The biggest difference between Hostgator Hatchling and the Baby plan is that you can host unlimited websites on Baby. But there are a few other changes too!
The Hatchling plan is the cheapest package available from Hostgator. It’s great value for money, especially considering that Hostgator pricing isn’t deceptive and doesn’t impose absurd hosting limits like 1 database on its cheapest plans. However, there will come a time when you need to upgrade to the next tier. Here’s the Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby plan comparison, and what you need to know before you upgrade.
The Best Hostgator Coupon
This is the best one to use for Hatchling shared hosting:
Check out the Hostgator coupon code list for similar coupons for the Baby plan.
Pricing: Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby
The difference between the two isn’t high. Here’s a comparison of the pricing for Hostgator Baby and Hatchling for 12-months hosting using the specified coupons:
| Pricing | Coupon | |
|---|---|---|
| Hatchling | $2.57/m | |
| Baby | $4.50/m |
As you can see, the difference is less than two bucks a month if you sign up using the coupon above. And for the low price of the upgrade, you get the additional features explained below.
Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby: Three Additional Features
To understand when you need to upgrade from Hostgator Hatchling, you need to understand its 3 major limitations. Namely:
- Single website only
- Resource Restrictions
- No parked domains
Let’s examine each of these three in more detail. For a comprehensive treatment, you can read my complete review of Hostgator Hatchling.
1. Hatchling Allows Just One Domain
Probably the biggest restriction on Hatchling from a long-term hosting point of view is that you can only host one website on it. I can tell from experience that once you have a website, you tend to create another. And another! On Hostgator Hatchling, you can only host one of these. And that’s the single biggest difference between the Hatchling and the Baby plan.
As a personal example, I have three websites on my current hosting provider. This one – WP-Tweaks – my blog, and my professional website. If I were to use the Hatchling plan, I would have to find another place to host at least two of them. This is probably the biggest restriction for power users. That’s where the Baby package comes in.
Hostgator’s Baby plan on the other hand, allows you to have unlimited domains. This means that you can continue expanding your collection of websites without limits. Here’s a screenshot of the comparison of the number of domains:
Given the low cost of Hatchling, it’s not surprising that Hostgator doesn’t allow you to host more than one website. All other hosts with low priced plans have the same policy. It’s meant for those who are just starting up with their first website and don’t have any other side businesses. If you’re a single website owner, this might indeed be all that you need.
2. Fewer Resources on Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby
Being on the lowest tier plan, you’ll need to upgrade Hostgator Hatchling to Baby if you find that the number of visitors to your site are chewing up more resources than allowed. “Resources” typically mean:
- CPU time
- Input/Output (I/O) operations per second
- RAM
As a general rule, Hostgator doesn’t allow a shared hosting accounts to use more than 25% of CPU time for more than 90 seconds. Since you’re sharing the server resources with a large number of other clients, it makes sense that there are some limits to how much you can use. There’s enough for “burst” usage for short periods of time, but anything more than that means you need to upgrade.
Naturally, since Hatchling is the cheapest package on Hostgator, you’ll be sharing your server with more accounts than on the other plans. The Baby plan on the other hand, has a lot more resources and lower density servers. Which means that your sites can handle a lot more, and there’s less chance that someone else’s bad behavior will affect your site.
3. Hatchling Has No Parked Domains
Parked domains are when you purchase additional domain names and attach them to your existing website. There are many uses for parked domains, notably for snapping up the “.net” and “.org” versions of your website so that other people can’t pretend to be you. Unfortunately, the Hostgator Hatchling plan doesn’t allow you to use parked domains at all, which is a major drawback.
The best host for parked domains is NameHero, thanks to its unlimited parking feature even for its lowest priced plan. But if you upgrade from Hostgator’s Hatchling to the Baby plan, then you too can have an unlimited number of parked domains.
Keep in mind that parked domains have other uses as well – such as being able to hoard potentially useful names and then sell them to the highest bidder. Done right, it can be quite a lucrative side hustle! All you need is the right instincts to be able to spot good domain names when they expire, and an ear to the ground.
Disk Space Isn’t a Problem
One area where you won’t have an issue with Hostgator Hatchling is disk space. Unlike other web hosts, Hostgator has unlimited disk space for all its plans – even the cheapest ones. There are many reasons for this, one of them being that they use HDD drives for file hosting and save the high-speed SSDs only for their databases.
Lots of web hosts rely on restricting storage space either of the files or the website database to get you to upgrade. But you won’t have that problem with Hostgator Hatchling.
Bottom Line
The Hostgator Hatchling vs Baby plan comparison is pretty clear. If you just have a single website with not too many visitors, you can continue using Hatchling in perpetuity. But if you find yourself needing to host more than one website, or require a little more breathing room for your site to grow, then you should upgrade to at least the Baby package.
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