Is HostGator Good for Hosting WordPress Websites?

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System used by site owners worldwide. More than 25% of all the websites online today, are using WordPress as their base platform.

Due to its popularity, there’s a high chance that you’re using it too. Since you arrived on this page, maybe you already own a WordPress website, or you’re planning to launch one in the near future.

No matter which one is true in your case, your website will need a hosting provider for it to be online working. But since you use WordPress as the site’s platform, you need to look for a hosting provider who has managed WordPress hosting available.

In this article, we will talk about one of the most popular hosting providers on the globe: HostGator. We’ll see if the company is good at hosting WordPress websites. More exactly, I will cover the hosting plans that offer dedicated WordPress services.

But before we do that, you should know what managed WordPress hosting really is. So, let’s see about that first.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

As you can probably tell from its name, managed WordPress hosting is a service specifically built for WordPress websites. Basically, a managed WP hosting plan can make any WP website work faster and be more efficient. How is that achieved?

For instance, the plan includes certain features and resources that a WP website needs. Lots of plans offer automated WP updates. This means that when a new WP update is out, the host will automatically take care of updating your system. You don’t have to worry about that at all.

The same is true with in many other aspects. The main idea is, that a managed WP hosting package, will take care of all technical aspects of running WordPress on your website. The support team is always there to help you out, and most things are handled by them from the beginning.

One of the most important things you must have included in a managed WordPress hosting plan, is the ability to install WordPress easily. Most companies do this by giving you a feature called “1-click installs”.

Using this, you can install WordPress with literally 1-click. There is nothing else to be done, it’s that simple.

However, others take a different approach to this matter. There are certain hosting plans that include WordPress in the package, but without the 1-click installation process. Then how do they handle it?

In such a scenario, when you sign up for your hosting plan, WordPress will be automatically installed on your chosen domain name. The host will ask you to register a new domain (or just choose one if you already have some registered with them) and then, it will install WordPress on it by itself.

In this case, you don’t have to do anything to make WordPress functional. The whole installation process is handled by the support team behind your plan.

Now that you know what a managed WordPress hosting plan is, we’ll move on and talk about HostGator’s WordPress hosting services. I will cover each one separately, so you’ll know easier which one is best for your personal needs.

One thing is sure though: HostGator can be one of your best decisions to host a WordPress website. They are a globally renowned company who offer reliable services.

HostGator WordPress Hosting

HostGator

As you probably already know, many hosting services are split up into multiple different plans to cover all kinds of expectations. The same is true about HostGator’s WordPress hosting service.

1. Starter Plan

This is the cheapest plan that HostGator offers. You can get it for a monthly $5.95. Many competitors price their WordPress hosting services a lot higher than this. So, it’s good to know that HostGator is offering WP hosting for reasonable prices.

This plan will give you the ability to host 1 WordPress website in your account. Being a starter plan, you can’t really expect multiple websites in one account. Even so, they will give everything that’s needed to manage a WordPress site efficiently.

For instance, the site will easily accept 100,000 monthly visitors. This is a pretty big number, which means that even a more established site will work fine using this plan.

HostGator is also offering 1GB of storage space for having regular backups made. Also, an SSL certificate is added to the plan. This is very important to look out for in any hosting plan, and especially with WordPress websites.

The SSL certificate will ensure that your website remains safe while a visitor is using it. Any data that is sent or received by the user, will be encrypted. This way, nobody in between the visitor and the destination server is allowed to access that data (credit card information for example).

For starting out with the plan, HostGator is also giving you the chance to freely transfer an already existing website onto this hosting plan. So, if you have a website that needs dedicated WordPress hosting, you can easily transfer it to HostGator without any charge.

The storage space and bandwidth are unlimited, so you can build your website as complex as you want it to. Of course, the hardware used to store the data is made of modern SSD drives, instead of traditional HDDs. These new drives will make your website much faster when loading in the browser.

I should mention that HostGator is also including $100 of free Google Ad Credits. These can be used to market your website with Google Adwords. You’ll be noticed quicker on the web, and starting to build an audience will be much simpler.

2. Standard Plan

This plan costs a little more than the previous one, at $7.95/month. It is similar to the one before, but there are some differences due to the additional features and resources.

