This piece is about the best alternatives to HostGator. Are you looking for ways to run your website besides HostGator? Whether you’re already using HostGator login to host your WordPress site and want to switch, or you’re still doing research, we’ve put together a list of the four best Hostgator alternatives.
What is web hosting, exactly?
Every founder and small business owner will ask themselves this question within the first few minutes of looking for a home for their website. There is a shocking amount of bad and just plain wrong information about web hosting. Let’s get rid of any misunderstandings we have right now?
In today’s world, everyone either has a website or wants one. That means they will need someone to host their web. Your website isn’t made of magic, despite what that expensive developer you hired on Fiverr told you. It’s made up of many files, which need a home to live. Web hosting is putting your website’s files on a server. Your hosting provider is the person who owns the server where your website files are stored. You have a choice of several hosting companies.
The 4 Types Of Web Hosting
Web hosting is a big field, but most people use one of four main types. This is a critical choice for any small business or founder. Your hosting provider will determine your files a certain amount of space on their server based on the type of hosting you choose. In other words, it changes how big your website is, how it looks, and how it works.
This is important because it will affect every part of your site, even the most important ones, like how quickly it loads and how safe it is. If you make a mistake here, it could ruin your SEO work and wipe out any progress you’ve already made.
So, let’s look at the four main ways to host:
- Shared – The name gives it away. Your website’s files are on a server with many other files. You “share” space on the server.
- Interested – Here, too, there are no prizes for being right. Your website will have its server.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS): Now, things are getting more complicated. Even though you’re still sharing the physical space, a virtual private server (VPS) gives you the same experience as a dedicated server. But the technical basics and management are only interesting to people like Sheldon Cooper, so that we won’t get into them here.
- Reseller: This is not as hard as it seems. A middleman or “intermediary” buys server space from a hosting provider and then sells it for a profit. We do not recommend this way of hosting for your website.
Don’t be fooled by how simple the above is. Your server technology and the level of service and management will determine the type of hosting you choose. Our guide is mostly about shared hosting because it’s cheap and meets the needs of almost every small or medium-sized business.
But, even though most of the providers listed below offer the same basic services, they try to stand out by providing different levels of service and extra services. These will have a big effect on the quality of your website and the user experience, so pay attention to them (and occasionally invest in).
The 5 Keys to Hosting a web
Hosting company: How do you differentiate yourself from the others? What should you pay attention to if you want to make an intelligent purchase for hosting your site?
First and foremost, keep the following 5 things in mind when looking at any web host provider’s offering. They are very important to your site’s overall performance, which can affect your Google ranking positively or negatively (and, therefore the health of your business).
That also makes them excellent standards against which to judge Hostgator cpanel.
Speed
Boxers say “speed beats power” for a reason. Most of us use the internet every day, and we expect our sites to load very quickly. Research has shown repeatedly that a load time of 2 seconds leads to a 9 percent bounce rate. But if that load time goes up by just one second, the rate of people leaving more than quadruples to 38%. Google already punishes pages that load slowly, and a high bounce rate will make things even worse. This means there is little room for error regarding load time. Your load speed depends on a number of things, but make sure that your hosting provider has a fast server, lots of memory, and lots of processing power.
Security
Remember how we said your website was like your home on the Internet? You wouldn’t leave the house with the windows open and the front door unlocked, would you? Still, we see so many business owners make this mistake repeatedly. When it comes to ecommerce, security is even more important than usual. Secure socket layer (SSL) certificates don’t protect against thieves; they’re just the bare minimum (so don’t believe the hosting provider’s landing pages). Almost certainly, dynamic content will need the improved security and backups available to keep it safe.
Support
Everyone always gives this metric too little weight. I can only say that those people have never had an expensive server-side problem they didn’t know how to fix. If you can’t manage your site, you’ll have to use your hosting provider’s support system sooner or later. When your site is down for maintenance, nobody can purchase anything from it. Profits go down when there is downtime.
Scalability
You’re probably like most people in that you don’t see why you should pay for something you’re not going to use. I’m the same, to be honest. But don’t just look at what’s on your website and how many people visit it when choosing a web hosting service. Plan ahead: how much do you expect your growth will grow in the next year? Can the amount of rich content you want to publish fit the server? How long does it take to make content and post it through the provider? These are important questions that should affect your choice of hosting provider.
Price
Oh, that great dollar. The good news is that most major web hosting companies have similar deals for new customers. Unfortunately, some of the contract terms and upsells are downright horrible. Be careful and think about your ongoing costs and your initial costs.
Why doesn’t Hostgator work?
