Month: December 2021

They Tout High Performance and Premium Customer Service…Are They Worth the Buzz?

Introduction

WebhostingBuzz started from modest beginnings, from 2002 it was a basic reseller account. Safvan Malik, who has been there from the beginning, has grown the company to becoming one of the leading multi-nation web hosting companies.

Hosting more than a hundred servers and providing a platform to nearly 30,000 customer and hosts over 200,0000 websites. This company is spread out all over the world.

It boosts on being privately owned and free of debt. They provide services to the most modest of clients to meeting the needs of large corporations.

They have a main office in Auburn MA. There other offices include, one in Lincoln City, Uk and Kharkiv, UA. This is a a good to know if you are shopping for web hosting overseas.

This allows them to provide true 24×7 online technical support.

The servers are located in Atlanta, GA and Phoenix, AZ which hose their dedicated servers, and VPS.

In this review, I will be relying on the data that we have captured for our own testing.

All plans come with 24/7/365 support, free website migration, and the first two months free. They also a guarantee a 99% uptime.

There performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://whb-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.71%
Response Time – 678 ms
WordPress Render Time – 148 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru Mar 2021

Average Page Speed	678 ms
Average Uptime	99.71% - 120 minutes over 17 outages
Average Render Time	192 ms
Average Security Threats	5 attempts
Support	Tickets, chat and phone support
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, and AbanteCart
Features	Unlimited bandwidth, SSD storage, free SSL
Plans	Shared, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Free Site Transfer - One Time
Pricing	Starting at $4.99/mo (same renewal price)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

Most website owners are losing money if their website is down or people leave because it is slow. At a bare minimum a web hosting provider should be able to provide 99.95% uptime and load pages in less than 1 second.

We are performing a running monthly test of WebhostingBuzz’s speed and reliability with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon. Here is a link to that site:

http://whb-openhostingreviews.com

So far, WebHostingBuzz has been able to beat our expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

Jul 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 648 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 628 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 683 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 625 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 608 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 621 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 578 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 650 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 672 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 696 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 679 ms
Jun 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 724 ms
Jul 2020 average uptime: 99.87% average load speed: 706 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 896 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 747 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.82% average load speed: 715 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 652 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 672 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 674 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 680 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 752 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 93.77% average load speed: 628 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 752 ms

Quality of Support

I like the variety of options that WebHostingBuzz offers to get help. Their online Knowledge Base is very in-depth and easy to use. To get to a support agent, you can use their chat, call toll-free, or open a support ticket.

The quickest way for me to judge the quality of support is to connect to their agents via chat and ask a simple question that most data center operators should know off the top of their head:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This is the operating system. Almost all web hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can learn a lot about a Data Center Operation by finding out what version they are on and how easily the staff knows.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

Overall the chat was fairly quick it took around 5 minutes for John to respond back to me. He needed more information on my website to get the correct information to me.

The agent was very quick to let me know that the server running my website was CloudLinux release 7.7. All in all it took around 6 minutes from start to finish.

Affordability

WebHostingBuzz is one of the higher priced web hosting companies out there. To get started is only $4.99 per month for their basic package for a single website. To upgrade to their highest business package with more features, and unlimited websites, is only $24.99 per month.

The personal package at $4.99 is a basic starter pack for a general website, not much free other than one domain. This comes with limited storage at 20 gig SSD. The upside is Unlimited bandwidth which is pretty standard for most hosting companies.

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the WebHostingBuzz Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Personal Plan

The Personal Plan from WebHostingBuzz starts at $4.99/month. This is an ideal plan for someone starting out. It comes with everything you need to host a single website.

Developer Plan

The Developer Plan offers unlimited websites, 100gb SSD storage, 200% CPU speed, 2gb memory, 10mbps i/o speed, free SSL, and unlimited bandwidth. This is with a starting price tag of $9.99 a month.

Business Plan

The Business Plan starts a bit more at $24.99/month. It comes with unlimited SSD storage, 300% CPU speed, 3gb memory, 20mbps i/o speed, free SSL, and unlimited bandwidth.

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes free for the first year, there is no addition cost the next year.
• Easy Setup Process: Two Page sign up form.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 7.7, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses:
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Do We Recommend WebHostingBuzz?

Yes, we recommend WebHostingBuzz as a hosting company. Their websites are an ease to set up.

WebHostingBuzz is absolutely dominating on all our speed reports.

They have the standard cpanel to navigate the site. Their customer support is top notch. They are also up to date with the latest version of CentOS and RedHat, so you know they are secure.

One of the selling points of WebhostingBuzz is their 45 day money back guarantee, most tote 30 days which is standard.

However they are a bit more expensive than the competition, but for $4.99 a month you get quality support and uptime.

All in all they offer great value for what you pay for.

Visit WebHostingBuzz.com

How Does This LA-based Web Hosting Company Stand Out From the Competition?

Introduction

This LA-based hosting company is owned by New Dream Network, LLC. It was founded in 1996, and began hosting customer’s sites in 1997.

Dreamhost employs about 200 employees and has close to 400,000 customers.

