I am writing this review of Hostgator after trying it for one month on multiple websites hosted on different servers of theirs including VPS, dedicated, and shared hosting.

There is no doubt that Hostgator is one of the best hosting companies in terms of features but they are pretty average when it comes to support.

I have hosted my primary website with them for more than 6 months now after trying out different similar services like Bluehost, 1and1, etc.

Here, let us know about the pros and cons

Pros:

1.   Hardware: I have been provided with a cPanel VPS on Xeon 8 cores with 4GB of RAM and 160GB HDD storage for a very cheap price of $9/month ($5/month if you buy 36 months or more).

2.   Features: A lot of features are available in the least expensive hosting plan starting at $3.95/month (after discount).

3.   Security: They use the latest version of cPanel with WHM which is very secure but they do need to improve their server security further.

4.   Support: The chat support is actually amazing which I was not expecting at all because most times they were able to resolve most of the issues I had within a few minutes.

5.   Uptime: My website has been up most of the time and even when it was down, it was because of my mistake or some issue on my end.

6.   Price: They do have a lot of offers going on but you cannot get a dedicated server for the price they are offering.

Cons:  

1.   Unhelpful and rude agents: I would give this a big zero if it was possible because all the times I called them, they were very unhelpful and overall their communication skills need to be improved by at least 100%.

2.   Refunds: If you ask for a refund then they will give 100% of the money back because their renewal price is very low but if you are on a monthly payment plan, it gets difficult.

3.   Slow customer support: This was never expected because all the times I called them, they were able to resolve my issue within minutes which made me think that their chat support is good and they hire only the best agents.

4.   No phone support: One of my websites was under construction due to some bugs and it had a lot of traffic but even then nobody picked up the phone when I tried calling them during business hours (9 AM- 5 PM EST).

5.   Slow server: My other website was hosted on a shared server and it performed very poorly at times.

6.   Refusal to migrate: When I tried migrating from a shared hosting plan to dedicate one, they were not willing to do because my main site's traffic increased even more after that and they said that "if we wish to increase your resources you would need to upgrade your hosting package" which is understandable to some extent.

7.   Cancellation: It was a big headache when I tried canceling my account because they make you do it in person by submitting a request on their website and you cannot cancel the whole account over chat or phone call, only a few services can be canceled in a week per account.

8.   Server Location: They do not provide the facility to choose your data center and this is very irritating when you want a server in Europe or some other location where there is less latency and issues with page load time and speed.

The issue I faced was that keeping up with all their servers was tough. I had to change servers many times in just 6 months because of problems like downtime or low performance.

The sign-up process is pretty easy and within a few minutes, you get your account activated. They offer both monthly pricing plans as well as semi year billing for long-term users at discounted rates. You can pay through PayPal, Credit Card, and wire transfer as well.

The email id you sign up with is a catch because they will use it to lure you into buying spammy services like domain locking, removing competitors' ads from their pages, etc.

Servers Location and Status:

I have used different servers to host my websites including dedicated, VPS, and shared hosting.

Their dedicated servers are well equipped with the latest technology however in my experience I didn't find them to be uptime, the servers would either go offline or become slow within a few months of signing up.

On shared hosting, you can expect regular downtime due to heavy usage by other sites hosted on shared servers. However, after about 6 months of usage, you can expect 3-4 days of downtime every month which is pretty bad for a hosting company.

Their VPS server is better than their dedicated servers but still not as uptime-proof as they claim it to be.

In my experience, Hostgator has been average with regard to server's speed and uptime however I have faced uptime issues with them only on the shared hosting plans.

Uptime and Speed:

Their servers are fast but not uptime-proof for shared hosting. The server got slow after 2 months of heavy usage, however, this was fixed by changing the server as they offered flexible options to choose from during sign up.

After changing to a new server, I noticed a significant increase in server speed and uptime.

The price they charge for different hosting packages is pretty average when you compare it with other companies in the same industry.

Customer Support:

Their customer service is not up to the mark, providing support to users through phone especially during weekends or holidays is very difficult. You can only get their support during working hours.

That is the reason I prefer online chat support rather than phone support if you want to get your work done without any delays.

They do provide a free chat service for all users but it was pretty slow and I had to wait for 15 minutes before getting my question answered while their online chat support team was idle.

I hope you have found this Hostgator review helpful. Do share your experience with other hosting companies that you have used in the comments section below.

Thanks.