HostGator Review

HostGator is one of the best WordPress hosting companies, offering lots of hosting plans. Shared hosting up to dedicated servers, allowing for your site to grow without switching hosts.

What really makes HostGator standout is their excellent tech support. They have 100s of US based support staff available 24 hours a day. First level support is able to answer a surprising number of issues. Read Full HostGator Review

HostGator Benefits:

• Excellent Prices
• Some of the most knowledgeable support in the industry
• Server Environment is perfect for Word Press
• Custom WordPress Installers

http://www.hostgator.com

Founded in 2002, HostGator has become one of the premiere web hosting services. Based in Houston, Texas, the company is now one of the top ten web hosting companies in the world.

HostGator has developed a winning strategy with excellent US based tech support, fast reliable servers and reasonable prices.  They have become home to hundreds of thousands of WordPress Blogs.  Hard to imagine but these guys just are that big. They add about 800 to 1000 new customers per day.

WordPress Expert Review:

HostGator is one of our favorite WP hosting companies. Having used them for over five years, we remain a very happy customer. The servers are fast and well managed and customer support is always there for any questions.

cPanel which is the control panel they use is set up just right for WordPress. HostGator provides several 1-click installers to make it easier than ever to get your next blog up and running.

Ability to Host WordPress

If you start out with the one of the shared plans you will be provided with a control panel that gives you everything you need to manage your website.  HostGator uses an industry standard software called cPanel.  This is our favorite control panel for WordPress, it is fast, easy to use, file and folder permissions are correctly configured.  Essentially it is a no hassle setup.

One very nice aspect to hosting with an industry standard is WP plugins and developer support. Just about every WP plugin developer would have tested the plugin on a cPanel server.  This means that you are much less likely to have plugin conflicts or technical issues that only a developer will be able to fix.  We learned this over time.  Our blogs that run at HostGator/cPanel just seemed to have fewer issues than sites that ran on custom control panels and when we did have issues it was much easier for the developer or programmer to fix them.  Saving us time and money.

Server Speed & Uptime

You can expect very good server speed and uptime when using a HostGator Shared plan.  The results will only get better when using one of the more robust/expensive plans.  Keep in mind that it is shared hosting and one bad site can bring the whole server down.  HostGator has nice security measure and monitors to keep this form happening.

Should you decide to go with a 3rd party CDN, just ask support and they can enable rsync which will give you the ability to automatically transfer images and files to the CDN.

Customer Support

Customer support is easy to get in touch with and very knowledgeable. HostGator has a good grasp of what it takes to run WordPress well. While the support staff can be contacted by phone, we typically contact them via chat session. HostGator at times will have up to 100 support technicians at a time answering questions.

Plans & Prices

As your site grows, HostGator has the plans that can grow with you. Whether it is moving from a shared plane to a Virtual Private Server or even up to a dedicated Server. Host Gator will provide the best plan for you.

Final Thought

It seems that over the years HostGator has been able to refine the art of hosting and especially shared hosting. We are very happy with HostGator and will continue to use them.

HostGator Features & Detailed Information:

Hosting Plans

HostGator has shared, reseller, dedicated and VPS packages available . For WordPress you will most likely use a shared hosting plan.

The shared hosting plans are:

Hatching Plan: Starting at $4.95 per month, this plan includes a single domain, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and a shared SSL certificate.

Baby Plan: Starting at $7.95 / month, all the features of the hatchling plan and adds unlimited domains.

Business Plan: Starting at $12.95 / month, unlimited domains, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and a free dedicated SSL and IP, along with a free Toll-Free number.

All web hosting plans include 99.99% uptime guarantee, 45 day money-back guarantee and 24 hour customer support.

HostGator WordPress & Technical Features

Apart from unlimited bandwidth, disk space and domains in each hosting plan, HostGator offers a variety of other technical features. These include the flexible cPanel control panel, free sitebuilder tools, website templates, unlimited email accounts, support for PHP 5, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, SSI, CGI, Fast CGI scripts. $50 Google Adwords Credit, free website transfer, password protection, spam protection and website statistics are also provided.

You can install WordPress with a few clicks using HostGator’s Fantastico autoinstaller. The latest cPanel control panel allows you to create and edit your blog. The hosting plans support PHP 5, MySQL (5.x) and Apache (2.x) module needed for WordPress.

HostGator Customer Support

• Phone Support: Yes (24hrs/day)
• Email Support: Yes (24hr/day)
• Support Ticket System: Yes
• Live Support Chat: Yes (24hrs/day)
• Support Forums: Yes
• FAQ & Knowledge base: Yes
• Video Tutorials: Yes

As an award winning hosting service provider, HostGator provides top-notch security, management and customer support to its customers through various options.

Visit HostGator http://www.hostgator.com