Hostgator Business Plan Review: The Good and Bad

Hostgator Business Plan: The Good

Here’s what I like about the Hostgator Business Plan.

Low Cost

Compared to the prices that other web hosts charge for their premium package, the Hostgator Business plan is downright cheap. At a measly $6.95/m for the first year, it’s the lowest cost hosting for a business plan on the market. Sure, the subscription renews as soon as your first billing cycle is up, but that’s true for all web hosts, not just Hostgator.

Hostgator knows how to do one thing well – provide low-cost, reliable hosting. They don’t have many features, but this is one thing they’ve got nailed down!

Free Positive SSL

These days, no web host should ever charge for an SSL certificate. Except for GoDaddy, all major hosting providers offer free SSL. These are usually Let’s Encrypt certificates, or AutoSSL like with InMotion. Hostgator also offers free SSL with all its plans. However, the Business plan includes what is known as a positive SSL, over and above Let’s Encrypt.

This gives you the following:

1. Option to extend SSL validity to 2 years, instead of 90 days as with Let’s Encrypt
2. Warranty starting at $10,000 in case something goes wrong
3. The TrustLogo® site seal

In short, the positive SSL might inspire a bit more trust from your customers if you accept payments online. The TrustLogo seal and warranty provide you with additional protection. With Let’s Encrypt certificates, your hosting provider probably takes care of automatically renewing it for you, so you don’t have to worry about the 90-day limit.

I don’t think having a positive SSL is such a big deal compared to Let’s Encrypt. But it’s nice to have, I suppose! It won’t make your entire address bar green like an Extended certificate. So be aware of that!

A Dedicated IP Address

Unlike normal shared hosting, the Hostgator Business plan gives you a dedicated IP that’s not shared with anyone else. This is a unique offer since you normally require specialized hosting for a dedicated IP. The benefits of this are debatable. There’s no evidence that it improves your ranking. John Mueller from Google weighed in on a hotly debated study on the benefits of dedicated IPs:

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1306871880977207298

Despite the statement above, there’s some evidence to suggest that Google might blacklist some IPs that host a lot of spam or porn. On an ordinary shared hosting server, you never know what the other people who share your IP are up to, and it might negatively impact your business. With a dedicated IP, you can at least be assured that no one can mess up your reputation.

Anonymous FTP

Most shared hosts don’t support anonymous FTP on their shared hosting. For example, Bluehost specifically disallows anonymous FTP due to security issues. The Hostgator Business plan, on the other hand, lets users create and use this feature.

An anonymous FTP account allows anyone to log into an FTP server with the username “anonymous” and doesn’t require a password. For obvious reasons, this can scare a lot of hosts who worry that their service will be used for hosting dubious, or even illegal content. I don’t blame them for disabling it. But for whatever reason, if you need to use something like this, the Hostgator Business plan lets you do it.

Free SEO “Start” Package

Hostgator has an SEO plan as an add-on to their regular hosting. I’ve never thought that it was worth it, and there are plenty of free alternatives. But the Hostgator Business plan gives you the “Start” SEO package for free. This allows you to track up to 5 keywords, and analyze two competitors. It’s not much, but hey – free is free! It’s a nice little freebie.

Hostgator Business Plan: The Bad

Here’s what I dislike about the Hostgator Business plan.

No Automatic Backups

For me, this is the biggest drawback. I’m a paranoid person, and I take backups very seriously. For the highest tier plan, I expected Hostgator to at least back up my site once a day. Yes, I understand that this is why it’s cheap. But still! For automated backups, you need to purchase the Hostgator CodeGuard add-on, which isn’t that great. I choose to use DropMySite instead.

Other hosts like NameHero, A2 Hosting, and SiteGround, all have pretty good backup systems. Even Bluehost, which is another cheap hosting provider gives CodeGuard for free with their “Pro” plan. But Hostgator’s backups are pathetic. You have no choice but to purchase an additional add-on if you want your files and data to be safe. That’s the single biggest problem with the Hostgator Business plan.

No SSD Drives for Files

I would have thought that in today’s world, everyone would use SSD drives. However, using HDDs for storing files allows Hostgator to keep costs low. To be fair, they use SSD drives where it matters – for their MySQL database servers. Since databases are the place where the most intensive disk operations occur, it’s a smart compromise. But still, it’s not a good look for one of the largest hosting providers to be using SSD – even if it’s just for files and folders.

