Are you curious about the HostGator managed WordPress hosting review? So this blog is definitely for you.
The shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated, reseller, and WooCommerece hosting are the types of hosting.
The WordPress hosting is optimized for WordPress CMS (Content Management System) and most webmasters use this CMS.
WordPress is the open-source CMS that is used to create, store, showcase and manage web content in an ideal way. Not only do bloggers use it but also a significant number of web developers enjoy it. A 30% of all the web is powered by WordPress CMS.
Before starting the unbiased HostGator managed WordPress hosting review, let’s talk about HostGator at a glance.
Table of Contents
A Brief Introduction to HostGator
Founded in October 2002, HostGator is one of the reliable, oldest, secure, and faster web hosts. The web host gained 1,000 customers’ trust in the first year of the company launching and after that got rapidly continual growth. Also, the company had more than 200,000 clients worldwide in 2009.
HostGator was acquired by EIG (Endurance International Group) in 2012 and it has numerous international offices across the globe.
Like Bluehost, HostGator currently hosts more than 2 million websites throughout the globe.
Their hosting plans are rich-featured, a free site migration, free of cost SSL certificate, a free domain for the first 12 months, advanced security, an unlimited number of visits per month to handle, free email addresses, Google ads credit, 45-day money-back guarantee, one-click WordPress installs and more useful features that make the HostGator is one of the reliable hosting providers in the industry.
What Hosting Products are Offered by HostGator?
HostGator has covered the ideal solutions for every business and individual with their needs and budgets in mind. The hosting brand specializes in the following hosting options.
- Shared Web Hosting: Costs you $2.75/mo for the basic plan and is recommended for newbies
- Managed WordPress Cloud Hosting: Charges you $5.95/mo and the right choice for WordPress websites
- VPS Hosting: Starts at $29.95 per month and perfect choice for small to medium-sized businesses
- Dedicated Hosting: The price is $119 a month and is ideal for enterprise businesses and organizations
- Reseller Hosting: You’ll pay $19.95/mo and works best for those businesses that want to run their own hosting companies.
Before starting the HostGator managed WordPress hosting review, let’s find out the differences between normal web hosting and managed WordPress web hosting.
What are the Differences Between Normal Hosting and WordPress Hosting?
Normal web (shared) hosting is the cheapest and first choice of most beginners in the industry. A normal hosting or shared hosting environment is where a single server’s resources are used even by hundreds of websites. If one of the hosted websites on the server gets a ton of traffic, it affects all websites’ performance that are installed on that particular server.
By contrast, WordPress hosting is optimized for WordPress websites to boost performance, page loading speed, and security. And also includes WordPress-specific features i.e one-click WordPress installs, automatic WordPress updates, and decent WordPress expert support. It could be shared, dedicated, or cloud.
Some web hosts including HostGator, Bluehost, InMotion Hosting, and Nexcess offer managed WordPress hosting plans and some others provide unmanaged WordPress hosting environments.
The managed or optimized WordPress hosting plans come with an easy-to-use dashboard, better performance, plugins & WordPress core updates, scanning for plugins vulnerabilities, monitoring your website security, and much more. In the unmanaged WordPress hosting plan, you have to manage all tasks of your WordPress website.
Let’s get started with the honest HostGator managed WordPress hosting review.
HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting Review
The HostGator managed WordPress hosting also known as HostGator optimized WordPress hosting or HostGator managed cloud WordPress hosting.
So this HostGator managed WordPress hosting review will let you know about the web host’s managed WordPress hosting performance testing, top features, plans pricing, pros & cons.
HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting Uptime and Speed Review
Let’s run the tests for uptime and speed of HostGator by popular tools.
Uptime Guarantee
HostGator claims a 99.9% uptime guarantee which meant your website may be down or not for 10 minutes for the entire week.
At the HRANK platform which tracks millions of websites to analyze their uptime and downtime, I got the 99.951% uptime guarantee which is higher than what HostGator boasts?
