The Hatchling plan is Hostgator’s most basic and cost effective shared hosting package. It’s the cheapest shared hosting plan on the market, beating out all the others.
However, you need the right coupon for that!
Best Hostgator Hatchling Coupon Code
The Hatchling plan has a special coupon which gives a lower price than all the others.
Duration: 36 months
Hatchling Coupon Code (Click to copy):
This lowers the price of of the Hostgator Hatchling package to $2.57/month. That’s a huge discount. Here’s a screenshot of the price in the billing section when you checkout using the code above:
Note that this price is available when you sign up for 3 years. If you want to host for longer than that, there are other coupons to apply. Here’s the full Hostgator coupon code list to help you decide.
Hostgator is one of the most cost-effective web hosts. Here’s an article on Hostgator pricing to find out why.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hostgator Hatchling Right for Me?
For normal websites with average traffic, the Hostgator Hatchling plan is adequate. There are better plans out there with more speed and resources, but Hostgator’s Hatchling plan has the lowest cost with acceptable performance.
The most important factor is that you can only attach one domain to Hostgator Hatchling. So if you have more than one website and domain name, you need to choose a different plan. This makes it unsuitable for domain parking.
If you want to sell products on your website, you might find it easier to use the Hostgator Website Builder, instead.
What the Hostgator Hatchling Plan Storage?
Unlike other providers like GoDaddy for example, Hostgator doesn’t have any limits on its storage for the Hatchling plan. That’s not to say that the limits of other providers are low though. Safe to say that storage is not going to be a problem for you.
To enable this, Hostgator uses HDD drives instead of SSD. It allows them to offer unlimited storage at low prices. However, their MySQL database is hosted on SSD servers, so there’s no real performance loss. The only limitation is if you’re using the Hatchling plan as a file or media sharing service, which is against Hostgator’s terms of service.
For more choices, here’s a list of web hosting plans with unlimited storage.
What Are the Hostgator Hatchling Plan Features?
The starter Hostgator package comes with the following features:
- Unmetered disk space
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 1 Domain
- Unlimited sub-domains
- Free SSL
- Unlimited FTP accounts
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- SSH Access
- Unlimited POP3 Accounts
- cPanel
Along with these, you can run any application that you normally would on a standard Linux shared hosting server. Of course, you must keep in mind that that this is shared hosting, and that all hosts oversell their servers.
Which brings us to the next point.
What Are the Limitations of the Hostgator Hatchling Plan?
All the Hostgator features talk about “Unmetered” and “Unlimited”. You must understand that these are not to be taken literally. What they mean is “Any reasonable usage for the average customer”. The Hostgator Terms of Service make it very clear that they can terminate your account at any time.
Particularly, see this line:
” HostGator may, in our sole discretion, terminate access to the Services, apply additional fees, or remove or delete User Content for those accounts that are found to be in violation of HostGator’s terms and conditions.”
You cannot use more than 25% of resources on the server for more than 90 seconds. This is a violation of their terms of service. The implication is that high usage is fine for a few burst scenarios lasting for a very short period of time. Anything more, and you’re out.
Consider that Hostgator’s VPS and Dedicated servers themselves don’t have “unlimited” or “unmetered” usage. These guys pay a lot more than the ordinary shared hosting customer. So when they can’t get truly unlimited resources, neither can you.
The Hostgator Hatchling plan is great for a basic website with mainly static content that doesn’t change too often and doesn’t get a ton of traffic. Otherwise, it’ll struggle to breathe.
Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby Plan
With the Hostgator Hatchling, you have two limitations compared to the Baby plan:
- Limited to 1-domain
- Unable to purchase a dedicated IP
Here’s my complete review of the Hostgator Baby plan.
Does Hostgator Hatchling have Free SSL?
Yes. A while back, Hostgator started offering free SSL certificates to all its customers. These are “Let’s Encrypt” certificates and provide you with the standard “green padlock” as required by Google to get the search ranking benefits.
However, if you’re offering e-commerce transactions on your site, you should consider upgrading to a higher-level certificate. But most sites can get by just fine with the basic one from Let’s Encrypt.
The Hostgator Business plan on the other hand, gives you a free positive SSL certificate. That’s slightly superior to the standard Let’s Encrypt certificates. Read my Hostgator Business hosting plan review to find out more.
Does Hostgator Hatchling have SSD Drives?
As of today, Hostgator does not offer SSD storage on its shared hosting. This will make itself most noticeable when working with database heavy applications without dynamic caching. Like a constantly changing WordPress website.
Though there’s some debate on whether SSDs are actually useful for the average website owner. As mentioned above, Hostgator uses SSDs for the servers on which it keeps its MySQL databases. So any negative impact is really limited.
Hostgator Hatchling vs Hostgator WordPress – Is there a Difference?
There are a few differences between Hostgator Hatchling and WordPress packages from Hostgator. Here’s a more detailed Hostgator WordPress review.
Pricing Difference
Hostgator’s WordPress plans are significantly more expensive than their basic shared plans.
Functionality Difference
The WordPress packages have additional features such as a CDN and caching of dynamic content. This speeds up your WordPress site quite a bit. In addition, they take care of automatically updating your WordPress installation, theme, and plugin files.
Also, special security rules like mod_sec rules are already configured to protect WordPress from the most common attacks out there.
cPanel
In addition, there’s no cPanel access for WordPress hosting. This isn’t usually a big deal, because most of the cPanel features are unnecessary for regular users anyway. Advanced users might be inconvenienced though.
But otherwise, the most important features of cPanel are rolled into the new WordPress interface that replaces it.
Summary
The Hostgator Hatchling plan is as good a plan as you’re going to get for basic shared hosting. It comes with a free SSL certificate. The best Hostgator hatchling coupon code is with a 36-month billing cycle. If you want to host for shorter than that, choose a different Hostgator coupon instead.