No Server Caching

Hostgator doesn’t provide server caching on any of its shared hosting plans. Here’s a list of web hosts that do. Without this, you have to rely on 3rd party caching plugins to speed up your site. But these are never as fast as when the server does it directly. It uses up CPU on your account, unlike native support. Hostgator only has server-caching for its managed WordPress plan. But without that, you have to implement it by yourself.

Other web hosts like NameHero, A2 Hosting, and SiteGround provide extensive server-caching capabilities for their highest tier plans. Using LiteSpeed servers, NameHero can extend it even to its basic tier packages! So the lack of server-caching on the Hostgator Business plan is a glaring omission.

Hostgator Business Plan vs Other Web Hosts

In this review, we’ll compare the Hostgator Business plan to the other advanced packages offered by SiteGround, Bluehost, NameHero, and GoDaddy. The difference in the features is quite large, so it’ll be an interesting comparison. Generally, the selling point of Hostgator is lower prices, so that’s what we’ll be seeing. The Business Plan will have a lot more freebies compared to other web hosts, which prioritize features instead.

Hostgator Business Plan vs SiteGround GoGeek

SiteGround’s GoGeek plan is their premium offering. However, I feel it’s important to state that I’ve stopped recommending SiteGround. The massive price increases, along with the lack of cPanel finally pushed me away. Instead, I recommend NameHero which we’ll compare next.

Feature Comparison

Here’s a summary of the feature comparison between Hostgator Business and SiteGround GoGeek:

Feature	Hostgator Business	SiteGround GoGeek
Price	$6.95/m	$7.99/m
Dashboard	cPanel	Custom interface
Storage	Unlimited	40 GB
Free Positive SSL	Yes	No
Free Dedicated IP	Yes	No
Free SEO Tools	Yes	No
Free Domain	Yes	No
SSD Drives	No – Database only	Yes
Backups	No	Yes
Server Caching	No	Yes
Priority Support	No	Yes

As you can see, the Hostgator Business plan has a lot more free items than SiteGround’s GoGeek. On the other hand, SiteGround’s features really make it stand out. Hostgator lacks backups, malware scanning, staging, support for new technologies, and a lot more. SiteGround has all of these. Here’s my full review of the SiteGround GoGeek plan.

Hostgator Business vs SiteGround GoGeek Pros and Cons

Here are the broad positive and negative aspects of each:

Choosing between these two depends on what you want. If you just want solid hosting at a cheap price without bells and whistles, the Hostgator Business plan is great. But if you want advanced features, priority support, and support for the latest technologies, then choose SiteGround’s GoGeek plan.

Hostgator Business vs SiteGround GoGeek Rating:

Hostgator Business Rating: 3/5 ★★★☆☆
SiteGround GoGeek Rating: 4/5 ★★★★☆

Winner: SiteGround GoGeek

Hostgator Business vs Bluehost Pro

Unlike SiteGround’s GoGeek, the Bluehost Pro plan has a lot more freebies. In this regard, it’s more similar to the Hostgator Business plan. Unfortunately, it’s still super expensive compared to Hostgator.

Features Comparison

Here’s a comparison between the two:

Feature	Hostgator Business	Bluehost Pro
Price	$6.95/m	$5.45/m
Free Domain Privacy	No	Yes
Free Positive SSL	Yes	No
Free Dedicated IP	Yes	Yes
Free SEO Tools	Yes	No
Automated Backup	No	Yes
Free Office 365	No	Yes (30 days only)
Free Domain	Yes	Yes
SSD Drives	No – Database only	Yes
Marketing Offers	$150	$200

Bluehost Pro is still a lot more expensive than Hostgator Business. But unlike SiteGround, it has a lot more free stuff like a dedicated IP and automated backups. You also get a free domain. However, for the price range of Bluehost Pro, I feel they don’t have nearly enough features to make it worthwhile.

Pros and Cons

Hostgator Business vs Bluehost Pro Rating:

Hostgator Business Rating: 3/5 ★★★☆☆
Bluehost Pro Rating: 3/5 ★★★☆☆

Winner: Tie

Hostgator Business vs GoDaddy Ultimate

“Ultimate” is GoDaddy’s high-end plan. So it’s fair to compare it with Hostgator Business. The most important difference between the two is that GoDaddy Ultimate only comes with 1-year free SSL, whereas Hostgator Business has free SSL for the entire duration of hosting. This saves you close to $100 every year! It’s a huge difference and one that you simply can’t ignore. Apart from that, GoDaddy’s plan is far more expensive – both in the initial discount phase, as well as when it comes to the full price.