Speed
We checked the website’s speed that is hosted on HostGator via GTmetrix and Pingdom tools.
GTmetrix
We got 93% performance with A-Grade and 613ms of loading time.
Pingdom
On the Pingdom test tool, the result was 1.75 seconds of load time and 76% (C-Grade)of performance.
LoadFocus
As you know that above 2 tests are shown how fast the website loads if a single user visits your website.
In the LoadFocus test, we increased the traffic stress on the website. It meant that we sent 20 virtual users to the website and got the following results.
In starting, the website load speed was 650ms and then gradually increased the load time. We got a 3294ms average response time but luckily there did not happen any error.
HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting Plans Pricing
Their managed WordPress hosting comes with 3 plans: Starter, Standard, Business
#1. Starter Plan
The Starter plan costs you $5.95/mo and supports one website to host, 100k visits per month, 1 GB for backup, free SSL, and free first-year domain registration.
| Term | 3 Years | 2 Years | 1 Year | 6 Months | 3 Months | 1 Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $5.95/mo | $6.95/mo | $7.95/mo | $14.95/mo | $14.95/mo | $14.95/mo |
#2. Standard Plan
The Standard package charges you $7.95/mo and allows you to host 2 websites, 2 GB backup storage, free SSL, free domain registration for first-year along with handling 200k visits per month.
| Term | 3 Years | 2 Years | 1 Year | 6 Months | 3 Months | 1 Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $7.95/mo | $8.95/mo | $9.95/mo | $20.95/mo | $20.95/mo | $20.95/mo |
#3. Business Plan
The Business plan is priced at $9.95/mo and lets you install 3 websites paired with handling 500k visits per month, 3 GB backup storage, free SSL, whole 12 months free domain.
| Term | 3 Years | 2 Years | 1 Year | 6 Months | 3 Months | 1 Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.95/mo | $10.95/mo | $11.95/mo | $27.95/mo | $27.95/mo | $27.95/mo |
Top Features of HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting
Here’s the list of top features that you get with HostGator managed WordPress hosting.
#1. 12 Months FREE Domain
You’ll pay almost $15 for purchasing a domain name. And at HostGator, you don’t need to pay that amount of money to purchase the domain, because you get a free domain for the first 12 months.
Please note that the free domain offer is valid for 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years terms. After the first year, you’ll pay the regular price to renew your domain.
Also, a non-refundable $15 domain fee plus applicable taxes will be applied when you cancel your purchased hosting plan. And you cannot transfer your domain to another domain registrar within the first 60 days of signup.
#2. FREE Site Migration
Want to move your already existing WordPress website to HostGator, their free site transfer service is exclusively for you. Keep in mind that this feature is valid for the first 30 days of sign-up.
#3. Daily Backups
As a website owner, always you need to take backups of your web content that aid you to restore your website content in case of losing your web content files.
HostGator uses the CodeGuard for automatic daily backups to keep safe and secure the databases and web content files. Along with that, you can create a schedule for backups to run in the background smoothly.
The backup storage is limited, 1 GB backup storage with the Starter plan, 2 GB backup storage with the Standard plan, and 3 GB backup storage with the Business plan.
#4. Free Business Email
Do you like to use the general email for your business website like [email protected]?
No, That’s why you need at least 1 business email for your WordPress website i.e [email protected].
Luckily, all HostGator WordPress hosting plans come with unlimited email accounts that will give your brand more reputation.
#5. $150 Google Ads Credit
With HostGator managed cloud WordPress hosting, you receive up to $150 match Google Ads marketing credit when you spend $25 on Google Ads.
Please note that the more money you spend on Google advertising, you’ll get up to $150 Google Ads credit. Also, only new customers of HostGator managed WordPress in US and Canada can avail of this feature.
#6. Single-click WordPress Installation
As managed WordPress hosting name shows that it’s fully optimized hosting. That’s why you can install WordPress with a single click within a few minutes.
#7. Free SSL Certificate
Nowadays the SSL certificate is not only important for those websites that sell the products but also important for every website even blog.
