Both Bluehost and Hostgator are well-developed brand in web hosting industry, who have very huge customer bases and are well-known for the first-class hosting service and award-winning customer support. Considering Bluehost only provides Linux Shared Hosting while Hostgator has a much bigger product family from Shared Hosting, VPS hosting to dedicated server, in below Bluehost vs Hostgator, we will only compare their Shared Linux hosting to see which one is better.
Bluehost
Founded in 1996, Bluehost (www.bluehost.com) is web host with a long history in the hosting market. Its mission is to help customers start their web site easily at an affordable price. Bluehost now is hosting over 3 millions domains, which make it one of the largest web hosts in the world.
Bluehost has 3 datacenters, all of them are located in Provo, UT.
Hostgator
Hostgator (www.hostgator.com) is a leading player in web hosting world. Its customers range from individual freelancers to Fortune 500 companies in more than 200 countries. Until now, it has been hosting over 8,000,000 web sites, which make up approximately 1% of the world’s Internet traffic.
Hostgator is also a Green hosting service provider, and its datacenter are in Dallas and Houston.
Hostgator vs Bluehost on Features
Bluehost just offers one hosting plan, which almost covers everything people need to create, build, and develop their website. However, Hostgator offers 3 shared hosting plan each of which comes with different features. According to our talk with Hostgator sale, all their 3 shared hosting use the same server with the same constraints on system resources, the difference between them are features.
In below table, we list out the features of Bluehost and Hostgator, from which you will see that Bluehost includes more features than HostGator Baby Plan, but its price is even lower than Hostgator Hatchling Plan. We do feel Bluehost has a better price value than Hostgator.
| Features | Bluehost | Hatchling Plan | Baby Plan | Business Plan |
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| Free Domain |  |
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| Domain Hosting | Unlimited | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Shell Access | |
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| Dedicated IP | |
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| SSL | Shared SSL | Shared SSL | Shared SSL | Privated SSL |
| Price | $3.95/mo | $3.96/mo | $6.36/mo | $10.36/mo |
| www.bluehost.com | www.hostgator.com | |||
Hostgator vs Bluehost on Speed
Bluehost and Hostgator are always working on offering the fast hosting speed and nearly full uptime to customers, and the two companies are doing very well.
Bluehost got its own datacenters, own servers, and these all are top facilities. Meanwhile, Bluehost also has the dedicated maintenance personnel to ensure the best hosting performance. Hostgator use 100% Dell powerful server to achieve better speed that makes its hosting service more reliable and faster.
Below is the speed testing we have executed in multiple locations, from which we can see that the speed of Bluehost and Hostgator are very close.
Hostgator vs Bluehost on Customer Support
Even though both companies have great records on customer support, looks like Hostgator is in big trouble now. They are running an 20% off deal for the whole year, their customer grows very fast, but their customer support team haven’t been grown correspondingly, which lead many complaints (please check Hostgator Complains). If Hostgator cannot find a way to resolve this issue, it will be the victim of its own success.
Compared with Hostgator, Bluehost is still in very good status, their customers are happy and only few complaints we have seen.
Hostgator vs Bluehost on Pricing
Obviously, Bluehost offers its customer a better price term. Its hosting solutions start at $3.95/mo only and comes with Anytime Money Back guarantee. However, Hostgator Baby Plan is at $6.36/mo after 20% off, which is around 60% higher than Bluehost. And what more, Hostgator doesn’t offer free domain. Please check the price difference in below table:
| 1 Year Term | 2 Years Term | 3 Years Term | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bluehost | $5.95/mo | $4.95/mo | $3.95/mo |
| Hostgator | $7.96/mo | $7.16/mo | $6.36/mo |
Bluehost vs Hostgator – Who is Better
From comparison above, it’s easy to see that Bluehost beat Hostgator on features, pricing, and customer support. If you need a shared hosting, then it won’t be wrong to choose Bluehost, which could be used for building personal blog or small business site. And now, with exclusive bluehost $3.95 promotion, people could subscribe to its service with 44% off.
To know more information about two companies, please visit www.bluehost.com and www.hostgator.com, or check out Bluehost Review and Hostgator Review.