HostGator Vs Bluehost 2024 | Which Hosting Plan Should
Experts do talk a lot about hosting prices and features but barely someone talks about which Web hosting plan that suits your site and from which hosting provider. Should you choose the Hostgator or go with Bluehost? When both hosting providers are alike with each other, it’s kind of difficult to select the best hosting provider that is profitable for you.
Before heading to any web hosting provider you must know some basic features that are important for your site.
5 Important Features to Look for in a Hosting Company
- Uptime: How long will your website be online is totally depends on Uptime. If a web hosting provider provides less than 99.9% uptime guarantee than you shouldn’t choose that one for sure. Most of the top companies provide 99.9% uptime guarantee and it’s a sign of reliability.
- Speed: Website speed make a great impact on the users who visit your site. No one is interested in a site who takes ages to get fully loaded. Also, a high duration page load makes a bad effect on SERP results as well. That’s why choosing a hosting provider that provides a fast page load is a good decision.
- Customer Support: A good company helps its consumers and provides an exact solution to what they are looking for. Hosting customer support must be 24*7/365 because no one knows when you need it.
- Bandwidth: Bandwidth set the limitation that how many visitors can surf your website per month. Some hosting providers provide 100GB in their minimum hosting plan and some of them provide unmetered too. Bandwidth limit totally depends on which web hosting provider you choose.
- Disk space: When you run a website you do upload many data related to your website and that data consume disk space. The more disk space you have, the more data you can upload on your website. That’s why you should choose a web hosting provider that provides high disk space.
These basic features are important for a website and its performance but knowing which hosting is suitable for your website also important too. Different websites have different needs and selecting a web hosting plan that suits your website gives an instant saving.
There are normally 5 types of users who look at web hosting plans for their websites which is listed below.
- Beginners
- Bloggers
- Small Business
- Large Scale Business
- E-Commerce
Webhosting Plans for Beginners: HostGator Vs Bluehost
Mostly, beginner looks for a hosting plan that is affordable and also provides a good amount of specs for their websites. A beginner website doesn’t have a large amount of traffic and also doesn’t consume enough server resources too.
The main goal of beginners is to give a start to the website and when the traffic increase so do data then move to a higher hosting plan (but that takes time).
Which hosting plan to choose for beginners?
For a beginner, the most suitable hosting plan is Shared hosting. Because in shared hosting you get enough resources to run a website and the best thing is the affordable pricing. Let’s take a comparison of shared hostings plans of Hostgator and Bluehost.
What does shared hosting mean?
In Shared hosting, A single server hosts multiple websites and the resources of the server are shared between all websites. Shared hosting is popular because it’s under the budget and gives all features that require to run a website
Is shared hosting Slow?
Slow speed totally depends on which web hosting company you are taking the hosting services. If the company has poor performance then it doesn’t matter which hosting you choose it will be a nightmare for your website.
What are the advantages of shared hosting?
Shared hosting is mainly used by beginner and choosing shared web hosting for your sites gives several benefits in low price, that is:
- You can host your website at a low price
- Get enough resources to run a website.
- Customer Support available 24*7/365
- It gives you enough time to grow your website.
Webhosting Plans for Bloggers: HostGator Vs Bluehost
Bloggers’ requirements vary from beginners. Where beginners have less amount of traffic on their websites also don’t have enough data either, Bloggers have their followers and readers who visit their sites/blogs daily on a large scale.
Why VPS hosting plan is good for bloggers?
More traffic consumes more resources and that why bloggers need hosting that can handle more traffic. Bloggers(who have a small-medium range followers list) should start their blog with VPS Hosting for several reasons.
- In VPS hosting a user gets his private virtual server unlike shared where all resources are shared between multiple websites.
- The price of VPS also ain’t that high to afford.
- Bloggers get high resources to run a blog.
HostGator and Bluehost VPS plan comparison for Bloggers (Main Features)
Bluehost VPS shared hosting plan starts from $19.99/mo* but for a fair comparison, we took equal price plan of both web hosting provider that is approx $30/mo*.
Considering all these data is necessary for a Blogger who has good traffic on their blog. Hostgator VPS hosting minimum plan starts from $29.95/mo* but gives you so many resources like 120GB disk-space, 2GB ram, 1.5TB bandwidth and many more. On the other hand, the Bluehost VPS hosting plan of $29.99/mo* provides you less disk-space but fast one(because of SSD), 2GB RAM high and also 500GB bandwidth extra too.
It’s easy to look that where Hostgator focuses on disk-space more for users, Bluehost focused on fast performance. Also, Bluehost has a $19.99/mo* VPS hosting plan for those who just switching their hosting Shared to VPS.
What is the purpose of VPS?
Main purpose of choosing a VPS hosting is that you got the root access of your server. You get your independent virtual server so you change OS (Linux, Window) as per your need and also other applications too. Also, your server ain’t shared with other sites like Shared hosting than performance, stability, and resources also increased.
