HostGator and HostMonster are 2 famous web hosting companies, both providing reliable and affordable hosting services to personal websites. Here is an in-depth comparison between HostGator and HostMonster, helping individuals find out which company meets their requirement at the most.
HostGator (www.hostgator.com) is one of the most outstanding web hosting companies, serving more than 8,000,000 hosted domains. It provides shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated server package to meet different individual requirements.
HostMonster (www.hostmonster.com) has been providing hosting solutions since 1996. During the past years, HostMonster has enjoyed an excellent reputation for delivering a reliable and rich-featured hosting plan to personal and small business usages.
HostGator VS HostMonster > Price
Although both HostGator and HostMonster offer big discounts on the web hosting services – 25% from HostGator and 44% from HostMonster, HostMonster is actually more cost-effective than HostGator.
Here is the price comparison between HostGator Hatchling, Baby and Business and HostMonster:
Billing | Hatchling | Baby | Business | HostMonster |
---|---|---|---|---|
1-Year | $5.21/mo | $7.46/mo | $11.21/mo | $5.95/mo |
2-Year | $4.46/mo | $6.71/mo | $10.46/mo | $4.95/mo |
3-Year | $3.71/mo | $5.96/mo | $9.71/mo | $3.95/mo |
Coupon BWH360 | Coupon BWH360 | Coupon BWH360 | Sign Up |
The price value of HostGator hatchling plan is much lower than that of HostMonster, because the hatchling plan only allows customers to host 1 site on 1 account and doesn’t include a domain name for free. The discounted price of HostGator business plan is starting from $9.71/mo, which is much more expensive than HostMoster designed for business which is not in the context of this review.
The HostGator baby plan is the peer to the HostMonster, but the discounted price is starting from $5.96/mo which is nearly much higher than HostMonster.
Features
It is true that HostGator and HostMonster provide a variety of competitive features, including unlimited disk space, bandwidth, MySQL databases, and space for FTP accounts.
The main difference between HostGator and HostMonste is that the latter one offers free domain name for customers and provides ANYTIME money back guarantee, but HostGator charges $ 11.95/year in addition to the shared web hosting plan and only offers 45 days money back guarantee.
The following feature table compares HostMonster with HostGator Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan, and Business Plan on some critical features.
Feature | Hatchling | Baby | Business | HostMonster |
---|---|---|---|---|
Free Domain | $11.95/mo | $11.95/mo | $11.95/mo | Yes |
Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
PHP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ruby on Rails | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Python | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Perl | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
MySQL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
PostgreSQL | No | No | No | Yes |
Shell (SSH) Access | No | No | No | Yes |
Shared SSL | No | No | No | Yes |
Toll-Free Telephone | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Money Back Guarantee | 45 days | 45 days | 45 days | Anytime |
Coupon BWH360 | Coupon BWH360 | Coupon BWH360 | Sign Up |
HostMonster supports almost all the latest state-of-the-art technology based on Linux platform. According to the feature table above, it is very easy to find out that HostMonster provides a more rich-featured and cost-effective web hosting plan than HostGator.
Performance
To be honest, HostGator and HostMonster both provide a reliable, fast and secure shared web hosting in the industry, ensuring the maximum reliability and fast page loading speed. According to our real hosting experience and the customers’ reviews, it’s not easy to have a clear conclusion of which is faster and which is more reliable.
We set up a website uptime monitor with the help of PingDom, testing WordPress site hosted with HostGator and HostMonster since Dec 2012. Based on the monitor for over 3 months, HostGator and HostMonster both provide a 99.9% hosting uptime.
HostMonster vs HostGator > Technical Support
HostGator and HostMonster both offers 24/7/365 US based technical support via free phone call, e-mail, and live chat. Besides, both companies support online discussion board and hundreds of video tutorials. However, we still feel that HostMonster has done a better job than HostGator.
The support staffs of HostMonster are all very patient and professional. With holding times that average less than 30 seconds, they can assure the customers’ problems to be resolved as soon as possible. Compared with HostMonster, HostGator customer service is a little bit worse than it used to be. The customers need to wait for a couple of minutes for response – perhaps because of the larger number of customers HostGator is serving for now.
Conclusion > Which Shall You Go?
HostGator and HostMonster are both trusted shared we hosting companies. However, it is clearly demonstrated that HostMonster offers the better web hosting service for personal website usage, including the cheap price, rich features, excellent performance, and outstanding customer service.
To learn more about the HostMonster service, visit http://www.hostmonster.com/