Hostgator vs GoDaddy

As you might already know, Godaddy is by far the largest registrar on the web and Hostgator is the largest provider of shared hosting, but how to they compare as hosts? I’ve used both GoDaddy and HostGator, so I’m writing this article to help you decide which one is best for you! The following is simply my experiences mixed with other reviews.
 

Uptime and Performance

Out of the 6 hosts I’ve tested over the past two years, HostGator has given the best uptime, which isn’t surprising since they are known to consistently give an uptime of over 99.9%, which is above the industry standard. GoDaddy gets a lot of mixed reviews in this area. I personally moved from Godaddy after being with them for a year, due to the lack of consistency in the service they provided. Normally GoDaddy would load my pages in around 3-4 seconds, which I found acceptable as I was only starting out. However, more and more often it would take between 20-30 just to connect to the database, never mind loading the page. I’ve been with Hostgator for almost a year now, and in terms of performance, relative to GoDaddy, I cannot praise them enough. I monitor the performance of my site 24 hours a day, and since moving from GoDaddy, my pages have always loaded in under 2 seconds consistently, which is far better than I was getting previously, even on a good day.
HostGator vs GoDaddy, HostGator is by far the superior host in terms of performance.
 

Hostgator Vs Godaddy Support

Both offer 24/7 support via toll-free numbers and email. If you don’t like talking on the phone, or don’t want to wait on a reply to your email, HostGator offers a live chat service as well as support forums. Although I found the support from both hosts to be very professional, GaDaddy really does fall short in this area. When I had an FTP issue that was related to DNS, I exchanged more than 10 emails with GoDaddy support, and like most big companies, the responses were very generic. After just few emails, they kept asking me to provide information that I had already given more than once, so it seemed clear that they weren’t reading any of my previous emails before replying. A lot of the time they just gave a link to the FAQ or TOS. In they end, after communicating for 3 weeks, they weren’t able to resolve the issue, I ended up getting a friend, who is a network engineer, to sort it out.
I haven’t been with HostGator long enough to gauge them well on support, I did however speak to them through email and their live chat service before and after I moved and they seemed to have more of a personal touch. I actually had a database issue when I moved the site over, I contacted them through the live chat and gave them my GoDaddy login details and they done everything for me for free, which I thought was great.
HostGator vs GoDaddy, based on my initial thoughts of HG and the shocking experience I had with GD, I have to say that HG’s support is miles ahead!
 

Control Panel and Features

Hostgator provides its users with cPanel, which has a huge array of features like the script installer Fantastico, which is incredibly useful to novice and experienced users. Godaddy uses their own custom control panel, which does lack a lot of the features that cPanel provides and isn’t the most user friendly around. I’m sure the more-advanced users will be very disappointed by it. If you are just starting out though, it will be useful enough. I can’t say that I had any issues with their control panel, there’s a lot of guides out there if you get stuck, but I guess the same could be said for cPanel.
I wouldn’t say I’m experienced enough to appreciate the benefits cPanel offers over GoDaddy’s control panel, but it’s a known fact that cPanel is a lot better. So HostGator vs GoDaddy, the winner is HG.
 

Hostgator vs Godaddy – Which is cheaper?

Both hosts offer three very similar packages. Hostgator offers more space and bandwidth, however, that’s really just a marketing gimmic. Both hosts oversell, especially Godaddy. The main restriction will CPU usage, although I haven’t experienced this with HG yet. For short-term pay monthly packages, GD offers a slightly better price, but there isn’t really much of a difference, for the added features and performance, the small price difference of one or two dollars shouldn’t be a deciding factor.
HostGator vs GoDaddy on price, GoDaddy wins.
 

Coupons

Here are some coupons to get you started:

COUPON CODE: superdeal2013    ($9.94 OFF)
COUPON CODE: 25offer2013      (25% OFF ANY ORDER)

Jason