Is VPS faster than Shared web hosting?
Absolutely, because in shared web hosting a web server resources are shared with multiple sites but VPS doesn’t share its resources with any other sites. That’s why VPS hosting is always faster than Shared hosting.
Webhosting Plans for Small Business: Bluehost Vs HostGator
For an entrepreneur and small businessman, a website that always online for the customers does mean a lot. Small businesses are at their growing stage and if their websites ain’t available for the customer for due to some reasons then growth becomes limited. Small businesses and startups should choose a hosting that is fast, gives enough resources to run their websites properly and also not costly too.
Which is the best web hosting plan for small business?
Normally startups and small businesses don’t have enough funds which they can invest in the hosting. Investing too much amount into hosting also makes helpless to the entrepreneurs and that can harm your business(it’s better to save that amount for future purpose). That why choosing a plan that provides enough resources and comes under the budget is the best strategy for small businesses.
Selecting the higher plan of VPS hosting is a good option for small businesses because it’s affordable for small businessmen and entrepreneurs and a good amount of resources to run a website smoothly also gives enough cybersecurity that a small business website need. Here are the top features of the high plan of VPS Hosting.
Hostgator highest VPS hosting plans cost only $49.95/mo* and provides similar features to Bluehost(except disk-space which is 240GB that is higher) and costs almost $10 less than Bluehost. So, if you looking for a web hosting plan for your small business higher plan of VPS is made for you.
Webhosting Plans for Large Scale Business: Bluehost Vs HostGator
A Webhosting plan for large-scale businesses considered one of the most valuable things. Big business has a reputation among its customers and other competitors that needed to be maintained every single time and ignorance of customer ease of use can open a tremendous door for big-scale businesses that can harm the sales and revenue.
Customers start finding an alternate of yours when they aren’t able to use your service in the time of need. So you have to be very careful while choosing a hosting plan for large businesses.
Which hosting plan is good for a considerable business website?
A considerable business website can have a high amount of traffic and usually higher percent of them are their regular customers. It’s better to choose a web hosting that is reliable, gives a fast performance, high data storage and some extraordinary features too. Dedicated web hosting is the best hosting plan that is built for big-scale business websites.
Why did dedicated hosting consider the favorite hosting for enormous business websites?
Features of dedicated hosting made it worth to use for enormous business websites and below feature comparison clearly shows what you get in dedicated hosting starting plan.
HostGator dedicated hosting plan starting from $118.99/mo* and gives you a basic platform for a big-scale business website but that is not sufficient for top business websites. That’s why Hostgator made enterprises server plan that costs $148.98/mo* and gives you high specifications like:
- 8 Core processor
- 30GB RAM
- 1TB SSD
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Variation of OS (Linux & Windows)
If we look at the Bluehost dedicated starting plan that only costs $79.99/mo* and provides you a dedicated server for an enormous business website(but the resources ain’t enough according to personal view). The premium plan of dedicated web hosting of Bluehost is quite impressive in the price of just $119.99/mo*. Here what you will get in the premium dedicated plan:
- 4 Core processor @ 3.3GHz
- 16GB RAM
- 1TB (Mirror Storage)
- 15TB Bandwidth
- 5 IP Addresses
- Variation of OS (Linux & Windows)
Webhosting Plans for E-Commerce Websites: HostGator Vs Bluehost
E-Commerce websites are made for sale and earn purpose. There’s nothing else use of an E-commerce website. Mainly E-commerce websites are categorized between two different sizes:
- Small and Medium E-Commerce sites that target only limited region
- Large E-Commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, etc that use widely (usually target one or more than one country)
What web hosting plans should small e-commerce sites use?
Small E-commerce sites normally target small or multiple regions. Users are limited in small E-commerce sites and that’s why they don’t need huge resources for consumption. Dedicated hosting plans with cloud features are sufficient to run a small E-Commerce site. Also, affordable rates don’t put the burden on small site owners too.
What web hosting plans should large e-commerce sites use?
When it comes to large E-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, etc the number of users is gigantic that access the sites worldwide. There is a huge difference between small e-Commerce sites and large E-commerce sites. Unlike small E-Commerce sites, big E-commerce sites utilized more data, need more space and also best uptime.
This type of hosting plan is not provided by any web hosting provider publicly. Contacting their sales and support is the best way to get the exact amount to identify that how much does it cost to host an E-Commerce site
Conclusion
The most controversial debate is ongoing in the market, which is a better hosting provider between Hostgator vs Bluehost. The insider thing is that both come under the EIG (Endurance International Group) and also provide similar types of Webhosting plans too. But both are managed by different companies and owners.
Before you forget, let me remind you that a fair comparison always comes when we take customers’ experience too. Consumer experience is one of the basic things that many people do ignore.