We have never hosted a website with Dreamhost before. So we were excited to try them out. See how they compare with the competition. In this review, I will be relying on the data that we have captured in our performance testing, as well as our interaction with their customer support.

Dreamhost makes it easy to get a new website started because they include a free domain name for the first year, as well as free site builder tools, and a decent 1-click WordPress installation.

All plans come with 24/7 Live Support, a free SSL certificate, and unmetered traffic. For a little more money per month you can get unlimited file storage, free backups, and added security.

Their shared hosting starts at $2.59 a month.They do have a long than normal 97 refund policy, which is a plus. The shared hosting also comes with a free Domain name.

You can choose between a one year or a three year term for the plan. Unfortunately, you have to pay for email on their starter-shared hosting plan, on their unlimited-shared hosting plan it is free.

Their performance is better than average based on our test beacon:

Uptime – 99.96%
Response Time – 916 ms
WordPress Render Time – 182 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru July 2021

Average Page Speed	916 ms
Average Uptime	99.96% 180 minutes over 19 outages
Average Render Time	180 ms
Average Security Threats	39 attempts
Support	Chat,Ticket & Callback
Apps	WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, Shopify, Wix, and more
Features	Unmetered bandwidth, free SSL, free domain (for the first year, SSD storage
Plans	Shared, Cloud, WordPress, VPS, and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Not free
Pricing	Starting at $2.59/mo (same renewal price)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

Most website owners are losing money if their website is down or people leave because it is slow. At a bare minimum a web hosting provider should be able to provide 99.95% uptime and load pages in less than 1 second.

DreamHost has an uptime guarantee. Like other web hosts, if your month-to-month average falls under the threshold of the guarantee, you’ll get a refund in the form of a credit for the cost of the service.

Most uptime we’ve seen usually hovers around the 99.90% mark. So Dreamhost believes in and stands behind their service, but they’re also giving themselves a little wiggle room in case ordinary fluctuations hit.

DreamHost, though, ensures 100% uptime in their Terms of Service. Keep
in mind that scheduled upkeep or user blunders aren’t protected in this guarantee.

However, any other DreamHost problem that messes with your site, database, email, or web-mail can trigger the guarantee. You’ll get a free day’s really worth of provider for each hour of service interruption.

The only trap is that there’s a 10% max of your “next prepaid internet hosting renewal fee” (so it applies in the future, as opposed to a retroactive discount or refund).

We are performing a running monthly test of Dreamhost’s speed and reliability with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon. Here is a link to that site:

http://dh-openhostingreviews.com/

Dreamhost has been able to beat our expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.71% average load speed: 848 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 528 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 518 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 518 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 565 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 544 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 553 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,667 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,717 ms
April 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,694 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,622 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,839 ms
July 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 763 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 761 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.86% average load speed: 788 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 628 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 672 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 698 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 786 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 833 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 902 ms
April 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,009 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 756 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 815 ms
July 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 681 ms

Quality of Support

Dreamhost has a straightforward chat system. They allow you to browse their knowledge base and forums while you wait for an agent.

One of the fastest ways to judge the knowledge of the help staff, is to ask a simple question most tech agents should know right away:

What version of MySQL is my website running on?”

Below is a screenshot of my chat session with a support agent:

The chat session was very quick. It connected to agent Andrew M. in less than a minute. They did not verify the account, I’m not sure if it’s because I did not ask an questions that would raise a red flag.

The agent was prompt in letting me know that I was running MySQL 5.7. They were very polite, overall it was a positive experience.

Affordability

Dreamhost is one of the lower priced web hosting companies out there. To get started is only $2.59 per month for their basic package for a single website.

This is a great bargain when you consider their uptime/speed, the features included in their packages, the free tools and easy-to-use management tool, and their free domain.

Just remember that these prices are the monthly price if you purchase 3 years of service upfront. Prices are a little higher if you buy 12 months in advance.

There is a month-to-month plan, called the Monthly Plan, that starts at $4.95. This option is without commitments or contracts.

Keep in mind these prices are promotional introductory offers and the do offer a 97 day money-back guarantee on all purchases.

Here is a copy of my receipt for their Starter Plan for 18 months of service:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Starter Plan

The Starter Plan from Dreamhost starts at $2.59/month. Note the $2.59 is for a 3 years plan, for a 1 year plan it’s $3.95. This comes with hosting for one website. This is a great deal, considering all the freebies you get with signing up, including a free domain.

Unlimited Plan

The Unlimited Plan for 3 years is $5.95 a month, and for 1 year it’s $6.95. This is the highest option they have. The features include unlimited websites, and unlimited email addresses. This is a steal for what is included in the package.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for as long as you are signed up
• Easy Setup Process: Easy one page registration form.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Unfortunately it does not have cPanel.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.7, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: no hidden fees that we found.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Plans

If you need additional features, Dreamhost also offers other web hosting types, including Managed WordPress, Virtual Private Server (VPS), Cloud, and Dedicated Servers.

Do we recommend Dreamhost?

Yes, we recommend Dreamhost as a hosting provider. If you are starting out this is a good one to use.

