My 3.5 Years HostGator Hosting Review [Sharing My Experience]

*This post may contain affiliate links. Which means if you buy a recommended product through any of those links I will receive a little commission at no additional cost to you.

In this post, I’m going to share my HostGator hosting review with you so that you can get to know the reality of it.

I will also tell you whether or not you should buy this hosting.

So, without further ado let’s get started…

 

Back in 2015, I planned to start my blogging journey. I had no idea where to start.

I only knew that blogging can bring me passive income. With this idea, I jumped into it and opened a free account on Blogger.

That time I was unaware of WordPress CMS. So, I started with Blogger.com (A blogging platform developed by Google).

Initially, Blogger.com was good for me as it allowed me to create a free blog without investing a single penny.

But soon I realized that blogger.com had very limited features that encouraged me to move to WordPress.

That was the time, where I had to decide to choose the best hosting to buy.

After researching, I came across HostGator.

However, there were many other Hosting like, DreamHost, Bluehost and WP engine which were providing best hosting services as well.

But I found HostGator to be the best hosting in terms of reliability and affordability.

Yes, HostGator offered me almost free hosting for 1 month which only cost me $0.01 (1 penny)

(*Make sure you uncheck these addon option to get $0.01 deal)

How cool is it? Isn’t…

Because of its affordable price, I signed up for a shared hosting baby plan.

The baby plan offers me one-click installation, unlimited domains, unmetered bandwidth and unlimited disk space.

After installing WordPress to my server, I migrated my blog from Blogger.com to WordPress.

Once I had all my content on my WordPress blog, I started adding new content to it.

This was how I started my WordPress blog.

Now let me tell you how did HostGator serve me?

Whenever it comes to price, HostGator always offers cheaper plans.

Though the price is not the only factor but other features are also essential to consider.

Once you’ve looked over all these factors, you can choose the best hosting server easily.

Initially, I didn’t know about these factors but I found all these qualities on HostGator hosting later.

That’s why I preferred HostGator Hosting. 

Let’s back to my story…

So, I kept on adding new content and my blog started to grow. I was happy.

My initial blogging journey became quite difficult because of these sudden changes

 

FIRST INCIDENT: – (500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR)

After launching my blog on HostGator server, my site started showing me a server error.

It was not loading.

And continue to show me 500 internal server error.

Ufff…..

I never heard of this error before because that time I was just a noob.

And of course, I was not technically able to handle the situation.

So what I did?

I contacted HostGator live support and talked about this issue.

You won’t believe, how fast they handle the issue. I was really impressed with their quick support.

Within a few minutes, my site was live.

Not just they solved the issue but also told me that the error popped out because of corrupted .htaccess file.

They fix the file and boom!

My site was back…

Note: – Sorry, I have no screenshot for proof. But I hope you would believe me.

(In case if you’ve encountered this issue, check out this article here – How to fix 500 internal server error in WordPress)

Let’s move on to next incident…

 

SECOND INCIDENT: – (MALWARE ATTACK, SITE GOT HACKED)

I Refer you these guides in case you’ve encountered malware issue on your WordPress site:

• How to configure SiteLock security with my WordPress blog
• How to remove malware from WordPress site using SiteLock

Again a few months later (22 OCT, 2017), I faced another issue.

It was a security issue…

 

Early morning, when I checked my inbox I found an email from HostGator saying that “Our Abuse department has received a report regarding malware being hosted on an account under your control.”

I feel so bad and I thought, my site has gone forever.

I was blank…

But without wasting much time, I went to HostGator Live Support…

And discussed the issue in detail.

I asked to remove the malware from my server.

And guess what?

She (A Customer support representative of HostGator) never asked another question…

She removed the malware within 10 minutes.

However, as per their terms of service, only I’m responsible for the security of my account.

Besides that, she came along and helped me.

I thanked her.

After 5 minutes, my site was up on my server.

Not just she helped me fix the issue but also she suggested me to buy a security service to stop these misbehaves.

NOTE: – None of the hosting services provides free security, you need to purchase third-party security service to keep your server clean and secured.

 

THIRD INCIDENT: – (BILLING ISSUE)

This was not a serious issue.

But I was unable to make payment via debit cards.

Actually, one of my hosting add-ons is due and I had to make payment to renew it.

So, again I contacted to live support and asked for fixing this issue.

They set up my Hostgator billing portal and fix the issue within the next 12 hours.

Next day when I made a payment, it happened successfully.

 

FOURTH INCIDENT: – (HTTPS ISSUES)

Recently, I redirected from HTTP to HTTPS.

I had to install an SSL certificate on my server.

I again contacted to live support and asked to install SSL on my server.

Fortunately, HostGator has recently added the free SSL to its all hosting plans.

So as I asked for SSL, they set up everything for me.

I didn’t do anything. They enabled SSL, installed the plugin and redirected everything from HTTP to HTTPS.

