A successful online business requires the right web host solution. Although the primary purpose of a host site is to give your website a web address, the quality of your host can have a significant impact on your website’s speed, reliability, security, and performance.
It can be overwhelming to find the right hosting service for you, whether you are a beginner in website building or hosting, or an expert techie looking to change providers. It can be difficult to choose one from the many options.
We want your website to be the best. We compared Bluehost and Hostgator to find the best option for you.
They are very similar in many aspects. For instance, they offer comparable services and are both praised for their reliability as well as speed. There are however some differences that should be considered.
This post will discuss Bluehost and HostGator, so that you can decide which one is best for your site. We’ve divided this lengthy post into sections because it is so long. To jump to a particular section, you can use the table of contents below.
Bluehost: What does it mean?
Bluehost was originally created by Matt Heaton in 1996. However, Danny Ashworth and Heaton officially launched it in 2003. The company had already registered one million domains five years later and was purchased by Endurance International Group in 2010. Bluehost had its servers housed in a Utah facility. It now has more than 750 employees.
Bluehost powers more than 2 million websites around the globe. Bluehost offers many hosting options, including shared, dedicated and VPS hosting. Bluehost is also a highly-recommended WordPress hosting provider. It offers managed WordPress hosting. Bluehost also offers WooCommerce hosting, which will help you create and manage an online store with just a few clicks.
What is Hostgator?
Hostgator was founded in 2002 from a Florida Atlantic University dorm room. Today, more than 8,000,000 domains are powered by HostGator’s offices around the world. Hostgator is one of the most successful hosting companies with 12,000 servers under its management and over 90% customer satisfaction.
HostGator claims it offers a reliable, secure, and fast web hosting service at an affordable price. HostGator focuses on simplicity and low prices for shared hosting. This makes it a great “beginner’s host”.
Comparison of Bluehost and HostGator – Key Features
Domain registration
Bluehost and HostGator offer free domains for their first year. This will help you to significantly reduce the startup costs of your website.
Keep in mind that your free domain name is not available for all plans. You will need to pay renewal fees after the first time. Bluehost provides a free domain all year, but HostGator offers it only periodically. You should be on the lookout for it!
Site builder
Bluehost does not have its own website builder. Instead, it integrates to the Weebly website builder, which is one of the most popular and well-known website builders. Weebly uses a grid system and is a drag-and drop builder. This system allows you to place elements in a snap-in fashion and automatically align them with others. You will only receive the Weebly basic version free of charge. It is important to carefully consider this!
HostGator has its own website builder, “Gator”, which is simple and intuitive with drag-and drop functionality. Gator allows you to place different elements with greater freedom. It also includes pre-built sections and 100+ mobile-optimized templates. Six pages are included in the basic plan. Upgrades to this service are available for an additional fee.
WordPress Integration
Bluehost’s WordPress integration category is where it has an obvious advantage: it is the WordPress hosting platform. Even WordPress recommends it.
Bluehost was designed with WordPress in mind. You can use many integration tools between Bluehost and CMS (Content Management System). You will find a simple setup, automatic WordPress updates, and WordPress-specific support. If you’re just starting your website, Bluehost will install WordPress on your domain.
HostGator offers WordPress-specific hosting plans. It also includes a setup wizard that will help you install and configure WordPress on your server.
HostGator is lacking many of the WordPress integration capabilities that Bluehost offers, which is quite frankly. If you have a WordPress website, this is something to consider.
Migration of websites
You can move your website to Bluehost from another host. However, you must either transfer it yourself or pay $144.99 for the company’s migration service. Bluehost is outsold by HostGator’s free migration service.
Backups
Bluehost offers CodeGuard Basic, an automatic backup service for higher-level shared plans. These backups can be scheduled to occur daily, weekly, and monthly. You can create your backup using cPanel for all plans.
HostGator offers CodeGuard as a paid upgrade. This allows you to create manual or daily backups.
Money-back guarantee
Bluehost provides a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. Bluehost will refund your money if you are not satisfied with their service for any reason. Bluehost will deduct the cost of your domain as well as any non-refundable fees from the refund.
HostGator’s money back guarantee is slightly more generous than Bluehost. A refund can be requested up to 45 days after your term has begun.
