Facts
Year Established: 2002
Now Hosting over 10 million domains
Many reputable web hosting review sites including besthosting2014.org believe that they are the best all rounder hosting. Having over 10 million domains hosted on their servers makes them one of the top 10 biggest global hosting provider. 
Despite their size and popularity, they are still recognized by About.com’s web design community and besthostingreseller.org as the Best Reseller Host, Cheap Web Hosting, and Best Linux/UNIX web hosting provider. They also received the Highest Level of Recommendation by WebHost Magazine, the toughest reviewers in the industry.
Why Hostgator is Better than Other Cheap Hosting
- Free trial – No other top hosts lets you try their plans before you buy. Hostgator is an exception. You can use the Hostgator coupon (2014) below to get a free first month on shared hosting.
Try the Hostgator coupon code, which will take off $9.94 from Gator Baby plan. Thus you will be paying
nothingonly $0.01 for the first month. Previously some of their coupon codes can give your completely free first month but that has changed so now you can try for a penny. - Upgrade possibilities – Unlike many cheap hosts that offer one hosting plan, Hostgator has many different hosting plans for each hosting categories.Under shared hosting they have:
- Hatchling plan – cheapest if you only need to host one domain
- Baby Gator – the most popular and can host unlimited domains
- Business plan – targeted for businesses needing VOIP etc.
Under reseller hosting there are Aluminum, Copper, Silver, Gold and Diamond plans where each has different bandwidth and disk space. Users can start from the basic reseller plan at $24.95 (first month free with coupon code above) and upgrade later once their business expands.
VPS and dedicated hosting also come with their own sub plans.
- Longer money back guarantee – Many companies now do not even give 100% refund anymore and opted for prorated refund instead. Other companies on average will only allow you to request for you money back within 30 days of your purchase. Hostgator on the other hand is in league of its own. They are very confident with their service and can give an extra 50% longer money-back-guarantee period. What more could you ask?
- cPanel/WHM – Hostgator’s account control panels are powered by cPanel which provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. cPanel is an easy to use, stable and reliable control panel. Many other major web hosts like Godaddy, Fatcow, iPower, iPage and icdsoft, use their own proprietory control panel which is not as user-friendly and some full of upsells. Hostgator’s accounts feel much more familiar and also easier to manage from the web.
- Account Suspension – Some web hosts like Hostmonster and Bluehost will quickly suspend your account or give “Connection Problems
Sorry, [your application] was unable to connect to [the database]. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.” error whenever a website of yours have a spike in visitors or database connection. With Hostgator, we received a courteous email asking us to check the related application or script and to act accordingly. They will remove access to the related script but they did not suspend the whole domain. This means that if a scripts is giving problem, the other parts of the site will not be affected. - Reasonable inodes restrictions – Have your heard scary stories about users having their account suspended for no reason (atleast most users are not technically proficiend to understand the reasons)? Most other cheap host like Bluehost and Hostmonster will suspend your account if you have inodes above 50,000. Hostgator will not suspend your account but instead will only exclude your account from their daily backup. Number of inodes does only effect the time it takes to move, copy or backup your files so bravo to Hostgator for solving just the problem instead of punishing users who may not even aware of their number of inodes.
- Windows Server Option – Hostgator is not only the top when it comes to Linux, cPanel website hosting and PHP5 hosting, but they also provide one of the best windows hosting plans at affordable prices. If you need a hosting plan to handle ASP or ASP.net applications, then you can also opt for one of the Gator’s Windows hosting packages. That way, you know that the support should come from the same trusted company.
They Sound So Perfect. What is the Catch?
Sure there is a catch. They are not the cheapest hosting around. On average, their most popular Baby Gator plan is about $1.05 more expensive than other popular unlimited hosting companies. But you do get what you pay for. Seriously, would you pay $1 extra a month for a peace of mind? I know I would.
And yeah, they do not give free domain. Some cheap hosting do give free domains but registering a domain at a separate registrar is highly recommended. We have heard many horror stories about web hosts taking hostage of websites because they own the web domain registration (so called given free, for life). Not that we are saying Hostgator will do that, but it feels safer to have full control of our important domain name by keeping it separate from the website host.
Discount Link: Try Hostgator for Only $0.01