Dreamhost has consistently been near the top for speed and uptime in all our reports.

Plus, they have a great administration panel to manage your account and website.  Their security and support is on-point and reliable.  We like their money-back guarantee and they have some of the lowest prices out there. Their 97 day period for a refund is a plus.

DreamHost doesn’t have any hidden terms or hoops to leap thru that would possibly jeopardize your refund, either. There are only a few cases your refund would possibly be deducted or no longer given, but most are very standard.

The first exception is that only credit cards will be refunded. So other price methods like checks, or money orders won’t be refunded.

The second exception is that extra services and that were purchased thru another party won’t be refunded, either. That consists of things like domain names, SSL certificates, AdWords credits, and comparable extras.

There are, however, some things we don’t like that are important to keep in mind.  It is pretty annoying that they have a fee for site migrations. 

Most other hosting companies offer this for free and you would think they would too to get new customers. It’s a large fee, $99.00 to be exact for each site migrated.

Despite some of their drawbacks, they offer a great experience and value.

Visit Dreamhost.com

You’ve Seen Their Ads…But How Do They Stack Up?

Introduction

Company History

GoDaddy is a staple piece of the history of the internet. They have helped launch millions of websites since 1997. The founder of GoDaddy is Bob Parsons. He was a financial software services visionary who decided to come out of retirement to compete with Network Solutions for domain registration services.

In the last 22 years they have become largest ICANN-accredited registrar on the Internet. Their book of business is over 60,000,000 registered website domains. Their main hub of operation is a 270,000 square foot data center in Phoenix, AZ and they are quickly moving infrastructure into the AWS cloud. (Amazon Web Services)

My Personal Experience

I have been a GoDaddy customer since 2002 when I registered my very first domain. At that time, they weren’t offering hosting services, so I used other providers. (I have been a HostGator customer since 2008.)

I never thought to use them for hosting in the years since because I always thought of them as my Domain Registrar. I am a big believer in using tech companies for their core competency.

Despite having 17 years of experience with them as a customer for domain registration, my first hosting account with them was in 2019 when we launched this hosting review website.

Here is a link to our testing beacon website on GoDaddy services:

http://gd-openhostingreviews.com

Their average uptime and performance metrics are pretty decent:

Uptime – 99.96%
Response Time – 879 ms
WordPress Render Time – 455 milliseconds

With their very basic package, you get a decent 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth. Of course you get a free domain for the first year, and it is pretty darn cheap. Their introductory rates start at $2.99/month.

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	879 ms
Average Uptime	99.96% 15 minutes over 10 outages
Average Render Time	455 ms
Average Security Threats	5 attempts
Support	24/7 Live Chat - 24/7 Phone Support
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more
Features	Unmetered bandwidth, 100GB storage, free email and free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Not free
Pricing	Starting at $5.99/mo (renews at $8.99/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

For as large a company as GoDaddy is, I expect their performance to be solid. No one has time for their website to be down. It is critical for your website to be fast, no matter many people are visiting it.

GoDaddy has operated multi-million dollar infrastructure for years and should be able to deliver. We see well they are delivering their services every month with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that WordPress site:

http://gd-openhostingreviews.com

In all our testing, GoDaddy has exceeded expectations for uptime and speed. They are also way ahead of most of the competition.

Here is a quick chart showing a breakdown of our GoDaddy performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 793 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 776 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 748 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 828 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 851 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 837 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 886 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 849 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 839 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 807 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 813 ms
Jun 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 866 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 887 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 870 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 916 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.64% average load speed: 915 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,033 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 939 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 964 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 874 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 936 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,003 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 950 ms

Quality of Support

GoDaddy offers several ways to contact them for support. You can reach their support via phone, email, and live chat.

They also have a Knowledge Base that is quite in-depth, but I found that it is hard to get straight to the point on some things.

I have a go-to method for quickly knowing how well the support techs are going to be able to help. All I do is start a support ticket and ask them a simple basic question.

It is a question that every Data Center Operator should be able to recall quickly:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

Pretty straight forward, what operating system is the server using. Nearly all web hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS.

If the first level of support for any Data Center Operation can’t rattle this off the top of their head, or by send a quick IM, then it makes me question what is going on around there.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

So a few things to note about this interaction:

It was very painful. It was very difficult to figure out how to initiate a chat. It ended up being 20+ minutes of the agent “Dhanrani” fumbling around, and in the end I didn’t even get the answer to my question.

What made this even worse is the fact that other hosting provider that we have reviewed were able to answer this question within seconds of being asked.

A few positive notes:

Even though the chat was hard to find, GoDaddy puts their phone number everywhere and is easy to find. Their phone agents are very friendly, too.

The chat software did connect quickly and the agent “Dhanrani” verified my account before addressing any questions. Not all hosting companies do this and it leads them prone to social engineering attacks.

Affordability

GoDaddy is one of the lowest priced web hosting providers out there. For a single website you can get started on their basic plan for only $2.99/month. Their top-tier plan for high-traffic websites costs as low as $12.99/month.

