We take a close look at HostGator and Godaddy to see which hosing giant is better

There are dozens of different web hosting service providers on the Internet and going with the first one you see is NOT always a good idea! A thorough research on a variety of web hosting providers is required first to find the ones that can offer you BETTER service for what you need and can afford.

Over the past couple of years, HostGator and GoDaddy has been the number one choice for countless of Internet Marketers, small business owners, and bloggers from around the world because of their excellent and uncompromising services.

This HostGator or GoDaddy review will hopefully help you choose between the top two web hosting companies so that you select “the best” one for your specific needs. In addition, you will also learn about important aspects of web hosting pertaining to HostGator and GoDaddy.

HostGator or GoDaddy: Plans, Prices, and Features

• HostGator and GoDaddy offer similar plans and pricing to their customers.
• HostGator offers three plans – Hatchling, Baby, and Business. Hatchling plan allows only one domain while Baby plan allows UNLIMITED domains. If you were thinking about building multiple sites, you would go and purchase HostGator’s Baby plan.
• The Business plan, on the other hand, comes with a dedicated IP address (free), which you will not find in previous two plans.
• Similarly, GoDaddy offers three plans to their customers, namely: Economy, Deluxe, and Unlimited.
• The Economy plan comes with a single domain and 100GB space, while the other two plans comes with unlimited domains and disk space.
• In addition to these three plans, GoDaddy also offers their customers with a Business Class hosting package. Starting at $17.99, this plan can host five different websites that has over 250,000+ monthly visitors each.

HostGator or GoDaddy: Control Panel

• HostGator has cPanel as its control panel, while GoDaddy offers its users to choose between two control panels: cPanel and Plesk.
• What is cPanel, you ask? It is the most commonly used control panel in the market today to host and manage websites due to its easy-to-use features and simplicity.
• Plesk is the second most used control panel after cPanel, capable of running on both Windows and Linux OS, which can be a huge plus depending on where you website runs on.
• It terms of flexibility and features, HostGator’s cPanel has many tutorials to help beginners to get started using their services. This is highly beneficial for those who have never built their own site before because everything is self-explanatory.
• For expert web developers, HostGator offers advanced tools so that can immediately start building sites without wasting more time on basics.

HostGator or GoDaddy: Performance

• Both HostGator and GoDaddy boast of high uptime of 99.99% every month, which is the most than any other web hosting service provider offers in the market. Two major factors contribute to this high uptime feature – powerful OS and servers.
• HostGator runs on powerful Dual Xeon E5520 2.26 GHz Quad Core processors, while it uses Linux x86 CentOS 6 64-bit operating systems. On the other hand, GoDaddy runs on Intel Core i7 processors and offers its customers the choice between two OS: Linux and Window OS.
• Though both companies run on powerful Intel servers, the recent uptime outages of GoDaddy have caused many customers to become angry and discontinue using their services. Personally, I feel that GoDaddy is the best domain registrar, but when it comes to web hosting services, they still need to offer great quality to their customers.
• In addition, many believe that Dual XeonE5520 processors are more suited for server type compatibility, whereas Core i7 processors are more suited for desktop environment.

HostGator or GoDaddy: Customer Support

• HostGator provides 24/7/365 customer support via e-mail, live-chat, and ticketing system to contact their support team. If we had an issue and contacted them, they were always quick to respond and took our issues seriously. In addition, we got very fast response with their ticketing system, unlike many other web hosting companies that take days to get an initial response from.
• GoDaddy, on the other hand, offer only toll-free call in product support. They do not offer customer support via e-mail and ticket systems, which is strange.
• Ticketing system is very common in web hosting industries, and we think, it is something GoDaddy should utilize because most of the time their call in support has a long waiting line.
• In addition, their Live chat is not working 24/7, and is limited to only few selected countries.
• We hope that in near future, GoDaddy needs to introduce faster live chat support and introduce e-mail support, because not everyone wants to deal with call-in support. It is also more convenient to respond to customers via e-mail and live chat and make them trust more in them.

HostGator or GoDaddy: Final Verdict

Coming to a conclusion for this HostGator or GoDaddy debate has been a very difficult task for me because they are both excellent service provides and share many similar qualities.

I did not find any major differences in regards to their web hosting plans, features, and prices. However, there are certainly noticeable differences in their control panels, performance, and customer support.

HostGator uptime and page loads are better than GoDaddy. HostGator’s customer support is superior to GoDaddy as the latter lacks a live chat and e-mail system for efficient and fast customer care service. In addition, HostGator has easy to use and simple cPanel than GoDaddy’s Plesk.

Therefore, I have finally concluded that HostGator is better than GoDaddy in the field of performance and customer support.

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