This is how they made it easy for me.

Though, it’s too many headaches. If you do it yourself, you might end up break your site.

NOTE: – You may lose 30 – 70% of traffic. But it will be recovered within 2-3 months. So don’t blame your hosting for this mess up. This is the part of redirections.

 

FIFTH INCIDENT (UNWANTED ISSUE)

It was related to earlier HTTPS redirection that I have made.

I was cleaning up my blog content and unnecessary plugins. Suddenly dashboard got blank and I lost my control over it.

But this time I was confident because of the quality support from HostGator.

And I don’t need to worry about anything.

As usual, I went there and told about the server issue. Within 10 minutes, everything was fixed.

So, this is it…

Now, you may ask, why should I buy HostGator Hosting?

It’s obvious, why should you buy a hosting having too many issues.

But believe me, there are no hosting with zero issues. Almost every hosting has issues, you can’t deny it.

But the thing that matters is reliability, trustworthiness and support.

NOTE: –

I’m not sure about HostGator.in (Indian server) but when I researched I found bad reviews from Indian customers.

However, I’m also from India but I am using HostGator.com (US server).

This is reliable than Indian server.

That’s why I always contacted via live support not via phone.

As HostaGator.com doesn’t allow you to contact via phone if you outside from the US.

But don’t worry, you can contact via live support to get assisted.

Besides having these common issues, I never encountered any other issues in 3.5 years of time span.

Now, let’s talk about some pros

PROS & CONS of HostGator Hosting 

PROS:

SERVER UP-TIME

With over 8 million satisfied users HostGator guaranteed 99.9% up-time.

 

SERVER RESPONSE TIME  

According to bitcatcha.com, HostGator is the world’s third most popular hosting when it comes to server response time.

 

SERVER SPEED

As the response time is reduced, server speed will be increased correspondingly.

So you can say that server loading speed is also great.

That’s the reason why WPbeginner uses HostGator. And loads under 500ms (milliseconds).

This is the power of HostGator Hosting. (Isn’t that cool)

However, speed also depends on theme, plugins and other third-party add-ons that you use on your server.

That’s why my site takes time to load. See the report (by pingdom.com)

You can improve loading speed by making fewer HTTP requests and using a content delivery network.

 

ACCESS & CONTROL

HostGator provides better user experience and control over cPanel.

A very familiar UI and navigation.

Navigation is pretty much understandable.

From here you can edit files, change permissions, take backups, upload new files or create new files.

You have full control over cPanel and FTP accounts. You can access the MYSQL database using phpMyAdmin.

 

UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH (Do not worry about bandwidth initially)

Almost every hosting company offers unmetered bandwidth to attract newbie customers.

But the reality is that none of the hostings can handle unlimited traffic. Either you are on SiteGround or HostGator or any other hosting.

Once the uses of files exceed the maximum limit, you will get the warning from the hosting company to reduce the INODES.

For those who drive more than 5000 – 10000 traffic daily may receive the warning from your server provider.

But It’s really hard to achieve this milestone, it may take 2 – 5 years to drive this much traffic to your site.

So you don’t need to bother about it initially.

 

REFUND POLICY

45 days money-back guarantee. (No contract)

 

ACCOUNTS

You can add unlimited sub-domains, create unlimited FTP and email accounts.

 

SSL CERTIFICATES

Recently, HostGator has added free SSL certificate which is sufficient of a non-e-commercial site.

 

FREE FEATURES (comes with every hosting plan)

• Free Migration service
• $100 Google Ads offer
• Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
• $100 Bing Ads credit

 

 

 

GET YOUR HOSTING FREE FOR ONE MONTH

 

PIN IT: – 

FINAL CONCLUSION

After reading this HostGator hosting review, you may ask again…

Should I buy HostGator hosting?

To be honest, it’s all up to you.

But in my opinion, If you want cheap, reliable, supportable and powerful hosting then I strongly suggest you choose HostGator web hosting.

This review is full of consequences because I have shown you the common problem that every blogger encounters in their blogging journey. 

But believe me, most of the bloggers don’t talk much about the “product’s consequences” because they want to let you buy the product so that they can earn the affiliate commission. 

This article also contains affiliate links but I am not saying you to buy the hosting, I’m just telling you why you should buy the HostGator hosting. 

No more consequences; overall I would say HostGator serve me well. 

In case, if you want to test the hosting, then try one month hosting for free.  

I have shared with you an in-depth Hostgator hosting review with my real experience that shows you how well HostGator serve me and what you could expect from your end.

You may be confused because of the CONS.

Right?

Its obvious…no one likes demerits

But you need to accept the truth that nothing is perfect. There are always ups and downs.

So better you consider ‘Consequences’ as a part of your journey.

Good LUCK…

It’s your turn… Try this out 

TRY HostGator Hosting