SiteGround and HostGator are both very good hosting services. Some say SiteGround is safer than HostGator, others on the other hand claim that HostGator is one of the best hosting providers for small budgets. To get to the bottom of all this, we wrote this direct SiteGround vs HostGator comparison for you.
Choosing the right hosting provider is one of the first big decisions you must face when building a website. A good hosting service guarantees a good accessibility of your website, data backups, and good loading times.
No matter how good your product or service is, if your website takes too much time to load, the potential customer will leave your website. This does not only impact the revenue of your company, but can cause bad SEO rankings.
In this article, we will compare SiteGround vs HostGator directly in terms of features, pricing, and security. Before giving our verdict, we’ll also talk about customer support.
SiteGround vs HostGator
Before we answer the question of which hosting provider is better, SiteGround or HostGator, let’s cover some basics first. Here are the criteria according to which we compared the two web hosting titans:
- Features
- Pricing
- Security
- Customer Support
HostGator vs SiteGround: Features
The list of features that comes with both SiteGround and HostGator, is long. In this comparison, we will concentrate on a few features that will give you a better picture of the differences and similarities:
- Available hosting types
- Backups
- Storage space
- Email accounts
- Extra services (e.g. SSL, CDN,)
SiteGround Features
SiteGround offers types of hosting services. Amongst others, shared, WordPress, WooCommerce, and cloud hosting. Besides a few platform-specific features, the plans of shared hosting, WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting do not differ much in features.
Here’s a list of the most important SiteGround features:
- free automated daily backups
- 10 GB to 40 GB storage space
- unlimited email accounts
- free SSL/TSL certificate
- free Cloudflare CDN
SiteGround automatically saves daily backups. This service is included in all shared plans. The higher tiers allow you to do customized backups on-demand.
The storage space is limited to 10 GB to 40 GB, depending on which package you choose. To be fair, an unlimited storage space is nice to have, but a storage of 40 GB is, in most cases, more than enough.
Another big plus point for SiteGround is its CDN. A CDN (content delivery network) has many benefits for your website. It speeds your site up, makes the entire loading procedure more efficient, it comes with advanced security and it can handle high traffic loads.
It does so by using a complex structure of servers all around the world. If someone from Germany visits your site, the CDN automatically loads your site from a server in Germany. Whereas someone from Brazil will get their content from a server from South America.
A CDN is ideal for everyone who plans on running an international site, because it allows your site to load quickly in every part of the world. It also blocks malicious traffic and reduces spam. SiteGround is partnering with Cloudflare and its CDN service is included in all packages.
SiteGround also comes with a free SSL/TSL certificate.
HostGator Features
HostGator also offers shared, WordPress, and cloud hosting.
Here’s a list of the most important HostGator features:
- One backup per week, depending on your plan
- unmetered disk space
- unmetered bandwidth
- unlimited email accounts
- free SSL certificate
- extra services available (e.g. website builder, SEO tools…)
HostGator comes mostly with backups, depending on the plan you’re on and the type of hosting you’re using. Most plans, however, come only with one weekly backup which overrides the previous one. If you want to save multiple backups, you need to buy this feature.
With HostGator, you get an unmetered disk space and unmetered bandwidth of monthly visits. Compared to SiteGround, this seems to be a really nice feature in the first place. If you take a deeper look into HostGator’s terms of service, however, you’ll soon realize that this is only half the truth.
Unmetered means that you will not be charged according to the amount you use, but there are limits in terms of bandwidth and storage.
Verdict: Features
Both hosting companies offer a wide spectrum of comparable features. According to customer reviews, most of the users do not complain about the limited storage of SiteGround, whereas the missing backup service of HostGator seems to be a bigger problem.
HostGator vs SiteGround: Pricing
In the hosting world, it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive providers offer the best value. We compared HostGator and SiteGround according to the following criteria when it comes to pricing:
- Price
- Money-back guarantee
- Contract duration
SiteGround Pricing
SiteGround seems to be quite expensive compared to other hosting providers. However, unlike many other web hosts, SiteGround does not hide its price or comes with hidden extra costs.
With SiteGround, the monthly fees do change depending on the duration of your contract. If you want to try SiteGround, you can do so without taking any risk because it comes with a 30 days money-back guarantee.
SiteGround’s shared hosting plans start at €5,99 per month for the smallest plan. Its most expensive shared hosting plan comes for €13,99 a month. Please be aware, that the VAT is not included in the prices and that SiteGround offers all of its plans on a discounted rate for the first contract term. If you go for SiteGround’s smallest plan, you will pay €5,99 per month for the first year and then €12,99 per month for the second year.