Note We’ll give you an in-depth look at Bluehost vs. HostGator by displaying them in the table below. Let’s take a quick look!
| Feature | Bluehost | HostGator |
| No cost domain name | Yes, the first year. | Yes. |
| SSL Certificate Free | Yes | Yes |
| No cost website migration | It costs $144.99 | Yes |
| Site builder | Grid system (available via Weebly | Drag and Drop with complete freedom (Gator website builder). |
| WordPress Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Backups available at no cost | No | No |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days | 45 days |
Key features are difficult to determine the winner. Bluehost offers a free domain and WordPress integration. HostGator, however, offers a longer money-back warranty and free website migration.
Bluehost vs. HostGator – Ease to use comparison
Both hosting companies allow you to use cPanel for managing your servers. cPanel, a popular Linux-based platform, provides a variety of administrative tools via a graphical interface. Bluehost has modified some menus to make its cPanel screen more customizable than HostGator’s.
Bluehost and Hostgator are both beginner-friendly. You’ll be guided through the setup process from the moment you sign-up. It is clear, concise, easy-to-follow, and will take you through it. Both provide one-click WordPress installation as well as easy access to support should you need it. You’ll be guided through every step of the website setup process. The support team is extremely easy to understand.
Bluehost, HostGator and other hosting providers are solid in terms of ease-of-use. This is thanks to the intuitive cPanel interface and a variety of easy-to-install features.
Bluehost vs. HostGator – Load time and Uptime Comparison
Small differences in speed and uptime can have a significant impact on your business. Google ranks page performance as a key factor in search results. Most visitors expect pages to load within seconds.
When your website is down, page speed doesn’t really matter. Hosting providers that are trusted will advertise an uptime rate of at least 100%. This is because downtime can damage your reputation and deceive audiences. While downtime is less common with higher-tier plans than for the cheapest ones, it should still be at least 99.95%.
Your hosting provider must ensure that your website pages are delivered quickly and reliably in order to be able to compete with other websites. Let’s compare our two candidates!
Bluehost has been consistently ranked among the most reliable and fastest providers in the industry for its load times.
Hosting Facts recently conducted a study on the page performance and uptime for websites using the Bluehost Basic shared hosting plan. The average load time was 400ms, according to the study. Bluehost also achieved a remarkable 99.9% monthly uptime for the test site over two years. This is a remarkable result considering that 100% uptime is almost impossible.
CloudFlare’s content delivery network integration may also be beneficial for websites with higher Bluehost plans. They might experience less downtime and faster speeds.
HostGator claims it has an exceptionally fast loading time due to its content delivery networks, and low-density server. HostGator websites load much faster than Bluehost websites. A recent analysis by Themeisle showed that loading times were below one second.
HostGator claims an average uptime of 99.99% recently. They even guarantee one month credit to your hosting account if your website’s downtime falls below 99.9%. This compensation must be requested from HostGator’s billing department. In some cases, it might not be granted.
Bluehost and HostGator are both leaders in reliability and performance, and you can’t go wrong with either service.
Comparison of Bluehost and HostGator Security
Bluehost plans come with a free SSL Certificate for eCommerce Website. This certificate will protect your visitors from any unauthorized access to your website. A SSL certificate is almost a necessity for your website. Many browsers warn users when they see a site that is not SSL-protected. Google also appreciates SSL encryption in its ranking.
Bluehost claims that its servers can detect and manage intrusions, keeping your data safe. Cloudflare is a digital security company that integrates with Bluehost. This allows you to add additional security features to your website such as firewalls and spam protection.
Bluehost plans with pricier packages include automatic backups and restoration via CodeGuard Basic. However, you can still manually back up Bluehost sites whenever you like. SiteLock is an add-on that allows you to perform malware scans to identify potential vulnerabilities and spam.
HostGator, like Bluehost, offers all customers a free SSL certificate and the paid addons CodeGuard or SiteLock to protect against malware and back up your site. You can back up your site at any time by running automatic weekly backups.
