Is Hostinger Better than HostGator? Hostinger and HostGator offer super affordable hosting solutions, making them extremely attractive to users on a tight budget. Not just that, but both providers demonstrate reliable and speedy performance results.
They also cover basic security needs and have a trained team of customer support reps available 24/7 to help if anything goes wrong.
On the surface, both providers seem very similar but are they really? In this Hostinger vs HostGator comparison, I aim to uncover their differences and help you pick the right one for you.
Both Hostinger and HostGator are well-known and affordable hosting providers that come with resource-packed plans and good performance results. Hostinger is a star when it comes to the lowest prices on the market, while HostGator is known for its “unlimited” hosting” offerings.
HostGator vs Hostinger: Pricing Comparison
Between the two hosting providers, Hostinger offers more affordable plans starting at just $2.99/month. In comparison, the cheapest shared hosting plan from HostGator will cost you $2.75/month.
Both hosting providers share a few common features. You will get a custom domain name, an SSL certificate, and at least 100 email account, with all Hostinger’s and HostGator’s shared hosting plans.
Here’s what each provider’s cheapest plan looks like:
- Hostinger’s Premium Shared ($2.99/month) – Host up to 100 websites and get 100GB SSD disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and access to weekly backups.
- HostGator’s Hatchling ($2.75/month) – allows hosting 1 site and includes unlimited storage, email accounts, and unmetered bandwidth.
Just looking at the feature list, it might seem that HostGator is better with unlimited storage. However, there is no such thing as “unlimited”. The host has set a disk and bandwidth utilization limit adjusted for personal and small business website hosting.
Now, although the cheapest options are always tempting, both Hostinger and HostGator have 2 more shared hosting plans to woo you.
Hostinger provides you with 2 shared and 1 cloud hosting option, priced between $2.99/month and $9.99/month.
According to Hostinger, its Premium plan at $2.99/month is the most popular option, and for a good reason. For a reasonable price, you get to host 100 websites and the storage is very generous (100GB). More so, a free domain is also included.
One more thing, Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Within this time you can get a full refund for the services. However, be mindful that a domain name is non-refundable.
Just like Hostinger, HostGator also has 3 shared hosting plans. The prices for those start at $2.75/month and go to $5.25/month.
HostGator also has a plan that it deems the best value for money out of the 3. The provider’s official recommendation is its Baby plan at $3.50/month. And it’s not hard to see why. For just $0.75/month more than Hatchling, you get to host unlimited websites. At the same time, Baby’s renewal rates are much lower than with the business plan.
One thing to note, HostGator comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just be aware, such elements like a domain name, are not refunded.
In short, both providers deliver resource-rich plans for very reasonable prices. However, taking price as the main deciding factor, Hostinger wins this round.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Ease of Use
Both Hostinger and HostGator are targeted at beginners and, as such, offer simple user interfaces. Although similar in terms of simplicity, Hostinger and HostGator use different management systems. Hostinger presents you with a single native hPanel, while HostGator uses a classical native dashboard and cPanel mix.
One great thing about Hostinger is that it makes the setup process extremely fast and easy. Immediately after account creation, you’ll find yourself with an automatic account setup wizard.
It’ll help you with SSL certificate activation, domain registration, and setting up your hosting environment.
You’ll also get your hands on Hostinger’s custom control panel – hPanel. It offers a clean, organized, and user-friendly interface that allows you to access and manage various tools like domain names, SSL configuration, email accounts, databases, a CMS installer, and many more.
HostGator’s native interface handles basic tasks like billing, connecting to support, accessing the HostGator marketplace, and serves as a link to the cPanel.
Talking about cPanel, there you access more advanced tools, like email accounts and files on your server, manage databases, and security features. Simply put, all your website management settings and main tools are found in the cPanel.
It’s also here that you’ll find the Softaculous Installer app to help you install WordPress or any other CMS you like.
Overall, both providers are very simplistic and easy in terms of management. However, with its custom control panel and automatic setup wizard that practically holds your hands, Hostinger came on top in this round.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Performance
In my time with Hostinger and HostGator, I found both hosting services deliver similar performance. However, to pick a winner, I ran both through a series of tests. What I found was that Hostinger offered slightly better uptime, response time, and faster loading speeds.
The performance difference isn’t that big between HostGator and Hostinger. However, as your site grows and you add more content, graphics, CSS/JS scripts, etc., the slight advantage with Hostinger might be exactly what you need.
Uptime and response time
For this test, I’ve examined both providers for an almost identical period of time – just around 2 months. Here are my findings.
In 2 months of examination, Hostinger did not have a single outage, resulting in a perfect 100% uptime.
This is excellent! However, expecting 100% uptime in the long run (>1 year) isn’t realistic. That said, Hostinger does give a standard 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Now looking at the responsiveness, I got an average response time of 511ms – the time taken for the browser to retrieve HTTP headers and the first byte of data. This is also within the industry average of 600ms.
Coming to HostGator, the host experienced 3 outages or 5 minutes of downtime in 2 months. This has brought HostGators uptime to an impressive >99.99%.
