Regardless of your hosting plan, HostGator’s main features include a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a free domain for a year, and free SSL certificates.

Other features include unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, free website transfers, and 24/7 live chat support.

These features sound impressive on paper, but the real test lies in how they perform for your website.

While claims like free SSL certificates and one-click installs are straightforward to verify, others like 99.9% uptime and unmetered bandwidth are abstract.

To verify these, I conducted performance tests on a HostGator-hosted site to provide concrete data on critical factors such as uptime, server response time, loading times, and overall reliability.

HostGator Server Response Time

For this test, I needed a website hosted on HostGator. Since I didn’t have any and didn’t want to use a dummy site, I visited HostGators to pick one of their customers’ sites. I chose an active website with content, text, images, and more.

For this test, I use Bitcatcha, a speed testing tool that works slightly differently from traditional testers for this test. Instead of loading up the whole website, it only checks how fast the server responds to requests from different geographic locations.

Here’s what I found out:

The server response time was consistently below one second for requests initiated from all locations, reaching as low as one millisecond in Canada. With this result, sites on HostGator servers will load fast.

HostGator Speed Tests

In the test above, we only tested the server response time, ignoring the website’s content. Here, we’ll test how content will impact load time. I ran these tests using two tools.

The first tool I use is Google owned PageSpeed Insights. This tool accesses a webpage performance and speed against Core Web Vitals benchmarks on a scale of 0-100.

Here are the results:

• Performance score: 97
• First Contentful Paint: 0.8 s
• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.0 s
• Total Blocking Time: 20 ms

The results show that HostGator servers can deliver excellent load time to users.

Next, I enter the test site URL into Pingdom and test from San Fransisco, USA.

According to Pingdom’s website speed test, our test site loads in under a second (524 milliseconds) when accessed from a server located in San Fransisco.

This speed places it ahead of 90% of all tested websites.

HostGator Uptime Guarantee

Hostgator promises its users a 99.90% uptime guarantee, and it’s been living up to that.

When I checked HostGator’s uptime history, I found that throughout 2023, it averaged 99.99% uptime, slightly more than what it promised.

This means that websites hosted on HostGator will only experience a downtime of 5 minutes in 365 days instead of the 8-9 hours expected downtime from its 99.90 guarantee.

If HostGator fails to meet its uptime promise, it compensates customers with a month of credit towards their hosting package.

Be aware that this reward isn’t automatic. You must open a support ticket to request it, and it must be within 30 days of the downtime event.

HostGator Security

Regarding securing your site, HostGator offers enhanced security features with all its plans. Each plan includes a free SSL certificate.

But this may vary may vary by hosting plan. For example, the Hatchling and Baby plans include free SSL certificates, while the Business plan offers a free Positive SSL option as an upgrade.

There’s also free Cloudflare CDN caching, which protects against malware and attacks. You can also purchase optional security add-ons like SiteLock for $5.99 monthly.

This service continuously scans your website for malware and automatically removes any threats detected.

HostGator Support

Hostgator offers round-the-clock customer service. You can contact the support team 24/7 via phone, live chat, and email ticketing.

The best part is that these channels are available for users on all plans.

You’ll see the support portal inside your dashboard. To request urgent assistance, you should use the live chat. I tried it and was joined by an agent in less than 2 minutes.

The ticketing option is ideal for technical and more severe issues. A HostGator rep will respond within 48 hours when you submit a support ticket.

I checked out HostGator customers’ reviews to see how helpful they find this service. Most reviews show that HostGator support reps do well in solving general issues but often struggle with more technical issues.

That means you might have to wait longer to get specialist assistance.

HostGator also offers resources for self-help and learning, including a comprehensive knowledge base and a library of video tutorials.

The only issue I noticed with this is that these libraries can’t help you solve critical problems, just routine ones.

All HostGator hosting services offer fantastic entry-level pricing.

The most affordable is the shared hosting plan, which starts at $2.75 for the Hatchling Plan on a 36-month commitment. The HostGator Managed WordPress hosting plan starts at $3.5 per month.

VPS and dedicated server hosting are HostGator’s most expansive plans, starting at $36.99 and $91.98 per month, respectively.

When I compared this pricing with other providers, HostGator is one of the most affordable on the market.

Does HostGator Offer Discounts?

HostGator offers new customers up to 70% off all its hosting plans. However, you won’t get discounts for its one-month and six-month shared hosting plans.

Its one-year and three-year plans offer 60% to 73% discounts, making longer-term commitments more cost-effective for users.

As of the time of writing this review, HostGator currently offers up to 77% off its WordPress hosting.

The company also offers seasonal promotions such as New Year and Holiday discounts.