For instance, you can now host 2 websites in a single account. Basically, your working space is doubled with this feature. For hosting 2 websites, HostGator is letting you transfer 2 of your own, if you want to. This is free, of course.

The monthly site traffic is also raised to 200,000 visitors. It’s worth mentioning that this number is an average. So, you can go even higher, if your sites can do that.

Any malware noticed by the platform or the support team, is automatically removed. You don’t have to worry about keeping your site clean from viruses or other malicious software. The back-end team is always there for such situations.

3. Business Plan

This is the 3^rd WordPress hosting plan. It costs a monthly $9.95. Yes, it is the most expensive, but it’s really worth the upgrade for someone who needs even more resources.

That’s because the plan can host 3 websites using your one account. Transferring 3 website to HostGator using this plan is free as you’d expect by now.

But how many visitors are allowed for this plan? The average number is 500,000/month. Yes, that is correct: 500,000 monthly visitors. So, no matter how big your WordPress site is, this plan can surely handle it.

The plan is giving your 3GB of storage for making daily backups of all your files. This way, even in the worst-case scenario, you can restore your site to a previous version with only a few clicks.

It’s worth noticing that the relative processing power is 5x compared to the previous 2 plans. This means that every process related to your website and hosting service, can be done up to 5x faster. This number will also positively impact the loading speed of any website using the plan.

Now that we talked about all 3 WordPress hosting plans, you can create yourself a pretty good idea, if HostGator could manage your site’s needs. The likely answer is yes.

Even if you have a well-established website, with thousands of daily visitors, the third plan that we just covered, can easily handle it.

Why Choose HostGator’s WordPress Hosting?

One of the main reasons why you should HostGator for hosting your WordPress sites is: online support.

The support team at HostGator is one of the best in the business. They are very quick at answering any request made by a customer. Usually, you don’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes to get your question answered. And they are efficient as well, at giving you the best possible solution in no-time.

Their support team is trained to handle both hosting and WordPress related inquires.

Is Email Included with HostGator WordPress Hosting?

Yes, email is included with every WordPress hosting plan at HostGator. In fact, you can create as many email accounts as you want for your website such as name@website.com – there is no limit on the number of email addresses you can create on HostGator’s WordPress hosting plans.

Advantages of HostGator’s WordPress Hosting over Shared Plans

Shared hosting is great for small WordPress blogs and websites. However, if your website receives lots of traffic a day (more than 1,000), shared hosting will simply will not be enough. Although some shared plans at HostGator allows you to host multiple websites and do not have a cap on the bandwidth and disk space usage, resource are very limited.

WordPress hosting plans are designed to support more traffic. HostGator use cloud hosting technology on their WordPress hosting plans, which can handle huge traffic spikes by allocating server resources in a better way. So even though, you will receive most of your website traffic in a short amount of time, your website will run smoothly over the entire day. On shared hosting, this is not possible.

HostGator WordPress Website Transfer

If your current web host is not enough for your websites anymore, but you don’t have much know-how to transfer websites, at HostGator you can ask for help. HostGator’s team will transfer up to 3 WordPress sites for free from your old host to their servers.

They will perform the website transfers in such a professional manner, that your visitors will not experience any downtime.

Is WordPress Hosting Worth the Extra Cost?

If you are making money from your website, probably you can afford paying the extra cost for managed WordPress hosting. If the revenue of your website can easily cover the cost of hosting, then it definitely worth upgrading from shared to managed WordPress host.

In the long run, it will pay off, because your website will be faster, will have better security and uptime. Hosting pays an important role in the success of a website. Though you should start at the low tier plans and upgrade once you need more performance and features.

Conclusion

All in all, HostGator is definitely capable of hosting a WordPress based website. As you can see from the plans mentioned above, even multiple websites are easily hosted with the 2^nd and 3^rd plan.

It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out with a new website, or you own a big and popular site already. HostGator can handle both quite well. Of course, for starters, the first plan is recommended.

But if you plan to expand later on, or you already have a big site, go for the second or third plan. Just think well about your needs, and choose accordingly. You won’t be disappointed with this WordPress hosting service.