Planning to launch a business website or blog? Looking for Bluehost vs HostGator comparison posts to find out the best web host? If so, this’s is the right page you are landed in.
Bluehost and HostGator are leading cheap web hosting services. No matter what kind of website you are going to start, they allow you to host them with minimum investment and efforts.
In this post, we’re going to compare both budget-friendly hosting providers to choose the winner.
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Table of Contents
Bluehost: Overview
Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in 2003. It is one of the cheap web hosting services with affordable pricing and valuable services. They serve customers with shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting plans.
It is one of largest web hosts and officially recommended by WordPress.org. They host more than 2 million domains around the world.
Powered by SSD technology, it automatically optimizes your site to boost performance and reduce page loading time. Connect it to the built-in free CDN to smoothen the content delivery and further improve your visitor’s experience.
From free CDN to email marketing tool, Bluehost offers many freebies to give you a perfect start. It constantly monitors security events to detect and block hacking attempts if any. Free malware scan is another advantage of Bluehost shared hosting plans. It will also back up your site every day to safeguard data against unexpected loss.
They have a 24/7 customer support and 30 days money-back guarantee. You can reach out to their customer support any time via phone (888-401-4678) or live chat.
Bluehost Hosting Plans
Bluehost offers shared, WordPress, managed WordPress, VPS, WooCommerce, and dedicated hosting plans. Their pricing starts at as low as $2.95/mo.
Let us check their pricing across various hosting types,
Bluehost has four subscription plans in shared and WordPress hosting types—Basic, Choice Plus, Online store, and Pro.
Basic
- Start at $2.95/mo
- 1 website
- 50 GB SSD storage
- 24/7 support
Choice Plus
- Start at $5.45/mo
- Everything in the Basic plan, plus
- 3 websites
- 40 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL
- Free domain
- Free CDN
- Daily backups
- Malware scan
Online Store
- Start at $9.95/mo
- Everything in the Choice Plus plan, plus
- eCommerce plugins ($450 worth)
- Unlimited products
- Safe online payments
- Booking
- Gift cards
- Wishlist
Pro
- Start at $13.95/mo
- Everything in the Choice Plus plan, plus
- 5 websites
- 100 GB SSD storage
Click here to visit Bluehost and choose a shared or WordPress hosting plan for your website (30-days money-back guarantee)
VPS Hosting Plans
Bluehost has three plans in VPS hosting—Standard, Enhanced, and Ultimate.
Standard
- Start at $29.99/mo
- 2 GB RAM
- 120 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 1 IP address
Enhanced
- Start at $39.99/mo
- 4 GB RAM
- 165 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 2 IP addresses
Ultimate
- Start at $69.99/mo
- 8 GB RAM
- 240 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 2 IP addresses
Click here to visit Bluehost and choose a VPS hosting plan to increase your website performance (30-days money-back guarantee)
Dedicated Hosting Plans
Bluehost serves customers with three plans in dedicated hosting type—Standard, Enhanced, and Premium.
Standard
- Start at $89.98/mo
- 8 GB RAM
- 1 TB HDD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 2.3 GHz CPU Clock Speed
- 3 IP addresses
- Free domain
Enhanced
- Start at $89.98/mo
- 16 GB RAM
- 2 TB HDD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 2.3 GHz CPU Clock Speed
- 4 IP addresses
- Free domain
Premium
- Start at $119.88/mo
- 30 GB RAM
- 2 TB HDD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 3.3 GHz CPU Clock Speed
- 5 IP addresses
- Free domain
Click here to visit Bluehost and choose a dedicated hosting plan to maximize your website performance
HostGator: Overview
HostGator is founded by Brent Oxley in 2002. It is another cheap web host from US. They have shared, WordPress, cloud, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans to meet the needs of all types of customers.
Their hosting plans come with SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and other features. It is a good choice for beginners to start a blog with limited tools.
HostGator has a 24/7 support and 45-days money-back guarantee. You can contact their support via phone, email, and live chat.
HostGator Hosting Plans
HostGator offers shared, WordPress, cloud, VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting plans. Their plans star at just $3.75/mo.
HostGator has three subscription plans in shared hosting—Hatchling, Baby, and Business.
Hatchling
- Start at $3.75/mo
- 1 website
- 10 GB SSD storage
- Free domain
- Free SSL
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free email
- Chat support
Baby
- Start at $4.50/mo
- Everything in the Hatchling plan, plus
- 2 websites
- 20 GB SSD storage
- Advertising credit
- Phone & chat support
Business
- Start at $6.25/mo
- Everything in the Baby plan, plus
- 3 websites
- 40 GB SSD storage
- Free CDN
- Free migration
- Free Premium SSL
- Free dedicated IP
Click here to visit HostGator and choose a shared hosting plan for your blog (45-days money-back guarantee)
WordPress Hosting Plans
HostGator has three plans in optimized WordPress hosting—Starter, Standard, and Business.
Starter
- Start at $5.95/mo
- 1 website
- 100k visitors/mo
- Free domain
- Free SSL
- Free email
- Free migration
- 24/7 support
Standard
- Start at $7.95/mo
- Everything in the Starter plan, plus:
- 2 websites
- 200k visitors/mo
- 24/7 support
Business
- Start at $9.95/mo
- Everything in the Standard plan, plus:
- 3 websites
- 500k visitors/mo
- 24/7 support
Click here to visit HostGator and choose a WordPress hosting plan for your business
Cloud Hosting Plans
HostGator has three subscription plans in cloud hosting type—Hatchling Cloud, Baby Cloud, and Business Cloud.