HostGator Pricing
Compared to SiteGround, HostGator’s shared plans seem to be cheap with only €2,34 per month for the smallest plan. However, if you want to get that cheap price, you need to get the 3 years contract and pay the whole amount in advance. Still, €84,31 isn’t a bad price, considering the fact that you will get decent hosting for 3 years. The only real downside is that you need to pay for backup, which is an additional €20,40 per year.
If you decide to go for a 1-year contract, you’ll have to pay €64,77 (incl. backup and taxes).
The good thing is that HostGator offers a 45 days money-back guarantee. With this refund policy, you can try out the service without taking any risk.
HostGator also offers a 1-year free domain registration if you purchase the service for at least one year. This will save you €17,95 for the first year.
Verdict: Pricing
If you don’t mind a 3 years contract, HostGator is definitely the cheaper option. You need to pay some extra costs for additional security features and daily backup, but on a monthly basis, HostGator is a lot cheaper than SiteGround. HostGator also comes with different contract
SiteGround scores the biggest plus point when it comes to transparency. While we had to consider many obstacles and hidden costs with HostGator to find out the total price, SiteGround made things very easy for us.
HostGator vs SiteGround: Security
A breach of security can destroy entire online businesses. In order to decide which provider is the safer one, we were looking for the following services:
- SSL
- Firewall
- Backup service
SiteGround Security
SiteGround comes with an impressive security package. Besides a strong firewall and an anti-bot system, there are also automated daily backups and a free SSL/TSL certificate included in every shared plan.
If you want to upgrade your protection, you have the possibility to add some more services. For example, a malware scanning tool called SG Site Scanner for an additional fee of €17,03 per year.
HostGator Security
HostGator offers similar security features. However, you may not get them for free.
As mentioned earlier, daily backups are not included in the purchasing price of shared plans.
CodeGuard (a HostGator application) is an automated, reliable backup service. Depending on how much storage you need, the prices for this service vary between €1,70 and €6,81 per month.
If you want to have a firewall, you need to buy a package that will cost you €34,06.
The free version of SiteLock (another HostGator application) that is included in the package only scans your website once a week with a maximum of 5 pages.
The only security service you can get for free for all shared plans is an SSL/TSL certificate.
Verdict: Security
The security packages offered by SiteGround and HostGator are quite similar. Whereas essential services such as an automated backup, SSL, and a firewall are included in the packages of SiteGround, you need to buy them with HostGator for an additional cost. Especially the missing backup service is a big drawback of HostGator.
HostGator vs SiteGround: Customer Support
In order to evaluate which hosting provider offers better support, we compared the customer service on the following criteria:
- Availability
- Response time
- Channels (Email, telephone, live chat)
- Tutorials
SiteGround Customer Support
SiteGround brings its customer service to the highest level. The company invented its own ticketing system, providing support within seconds. Support is available 24/7 via live chat, email, and telephone. It’s notable, how fast and efficient the responses are. In our test, the agent joined the chat in less than 10 seconds, solving the problem within 2 minutes.
According to customer reviews, you do not have to wait for your calls to be answered. The customer satisfaction rate is also impressively high.
If you want to try to solve your problem of your own, you can work your way through SiteGround’s tutorials and an entire database of support articles.
HostGator Customer Support
The customer service of HostGator is also quite impressive. There is no email support, but you can chat via live chat support around the clock. Telephone support is also given. HostGator also satisfies customer needs with beginner-friendly tools. You can expect to get an answer within 5 minutes. When we tried to connect with the customer support via live chat, it only took them 1-2 minutes to respond.
In addition, there is a large database of video tutorials, which offers a wide variety of solutions in case you want to solve your problems by yourself.
Verdict: Customer Support
In our opinion, the customer service of SiteGround is hard to beat. However, both hosting providers offer great customer service.
Conclusion: HostGator or SiteGround
Both, SiteGround and HostGator are reliable hosting providers with a variety of impressive features and a great support system. Which service you ultimately use, depends on what is more important to you.
If you want it cheap and don’t mind signing a 3 years contract, HostGator seems to be the better choice. HostGator is most known for shared hosting and the price for the basic shared plans are unbeatable. The downside: You need to pay extra if you want to have essential security features such as an automated backup.
SiteGround on the other hand is a managed hosting provider that is more expensive and suitable for websites with high traffics and an international community. With this provider, you get a range of security features for free. Cloudflare CDN is another big advantage.
Which one do you prefer more? HostGator or SiteGround? Let us know in the comments and thank you for reading.