Namecheap vs HostGator: Which one Is Right For Me?

You need to develop a highly functional and visually appealing site to generate web traffic and promote conversions. But there is more to it. To ensure efficient and smooth blog/site functioning, you need to select the very best hosting provider. Therefore, it would be best if you compared top providers like Namecheap vs. HostGator.

Then, check out their plans and prices. With so many providers offering a wide range of plans, choosing the right one can be an intimidating task. However, this is a crucial task you cannot avoid since selecting the best provider can help enhance your digital presence. 

A well-established hosting provider will ensure minimum downtime and meet demanding web traffic, increasing overall site efficiency. They will also offer high-end security and excellent customer support. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Which one offers better features and plans?

You need to consider two essential factors when selecting a web host provider, namely, high performance and low cost. Unfortunately, most first-timers are found to make the wrong choice by falling for aggressive marketing campaigns.

As a result, they end up getting inadequate plans to meet their site’s growing needs. This should be avoided by comparing different hosts thoroughly by taking certain parameters. Then choose the one that fits your site requirements perfectly. The two popular providers that you can consider for the selection are Namecheap and HostGator. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – An overview

Namecheap: It is considered to rule the domain registration area predominantly while providing its customers with reliable hosting services. They also offer a wide range of hosting plans to choose from. It includes VPS hosting, private email hosting, WP (WordPress) hosting, reseller hosting, and shared web hosting.

Shared hosting plans come with numerous exciting features as well as benefits. They also have integrated effortlessly with different productivity apps, SSL, site builders, and managed WP hosting tools. In addition, their servers are powerful enough to host multi-sites at a time.

Moreover, users are provided with limited period security through WhoisGuard privacy and free DNS service. They also allow flexible site management included within the package. Thus, selecting them carefully can improve your blog or site’s overall performance and functionality.

HostGator: This Houston-based hosting provider has been in the domain since 2002, offering dedicated shared hosting services. It boasts of hosting 9+ million domains since its launch, and this number seems to be increasing quite fast with time.

They provide their clients with a complete suite of VPS (virtual private server) plans and dedicated servers, including high-end cloud servers. They mainly offer shared hosting plans for Linux and Windows meant for medium and small-sized businesses. Besides this, they also provide dedicated server and cloud hosting plans.

This provider is best known for its high uptime, speed, low prices, user-friendly, and enhanced security features. In addition, unmetered bandwidth, introductory prices, lengthy money-back guarantee, and unmetered storage are a few benefits that their users can enjoy. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Pros & Cons

Namecheap:

Pros:

• With every package, they offer additional benefits like flexible domain management, 1-year WhoisGuard privacy protection and free high-quality DNS.
• This provider boasts to possess the industry’s top cPanel control panel to ensure an organized and clutter-free interface. Users can manage their sites without any hassle. 
• Large memory and high-quality servers ensure excellent uptime. 
• They offer CloudLinux, considered to be a stable and reliable software platform. 
• It starts at a very low price like $3.95 amount and hence, is counted among the cheapest web hosting services. Users are free to upgrade to a higher plan as desired at a later stage. 
• Users who slowly get acquainted with this platform can avail numerous online video tutorials. It offers step-by-step procedures to complete tasks quickly and effortlessly. 

Cons:

• They offer an economical basic package, but with limited features. Customers most often tend to switch to a much better and higher value package to derive enhanced features. 
• Chap support offered live online by the officials is the only type of customer support offered. Although issues tackled on time by the qualified team, it lacks the kind of efficiency offered generally through a hotline. 
• Other popular hosting service providers are found to offer their clients with a thirty-day money-back guarantee. However, Namecheap is found to offer just fifteen-day money-back guarantee. Some might not find this offer satisfactory. 
• WhoisGuard privacy is offered for a limited period of one year only after which users are charged some amount. This means in subsequent years, the cost only adds to the package, making it expensive.

HostGator:

Pros:

• All plans offered by this provider can easily meet those site/blog owners who seek budget plans. Although not the lowest, their prices on most plans are quite affordable and within limits of the average small or medium companies. Even introductory offered prices are valuable since it is packed with exciting features and lots of benefits. 
• Every package offered comes with a wide range of carefully selected hosting services. This hosting company offers different types of plans to meet the varying needs of their clients. 
• They offer a cPanel control panel considered to help users to enjoy convenient website management. Even beginners can have full control over their websites without having to know the technical aspects. You can avail of their online video tutorials which is an additional benefit. 
• This hosting provider claims to have a lengthy money-back guarantee on all its plans. The standard guarantee offered is the thirty-day assurance while the longer one is for 45 days. 
• Add-on benefits are offered on almost every hosting plan offered by this provider. It includes website transfer, free domain transfer, HostGator website builder, MySQL transfer, Adwords credits and $100 in Bing. 
• Users are provided with unmetered storage and bandwidth in all plans. 
• Users can easily develop a great-looking and functional site using the inbuilt web design tools. 
• Even Windows OS is supported. 
• They offer efficient server monitoring, excellent customer support and instant setup. Thus, you don’t have to struggle to manage your site. 