HostGator focuses on the security measures it has implemented to protect against DDoS attacks. This is a hacking technique in which many hostile servers send large amounts of traffic to a host server, causing it to crash. It uses a custom firewall to combat DDoS attacks and immediate reactive measures to stop these hacking attempts.
It is a tie when it comes to security features of Bluehost or HostGator
Bluehost vs. HostGator: Customer support
Bluehost and HostGator offer support in most areas. This means that you can be sure that they have the right team available to help you. They have so many customers who rely on them that they cannot afford to ignore their customer service. Take a look at the table below!
| Bluehost | HostGator | |
| Knowledge base | Yes | Yes |
| Chat live | Yes | Yes |
| Telefon | Yes | Yes |
| Tickets | Yes | Yes |
HostGator’s knowledgebase is a support portal that offers documentation and live technical support 24 hours a day. You can find a forum that covers a variety of topics such as customer reviews, suggestions and pre-sales questions. There are also video tutorials as well as live chat support and telephone support. Although you might find it quicker to get your answer via the knowledge base than by phone, at least you have the option!
Bluehost’s knowledge base has a search function at its core. It also contains educational resources such as articles and “how-to” guides for various sections (e.g. emails, WordPress domains, etc ). You can also find the FAQ section as well as a link to its Contact page, which provides information about how to reach the correct department to address your query.
You can submit a ticket if you have a more complex issue that cannot be solved by online advice. The ticket will be sent to a team who will attempt to solve the problem in a more personal way.
=> Both providers perform very well in this round. It is difficult to determine the winner. They have more support channels than any other web hosting company.
Bluehost vs. HostGator – Pros and Cons
Bluehost: The pros and cons
Pros:
- No cost domain name for the first year
- SSL encryption available for free
- CDN Free
- Unlimited web traffic and storage space
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Reliable and fast
- Great customer service
- All plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee
Cons:
- No website migration is free
- There are no monthly pricing options
HostGator: The pros and cons
Pros:
- SSL Certificate Free
- No cost website migration
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Monthly pricing plans available
- 45-day money-back guarantee
Cons:
- HostGator requires a long commitment period – Discounted prices are only available if you have stayed with us for at least a few years
- Aggressive upselling – you will need to review additional services that were pre-selected during your signup process. You can always uncheck them if you aren’t sure.
Bluehost vs. HostGator: Pricing plans
Without mentioning pricing plans, no hosting service review would be complete. It should not be difficult to create your own website. Bluehost and HostGator both offer different hosting plans to meet the individual’s needs.
| Bluehost | HostGator | |
| Shared Hosting | $3.95 to $13.95 per month | $2.75 to $5.95/month |
| Hosting dedicated to your needs | $79.99 to $119.99/month | $89.98 to $139.99 per month |
| VPS Hosting | $19.99 – $59.99/month | $19.95 – 39.95/month |
| WordPress Hosting | $3.95 to $6.95/month | $5.95 to $9.95/month |
HostGator may offer lower prices for certain services, but the more you spend on Bluehost, the better features, ease-of-use, and WordPress integration will be yours. Bluehost is more affordable than HostGator.
Bluehost: Who should you choose?
Bluehost is an excellent choice if you’re looking for reliable web hosting providers with a solid reputation. Bluehost is also highly recommended for:
- Anyone who wants to get into the blogging world
- Anyone who needs to set up small E-commerce sites
- Whoever doesn’t want extra bandwidth, should not pay.
- Anybody who wants flexibility in the design of their website.
- Medium to small businesses
HostGator: Who should you choose?
You should keep in mind that HostGator may not be for everyone. It’s highly recommended for bloggers and online business owners, but it is not suitable for everyone.
HostGator is recommended if you:
- Are you unhappy with your current web host provider and would like to migrate for free
- You wish to create your website in a way that is flexible
- You are familiar with the technical aspects of setting up and building websites.
- You wish to create multiple websites
- Hosted platforms such as WordPress, Shopify and Wix don’t have to limit your options.
The bottom line
This comparison of Bluehost & HostGator should help you to choose the right service for your company. There is no single solution that will work for all businesses. To make the best decision, you must clearly define your business’s needs and budget.
Please contact us if you have any questions about Bluehost and HostGator. Don’t forget the next informative and entertaining article on our blog!
