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Choosing the right web hosting company is a crucial decision as it can make or break your site. All the efforts you put in can go vain if you opt for a web hosting service below par. Beginning your website, creating and launching a journey with a good web host ensures that you are not troubled by issues such as downtime and data breaches.
SiteGround and HostGator are two popular web hosting platforms preferred by people. Here, we shall compare the services offered by both of them and conclude which one is the better website hosting provider.
SiteGround – A Brief Overview
SiteGround is an easy to use, friendly web hosting service that has partnered with WordPress.org. Headquartered at Washington DC, SiteGround focuses on hiring well-trained employees who are the best in the industry. A company’s success is determined by its workforce, and happy employees result in better workplace performance. SiteGround aims at achieving that with their comfortable office space and support of maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
SiteGround offers managed WordPress hosting, shared hosting, cloud hosting, enterprise hosting, and WooCommerce hosting, all of which come at affordable prices. They offer these services at excellent speeds and the latest technology servers. A few other attractive features of SiteGround include the free SSL certificate, daily backups, free CDN, and site migrations. They also have detailed tutorials to help you navigate the platform, which will be great for beginners. Their 30-day money-back guarantee is another attractive factor that enables you to give a trial run for their services and continue if you are satisfied. They also offer excellent customer support.
HostGator – A Brief Overview
HostGator is a worthy contender coming in the top 10 largest web hosting companies in the world. They provide WordPress hosting, VPS, shared hosting, and dedicated hosting. Their drag and drop site builder helps you create a professional-looking website with ease, even if you have no web development background. HostGator boasts of a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which is excellent as you will not lose visitors. They also provide a 45-day money-back guarantee in case you are dissatisfied with their services.
HostGator’s key features include SEO tools, SSL certificate, a free domain name, and site migrations. They also do not restrict bandwidth and allow easy installation of applications with a single click. HostGator also has around 4500 templates you can choose from to design your website. Upon signing up with HostGator, you get $100 credit with Google AdWords and Bing Ads each.
Features Offered By SiteGround and HostGator – A Comparison
Here, we shall compare a few key features offered by both SiteGround and HostGator to conclude which one is the better web, hosting provider.
Pricing and Money-Back Guarantee
SiteGround’s services start at $6.99 per month, whereas HostGator has plans with prices starting from $2.75 per month. In terms of cost alone, HostGator would be the better option as you can keep your overhead expenses low.
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, and HostGator offers the same within 45 days.
Storage Space
Today, websites use lots of visual media, such as photos and videos that need more storage space. While HostGator offers unlimited disk space, SiteGround has limited storage ranging from 10 GB to 30 GB.
Pros Of SiteGround
- Free Premium Features
They offer premium features like daily automatic backups, SSL certificates, and Cloudflare CDN with all their hosting plans.
- Optimized Hosting Plans
SIteGround has hosting plans to cater to specific content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. They also offer hosting optimized for e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop.
- Excellent Customer Service
Customer service is an essential feature, and SiteGround provides quick responses to all customer queries. You can contact their customer support team via phone, chat, live support, and a ticketing system.
- Reliable Uptime
SiteGround guarantees an uptime of 99.99%.
Cons Of SiteGround
- Limited Resources
The cheaper and more basic hosting plans of SiteGround offer lesser resources and place limitations on disk space and domains.
- Poor Site Migration
Transferring a website through SiteGround is a time-consuming, sluggish process, and this has been one of the complaints users have had against SiteGround.
- No Windows Hosting
SiteGround offers high speeds with Linux, and this is not optimized for Windows, letting down a section of users.
Pros Of HostGator
- Affordability
HostGator is a great option if your budget is low.
- Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth
There are no restrictions on disk space and monthly traffic, giving your site the room to expand.
- Windows Hosting
HostGator supports the Windows operating system, and you can opt for Enterprise-class and Personal hosting for your ASP.NET site.
- Excellent Uptime
HostGator offers an assured 99.99% uptime, making sure that your site is running all the time.
- Money-back Guarantee
If you are not satisfied with the services, you can get a full refund up to 45 days.
Cons Of Hostgator
- Customer Support
Unlike SiteGround, they do not provide quick responses via live chat, and when they give a solution, they offer average alleviations.
- Bad Response to Traffic Spike
As a website owner, getting good traffic is essential. HostGator handles traffic poorly, by shifting users to a different server rack or sending complaint emails when there is a rise in traffic.
Summary – SiteGround
If you are looking to host a WordPress blog or website, SiteGround could be the perfect option for you. They provide premium WordPress-specific features and fast performance, which is enhanced by servers on three continents. They provide SSD drive storage, free SSL certificates, and unique firewall security. With SiteGround, you get free website transfers and improved performance using NGINX, PHP7, and HTTP/2. They have a sound customer support system that is highly responsive and can be contacted through live chat and phone. You can start hosting with SiteGround at $6.99 per month.
Summary – HostGator
If you’re using WordPress, Joomla, or other related platforms of similar functioning, HostGator is a good option. HostGator provides services such as domain name registration and website hosting. They also offer designing and site-building tools, all of which are available at an affordable price of $2.75 per month. You can get a full refund within 45 days if you choose to terminate your subscription. HostGator has an impressive uptime rate of 99.9%. Other appreciable factors of HostGator are their eco-conscious service focusing on green power and a sound customer service system.
SiteGround vs. HostGator – Which One Should You Choose?
SiteGround provides excellent managed WordPress hosting, and their service is faster and more reliable as they use the latest technology. Hostgator is better known for their shared hosting services and lower prices, but they do not match up to SiteGround when it comes to customer service, security, and loading speed.
Overall, although HostGator is the bigger company, SiteGround has achieved great strides and better performance with its in-house technology, making them the better contender compared to HostGator.