Bluehost vs HostGator: A Battle of the Giants
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With so many web hosting services providers out there, it can be difficult to choose the one that most meets your needs. You might even think that making your selection is a simple matter of reading what others have said on various platforms. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
- The biggest web hosting services providers out there include HostGator, Bluehost, DreamHost GoDaddy and Network Solutions.
- Look any of them up, and you will be surprised at the mixed bag of reviews that have been left all over the Internet by former and current clients.
A comparison of HostGator and Bluehost
So, with so many conflicting opinions floating around, how do you determine the web hosting services provider that is best suited to your needs?
- To begin with, you can check out our reviews of both HostGator and Bluehost on the provided links. The articles offer a comprehensive assessment of both companies’ strengths and weaknesses.
- This write-up is based on our experience with HostGator and Bluehost, both of which we have previously used as our hosts. It also draws on the experiences of the thousands of people who have written about their experiences with both companies.
1) Price
Price is arguably one of the biggest things that most people take into consideration when choosing a web hosting services provider. So, which is the cheapest between Bluehost and HostGator?
- The answer, as it turns out, is not straightforward. It really depends on your selection of a plan that best suits your needs, and on the number of months over which your chosen package is going to run.
- Below is a table that compares the entry level, shared hosting plans from Bluehost and HostGator. These prices are subject to daily fluctuations (particularly in the case of HostGator), and can be reduced even further with the help of the coupon codes that are floating around affiliate websites across the Internet.
| Shared Hosting | Price/Month*36 Months | Price for only 1 Month |
| HostGator | $5.56 | $14.96 |
| Bluehost | $2.95 | N/A |
- As you can see in the above table, the prominently advertised hosting prices are for the 36-month package. Should you decide to have your site hosted on a month by month basis, you should expect to pay significantly more.
- It is clear from the above that Bluehost is better priced than HostGator for the 36-month Shared Hosting package.
- However, with HostGator, you do have the single month option, which, though much more expensive, should be useful to those who are looking to test drive the hosting giant’s services before signing up for the long term.
- If we have to call the price round in favor of one web hosting company or the other, we would have to give it to HostGator, for reasons that you shall see later on in this article.
2) Products and Features
Both Bluehost and HostGator offer a wide variety of hosting-related products and services:
| HostGator |
Bluehost
|
| Web Hosting
Cloud Hosting WordPress Hosting Reseller Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Hosting Application Hosting Windows Hosting Domains Transferring of Domains | Web Hosting
Shared Hosting Cloud Hosting WordPress Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Hosting Reseller Hosting Hosting Features Domains WooCommerce Hosting |
3) Bandwidth
Bandwidth is another important consideration for those who are looking to launch their websites. Most sites today have adopted the use of high-quality multimedia formats as a way of increasing visitor engagement.
- Search Engine Optimization experts contend that videos are a good SEO tool that can be used to help improve a web page’s rank.
- Bandwidth is thus important, because it determines the amount of information that can be downloaded, at any given point in time, by visitors to a site.
- Having more of it means that your website will be able to easily handle a high number of simultaneous requests.
- Here, Bluehost and HostGator are comparable. They offer unmetered bandwidth on all their products, including the lowly priced shared hosting plans.
- This makes this round something of a tie, although it is performance that actually determines whether or not the promise of unlimited bandwidth is being met.
4) Storage
Storage is another important consideration for those who are looking for a web hosting services provider.
- Your needs in this regard depend on whether or not you plan on building a static site, whose content almost never changes, or a blog type of website, whose content is constantly being renewed.
- HostGator offers unlimited storage on all its plans. Bluehost’s basic Shared Hosting plan, on the other hand, comes with a storage limit of 50GB. The unlimited option begins at the “plus package.”
- Based on this, we would have granted victory to HostGator, save for the fact that at $5.45 per month, Bluehost’s plus package is, at the time of this writing, still priced lower than the Hatchling Plan at HostGator, which costs $5.56 per month.
- We have to, therefore, declare a draw in this regard.
5) Preselected Add-ons
One of the biggest complaints that we have come across concerning web hosting companies is the fact that the advertised package prices are, in almost all cases, far from reality.
- Think you are going to pay $2.95 per month to have your site hosted on Bluehost? Think again.
- While the web hosting companies do not actually compel you to pay anything more, you are offered tantalizing indications that you need to do so for the sake of your website.
- A major complaint with most people is that some options come already ticked on signing up. Most only realize later that they were made to pay for a lot of extra features.
| Shared Hosting | Setup fee without ticked addons (*36 months) | Setup fee with pre-ticked addons |
| HostGator | $5.56 ($200.16) | $240 |
| Bluehost | $2.95 ($106.2) | $249 |
- While there is nothing that differentiates the two web hosting companies in this regard, Bluehost takes the dubious title of being the company that is most likely to catch customers unawares with preselected add-ons.
6) Free Domains
Bluehost is clearly the best in this regard, since it offers a free domain with every plan. HostGator, on the other hand, does not have this offering. If you do not already have a domain, you can expect to pay up to $12.95 for a .com website on HostGator.
7) Reliability
- Reliability is at the very center of most people’s considerations when it comes to web hosts. Most web hosting services providers promise a certain level of uptime as part of their plans.
- It has to be said that when it comes to uptime, Bluehost and HostGator are evenly poised.
- Bluehost has a tested uptime of 9%, while HostGator comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
8) Support
Support is another important aspect of web hosting. That is largely due to the fact that when something goes wrong with your site, you want to be able to talk to someone who is capable of resolving the issues in a short space of time.
- If you browse through web hosting Internet forums, you will notice that this is an issue about which people have the most complaints. No web hosting company is spared in this regard, which is hardly surprising, considering the fact that they have thousands of clients.
- Both HostGator and Bluehost promise word class support and offer various ways through which you can get in touch with their representatives.
- These include through email, live chat and over the telephone. However, we do have to give this round to HostGator, if only for the simple reason that their support page is livelier and more intuitive.
The Verdict
- So, which of the two web hosts is the best? It is clear, based on the preceding write-up, that both Bluehost and HostGator are quality web hosting companies.
- They are competitively poised, both in terms of price, products and quality of service.
- However, at the end of the day, HostGator wins this head-to-head write-up for a number of reasons:
- Despite the fact that Bluehost offers the cheapest shared hosting plan, HostGator, as it turns out, actually has other cheaper options. A good example is WordPress Hosting, which starts at $5.95 per month at HostGator. However, the lowest priced WordPress Plan at Bluehost starts at $19.99.
- As noted earlier, HostGator comes with unlimited storage across all plans, unlike Bluehost, whose “basic” package has a 50GB limit. The unlimited option can come in handy, considering the fact that videos are fast becoming an SEO tool of choice for most websites.
- HostGator, we feel, offers much more in terms of value. However, this view is rather subjective considering that, as stated earlier, there is really nothing that differentiates these two companies.
- Whatever solutions you are looking for, you are likely to find them whether you ultimately decide to choose Bluehost or HostGator.
Have a question? Ask below in the comments!
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