This is great considering their uptime and speed results. Sometimes you get what you pay for when it comes to low-price hosting companies. Many in the bottom tier can’t deliver results like GoDaddy can.

Remember that these are introductory prices only. After your initial term is up, which is usually a year, the prices will be more. They do offer a money back guarantee, but we have read about some bad experiences from folks trying to take them up on it.

The more time you pay for upfront, the cheaper it is. I wanted want the damage would be with them if I only bought 3 months in advance. Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the GoDaddy Economy package for 1 quarter of the year:

Here is what their breakdown is for my renewal after my first three months was up. You don’t get much of a break until you purchase at least a month in advance.

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Economy Plan

The Economy Plan comes with hosting for one website at $2.99/month. (The plan renews at $7.99/month). The plan comes with 100 GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, free business email for the first year. Free domain name registration for the first year is also included.

Deluxe Plan

The Deluxe Plan includes all of the features of the Economy Plan, plus unlimited storage and domains. With this plan you can host unlimited websites for $4.99/month. (The plan renews at $10.99/month)

Ultimate Plan

The Ultimate Plan includes all the features of the Deluxe Plan plus some more performance enhancements for $5.99/month (renewing at $16.99/month).

The Ultimate Plan comes with twice the CPU and RAM as the Economy Plan and Deluxe Plan. It also comes with a free SSL certificate for the first year, premium DNS, and unlimited databases.

Maximum Plan

The Maximum Plan comes with everything the Ultimate Plan does plus some more $12.99/month (with a $29.99/month renewal). It comes with two times the CPU power and RAM memory of the Ultimate Plan which gives you two times “maximum site traffic” they call it.

A nice feature in the Maximum Plan is a free SSL certificate the entire term of your purchase, not just for one year like the Ultimate Plan.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year, if you buy at least 12 months of service upfront. Then renews at $12.99/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete a three-page registration form. The form gives you a lot of upsells. Be sure to read through all of the boxes that are checked before moving on.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: The GoDaddy Control panel is very clean and it is easy-to-use once you click through it a few times. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Installatron for easy installation of popular open-source scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 or 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: GoDaddy’s check out process has a lot of Upsells. Mostly for extra SSL, data backup, and data security services.

Other Plans

If you need more services or features than the Shared Hosting plans we reviewed, then GoDaddy does offer other types of web hosting services. This including Reseller, VPS, Business Cloud, and Dedicated Servers.

Do We Recommend GoDaddy?

Yes, we recommend GoDaddy for hosting. However, we also recommend shopping around, too.

We really like GoDaddy’s speed and uptime.  Their pricing is attractive for the first term, and the renewal isn’t terrible. 

The main problem with GoDaddy that we have seen is that many of the basic features you need to run a website are all upsells and addons.  

Adding these upsells to your plan could easily double your costs, and the hosting providers on the top of our list include these features for no extra fee.

Visit GoDaddy.com

Are They as Fast as They Claim?

Introduction

InMotion is employee-owned, it was founded in 2001. Their network is is based on Linux and Unix operating systems. They have offices in Virginia and California.

InMotion is an accredited member of Better Business Bureau (BBB). The company has been given many awards, which include: 2011 Best Business Hosting Award, 2011 Best Small Business Hosting, 2011 Dedicated Hosting Awards and 2011 Best VPS Hosting.

The organization gives a wide scope of web facilitating arrangements, including business class facilitating, VPS hosting, individual/beginner hosting and dedicated servers. It likewise offers custom website architecture for clients.

Their performance is decent based on our test beacon:

http://im-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.81%
Response Time – 3,714 ms
WordPress Render Time – 173 ms

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru July 2021

Average Page Speed	3,714 ms
Average Render Time	2,640 ms
Average Uptime	99.81% 600 minutes over 65 outages
Average Security Threats	4 threats
Support	24/7 live chat, phone email tickets
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and many more
Features	Free Domain, Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Email, and Free SSL. free Domain registration, free Advertising credits
Plans	Shared,WordPress, VPS, Website Creator and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Free
Pricing	Starting at $5.99/mo renewal increase after the term

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

The old saying “time is money” is true especially when it comes to running a site. The bare minimium for a hosting company should be 99.95% uptime and pages that load in under 1 second.

We are playing out a running month to month trial of Inmotion’s speed and unwavering quality with a straightforward WordPress site as a testing reference point. Here is a connect to that site:

http://im-openhostingreviews.com

Inmotion is exceptional with speed, unfortunately not so much with uptime. Below you will find the info of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,785 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 2,750 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.66% average load speed: 3,570 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.51% average load speed: 3,792 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.60% average load speed: 3,801 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.90% average load speed: 3,819 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.80% average load speed: 3,807 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.69% average load speed: 3,636 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 3,684 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.75% average load speed: 3,769 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.65% average load speed: 3,779 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.50% average load speed: 3,932 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 4,156 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 4,329 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 4,233 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 4,187 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 4,153 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.85% average load speed: 4,261 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.67% average load speed: 4,186 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 4,226 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 4,302 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 3,902 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.37% average load speed: 1,164 ms
July 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 604 ms

Quality of Support

The snappiest route for me to pass judgment on the nature of help is to associate with their specialists by means of talk and pose a straightforward inquiry that most server administrators should know right away:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my site running on?”