Just like Hostinger, HostGator comes with the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. Knowing this, I’m even more impressed with the results I got.
Moving on to the server speeds, I got an average response time of 525ms. While this is just barely slower than Hostinger’s, HostGator still manages to slip below the market’s average of 600ms.
In short, both hosts put up a good fight and went hand in hand in terms of uptime and response time. However, I must admit that Hostinger showed slightly better results overall.
Website speed
I host my website in the US with both providers. Therefore, the loading speed takes place in the US too. Important to note is that HostGator has data centers in the US alone, while Hostinger allows picking 1 out of 4 locations (USA, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Singapore) with its shared hosting plans.
Now, before I talk about the speed and performance of each hosting provider, you must become familiar with a few terms:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is the time that it takes for the largest graphic element to load. According to Google, an LCP should not exceed 2.5s, as that’s the maximum recommended time.
- Fully Loaded Time, as the name implies, signifies how long it takes to fully load all elements on the site. For the best user experience, this time should be under 3 seconds.
As a whole, when it comes to overall performance, Hostinger and HostGator are pretty equal rivals. However, it is pretty clear that this Hostinger vs HostGator comparison has to crown Hostinger, as the host was more reliable and overall faster.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Website Security
Hostinger and HostGator cover the basic security features you will need to keep your site safe and protected. With both hosting providers, you will find the following features:
- Free SSL certificate;
- DDoS protection;
- Automatic backups;
- Server-level security enhancements.
Hostinger also comes with a 2-factor-authentication. However, HostGator skips out on this basic feature.
Other than this, it is worth noting that Hostinger offers weekly backups with the Basic and Premium plans. Daily backups are only available with its Business plan. Unfortunately, HostGator isn’t as transparent. All their plans get automatic backups. They do state that backups can be taken daily, weekly and monthly, but the schedule is unclear, and you are asked to pay if you’d like to restore one of the versions.
There are also some differences in how Hostinger and HostGator handle security at the server level:
- With Hostinger, you get 24/7 server monitoring backed by security modules like mod_security and PHP open_basedir. This is good enough to keep your site safe from common threats.
- HostGator’s custom firewall provides the same level of security to keep malicious and suspicious traffic off your website.
Now, apart from these basic security features, HostGator does give you the option to install add-ons:
- Positive SSL upgrade ($39.99/year): secures your domain and subdomain with a TrustLogo site seal and offers a $10k warranty. This is free with HostGator’s Business plan.
- SiteLock Essentials ($23.88/year): an automatic monitoring tool that will screen your site to fight off malicious attacks, spammers, and hackers.
- CodeGuard ($23.95/year): an enterprise-level website backup utility that offers automatic server backups, monitoring, and restores services.
Now, it is worth noting that all these are third-party security add-ons. You can easily get these features on Hostinger by installing similar or alternative security plugins. As such, to compare Hostinger and HostGator, I will only consider their free security features.
As a whole, Hostinger comes out slightly more appealing in terms of security. Its clear backup policies and the addition of 2FA make it a very secure hosting provider. Other than this, both providers are the same.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Customer Support
Both Hostinger and HostGator have 24/7 live chat support and pretty detailed knowledge bases. Additionally, Hostinger offers support via email, while HostGator’s agent can be reached via phone.
Now, whenever I test any provider’s support, I always go for the live chat option as I find it the quickest and most convenient. Here are my findings of each provider:
Talking about Hostinger, I had to wait up to 20 minutes before connecting to a support expert. However, once I got through, my problem was quickly resolved in a couple of minutes. The support members were also extremely friendly and helpful, which is always a plus.
On the flip side, I got connected to a HostGator support rep within just a few seconds. It did take 9 minutes for the agent to solve my issue, but to be fair, it was not a common error. The agents were also very helpful and friendly, which always leaves a good aftertaste.
Now, in terms of knowledge bases, both providers offer very well-organized, informative, and easy to navigate options. Any issue you might be having, chances are high you’ll be able to find an article on it.
Overall, Hostinger and HostGator come forward with very knowledgeable support agents and extensive knowledge bases. Although, I must say that the lack of phone support with Hostinger and email for HostGator does take some points off.
Hostinger vs HostGator: Who is The Winner?
And this brings us to the end of this HostGator vs Hostinger comparison. Both Hostinger and HostGator are pretty comparable in most departments. However, Hostinger delivers slightly better performance at much more affordable prices. This gives Hostinger a great practical advantage over HostGator. With cheaper prices, a more intuitive control panel, friendly support, and slightly better performance metrics, Hostinger takes the overall win. It’s one of the best options for users who are tight on budget but want reliable hosting to establish their online presence.
Both Hostinger and HostGator are affordable hosting providers focused on delivering good and cheap hosting solutions. However, as there are many great hosting providers out there, you might be curious to see some other options. In that case, here are a couple of alternative hosting providers worth considering like ASPHostPortal, BigRock, RackSpace, or HostForLIFE.eu.