This is a fundamental question because the web hosting service in Houston has done a good job for its customers since it started in 2002. They have been open for 20 years and still have a good average uptime of 99.8 percent, so they must be doing something right.
Web hosting isn’t a “one size fits all” business, so hostgator customer service might not be the best problem. This is especially true if you have started a new business or are a founder.
As a startup, growth is probably your top priority, and that means you need a web hosting provider that can grow with you. Everyone focuses on speed and security, but it’s also essential to think about price and scalability in the future.
What Hostgator Does Well
You can’t be PC mag’s web hoster of choice for six years and host more than 2 million websites if you’re not doing something right.
Here’s what they’re good at:
- Hostgator has spam protection built-in for free.
- With an average load time of 1.03 seconds, Hostgator doesn’t have too much issue with speed. This is a long way below the 2-second bounce hurdle.
- As you might expect, HostGator has customer service available 24/7 and a good knowledge base and ticketing system.
- The fact that they don’t limit bandwidth helps to strengthen their scalability offering.
- With a price of less than £3 for the first order, they are also a pretty impressive offer.
What Hostgator Does Poorly
- That free protection against spam is nowhere near enough to keep your site safe. If you want to prevent hackers from accessing your site, you’ll need an SSL certificate, and hostgator com login site locker essentials. All of that will cost you more.
- Even though speed isn’t an issue, their average load time is twice as long as Siteground’s. Their prices are about the same, so this is a significant price.
- If you want an email address linked to your URL, you’ll have to pay for it, which is disappointing since Bluehost and other web hosts offer this for free.
- That special offer is only good if you sign up for at least 3 years. That is not a mistake. If you sign up for a shorter term, the cost goes up quickly.
The Top 5 Sites Like Hostgator
1. Tiiny Host
It’s easy to see why Tiiny Host is quickly getting a reputation for itself as an independent static web hosting provider that does a lot more than it should for their size. With speedy load times, more personal customer support, great scalability, and no upsell.
Let’s see how they stack up against Hostgator prices:
Speed: Load speed is becoming more and more important in the fierce competition to get to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), and Tiiny Host is almost impossible to beat on this metric. Because they specialize in hosting cached, static websites, they can make them load quickly at a fraction of the price. If you’re considering launching an e-commerce website, Tiiny Host’s speed could give you an edge over your competitors.
Security: We all wish the internet were safe, but bad people are there. You give them a chance to attack your site every time your database has to load so much dynamic content that it gets too hot. Static sites load cached content, which means that security is built into them. This also means that SQL injection attacks are a thing of the past.
Support: Tiiny makes up for the lack that they don’t have hostgator support available 24/7 by offering a more personalized support service. This means that a person, not a poorly programmed “AI” robot that is “artificial” but not “intelligent,” handles your ticket and figures out how to solve it. Real humans oppose Tiiny’s support for real humans. This means that when it comes to customer support, they’re focusing on the right metric: “time to resolution” instead of “time to acknowledgment.”
Scalability: Tiiny is the only company on the list that uses a drag-and-drop interface by default. As a result, it’s easier and more accessible for small and medium-sized agencies to build websites and share projects. When you simplify processes and only have to make content once, you can grow quickly and cheaply.
Price: The way Tiiny host prices their services shows how scalable they are, which makes them a great choice for startups and small to medium-sized agencies. It’s the only one on the list that doesn’t try to sell you extra things at every step, and it also has the lowest ongoing costs. The niche web hosting provider has a strong value offering because it has bulletproof security, is honest about prices, and is price-conscious.
2. Siteground
There isn’t much that Siteground does poorly, and they’re hard to beat when it comes to hosting dynamic content.
Speed: Siteground’s “supercacher” feature means that they probably have the fastest loading speed for dynamic content outside of a costly dedicated server. But they aren’t just fast. They also promise that your site will be up 99 percent of the time. The web host is fast and reliable, which is very impressive.
Security: Siteground’s basic security features are much better than Hostgator’s. Malicious bots can’t get through their IDS/IDP security systems, and all of their shared servers are equipped with Modsecurity. They update their security rules every week, but they also use a custom web application firewall. Even though this isn’t an imperfect offering, you’ll probably want their more expensive “enhanced security” package.
Support: Siteground is on par with their competitors because they offer multichannel support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even though the 24/7 support is good (and some would say necessary if your product is sold on different continents), it doesn’t have the understanding and personal touch of Tiiny Host.
Scalability: “Supercache” keeps your site running faster for longer as your business grows, and Siteground’s standard CDN service backs this up. If you are willing to pay more, you can get more server space and PHP, 30 percent faster.