This is the working framework. Practically all web facilitating organizations are utilizing Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can learn a lot about their operations quickly.

Here is a screen capture of my help visit:

All in all the chat session was very speedy. I connected to agent Czyrus T. in about 2 minutes. I appreciated that the login gives you the option to log in a a guest or verify your account. That alone only took about one minute.

The agent let me know that it was running CloudLinux release 7.6 (which is a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

This was a good first impression, as the agent didn’t pause in answering my question. I also liked that their Operating System was up to date.

The chat software was painless to use, no errors occurred, the process was painless from start to finish.

Affordability

Inmotion is one of the more expensive hosting companies, for a beginning website it’s $6.39 a month for two websites. To upgrade to the best option, it starts at $14.71 a month, which gives you unlimited websites.

This is not a bad option considering that you get unlimited email accounts and a free domains.

The main thing to remember these prices are for signing up for 2 years the price jumps up slightly when you choose the year option. You do not have the option for month to month.

Remember these costs are limited time starting offers and the do offer a 90 day money back guarantee on all purchases.

Below is a copy of my receipt for 12 months on the basic package for Inmotion:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Launch Plan

The Launch Plan from Inmotion starts at $6.39/month. This is great deal and comes with everything you need to start a website.

Power Plan

The Power Plan offers hosting for six websites, and 2X performance which is not explained very well.

Pro Plan

The Pro Plan offers unlimited websites, 4X the performance, and Pro Level Support. This totes keeping your site up 99.99% of the time, if not they supposedly will credit you with free hosting.

All Plans

The Launch Plan, Power Plan, and the Pro Plan all share the same unlimited options – disk space, bandwidth, and email.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete an 5 registration form. The form will also give you the option to install WordPress at the same time.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: A few upsells but this is very common with a web hosting company.

Other Plans

Inmotion offers a variety of other plans, including Managed WordPress, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and Dedicated Servers.

Do we recommend Inmotion?

Yes we recommend Inmotion as a hosting company. They are pretty painless when it comes to setting up a website.

Inmotion is top for speed out of most of our comparisions, however the uptime would be a little bit to be concerned with.

Some of the main selling points of Inmotion is there customer service is excellent. Right out of the gate the agent answered within seconds and correctly. The next big point to make is the free site transfer, and the free data backups.

Despite some of their drawbacks they do offer a great experience, especially when it comes to customer support.

Visit Inmotion.com

Gaining ground in the WordPress World

Introduction

SiteGround was formed in 2004 by University friends in Sofia, Bulgaria. They host over 2,000,000 domains in 5 data centers across the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.

Although they have been in operation for nearly 15 years, they remained somewhat obscure until they partnered with Joomla for a free hosted website solution in 2015.

Then they catapulted into marketplace recognition when WordPress.org listed them as a recommended hosting provider.

I was excited to open an account with them for this review. I had never hosted a website with them before, and I wanted to see for myself what they were all about.

SiteGround has developed their own speed optimization software, a custom WordPress plugin for performance, and their servers run on all Solid State Disk storage. I wanted to see what this all translated to in the real world.

So far, I am totally impressed. Their performance is outstanding based on our monitoring on our custom test beacon:

http://sg-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.98%
Response Time – 993 ms
WordPress Render Time – 91 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	993 ms
Average Render Time	116 ms
Average Uptime	99.98% 60 minutes over 6 outages
Average Security Threats	2 attempts
Support	Tickets 24/7 - Live Chat 24/7 - Phone 24/7
Apps	Supports more than 500 applications
Features	Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage, free CDN, free backups
Plans	Shared, WordPress, Cloud, Reseller, Enterprise and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Free on GrowBig and GoGeek plans
Pricing	Starting at $3.95/mo (renews at $11.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

No one wants their website is down or run slow. In many cases you have less than a second to win over a new web visitor.

All companies that deliver technology solutions should strive to provide 99.95% uptime. Ideally a web server should load pages in less than 1 second. You should be able to track load time in milliseconds.

We are constantly monitoring the uptime and page load speed of SiteGround’s service. Then we publish our testing results on a monthly basis. We have setup a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that site:

http://sg-openhostingreviews.com

Since we started our testing, SiteGround has consistently exceeded our expectations for uptime and page load speed. They are also beating out most of the competition.

Here is a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 726 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 819 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,041 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 695 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 740 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 879 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,210 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 912 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,276 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,293 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,327 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 999 ms
July 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,043 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,098 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,568 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,451 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,404 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,640 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,078 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 931 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 366 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 993 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 437 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 436 ms

Quality of Support

SiteGround makes it easy to get support. You can reach an agent 24/7 via phone, chat, or email/support ticket. Another thing worth mention is their self-service.

Their online Knowledge Base is powered by their own AI engine and the search returns amazingly accurate results:

Their Knowledge Base also has great starting points to get you to the information you need quickly for a lot of common scenarios. You can tell that they put a lot of thought into their customer experience:

I have a go-to test that I use to gauge the quality of support a hosting company has. I simply start a chat with their support agents and ask an easy question that any data center operator should know without thinking:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

It shouldn’t be too hard for them to know, or find out quickly, what Operating System they are using.

