HostGator Joomla Hosting Review – Is it a Good Joomla Web Host?

HostGator is indeed a good hosting provider for Joomla websites and this is how: To begin with HostGator has been in business since 2002 hosting a staggering 8 million domains and still counting. It is one of those popular website hosts you can’t help but wish to have. This web hosting provider has taken the world by storm starting with its ability to offer several hosting plans, having an excellent uptime and an average page loading speed, and not forgetting a handful of hosting plans such as WordPress, Joomla and many others you can think of.

HostGator has stood the test of time earning respect for its huge number of servers and unmatched reliability among other factors. Everyone using this hosting platform will attest to its decent dedicated as well as VPS options that have helped to scale their sites to their current status.

There is more than meet the eye when it comes to the use of HostGator as your hosting provider and in this review, we will take you down the road to show you why this platform is ideal for Joomla web host. From performance and uptime to customer support and hosting plans with pricing all the way to running Joomla, we will not leave any stone unturned in giving you a comprehensive review of this most popular web host in the industry today. Read more and find out why you should consider moving to HostGator for your Joomla websites.

HostGator Joomla Hosting Review

In the following I will give you some in-depth information about HostGator’s performance, uptime, tech support, features and price. So, if you want to host your Joomla website with HostGator, keep on reading and decide whether this company is a good choice for you or not.

HostGator Performance and Uptime

When choosing your web hosting provider, the first factor to consider is its performance. The performance of a web host is greatly determined by the speed because a faster website is an added incentive to your users and it enhances your SEO rankings as well. According to the studies, a one second delay in loading the page can cost you almost 7 percent fewer conversations, 11 percent less page views and a 16 percent reduction in user satisfaction. Since you want to have the best for your website, your wish is not to experience the aforementioned issues and that is why performance for the web hosting company of your choice.

With its 99.9 percent uptime, HostGator gives you a reason to smile. This shows that its performance is admirably top-notch especially when it comes to reliability. As a matter of fact, this level of web hosting service is actually the industry standard. But its speed is only 984 ms, making it average compared to other hosts although this should not worry you anymore given that there are more positive attributes to behold. Even though there are numerous web hosting providers with higher uptime rates, the bottom line is that they are a little more costly than HostGator. Since this host has been in operation for an extended period of time, you can at least have a sigh of relief knowing that it is not a scam and that it has a promising future with improved web hosting services.

HostGator Customer Support

HostGator – Online Tech Support

HostGator provides a customer care service that is second to none in the entire industry. The service includes 24/7/365 live chat, phone and ticket-based email support. In your hosting dashboard, there’s the company’s support portal that will help you to find quick answers coming from the knowledge base of a staggering 680 plus articles and more than 500 video tutorials. In addition to that, every HostGator web hosting provider account has a full guarantee of the company’s CEO who normally responds personally to every problem presented before him. In case you still have problems that the regular support team cannot handle, then you can freely request your ticket to be assigned directly to the CEO for better solutions.

HostGator Plans and Pricing

HostGator Joomla Hosting Plans

HostGator comes with a variety of web hosting plans to choose from depending on your needs. These hosting plans include shared hosting, the VPS hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting and dedicated hosting plans. All these HostGator hosting plans have rich features that are suitable for different budgets as well as different hosting requirements. Take a look at the following hosting plans provided by HostGator web hosting provider:

Shared hosting: This is the best way to kick start on a brand new website that has low internet traffic. The plan gives your website an environment to share resources with any other website hosted on the same server.

Cloud hosting: Unlike a shared hosting that is only limited to one server, cloud hosting plan uses multiple servers. That is why this plan is a perfect choice for you if your website is getting frequent internet traffic.

WordPress hosting: It is a shared hosting plan that is fully optimized for WordPress powered sites. Actually, it optimizes performance while protecting your site from common WordPress attacks.

Virtual Private Server (VPS): This hosting plan lets you manage all your virtual resources on the cloud-based hosting platform and it is suitable for the growth of websites that experience frequent traffic spikes.

Dedicated server: The dedicated hosting plan gives a chance to get a server that only hosts your websites. The only drawback in this regard is that this plan comes with some great responsibility that requires you to maintain it on your own.

For the shared hosting plans, there are three different levels. Every plan has unlimited bandwidth and storage but the main differences emerge in the number of websites each hosting plan can host. This is how it goes:

Hatchling: This shared plan gives you a chance to host just one website. The plan includes a one-click Joomla installer and it comes in handy with a standard set of features. The entire plan costs $2.75 a month and it supports one domain name, unlimited subdomains and unlimited storage and disk space.

Baby plan: The baby plan gives you an option of hosting unlimited websites and it includes all features under the Hatchling plan. Also, you can use add-ons such as the private SSL on this plan. The plan costs $3.95 a month and supports unlimited bandwidth, storage and domain names.

Business plan: It is suitable for all small business websites and it includes a free SSL certificate and dedicated IP which is necessary for creating an eCommerce website. This plan costs $5.95 a month and it is capable of supporting unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage and domain names. Additionally, the plan has a free dedicated IP and a toll-free number.

Running Joomla on HostGator

Joomla is a world-class award-winning content management system (CMS) for websites and applications building. It helps you keep track of all information and content on your site. This includes pictures, texts, documents, music, videos and any item of relevance on your site.

However, HostGator web hosting provider and Joomla pair up seamlessly to give you the best website experience ever. In other words, HostGator comes with compatible Joomla hosting services for a large number of websites and this is a perfect match for your Joomla site. In real sense, HostGator is among the best Joomla web hosting providers in the industry today.

Installing it on your HostGator platform is very easy. With its automatic Joomla installer, you can simply install Joomla with just a single click. Included in this install are the current versions of MySQL, Apache and PHP. The PHP runs in the form of suPHP, another version of PHP with additional layers of security features on the servers. When running Joomla on HostGator, the suPHP makes Joomla CMS much more user-friendly. In short, if you are looking to have an easy way of managing your online content with the help of a fantastic hosting service provider, then HostGator Joomla is the ultimate solution for you.

Pros and Cons of HostGator Joomla Hosting

Despite all the hype and attributes that come with HostGator, there is still two sides of the coin and we will look into the pros and cons to give you a clear picture of what you should expect. Here are the merits and demerits of using HostGator as your web hosting service provider:

Pros of HostGator

• It comes with easy-to-use control panel
• There is unlimited disk space, bandwidth on every plan and unlimited emails
• You will enjoy 62 percent off your first 3 years
• Free drag-and-drop website builder
• There is no need for the contract before getting started
• You are assured of a 45-day money-back guarantee
• An excellent uptime of 99.98 percent
• Good customer support
• Enhanced security against DDoS attacks
• Free migration of your existing website
• A wide selection of hosting options
• Reliable web hosting
• Flexible billing periods

Cons of HostGator

• It is not fast enough
• There are extra charges for “true” backups
• Standard pricing tricks
• No free domain migration
• Aggressive upselling

Conclusion

Will you consider choosing HostGator for Joomla websites? Of course, your answer should be a “yes” given that HostGator is one of the hosting industry best and the biggest household website hosting names for many reasons. The host’s performance is something to admire let alone its reliability, excellent customer support, numerous shared hosting plans and many more. Needless to say, this company has shown a great improvement in the past few years making it a perfect choice for those looking to have an incredibly good host in the industry so far. At this point and time, you can confidently recommend HostGator for hosting Joomla websites for you and your friends as well.