Whether a small merchant or a big business, a website is a must-have, otherwise how would you market your brands online?
Making the right choice of a web hosting platform can be of a significant impact online. However, the wrong choice of a web host may harm your business, including:
- A loss of income in case your site goes down all over sudden due to a poor web host. This means that your customers are unable to find you online, thus a loss in sales.
- A poor SEO ranking is likely to occur in your site if it continuously goes down. Of course, your goal as a business person should be to appear among the top searches to attract potential customers.
- Your site is on the verge of attacks from online fraudsters if you invest in a bad web host. An excellent hosting platform should be capable of protecting your data from such attacks.
That said, let’s compare the two hosting companies: SiteGround vs. HostGator, after which, we can recommend one for your site. Stay tuned for more details.
HostGator vs SiteGround Compared
In this post, we weighed the two services – SiteGround and HostGator, which are well-known platforms for web hosting.
HostGator is one of the best hosting providers worldwide capable of building and managing a website. 9 million-plus domains and 400, 000 users are managed by HostGator, making it the best.
SiteGround, on the contrary, has a different motive from that of HostGator. Its open-source software supports multiple programs, including WordPress, Magento, and Joomla, along with hosting plans exclusively designed for them.
Despite being younger than HostGator, SiteGround has been able to attract an incredible number of customers across the globe.
Uptime
Uptime should be an essential aspect when choosing a web hosting company. Uptime is the time taken by a website to operate effectively. That’s why knowing how much uptime a hosting company can generate to its users is of great importance.
After extensive research, HostGator was able to generate an uptime of 99.99 percent. This means that there are minimal chances that your site would go down if you opt for HostGator. The good news is that the uptime is the same whether you decide to go for the premium or basic plans. Even with the lowest basic plan, you still get the same uptime!
The same applies to SiteGround. It guarantees a 99.99 percent uptime as HostGator for all the packages offered. Based on our findings, SiteGround attains a 99.9 percent uptime due to the programming, which may be of the significance of fixing malware that causes a website to shut.
To confirm the efficiency of both the hosting companies, the uptime numbers affirmed minimal chances of a site going down. In fact, your website may be temporarily down for 4 hours in 6 months, no matter the web host company you’re using.
It is, however, essential to note that over the past few years, SiteGround has shown drastic performance in terms of management. And as such, it has attracted a lot of big industries from WordPress Engine to SiteGround.
Hosting Speed
Both the web hosting companies in question guarantee excellent speeds. Choosing between the two can be daunting, but we’ve made it simpler for you by recommending SiteGround. Meanwhile, HostGator shows to be just as equivalent.
However, the difference in speed comes in due to the distinct approaches both services take to maximize speed.
SiteGround increases its speed using a tool known as the SuperCacher while HostGator takes the hardware-based approach. This includes adding more service layers and equipment. HostGator has also invested in tons of VPS servers, placing it at a more significant position of achieving sheer speeds if need be.
That said, HostGator provides an average web page speed of 1.54 seconds with SiteGround providing a standard web page speed of 1.59 seconds. Even though SiteGround has shown positive progress over the years with the help of the caching system, making it a standout.
Server Response Times
Ever wondered what those buffoon-looking hardware stacked together in large offices are?
Well, those are referred to as servers. They serve as a small hard drive in your computer or even laptop. And just like each part of your computer relies on the hard drive to take effect, the same applies to a web server.
HostGator, as well as SiteGround choose to go different ways in this category, just like in the hosting speeds compartment.
Again, HostGator uses several servers that work together to ensure stability as well as maintaining the balance of the servers. This also helps keep a productive server response time.
SiteGround, on the other hand, provides its users with an opportunity to stream, which ensures that loads are maintained at a lower profile. This helps to accommodate significant traffic.
Data Center
HostGator partners with SoftLayer, which makes the hosting provider an excellent option for data collection.
So far, SoftLayer manages the best data collection center all over the world. The data centers are not only the best but also equipped with a constant server monitoring tool; multiple power feeds, UPS backups, and power generators as well.
SiteGround, in contrast, has data centers located in three regions, namely: Amsterdam, Singapore, and Boston. These data centers are hardware-based equipped and fully secured with physical security.
SiteGround, having selected strategic places as their data centers, has helped with quicker processing for its users. On top of that, it provides a free CDN feature that helps improve the efficiency of your website.
So you see, SiteGround takes the lead without any doubt. The top-notch services, CDN feature, strategically placed data centers, you name it!
Packages
HostGator offers its users three shared hosting packages. This may be as low as $3.96 per month, with all the benefits inclusive.
HostGator also has additional packages for websites that receive massive traffic, which includes:
- Reseller package which starts from $19.96 a month
- VPS Hosting which starts from $11.97 a month
- Dedicated Hosting which starts from $105 a month
Similarly, SiteGround has three basic plans for shared web hosting, which can be upgraded at any time. It also allows an incredible number of 100, 000 views every month, favoring bloggers and marketers.
Below is the pricing for the three web hosting services SiteGround offers:
- Web hosting that starts at $3.95
- Cloud hosting beginning from $54.00
- Dedicated hosting, which goes for $217.50
Based on our research, both hosting companies prove comparable features with almost the same pricing. However, SiteGround goes the extra mile of providing discounts to its users, which is unheard of from the other hosting platforms.
With SiteGround, you get to enjoy half-price discounts along with incredible features that come with it.
Technical Support
Just like most marketers out there, most web hosting companies aim at providing the best technical support to its customers.
This is enough reason as to why people prefer a particular service to another. Reliable customer support is of considerable significance, especially for small merchants, who lack specialized technicians to help out with techie-problems.
Both SiteGround and HostGator provide its customers with excellent technical support, some of which include Live Chat support as well as 24/7 phone calls. No flaws have been found in either of the providers, but we recommend SiteGround to provide the best support of all the other services.
The Bottom Line: HostGator or SiteGround – Which one is Better?
Web hosting service providers are responsible for conducting response tests, via dedicated hosting. Surprisingly, almost half of users opt for shared hosting.
However, here are our findings after running both HostGator and SiteGround for the server response tests. HostGator provides an average response time of 195ms, while SiteGround guarantees an average response time of 222ms.
Your choice of a hosting company will depend on your level of needs. As a customer, expect nothing than the lowest package of the server response time. And as for the dedicated server, you’ll have to sacrifice several dollars from your pocket.
From our searches point of view and that of our customers, we’d gladly recommend SiteGround. When it comes to handling large server loads, its approach is more preferred to that of HostGator due to the quick responses.
HostGator and SiteGround are no doubt some of the best hosting platforms that people can’t stop praising or talking about. These two hosting rivals have attracted a ton of subscribers across the globe.
Both have one motive – to grow further while improving their standards. Both have positive customer reviews, as well as fantastic features and excellent user support.
They have the excellent tools that help users to maximize hosting speeds while effectively marketing online.
Depending on your priorities, these two rivals are still a good bet. Maybe, you could get a little specific by listing down your priorities to help you make a sound decision.
However, for comparison, we have to recommend the best service provider to our readers. We, therefore, suggest SiteGround based on our experiences.
If your doubts aren’t clear yet, you can check out for customers’ reviews from their website. Its continuous progress, as well as services, makes it a top-notch hosting company around the globe. What’s more, it has a 30-day refund, which means that you can happily get your refund within 30 days if you are dissatisfied with their services.