Price: Siteground’s introductory offer is the same as Hostgator’s price, which seems to be a cost. But they will lock you locked in for a year and charge you extra for domain registration and daily website cleaning. There are upsells around every corner here.
3. Bluehost
If you haven’t heard of this huge web hosting company, I want to congratulate you on getting out from under that rock. Bluehost vs hostgator billing does many things right, but it also does a lot of things wrong.
Speed: With an average load time of 324ms, Bluehost is at the top of our list for speed, and their site uptime is also incredibly impressive. It’s hard to find anything amiss with this.
Bluehost does not do as well as it could when it comes to security. Even with their basic package, they give you an SSL certificate, but that’s all you get. Backups and other essential security features will cost you extra. This is one of the things that quickly drive up the price.
Support: You can call or chat with someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which is standard in this industry. But tests with users have shown that neither is particularly useful. If your site is having trouble and you want to know how important it is or even just what’s going on, you might be on the phone for a while.
Scalability: The bandwidth is unlimited, but the storage space is only 50GB, half of what GoDaddy offers. That’s still enough to scale, but it is right in line with their competitors. The best thing about Bluehost is that it gives you 5 separate email accounts. It’s just too bad that only has 100mb of storage space.
Price: Bluehost has the best introductory deals, with a basic package going for an insane £2.20 a month. But this list is full of upsells, and Bluehost is no different. The monthly price goes up by more than double when you add backups and security features (and they lock you in for a year term as a minimum).
4. Dreamhost
Dreamhost is a hosting provider owned by no one else, which makes them a little different. This background in business should lead to more personalized service.
Speed: Dreamhost’s customers in North America and Western Europe are well taken care of by their two data centers in the United States. But their standard offer doesn’t come with a CDN, so if you want to reach people in other countries, you’ll need to upgrade. Even though Dreamhost’s speed is impressive, it’s not as fast as Siteground’s.
Security: As part of their basic package, Dreamhost gives you an SSL certificate and gives you privacy for your domain. Their improved security is sold and delivered through “Dreamshield,” which works as an upsell in the same offering that “Sitelock” does for Hostgator website builder.
Support: There is nothing amiss here at first glance since chat support is always standard. Dreamhost also does a favor by having their customer service based in the U.S. This helps to prove that they are a sophisticated company. But when it comes to customer support, the devil is in the details, and a little digging reveals a fly in the ointment for Dreamhost.
The dynamic content host doesn’t have any live phone customer service for people who call in. They have a callback option, but it isn’t part of their standard plan and will cost you extra.
This is crazy, considering how important a well-serviced website is to a business, and it hurts Dreamhost’s value offering.
Scalability: 50GB of SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth come as standard. That’s enough to run a big website, and it would probably be enough for any startup or founder.
Price: Dreamhost can compete with other shared hosting services on the list, but their shockingly bad customer service makes them less valuable overall. This error is made even worse when their price doubles twice. When you add their security essentials package and when the contract is renewed after a year.
5. GoDaddy
If you’ve ever thought about buying a hostgator domain, you’ve probably been targeted by a GoDaddy ad. This web hosting provider does the basics well, and that’s helped them grow.
Speed: You might think that GoDaddy is one of the slower web hosting companies. After all, “dads” have a good reputation for wearing cardigans and being generally old-fashioned. On the other speed, GoDaddy only took 480 milliseconds to load in recent user tests, which is very impressive.
Security: The well-known web hosting provider lets itself down when it comes to security. There isn’t even a hint of an SSL in their basic package, and we couldn’t find any mention of backups. Not as good as their rivals.
Support: The stalwart here can brag about having an extensive phone network, a good chat feature, and the standard hours of operation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But a little digging turned up reports of wait times that changed wildly, which is the last thing you want when you need your site to update right away.
Scalability: This plan offers unlimited bandwidth and 100GB of storage, which is more than any other plan on the market. But site migrations that aren’t priced and lack basic security mean that you’ll have to pay a lot to scale in a meaningful way.
Price: It’s not surprising that GoDaddy’s services were similar to those of their competitors when it came to price. What’s surprising is that the web hosting provider has decided to copy Hostgator phone number and try to lock customers in for 3 years. We don’t like that, and we’ve noticed that the monthly cost doubles when you purchase their “security essentials” offering.
We’ve done the hard work of web hosting.
Our web hosting guide cuts through the noise and gets to the heart of what’s most important to you if you’re a small or medium-sized startup.
I haven’t met a first-time founder who wasn’t a techie who could differentiate the difference between the big players in the web hosting market. This desperation favors the main hosts because it brings in large groups of confused people.
Choosing a web hosting provider is likely to be the most important choice for your new business. We’ve provided you with the information you need to make a good choice.