By: Matt
Drawing straws or tossing a coin may work when deciding trivial matters like which team gets to have the ball first. However, when it comes to choosing a web host for your website, a little more careful consideration is required.
This is especially so when you’re choosing between SiteGround and HostGator.
HostGator is a popular web host provider that has won the hearts of many through cost-effective plans, easy to use cPanel servers, consistent uptime reliability, award-winning customer support service, a series of freebies (free site templates, $100 free Google Adwords credits, etc.), plus many other amazing services.
SiteGround, on the other hand, has one of the best security measures in place, offers custom-made hosting solutions, fast speeds, 99.9% uptime, quick customer support response times plus a range of other great extra features.
So, which should you go with among the two? Hopefully, the following comparison review of SiteGround vs. HostGator will help you make that difficult choice.
Here below is a tl;dr summary version of our of SiteGround and HostGator head-to-head comparison.
The following web hosting features have been compared and scored (click on the link to scroll to each feature section): 1. reliability, 2. security, 3. scalability, 4. cancellation, 5. support and 6. extras.
| Company | Main features | Price | Rating | More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 HostGator |
More features at hostgator.com | From $2.75/month | 67% score | Visit website Read reviews |
 SiteGround |
More features at siteground.com | From $2.99/month | 81% score | Visit website Read reviews |
Shared hosting is usually the most cost-effective option for businesses that don’t require a large amount of resources.
Both hosts are capable of hosting for WordPress, but neither has a WordPress-specific plan.
SiteGround offers a number of shared hosting plans entitled StartUp, Growbig, and GoGeek.
These plans offer up to 30GB disk space and the high-end plan is suitable for up to 100,000 visits per month. The company’s mid-range and high-end plan also support multiple websites.
HostGator offers a range of shared hosting plans including Hatching, Baby, and Business plans. Which one you choose will come down to the resources required by your business.
The plans all offer unmetered bandwidth, unlimited disk space, and unlimited email accounts. Each plan comes with a range of additional features.
WordPress hosting is where Siteground shines above the rest. While the company does not offer WordPress-specific packages, they are one of the few hosts on the planet directly recommended by WordPress.
Their packages include a 1-Click installer, command-line management options, and automatic updates on all plans with additional functionality included with their ‘GrowBig’ and ‘GoGeek’ plans.
HostGator doesn’t offer WordPress-specific hosting plans and instead recommends users install the Content Management System on its Hatchling, Baby, and Business Plans. They come complete with one-click install functionality, unmetered bandwidth, and email marketing included.
The location of a hosting provider’s datacenters is extremely important for your business as the speed at which your customers can access your website depends on how near they are to the datacenter you choose.
Datacenter security and backup facilities are also important to ensure that your website remains online as much as possible.
Siteground has datacenters based across three continents with locations in the U.S., Singapore, The Netherlands and the U.K. Their physical datacenters are highly secure and also rely on multiple connectivity and power sources to make sure that your website stays online.
All of SiteGround’s plans come with Cloudflare CDN (content delivery network) included. This means your site will be able to be delivered to visitors from over 100 datacenters: the network will detect which one is closest to each web visitor and serve the site to them from the nearest node.
HostGator has two U.S.- based data centers in Houston, Texas and Provo, Utah.
Their servers are highly secure and are monitored by system administrators around the clock.
The type of control panel used by your hosting provider is one of the key features you should look out for when choosing a web hosting provider.
Many providers on the market use the super-popular cPanel control panel. Both SiteGround and HostGator, along with competitor Bluehost all use the cPanel interface. cPanel is known for user-friendliness, an icon-based layout and it has had a reputation for stability since it launched in 1996.
One thing to note is that HostGator only uses cPanel with Hatchling, Baby, and Business plans. Whereas for VPS with Plesk, Windows Shared, and Windows Dedicated hosting plans, Plesk control panel is in use. Both Plesk and cPanel offer many similar features, although Plesk is regarded as having a cleaner interface by some in the industry.
The first impressive fact is that SiteGround deliberately overstaffs every shift. This is so you don’t have to wait on the phone, in live chat or for email messages to receive replies. Staff work around the clock to ensure quality support and every employee’s performance and speed is assessed regularly.
Whenever you make contact with a support member, you’ll also see his/her photo and resume with the company so you know how much experience they have. The other reason is to put a face to a company, not just a faceless corporation that doesn’t care.
Customers on the GoGeek and higher plans get “Advanced Priority Support.” This means their service requests are routed to the most experienced technical support team members and prioritized.
You also have access to tutorials and webinars to help you learn about different aspects of your site. There’s also a set-up wizard that can guide you through the set-up of your account.
HostGator offers you just about all the support scenarios you could ever need. Everything is available 24/7/365 so it doesn’t matter what country you’re in.
Your options include: live chat, emails, phone calls, access to more than 500 tutorials and 700+ articles on different aspects of the site and how to get yours going, a mammoth knowledgebase of useful information and, finally, lots of active forums (some are open to everyone and others are members’ only).
You get a free domain name for the first term when you sign up for one of the plans on offer. After the initial 12 months, you’ll need to pay a fee to continue.
You can bring your site from a different host to this one at zero cost to you. However, this is a maximum of 1 GB.
You have a free website builder to assist you in creating your new website.
No advertising credits, unlike most companies. However, it’s usually easy enough to Google and find credits you can grab.
You get your domain name for free whenever you create a new account and site. This is only free for the initial contract term.
$100 in credits for Google AdWords and a further $100 in credits for Yahoo/Bing advertising.
You can have your site migrated from a different hosting company to HostGator at no cost to you.
You have access to a site builder for a small cost.
Visit siteground.com Visit hostgator.com
We hope these FAQ will assist you in your selection of a web host.
Have a question that’s not listed here? Reach out to us and we’ll be happy to research it for you.
The answer is nuanced. We recommend you contact the host if you need further clarification.
SiteGround is one of only 3 hosts worldwide recommended by the WordPress organization. That recommendation is based on SiteGround offering a technology environment that is specifically optimized for WordPress.
Here are some of SiteGround’s key WordPress hosting features:
Here are some helpful next action steps.