Nearly all Web Hosts are running Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can find out quite a bit about a Data Center Operation by finding out what version they are on and how easily the staff knows.

Staying up to date is important, for security and performance. The more a technology provider is staying on top of updates, the better they are being managed.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

I was ecstatic with my experience with SiteGround support. The support chat connect to Gabe within 5-10 seconds. Amazingly he answered my question accurately within less than a minute. (The worst chat in all of our testing was over 40 minutes, and they still didn’t answer the question.)

You could tell that Gabe knew the answer off the top of his head, like he should, and I was able to fit in a follow up question. All in less than 5 minutes. This was just stellar performance, and a head above the competition.

The chat software itself performed without any glitches, and I liked how it showed the support agent’s picture. Or at least what they want me to think how Gabe looks. I also liked the duration counter.

The only thing I thought could have been improved is that there wasn’t much account verification, except for the fact that I was already logged in. Besides that, it was top-notch support.

Affordability

SiteGround is an affordable web host. Their basic packages have an introductory offer of $3.95/month. You are required to purchase 12 months of hosting at the time of signup.

The basic package includes hosting for one website, 10GB of storage, and performance suited for ~10,000 visits. Their plans do come with unlimited data transfer.

Like nearly all web hosting companies, the advertised rates on their websites are introductory offers for new accounts. The regular priced for their basic package after renewal is $11.95/month or $143.40/year.

Here is a copy of my receipt from SiteGround of my initial purchase. I got their Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

StartUp

This is SiteGround’s basic package for Shared Hosting. The price for the StartUp package starts at $3.95/month. This plan is geared for beginners just starting out with their first website.

GrowBig

The next tier plan from SiteGround is the GrowBig plan, the introductory price is $5.95. With this plan you can host unlimited domains and websites, and you also get almost the storage and performance than the StartUp plan.

The GrowBig plan comes with 20GB of storage and performance for ~25,000 website visits. This plan is really suited for websites that are maturing and growing in popularity.

GoGeek

The GoGeek plan is their highest tier plan and has an introductory offer of $11.95 per month. It has everything in the GrowBig plan plus 30GB of storage for your website, and performance for ~100,000 web visits.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: No, domain names are not included with any SiteGround hosting plans. They can be purchased a la carte for $15.95/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Just fill out an easy two-step registration form. The form will also let you register a domain name with them if needed.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: The Control Panel to manage your account is fairly average. Accounts use cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Softaculous and PrestaShop for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 or 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, and Discover.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Hosting

If you need additional features, Bluehost also offers other web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data center services.

Do We Recommend SiteGround?

Yes, we recommend SiteGround, without a doubt. SiteGround hosting is fast and they are very innovative. Their uptime is very solid and your site should stay online nearly all the time. It is even guaranteed.

They do a lot of advanced things to deliver their uptime and speed. SiteGround. Beginners may have to take some time to learn about hosting infrastructure to ensure they are taking full advantage of the features they are paying for.

We recommend that you signup with the longest term that you can afford. Their renewal rates are some the higher that we have seen.

Visit SiteGround.com

Do They Live Up To The Hype?

Introduction

I have been familiar with Bluehost since 2009. One of my clients at the time was hosting the website that I was redesigning for them on Bluehost. After their new website was online, I managed the hosting account for them for two more years.

In the 8 years since, I have done work for other Bluehost customers. Speed optimization, hacking clean-up, software installations, etc. I also live relatively close to their 50,000 sq. ft. data center and am decently familiar with their operations from local IT “shop talk.”

I also live relatively close to their 50,000 sq. ft. data center and am decently familiar with their operations from local IT “shop talk.”

In this review, I will be relying on the data that we have captured for our own testing, as well as the experience I had managing Bluehost accounts for other website owners.

Bluehost makes it easy to get a new website started because they include a free domain name for the first year, as well as free site builder tools, and a decent 1-click WordPress installation.

All plans come with 24/7 Live Support, a free SSL certificate, and unmetered traffic. For a little more money per month you can get unlimited file storage, free backups, and added security.

Their performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://bh-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.95%
Response Time – 952 milliseconds
WordPress Render Time – 337 milliseconds

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	1,216 ms
Average Uptime	99.95%
Average Render Time	1209 ms
Average Security Threats	14 threats
Support	24/7 Live Chat - Phone - Email
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and some website builders
Features	Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Not free
Pricing	Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $7.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

Most website owners are losing money if their website is down or people leave because it is slow. At a bare minimum a web hosting provider should be able to provide 99.95% uptime and load pages in less than 1 second.

