Here at BHusers, I have shared numerous articles to help you understand how Bluehost hosting works and how to get things done. Today I will be comparing Bluehost and Hostgator, which are always looked at one of the closest options for shared hosting (Among beginners) and by the end, you will be able to conclude and decide which hosting you should opt for.

To start with I would like to share an interesting thing about both these hosting companies: Bluehost and Hostgator both are part of EIG group. For beginners, here is a small note for EIG:

EIG (Endurance International group) is a web-hosting company who own over 65+ web hosting companies around the globe. EIG group is expanding itself by acquiring all the upcoming web hosting company, and even though they seems to be running as an individual company, they are part of EIG Management.  Many popular web-hosting companies like Hostgator, Bluehost, ASmallorange are now part of EIG.

• EIG acquired Hostgator in August 2012
• EIG acquired Bluehost in Feb 2011.

When both the acquisition happened, I had few sites on Hostgator and few on Bluehost. I witnessed the complete buyout by EIG and how it affected the customers.

For me Bluehost acquisition was smooth, and it was probably the management team was untouched by EIG even after acquisition.

In 2012, Hostgator was top recommended hosting company, and after the acquisition, they lost the trust from thousands of users.

It was because, after the buyout of Hostgator, EIG moved all the server to one datacenter and in this process, many websites went down, and few of them lost access to their website.

However, things got better in past couple of years as they learned from their mistake. However, the damage was already done & it would take more time for HostGator to recover.

Sad but true!

Anyways, this was a little background for Bluehost and Hostgator, so that you can understand: Both companies are the child of same father (Literally). Now, let’s move in the current scenario.

Let’s see how both the hosting company can be compared with each other in term of quality and values.

Hostgator Vs. Bluehost: Neck to neck comparison:

One thing which I have seen in last one year is the way these companies are expanding. It’s in the similar nature, and both are expanding to multiple geo-location including China and India.

What surprises me is; in 2019 both the companies have more or less similar hosting package, but Bluehost has an edge regarding technology and services.

Especially as laid down by Bluehost roadmap they are revamping themselves to become completely WordPress hosting company. This is one reason you might notice many new tools introduced by them inside the Bluehost cPanel.

I will talk about this in detail in upcoming guides & for now let’s do a neck to neck comparison of Bluehost & HostGator hosting.

Hosting packages & pricing: Which is cheaper?

Both Hostgator and Bluehost have similar hosting packages and offers similar pricing. In their shared hosting packages, here are similar packages:

• Hostgator Baby plan –> Bluehost starter plan
• Hostgator Hatchling plan –> Bluehost plus plan
• Hostgator Business Plan –> Bluehost Prime plan

So in the plan and pricing, there is hardly any comparison as both of them offers the similar feature. Minimum hosting package on Bluehost starts at $3.49/month and HostGator starts at $3.96/month. They both have VPS, managed WordPress, reseller, and dedicated hosting.

• Must read: Which Bluehost Hosting package is best for your website?

Technical support:

This is one area that Bluehost wins all hands with Hostgator. Hostgator support has gone down in past few months and now the minimum wait time is 30 minutes on live chat.

Whereas Bluehost technical support is still better and you will be able to get hold of a tech-support representative in 10-15 minutes. Sadly it’s not a great response time, but this is what they have to offer. You can also get in touch with Bluehost support over phone which is in my opinion fastest way to get help on any technical or sales support.

Winner: Bluehost

User interface: Who is more friendly for nontech users?

Both of them offers standard cPanel, but Bluehost cPanel is customized and more user-friendly. HostGator offers standard cPanel without any customization.

I don’t see this as a big comparison point because as an end user you will be able to get things done on both the hosting in more or less similar manner. Here is a screenshot of Hostgator cPanel dashboard:

2017 Update: Recently Bluehost has started adding new features like WordPress tools that make it easier for you to manage your WordPress blog right from Bluehost dashboard. This also includes taking WordPress backup, updating themes & plugins, adding SSL certificate & few other things. Here is an updated screenshot of WordPress tools offered by Bluehost.

(More important they are not charging anything extra for this new addon)

Website uptime & speed: Which one will give quality ranking signals to search engine?

I have few sites hosted on Hostgator and few on Bluehost from last three years. On Bluehost, I have had few down-time due to server scaling and some internal changes, and most of the planned downtime lasted for about 30 minutes.

On HostGator I had similar experience due to planned maintenance, but one thing which bothered me the most is the slowness of dashboard and site.

There are times when the site was responding very slow (about 20 seconds to load the site), and reasons were unknown. But when the site is not experiencing any problem, I had no issues with Hostgator and site runs smooth even with too many WordPress plugins and daily traffic of 20000 Page views.

Overall regarding speed, both the hosting are great and value for money.

Note: I use CloudFlare and W3 Total Cache plugin to optimize my sites on both the hosting. I recommend you to use the same for your WordPress website hosted on any shared hosting.

Conclusion:

Instead of making this Bluehost Vs. Hostgator comparison too long and detailed, let me help you out with my observation and experience.

Undoubtedly both the web-hosting companies are top web-hosting companies and are reputed one.

If you have to pick one of them, I would recommend you to pick Bluehost. One major reason for this is, Bluehost is up to date with the latest technology and even being a part of same EIG group, they work differently. Theya re also recommended by official WordPress.org that gives more confidence & reason for budget concious users like you & me to go with Bluehost.

The biggest difference between Hostgator and Bluehost is the quality of support. Hostgator which used to be a great hosting company in the past is no more a top choice when it comes to the support quality.

Recently they also started asking users to pay for cleaning up their hosting account from malicious codes (Which is unacceptable).

Overall on the scale of 1-5 (1 being the least and five being the best) here is my rating for both of them:

• Bluehost: 4.8/5
• Hostgator: 4/5

I hope this comparison helps you to pick the right hosting company for your next project. If you are an existing user or had experience with Hostgator and Bluehost, I would love to hear your experience and opinion in the comment section below.

Note: New users can sign up any of the hostings from below link to get it on discounted price.

• Sign up for Bluehost (Discount included in the link)
• Sign up for Hostgator (Coupon: HOSTGATORDISCOUNT25 )