary features for managing your sites. Cpanel includes a one click script installer that lets you add install various types of CMS on your site with a few clicks. GoDaddy gives customers the option of choosing in between cPanel and Parallels Plesk. Parallels Plesk ranks as the second most popular option of control panel after cPanel.
Plans and Pricing
Hostgator offers 3 types of hosting plans including Hatchling, Baby and Business plan. The Baby and Business plans offer unlimited domain add-ons whereas the Hatchling plan only allow you to host one domain. All Hostgator hosting plans offer one click installs, unlimited hard disk, unlimited emails, and unlimited bandwidth. The Business plan offers extra features such as free private SSL, IP and toll free telephone number. Hostgator provides a 45 days money back guarantee. Hostgator hosting is slightly more expensive than GoDaddy and starts from $5.56 per month.
GoDaddy also offer 3 hosting plans including Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate. GoDaddy’s Economy plan features 100 GB storage, and 100 email addresses. All GoDaddy plans offer unlimited bandwidth, and free domain. The Deluxe and Ultimate plans features unlimited domain add-on, and unlimited hard disk. The Deluxe plan allows up to 500 email addresses while Ultimate allows up to 1,000 email addresses. GoDaddy hosting starts from $4.99 per month and is suitable for people looking for budget hosting.
Both Hostgator and GoDaddy offers monthly plans but you have the option of paying for the hosting in advanced. Hostgator allows you to pre-pay for up to 3 years while GoDaddy allows you to pre-pay for the hosting plans for up to 10 years.
Backup Recovery
Both Hostgator and GoDaddy offer automated backup recovery services to allow customers to easily restore your files in case something happen. Hostgator provides weekly off-site data backup service for free of charge but GoDaddy charges a low fee for the backup service.
Customer Support
Hostgator provides 24/7/365 customer support via toll free telephone, email, live chat and tickets. Their customer support service is quick and responsive as they usually respond to the customers’ tickets within 1 hour. The fastest way to reach Hostgator’s customer support is through the live chat because they will connect you to a representative within 1 minute. Hostgator is able to provide a fast customer support because there are over 850 customer support representatives that is available around the clock to address customers’ issues.
GoDaddy only provide customer services through telephone for customers from countries around the world. They do not provide other forms of customer support such as email and ticket system. GoDaddy customer support is not as good as Hostgator because they have long waiting time.
Website Builder
Hostgator offers a basic website building tool that comes with many high quality free templates. Hostgator site building tool do not offer an option that let you add a second tier menu so you have to use custom CSS. It supports a variety of features such as social media buttons, SEO options, drag and drop widgets, video embed, and photo gallery. The sitebuilder is included free of charge when you sign up with their Baby Plan.
GoDaddy also offer a flexible website building tool with an easy to use user interface. GoDaddy site building tool offers features such as Google Maps, site preview, dropdown navigation bar, photo gallery, flash intro, video, social media, forms and slideshows. To access the GoDaddy’s site building tool, you need to pay a low monthly fee.
Hostgator or Godaddy Hosting
In conclusion, there aren’t much differences between the hosting plans of Hostgator and GoDaddy. Hostgator’s is much better than GoDaddy in many aspects including customer support, reliability and uptime.