We are performing a running monthly test of Bluehost’s speed and reliability with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon. Here is a link to that site:

http://bh-openhostingreviews.com

So far, Bluehost has been able to beat our expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 883 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 985 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 99.81% average load speed: 949 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.82% average load speed: 1,047 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 932 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 924 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 806 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 936 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 938
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 890 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 937 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.73% average load speed: 1,120 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,197 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 3,116 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 3,116 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,772 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 1,350 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,267 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 1,289 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,336 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 1,401 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 1,421 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 1,254 ms

Quality of Support

I like the variety of options that Bluehost offers to get help. Their online Knowledge Base is very in-depth and easy to use. To get to a support agent, you can use their chat, call toll-free, or open a support ticket.

The quickest way for me to judge the quality of support is to connect to their agents via chat and ask a simple question that most data center operators should know off the top of their head:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This is the operating system. Almost all web hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can learn a lot about a Data Center Operation by finding out what version they are on and how easily the staff knows.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

Overall, the chat session was very quick. It connected to agent Melrin Akash in less than a minute. I was glad to see that he verified the account, and that process took another minute or so. The entire interaction including follow up questions took about 10 minutes total.

The agent was very quick to let me know that the server running my website was CentOS 6. If that was my only question, then the chat would have been over in 3 minutes.

The agent struggled to understand my follow up question, but overall it was a positive experience. He/she did well with a question that probably doesn’t asked much. I have had a lot worse experiences with overseas first-level support.

The agent was very curious, very quick to get back to me, provided accurate information, and made sure I had everything I needed before disconnecting. The chat software was very easy to use and only had one glitch.

Affordability

Bluehost is one of the lowest priced web hosting companies out there. To get started is only $3.95 per month for their basic package for a single website. To upgrade to their highest package with more features, and unlimited websites, is only $13.95 per month.

This is a great bargain when you consider their uptime/speed, the features included in their packages, the free tools and easy-to-use management tool, and their track record.

Just remember that these prices are the monthly price if you purchase 3 years of service upfront. Prices are a little higher if you buy 12 months in advance. Unfortunately you don’t have the option pay month to month, which I think is sort of a bummer.

Keep in mind these prices are promotional introductory offers and the do offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all purchases.

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the Bluehost Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Basic Plan

The Basic plan from Bluehost starts at $3.95/month. This is an ideal plan for someone starting out. It comes with everything you need to host a single website.

Plus Plan and Choice Plus Plan

The Plus and Choice Plus plan both have an introductory rate of $5.45/month. They give you the capability to host an unlimited amount of websites. These plans are ideal for website owners that run multiple sites with a good amount of monthly traffic.

The Choice Plus plan offers some handy features that the Plus plan doesn’t have. Features such as Domain Privacy as well as Site Backup and CodeGuard Security. Just remember that even though the introductory prices are the same, the Choice Plus plan does cost more upon renewal after your first year.

Pro Plan

The Pro plan starts at $13.95 month. It has the same features as the Plus and Choice Plus plans, allowing you to run unlimited websites. The main advantage to this plan is that your website(s) will be running on their High Performance server hardware.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year. Then renews at $15.99/year.
• Easy Setup Process: Complete an easy two-page registration form. The form will also give you the option to install WordPress at the same time.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Control panel is very clean and easy-to-use. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Add-ons: Extend your website functionality with add-ons like CodeGuard, SiteLock, Bluehost SEO Tools, Office 365, G-Suite, Google Ads, Constant Contact, and SpamExperts.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
• Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.

Other Plans

If you need additional features, Bluehost also offers other web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data center services.

Do We Recommend Bluehost?

Yes, we recommend Bluehost as a hosting provider. Especially for beginners who have never hosted their own website before.

Bluehost has consistently been near the top for speed and uptime in all our reports.

Plus, they have a great administration panel to manage your account and website.  Their security and support is on-point and reliable.  We like their money-back guarantee and they have some of the lowest prices out there.

There are, however, some things we don’t like that are important to keep in mind.  It is pretty annoying that they have a fee for site migrations. 

Most other hosting companies offer this for free and you would think they would too to get new customers.

Also keep in mind that the pricing is only an introductory rate.  The prices do go up on your renewal.  The best way to maximize the introductory rate is to secure a three-year plan, but this does make it more expensive upfront.

Despite some of their drawbacks, they offer a great experience and value.

Visit Bluehost.com

Consistently Solid For Us Since 2008

Introduction

I started using HostGator back in 2008.  I wasn’t happy with the hosting provider that I was using at the time, but they were one of the few at the time that offered plans for multiple domains. 

So, I was shopping around, and everyone was trying out HostGator because they were one of the first to offer unlimited domains and bandwidth.

I was excited to give them a try based on some online reviews, like you are reading now, and I am still hosting 7 websites on the same account I opened over 10 years ago. 

Their servers are well-managed and fast.  Their support has always been very useful, and their pricing is awesome.

In this review, I will be using my own experience with HostGator as a long-term customer, as well as the data that we have been capturing for our side-by-side performance testing.

HostGator makes it easy for anyone of any skill level to manage a website on their platform. Especially a WordPress site.

Their plans include a free domain on annual plans, free unlimited bandwidth, free SSL, and a really good one-click installation software.

Their performance is excellent based on our test beacon:

http://hg-openhostingreviews.com

Uptime – 99.97%
Response Time – 1,233 ms
WordPress Render Time – 316 ms

While HostGator is one of the best performing hosting providers on our list, there are a few things you should know about their pricing.