Features Comparison

Here are the features comparison between Hostgator Business and GoDaddy Ultimate:

Feature	Hostgator Business	GoDaddy Ultimate
Price	$6.95/m	$12.99/m
Free SSL	Yes	First-year ONLY
Free Dedicated IP	Yes	No
Free SEO Tools	Yes	No
Automated Backup	No	No
Free Office 365	No	Yes (1 year)
Free Domain	Yes	Yes
SSD Drives	No – Database only	No
Marketing Offers	$150	None
Anycast DNS	No	Yes

As you can see, the only advantages to GoDaddy Ultimate are the free Office 365 subscription for 1-year and the Anycast DNS Network.

What I Like and Dislike About Each

Hostgator Business vs GoDaddy Ultimate Rating:

Hostgator Business Rating: 3/5 ★★★☆☆
GoDaddy Ultimate Rating: 1/5 ★☆☆☆☆

Winner: Hostgator Business

Hostgator Business Plan vs Baby Plan

Here’s a list of features that are included with the Hostgator Business hosting plan, but not with the Baby plan.

Business Plan Review: Extra Features:

Positive SSL Included

The Hostgator Business plan comes with a free positive SSL certificate as explained above. This is a value of $40/year, so it’s quite a big bonus! Without it, you have an ordinary Let’s Encrypt AutoSSL certificate that renews every three months.

Free Dedicated IP Address

The Hostgator Business hosting plan provides you with a free dedicated IP address for your website. Look further up for more details on dedicated IPs. The Baby plan has this for an additional $4/month. That’s a huge amount compared to the cost of hosting! So if for some reason you need a dedicated IP address, you should go for the Business plan without a doubt.

Do you need a dedicated IP? Probably not. Unless you’re running some special service that you want to access directly via the IP address – maybe for performance reasons.

Anonymous FTP Allowed

If you need to have a publicly accessible folder where people can access, download, and upload files, then you require a Hostgator Business hosting plan. Again, this seems to be a pretty niche scenario, and I don’t think most websites will need it.

Hostgator Business Plan E-Mail Features

The Hostgator Business plan comes with the following e-mail facilities:

1. Web Mail
2. Email Aliases
3. Auto Responders
4. Spam Filtering
5. Mail forwarding
6. More Mailing Lists

All these features are available with the Hostgator Hatchling and Business plans as well. The only difference I can tell is in the “Mailing Lists” feature. The number of lists you can make depends on your plan according to the following rules:

Hostgator Hatchling: 20 e-mail lists max
Hostgator Baby: 25 e-mail lists max
Hostgator Business: 50 e-mail lists max

Hostgator Business Plan Login Details

You can log into your Hostgator Business plan pretty much the same way you log into any cPanel account. Use one of the following addresses in your browser:

example.com:2083
example.com/cpanel
cpanel.example.com
example.com:2082

Replace example.com with the name of your domain. The difference between example.com:2083 and example.com:2082 is that 2083 takes you to a secure login page, whereas 2082 can take you to an insecure page over plain HTTP. Always try and use 2083 to log into cPanel unless you have no choice. You can read more about the different ways to log into cPanel.

These login methods apply to all shared hosting accounts, and not just to the Hostgator Business hosting plan.

Hostgator Business Plan Toll Free Number

Hostgator’s support staff are available to you at any time of the day. Here are their contact details via phone:

Toll-Free Number: (866)964-2867
Local Number: (713) 574 – 5287
International: 00+1-713-574-5287

You can also contact them via live chat. They’re available 24/7!

What About Hostgator Business Plan Free SSL?

As mentioned above, all Hostgator plans come with free SSL via Let’s Encrypt. However, the Hostgator Business hosting plan, in particular, comes with a free positive SSL as well, which can inspire more trust and can also be renewed for up to two years.

Useful Hostgator Links

Here’s a list of links you might find useful when shopping for Hostgator plans:

• Complete list of Hostgator Coupons
• Hostgator Hatchling Plan review
• Hostgator Baby Plan review
• Is Hostgator CodeGuard Worth it?
• Hostgator SEO add-on Alternatives
• Hostgator vs Bluehost Comparison