Hostgator vs. SiteGround – Is a Pricier Option Better?

There are times that when it comes to looking at two hosts, there is very little wiggle room to prove that one is superior to the other. One such case is in the battle between SiteGround and HostGator, two of the most prominent names in the web hosting industry today.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing since for the most part, good hosts tick off many check boxes that need to be filled in users’ hunt for the perfect web host. If the most important technical stuff is taken care of, such as features and performance, what remains is just considering what icing you like on the cake, so to speak.

Hostgator vs SiteGround at a Glance

Hostgator is a Better Choice For Beginners

TL;DR: Hostgator is better than SiteGround in terms of:

• Cheaper entry price
• Lower price hikes on renewal
• 45-day money-back guarantee
• Free website migration services

Hostgator Shared Hosting Plan Starts at $2.75/mo

Shared Hosting at HostGator is impressive despite the simplicity of their plans. The lower-cost options are mainly segregated by how many websites you can host on each plan. They have a plan geared to businesses, including a better quality SSL certificate – very reasonable indeed.

Lower Price Hikes on Renewal

Both Hostgator and SiteGround welcome new users with open arms and offer steep discounts on new hosting plan sign up along with free site migration tools to boot.

However, Hostgator has lower renewal rates compared with SiteGround which are roughly 50% higher. A single-domain hosting account cost $7.95 per month (vs. SiteGround $14.99 per month); multiple domain hosting account cost $10.95 per month (vs. SiteGround $24.99 per month).

45-day Money-back Guarantee

Many hosting companies, including SiteGround, offer customers a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. At HostGator, they’ll give you a little extra time to assess the quality of service. You get 45-days to decide if you want to continue using Hostgator. 

Hostgator 45-day guarantee applies to most of their hosting products, including shared, reseller, and VPS hosting.

Free Site Migration for All New Customers

Hostgator offers to help new customers migrate one website to their service. While SiteGroud offers free migration through a plugin, Hostgator's free migration service means a lot to newbies. I’ve seen hosting companies try to charge hundreds of dollars for a single migration!

SiteGround is More For Veterans

TL;DR: SiteGround is better than Hostgator in terms of:

• More advanced features
• Official endorsed by WordPress.org
• Better customer support

More Advanced Features

One of the best features of Siteground is its SuperCacher plugin, which can make your site faster by using three different caching activities. These are NGINX Direct Delivery, dynamic cache, and Memcached.

SiteGround goes one step further, though. Most web hosting providers work with Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers like Cloudflare. SiteGround builds a CDN from the ground up, making it an advantage over Hostgator.

Official Endorsed by WordPress.org

With over 20 years of experience in the hosting industry, SiteGround has a good reputation for its services. Further more, SiteGround also has the impressive feather in its cap of being one of only three hosting providers recommended by WordPress.com.

Better Customer Support

SiteGround offers a very complete level of customer support which includes live chat, phone support and tickets. Their customer support gets good overall feedback from many users

That’s overall, though, and not just on customer support. Diving deeper into the comments from Trustpilot gave me surprise as to how supportive their customers are of SiteGround’s support system. Here are some randomly picked customer headlines regarding their support;

“Fast and professional customer service!”

“Support you can rely on.”

“SiteGround has incredible customer service.”

While a company may be able to get away with a few fakes, it’s unlikely to maintain such a high level of customer satisfaction over so many years.

Verdict: Hostgator is The Preferred Choice

In short, HostGator would be a better choice for those who are looking for a good host to break into the web hosting scene and those who are seeking a no-fuss, no-muss solution. Veterans or those who are of a more discerning taste can look forward to better performance if they are willing to invest a little time with SiteGround.

One of the reasons why this is so is because SiteGround does involve a little more of a premium when it comes to price. Their hosting plans are more expensive and some even consider their renewal prices to be a little unreasonable.

What About Server Performance?

Both SiteGround and HostGator offer very impressive technical performance. Looking past the service level agreement, SiteGround can offer very reliable servers that are often serving up 100% service time at reasonable speeds.

HostGator on the other hand is slightly behind in the reliability side, but not by much. This is bolstered by extremely fast servers that can clock in at an eye-raising below 50ms for US users. This speed is very rare and is backed by a solid “A+” rating in the BitCatcha Speed Test.

More About Hostgator

HostGator (one of the companies under the EIG umbrella) is a hosting platform established in 2002 and fitted with richly designed shared hosting packages that offer unlimited storage, email accounts, and data transfer. For those who want more, the company also offers feature-rich Cloud, Virtual Private, WordPress, and Dedicated Server Hosting packages.

To learn more, read our full Hostgator review

Hostgator Shared Hosting

Hostgator VPS Hosting

More About SiteGround

SiteGround was founded in 2004 and has become the preferred domain host for more than 2 million websites. It's renowned for offering fast web hosting, strict security, and 24/7 support. Whether you are a newbie or veteran, SiteGround makes an interesting web host that allows you to enjoy efficiency, reliable performance, and impressive technical support.

SiteGround Shared Hosting

SiteGround VPS Hosting

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