Let’s jump right into our deep-dive analysis of Host Gator.

Quick Overview

July 2019 Thru June 2022

Average Page Speed	1,233 ms
Average Uptime	99.97% 60 minutes over 9 outages
Average Render Time	354 ms
Average Security Threats	8 attempts
Support	24/7 Chat - Phone - Email
Apps	WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento
Features	Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year
Plans	Shared, Cloud, WordPress, VPS and Dedicated Servers
Transfer	Single Free Site Transfer
Pricing	Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $6.95/mo)

Three Main Considerations

Speed and Reliability

In a perfect world, your website is going to be online 100% of the time. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Inside every data center the power goes down, hard drives fail, and servers have to be patched and rebooted.

Since we know we won’t get 100% uptime, the next best thing is the “gold standard” of the hosting world – 99.99%.

Every month we are running a test of HostGator’s speed and reliability (uptime) with a simple WordPress website as a testing beacon.

Here is a link to that testing beacon site:

http://hg-openhostingreviews.com

So far, HostGator has beaten our baseline expectations for uptime and speed. They are also beating out most of the competition. Below you will find a breakdown of their performance by month:

July 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,048 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,069 ms
Sep 2019 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,096 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,065 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,014 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,107 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,250 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,352 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,178 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,081 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 1,250 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,299 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.79% average load speed: 1,363 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,310 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,344 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,212 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 1,179 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.98% average load speed: 1,193 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,288 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,529 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,526 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,202 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 100% average load speed: 1,078 ms

Quality of Support

HostGator has several different ways to get in-touch with their support. You can reach them via chat, phone toll-free, or open a support ticket.

They also have a decent Knowledge Base of support articles.

One of the ways I like to gauge the quality of support is to start up a quick chat ask a simple question.

This is a question that any data center operators should know right away:

“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”

This is asking them the operating system of their servers. Most shared web hosting plans use Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS.

I like this question so much because it helps you quickly learn a lot about their operations.

Not only does it show you the competency of their first-level support, but it also lets you know how well they keep things up to date.

Here is a screenshot of my support chat:

Affordability

HostGator has very affordable plans.

To get started is only $2.75 per month for their basic Hatchling package for a single website. To upgrade to their highest package with more features, and unlimited websites, is only $5.95 per month.

This is a great bargain when you consider their uptime/speed, the features included in their packages, the free tools and easy-to-use management tool, and their track record.

Just remember that these prices are the monthly price if you purchase 3 years of service upfront. Prices are a little higher if you buy 12 months in advance. Unfortunately you don’t have the option pay month to month, which I think is sort of a bummer.

Keep in mind these prices are promotional introductory offers and the do offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all purchases.

Here is a copy of my receipt for purchasing the Bluehost Basic package for 12 months:

Available Plans, Pricing, and Details

Hostgator riffs off their alligator mascot for the names of their plans. It is pretty clever and a small breath of fresh air in an industry that is otherwise pretty sterile and clinical.

Hatchling Plan

The Hatchling Plan from Hostgator starts at $2.75/month. This is the plan you want those launching their very first website. The plan includes all the features required to run a single website.

One thing that I love about Hostgator is that even their basic plans included unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain.

In the past these were all extras with them. Amazingly, some of Hostgator’s competitors are still charging for these.

Baby Plan

The Baby Plan from Hostgator starts at $3.95/month. This plan comes with all of the features of the Hatchling Plan, but it allows you to run unlimited websites and email with it.

I have a Hostgator account with the Baby Plan with 6 websites running on it. They get a moderate amount of traffic and they all perform well.

Business Plan

The Business Plan from Hostgator starts at $5.95/month. This plan includes everything in the Hatchling and the Baby plans, plus a few extras. The Business Plan also includes a dedicated IP address and a Step-by-Step SEO Plan to help you with a your search engine visibility.

Plan Feature Comparison

Plan Features

• Includes Domain: Yes, free for the first year. Then renews at $16.00-$22.00/year depending on how many years you renew in advance.
• Easy Setup Process: Very simple! All you have to do is fill out a single page form. It is the easiest out of all the hosting companies we reviewed.
• Admin Dashboard Experience: Their control panel is very easy to understand and you can switch between the Billing and Technical side effortlessly. Uses cPanel for site administration.
• 3rd Party Application Support: Includes their custom QuickInstall tool that gives you OneClick installations to over 70 popular scripts such as WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
• Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 5 and 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
• Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase after Introductory Offer, but is lower than other popular plans.
• Upsells: Some Upsells on the sign-up form, but they disappear with a mouse click or two.

Other Plans

If you have other needs for your website(s), Hostgator offers other types of hosting plans like WordPress Optimized, Cloud, VPS, and Dedicated Servers.

Do We Recommend HostGator?

Yes, we have been recommending Hostgator to clients for years. As a paying customer for web hosting since 2002, Hostgator is the best experience I have had for performance and value.

Hostgator is consistently at the top of our performance testing, and I love that they are the only hosting provider on our list that has an Uptime Guarantee!

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