HostGator vs GoDaddy Website Hosting Comparison

HostGator (review) vs GoDaddy (review) are two of the biggest names in Internet web hosting and domain registration.  GoDaddy has gained fame and even some notoriety for its outrageous advertising, including several Super Bowl commercials.  GoDaddy has been in business since 1997, whereas HostGator is relatively new, first being found in 2002.

• HostGator Coupon Code:
  Get 20% Off Web Hosting
• GoDaddy Special Discounts

GoDaddy’s website is flashy and includes a great deal of video and graphical content, including endorsements by IndyCar driver Danica Patrick and the infamous “Exposure” ad that was banned from the Super Bowl show.  Once you look passed the glitz and glamour of the site you will see that GoDaddy is fairly straight forward in its offerings.  The company offers some of the best prices for domain registration, with $1.99 non-popular purchases, and $9.99 popular purchases like .com or .org.  The company also promises a 99% uptime and the potential for unlimited storage and bandwidth.  Web hosting Economy packages for GoDaddy can be as low as $4.74 a month.  In addition to basic web hosting, GoDaddy offers virtual or dedicated server plans.

At first glance, GoDaddy is at least as competitive as HostGator, since HostGator also offers dedicated servers, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space.  The Texas-based HostGator, like the Arizona-based GoDaddy, offers shared, reseller and dedicated web hosting programs.  Like GoDaddy, HostGator also came from humble beginnings and has grown into a million-customer company.  HostGator offers a standard hosting plan for $4.95 a month, along with generous online coupons (like a recent Spring 20% discount).  All plans offer unlimited bandwidth and storage, but the $12.95 plan goes above and beyond by giving customers their own toll free number, along with unlimited domains, dedicated IPs and anonymous FTP.  HostGator playfully organizes its gator plans according to Hatchling, Baby and Business.  (As in a business-minded alligator, we presume).

When it comes to HostGator vs GoDaddy, GoDaddy consistently ranks high for domain registration but low for web hosting potential.  Customer support at GoDaddy is questionable at best, as is the satisfaction guarantee refund, which is hard-to-find on GoDaddy’s site but all over the page at HostGator.  GoDaddy does have telephone-based customer service (no toll free number), but HostGator has received better reviews for technical support and provides each customer with his or her own toll-free number.  The most basic HostGator plan is also cheaper than GoDaddy’s lowest hosting plan, at $3.99 a month.  GoDaddy can provide hosting services for $4.99 a month, with a three month commitment.  Most users agree that GoDaddy is hard to beat when it comes to domain name registration.  However, HostGator offers better customer support, lower prices and better features than GoDaddy.

GoDaddy has also decided to stay away from the industry’s standard control panel, cPanel, and had a custom control panel built just for them. While it’s fairly easy to use, GoDaddy uses a second control panel to manage your customer profile which can become somewhat confusing as you never know which one to use. GoDaddy’s control panel is also kind of slow and database creation is not instant as it is with cPanel. When you create a MySQL database, you need to wait from 5 to 10 minutes before the database is created.

HostGator Control Panel	GoDaddy Control Panel

On the other hand, HostGator uses cPanel which is by far the favorite control panel of many webmasters. It’s so easy to use, anyone can learn it within an hour or so. The fact that so many web hosts chose cPanel also makes it easier to move your website from one host to another.

That said, if you want something more than a reliable domain name, then HostGator’s alligator takes a chunk out of GoDaddy’s Super Bowl beaver.

Links

• HostGator Coupons
• HostGator Official Website
• GoDaddy Coupons
• GoDaddy Official Website

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