HostGator vs GoDaddy Comparison Guide

HostGator is one of the fastest growing website hosting companies out there. They have over 750 employees, host 5 million+ websites, and have 4 different data centers. Full Review

GoDaddy is the number 1 I-CANN registrar (domain registrar) in the world. Gaining lots of popularity due to their seductive ads during the superbowl, their brand became a staple of webhosting. Full Review

When it comes to using a control panel it’s nice to know how to use it. We have heard mixed reviews on both sides. On the one hand it seems that the GoDaddy has a pretty neat, well designed control panel.

On the other hand, HostGator uses cPanel. cPanel comes with a gagillion different apps for free. For us, having access to these apps regularly is very important to maintaining a high-class website (MySQL Databases, phpMyAdmin, FTP Accounts and more). One more issue with GoDaddy is that we have read complaints (and experienced ourselves) that if you are new to hosting, GoDaddy may try to nickle and dime you. All of their products are legitimate, but consider HostGator instead to see if they offer the same service for free.

HostGator and GoDaddy both offer ways to install WordPress. First you must have a web hosting account with them. Then you can either install it manually or using one of their script installers.

• HostGator uses QuickInstall (Recommended) and Fantastico
• GoDaddy uses Hosting Connection

HostGator tech support is top-class. You rarely have to wait more than 4-5 minutes to get a question answered. Usually their team is smart enough to answer questions on the first level. They make it really easy to get a hold of them and you won’t be guessing what to do next.

GoDaddy is a huge company. They do a pretty good job at tech support. We have heard a few complaints about tech support being slow and unresponsive but not experienced it first hand. If you have used GoDaddy and want to leave a review, go here.

We have hosted sites on both GoDaddy and HostGator. Our feeling is that GoDaddy is just slower. For whatever reason, after working on sites in the ‘backend’ of WordPress or Website Tonight, we noticed significant delays when trying to save and publish content. On the frontend (the side visitors see), it was not as bad but it was still noticeable.

HostGator we feel performs better. We do not know exactly the cause of why this is, but their backend response time is better. We don’t run into hang ups or slow times when publishing content. The front end is pretty fast for a shared server.

Read about performance and WordPress

If you are a beginner, don’t understand much at all how to use hosting or build a website, GoDaddy has some great tools for you. Though, even beginners should try HostGator. They have worked better for us, and if you want more tools for free and better performance, HostGator will do the trick for you.