The customers trust those websites that have enabled the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates because their sensitive information is secured. Also, Google ranks the SSL-enabled websites in the search results. Therefore, you need to install the SSL on your website.
Fortunately, HostGator adds SSL certificates to your plan free of cost.
#8. Free SiteLock Fix
In addition to SSL, the HostGator managed cloud WordPress hosting includes the SiteLock Fix that uses for website security monitoring. The SiteLock Fix tool scans your website for virus, monitor blacklist, detect malware, identify vulnerabilities, and so on to keep safe your website.
#9. 45-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostGator enables you a 45-days money-back guarantee with no question asked for hosting plans.
Quick Note: The refund policy isn’t valid for domain registration fees, setup fees, etc.
#10. Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage
All HostGator managed WordPress hosting plans enable unmetered bandwidth and webspace. In the simple term, you don’t have to worry about bandwidth and storage, they’re unlimited to use.
As there’re many HostGator alternatives, why you should host your website on its managed WordPress hosting?
6 Reasons to Choose HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting
To go ahead in the HostGator managed WordPress hosting review, let’s start knowing about 6 TOP reasons to consider this hosting.
#1. Excellent Security
If your website isn’t secure, your website might be hacked. Then you have to complete tedious tasks to recover your website.
Your web hosting has a great role in your website security. That’s why HostGator managed WordPress hosting comes with the following security features.
- Free SSL certificate is available in every plan to protect your visitors data i.e passwords, username
- Free SiteLock Fix (tool) is included to keep secure your website from virus, malware, vulnerabilites, etc
- Free daily Backups are included to take copies of your website files and databases
- Automatically detect and remove malware
#2. Excellent Uptime and Ultimate Fast Page Loading
HostGator’s uptime guarantee is 99.951% for the last 30 days at HRANK which is quite excellent. Also, HostGator provides an average speed of 613ms which is great. Their speed is 2.5 times faster than industry standard speed.
#3. 45-Day Money-back Guarantee
Unlike other web hosts that offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, HostGator comes with a 45-day money-back policy which is quite better.
The setup fee and domain registration fee ($15) aren’t included in this guarantee.
You can point your purchased domain (from HostGator) to another web host after 60 days of signup.
#4. 24/7/365 Premium Support
The human beings (experts) of HostGator are available 24/7/365 through phone and live chat. Additionally, you can find out the solutions to problems and answers to questions on their knowledge base.
I contacted two times to their live chat support agents during writing this HostGator managed WordPress hosting review. For the first time that I connected, the agent wasn’t knowledgeable and didn’t give me the correct answers, therefore I canceled the chat. Then, for the 2nd time, I was connected to the expert who gave me good responses.
#5. Free Site Migration
After reading this HostGator managed WordPress hosting review, if you want to transfer your WordPress website to HostGator, you can avail of their free website transfer feature.
All you have to do are purchasing a plan from HostGator, request for site migration, and provide your current website’s credential information. Next, their Web Pros will move your site from the current web host to HostGator.
#6. Everything Unlimited
HostGator delivers you everything unlimited in terms of email accounts, storage, bandwidth, support, themes, and so on.
Downsides of HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting
Have a look at the following downsides of HostGator managed WordPress hosting.
- The backup storage is limited.
- CDN is not included in plans.
- cPanel isn’t avaible.
- Dedicated IP isn’t included.
Pros and Cons of HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting
Conclusion
By the end of the HostGator managed WordPress hosting review, I want to share with you my final thoughts.
The managed cloud hosting of HostGator is recommended to host your WordPress website. Your Website will be live day and night and they provide an average of 613ms page speed.
For your website security, they offer SSL certificates, SiteLock Fix, and automatic daily backups free of charge.
After giving a try to HostGator managed WordPress hosting, if you aren’t satisfied, you can cancel your purchase during the first 45-day.
Please share your thoughts about the HostGator managed WordPress hosting review in the comment sections. I’ll be happy to hear from you.
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