Cons:

• Although they offer affordable introduction prices, their renewal prices are quite expensive. 
• They tend to upsell their services much more to their users than required. Thus, users may have more additional features in their package than desired. 
• Users are generally shifted to other server racks, but without being given any prior intimation especially during traffic spikes. 
• They offer 24/7 support. However, their team is found to be not that efficient enough to manage user queries and issues. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Speed

Generally, websites that fail to load within 3 seconds are categorized by Google as slow websites. Even users do not seem to be interested in waiting for such sites to open up. Instead, they move to other fast-opening sites to seek information. Good speed is crucial for the survival and popularity of any website.

Hence, it becomes to select a reputed host service provider who offers excellent speed at all times. In a test conducted, Namecheap was found to deliver an average speed of about 3.15 seconds. Its slowest was found to be around 71.71 seconds, while the fastest was approximately 2.09 seconds. Hence, Namecheap is found to experience inconsistent load times. However, caching headers and compression can help bring valuable improvements in its speed. 

HostGator is much better regarding page speed, claiming to enjoy an average speed of about 2.82 seconds. Their best-recorded speed is 2.07 seconds, while the slowest one being 15.02 seconds. However, issues noticed in their data centers have resulted in increased page load times.

But still, their speed is much better when compared to other hosts. Hence, it can be safely stated that HostGator offers better speed than Namecheap. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Price

Both offer affordable basic plans. 

• Namecheap: You can get basic plans for just $3.24 a month. This provider offers four plans, namely, Business SSD, Ultimate, Professional and Value. If you seek the cheapest plan, then you should select the Value plan. However, its limited features compel some customers to switch over to a higher package. 
• HostGator: Their plans start from $3.82 a month. They offer three different plans, namely, Business Plan, Baby and Hatchling. All plans are bundled with unmetered storage and bandwidth. 

In short, Namecheap is more affordable when compared to HostGator. However, you will have to upgrade to a higher plan to derive enhanced features. Even the basic Hatchling plan of HostGator is combined with composite features along with web hosting services. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Uptime

Better uptime means your website will always be online and be visible to potential customers. It will also have the opportunity to be found quickly and rank higher in the leading search results. 

• Namecheap: Unfortunately, this provider does not fare well when considering average uptime. Its recorded average uptime was around 99.94%. The worst is cited to be 92.92% while the best is 100%. It also suffers from outage issues, thereby not reliable. 
• HostGator: It is stated to enjoy the very best industry uptimes with the average being around 99.97%. The worst is cited at 97.5% and the best being 100%. Initially, it suffered from several outages. However, with time, it has managed to maintain a 100% uptime record. 

Hence, HostGator is found to be more reliable when uptime record is considered when compared to Namecheap. Unfortunately, the latter also is plagued with several outages of late. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Money Back

• Namecheap: They offer a very short duration. Its 15-day money-back guarantee is considered to be the industry’s lowest. 15 days is not sufficient for customers to determine if they are getting satisfactory results or not. 
• HostGator: They offer a much longer money-back guarantee on their different plans. Industry-standard is considered to be for 30 days while they offer 45-day assurance. 

Therefore, HostGator seems to have a clear edge over Namecheap in this category and hence, enjoys immense popularity. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Support Response

Both claim to offer 24/7 live online customer support. 

• Namecheap: They boast of having employed an efficient and well-trained support staff to attend to client issues. They respond to all queries very quickly. The average response time to resolve an issue is around d2.2 hours. The fastest recorded was 0.1 hours and the slowest being 6.0 hours. 
• HostGator: They have a similar system in place. However, their customer support observed is found to be a bit poor and lacking in expertise. Their average response time was around 53.4hours, much slower when compared to other hosting providers in the domain. The slowest is 168.0 hours and the fastest being 3.0 hours. 

Hence, when customer support is concerned, Namecheap seems to be much better and reliable. The only downside is that both providers offer only live chat sessions to resolve queries. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Performance

Usually, host performance is ensured based on several parameters like customer support, uptimes and costs involved. 

• Namecheap: Although reliable, they are less popular than HostGator as they have only 1,000,000+ domains. 
• HostGator: This provider does claim to offer excellent page speed and higher uptime. However, customer support is a bit poor. But still, many consider them to be a reliable hosting provider. They have 8,000,000 domains. 

HostGator lacks different customer support platforms. However, their users enjoy enhanced site performance when compared to those using Namecheap. 

Namecheap vs. HostGator – Features

• Namecheap: They come with features like backup manager, spam protection tool, hotlink protection, virus scanner, Perl, JavaScript, etc. However, the features offered might vary based on the chosen package. 
• HostGator: They offer unlimited email accounts, unlimited FTP accounts, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, etc. However, the features might vary based on the plan and hosting option selected. But users of all types of plans can enjoy unmetered storage and bandwidth.

HostGator does offer lots of features and hence, is much better than Namecheap. Even their basic plan has interesting features to meet the needs of the average user. 

Conclusion

So, when comparing Namecheap vs. HostGator, the latter seems to be a wise selection made. It is quite efficient, cost-effective, and provides value worth the money.