Hatchling Cloud
- Start at $4.95/mo
- 1 website
- 2 GB RAM
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 24/7 support
Baby Cloud
- Start at $6.57/mo
- Unlimited websites
- 4 GB RAM
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 24/7 support
Business Cloud
- Start at $9.95/mo
- Unlimited websites
- 6 GB RAM
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 24/7 support
Click here to visit HostGator and choose a cloud hosting plan for your growing business
VPS Hosting Plans
They have four types of subscription plans in VPS hosting—Snappy 2000, Snappy 4000, Snappy 6000, and Snappy 8000.
Snappy 2000
- Start at $23.95/mo
- 2 GB RAM
- 120 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Automated backups
- 2 dedicated IPs
Snappy 4000
- Start at $34.95/mo
- 4 GB RAM
- 165 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Automated backups
- 2 dedicated IPs
Snappy 8000
- Start at $59.95/mo
- 8 GB RAM
- 240 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Automated backups
- 2 dedicated IPs
Click here to visit HostGator and choose a VPS hosting plan to increase your website performance
Bluehost vs HostGator: Comparison of Features
Bluehost and HostGator are popular cheap web hosting services from the same name behind, Endurance International Group. However, their features and quality of service vary.
Let us examine how they differ and compare their shared hosting plans in detail.
1. Free domain
Bluehost offers a free domain (1 year) in all shared and WordPress hosting plans. It is useful for beginners to book their dream domain names freely and build a website around it.
The offer is valid for all popular domain extensions such as .com, .org, .net, .tech, and others. It is also possible to transfer your existing domain to Bluehost to manage your domain and hosting from one place.
HostGator also offers a free domain in all shared, WordPress, and cloud hosting plans. Anyone who sign up for 12, 24, or 36 month hosting plans can claim a free domain during sign up or on their initial hosting term.
2. Performance
Both Bluehost and HostGator have blazing fast SSD servers to host websites. There are no restrictions regarding the bandwidth limit also.
As a Bluehost’s shared hosting customer, you will get a free CDN integration to serve content faster from more than 200 edge locations. It is not a matter where your hosting servers are located. Cloudflare helps you to serve content faster irrespective of your user location.
Unfortunately, HostGator provide a free CDN in Business plan (shared hosting) only. It costs $6.25 per month. If you are opted for any other shared or WordPress hosting plan of HostGator, you should make additional investment for CDN delivery.
3. Security
Bluehost monitors your website security in real-time. It will also run a daily malware scan to detect and defend malicious threats if any. Powered by SiteLock, Bluehost protects your pages against all kinds of cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities.
Both Bluehost and HostGator add free SSLs to your sites. It encourages visitors to make safe payments and boost your sales. But again, unfortunately, there is no virus scan in HostGator’s hosting plans. It is a big drawback in this era of increasing cyber crimes.
4. Daily backups
A hacking attempt or a plugin vulnerability may damage your entire site. It will affect your online reputation and revenue. If your store went offline, even regular customers will go for other similar websites to buy products and services.
So it is essential to restore your lost data in no time. For that, you should have regular backups. Bluehost automatically backup your content and files daily to handle such strange situations. If anything bad happened, visit your Bluehost account and open cPanel to restore your entire website in 1-click.
On the other hand, HostGator doesn’t have a free backup option. You should buy CodeGuard add-on to turn on daily, automated backups for your websites. It starts at $2.75 per month with 1 GB storage and up to 3 restores a month.
5. Free migration
Moving data from one web host to another is a crucial task. Sometimes, you may lose files and content in between. It would be great if your new hosting company is willing to to take this risk.
As a result, you can relax peacefully or engage in other activities. Bluehost offers a free migration (for a limited period) in all shared hosting plans. They will automatically migrate your content to the new destination via Bluehost Migrator plugin.
HostGator doesn’t provide any option to migrate your files freely. You should use a third-party plugin or hire an expert to handle the process.
6. Pricing
Bluehost’s basic shared hosting plan starts at $2.95 per month for 1-years term. It lets you host a single website with 10 GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and other features.
HostGator’s basic plan costs $3.75 per month for 1-years term. It comes with a single domain hosting, 10 GB SSD storage, and unlimited GB bandwidth.
7. 24/7 support
Bluehost has a 24/7/365 customer support. You can contact them via phone and live chat for clarifications, fix complaints, etc. They will answer your queries in short moments and try to fix them as fast as possible.
HostGator also has a real-time support system. Reach out to them by phone, email, or chat anytime you need. They will address your questions and solve complaints before your business is getting affected.
Our verdict
| Features | Bluehost | HostGator |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | ✔ | ✔ |
| Free CDN | ✔ | ✖ |
| SSD storage | ✔ | ✔ |
| Unlimited bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ |
| Free SSL | ✔ | ✔ |
| Free malware scan | ✔ | ✖ |
| Automated backups | ✔ | ✖ |
| Manual backups | ✔ | ✖ |
| Free migration | ✔ | ✖ |
| SEO tools | ✔ | ✖ |
| 24/7 support | Phone, Live chat | Phone, Email, Live chat |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days | 45 days |
Bluehost is the clear winner. It is fast, affordable, and secure. HostGator misses many essential hosting features including free domain, free CDN, and malware scan.
If you are going to start a business website or blog, Bluehost is the right choice. It is cheap and lets you save money maximum through free domain registration, free migration, and marketing tools. Bluehost runs daily malware scans and daily backups to safeguard your online business from cybercriminals.
Most hosting companies provide a free CDN integration in their plans. Bluehost is connected to Cloudflare CDN to deliver pages faster irrespective of user locations. But sadly, HostGator misses this part.
Bluehost’s shared hosting plans start at $2.95 per month. HostGator is expensive and costs $3.75 a month. Bluehost saves your money and gives you more features to create faster, safer websites.
Click here to visit Bluehost and choose a shared hosting plan for your business (30-days money-back guarantee)
