GoDaddy vs. HostGator

GoDaddy vs. HostGator, which host is the fairest of them all, is probably a question that has afflicted a number of webmasters. For one, both hosts are extremely popular and have extremely low prices, with GoDaddy being quite famous for their one dollar per month Shared Hosting service. To settle this question once and for all, we did the only reasonable thing, we bought hosting plans from both hosts, set up dummy accounts and tested for some of the most important aspects of hosting to us. So in a way, we are sorta absolutely qualified for this sort of work.

We checked for speed, uptime quality and even customer support. Both hosts will be going head to head on all these metrics, and even more, and after each section, we’ll be declaring a winner. At the end of it all, we’ll give our final verdict and tell you who we think the best host is between these two. The amazing thing is that you do not have to follow our advice, you can come to your own conclusions yourself, and you’ll have the data to do so.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: A complete Overview

Founded way back in 1997 by Bob Parsons, GoDaddy is the largest domain registrar in the world, and also one of the largest web hosts available on the internet. Based in Houston and founded by Brent Oxley, a student at Florida Atlantic University, in October 2002, HostGator’s story is that of growth, growth and growth. By 2006, the host had registered over 200,000 domains, which is an amazing number in four years.

Today, both hosts offer roughly the same sort of services. They both offer domain registration services, and they both provide a host (yes, that was intentional, thank you) of web hosting services like VPS, managed WordPress hosting, Dedicated Server hosting and a few others. Since both hosts are really huge, hosting cumulatively over ten million websites, they can afford to offer great specs at the cheapest prices. Perhaps that’s why both hosts have become so popular.

While GoDaddy has maintained a level of independence, the same cannot be said for HostGator. A few years back, HostGator was purchased by Endurance International Group (EIG), one of the biggest telecommunication conglomerates in the world. EIG owns a host (look, it was just too easy) of other hosts like BlueHost (if you want, you can check how BlueHost compares to HostGator) and HostMonster, however, EIG has also earned a reputation of owning some of the lowest-performing web hosts. HostGator has, for the most part, kept that reputation by being consistently chosen by a lot of webmasters.

Enough about all that, let’s get into our business for today. First,

Popularity comparison: How much does it matter?

It’s easy to choose a product because most people choose them, and it’s easier even to ignore other brands because they aren’t quite as popular. But that is hardly relevant here, as both HostGator and GoDaddy are immensely popular, so if you’re someone in love with popular brands, you’re in safe hands regardless of which host you choose.

However, we wouldn’t want you to focus on the popularity of either host. There are other more important metrics, as popularity doesn’t even prove great hosting in the first place. If anything, it proves that a host is exceptional at marketing, which tells you next to nothing about the hosting value that can be offered to you. Instead of looking at how popular a host is, you should look at other factors, like performance, for example.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Performance

We’ll be measuring the performance of both hosts using two very important metrics which are speed and uptime.

Speed

It’s no secret that websites hosted on faster servers are able to retain more visitors and thus owners are able to increase their conversion rate. It isn’t quite the same with slower servers, and since that can affect your reach and conversion rate, it is important to check which host is faster.

First, we bought a hosting plan from GoDaddy and HostGator, set up WordPress sites on both accounts and went to work testing. First off, we tested response time, that is, time to the first byte. Before testing, we made sure to disable all speed optimization plugins in order to get a fair, or close to fair at least, final result. Here is a snapshot of our test results

GoDaddy.                         Hostgator

New York      91ms                                 131m

London.        132ms.                              183ms

Sydney.         689ms.                              620ms

Bangladesh.  701ms.                             831ms

Amsterdam.   502ms.                            609ms

Ontario.        210ms.                             421ms

Ottawa.        162ms.                                141ms

Calcutta.      791ms.                                 810ms

Mumbai.      589ms.                                 501ms

After all our tests, GoDaddy recorded an average TTFB of 510ms, which isn’t that great. It isn’t that terrible either, as many hosts that we’ve reviewed have consistently posted even lower speeds. HostGator, on the other hand, did even worse, posting an average time to the first-byte speed of 781ms. Not content with that, we also tried to test full page load speed, and as expected GoDaddy was still faster than HostGator, at 800ms while HostGator consistently took over a second to load.

Speed optimization tools

Content Delivery Systems usually make servers faster, and recently most hosts have started integrating the technology into their hosting infrastructure.  HostGator comes with integrated Cloudflare CDN on all plans, so users do not need to pay for additional CDN services. While GoDaddy also offers CDN support, it is only offered on select plans and you’ll have to set it up and activate it yourself. However, if you want, you can also add third-party CDN providers like KeyCDN to your site for more speed.

Data centers

Hosts that have Datacenters across the world are usually faster than hosts who do not, especially if such host doesn’t offer CDN. GoDaddy, for one, has Datacenters scattered all over the world in places like; (show GoDaddy’s data centers)

HostGator, on the other hand, has only two Datacenters and they are located at Houston, Texas and Provo Utah.

Speed analysis winner, GoDaddy: To be honest, neither host impressed us. There are a lot of much faster hosts, A2 hosting, for one, comes to mind. You can even check out how A2 hosting compares to GoDaddy if you like.

However, even at that, we have to pick a clear winner. It is clear that GoDaddy disappointed us less than HostGator did, so GoDaddy wins this one for us.

Uptime

Speed is important, but if your site isn’t online, it means very little. No host can guarantee a hundred per cent uptime, but the best hosts consistently make sure that your site is online at least 99.99% of the time. We tested for uptime on both servers over a three month period, and these are the results we recorded.

HostGator.                        GoDaddy

August, 100%.              August, 100%

September, 99.99%.           September, 100%

October,99.99%.              October, 99.98%

Thus, we recorded an average uptime of 99.99% for both hosts, something that is truly remarkable, given that perfection is an ideal that is almost impossible to reach in matters such as this. However, we don’t check only uptime statistics to decide the host with the better uptime, we check uptime guarantees too.

Uptime Guarantees

Uptime guarantees make sure that if uptime ever gets terrible, you always have a path of redress or a way to get some compensation. Both HostGator and GoDaddy offer uptime guarantees, but one offers more value and is overall less complicated than the other.

GoDaddy’s service agreement states the following;

“We offer a Service uptime guarantee of 99.9% (“Service Uptime Guarantee”) of available time per month. If we fail to maintain this Service Uptime Guarantee in a particular month (as solely determined by us), you may contact us and request a credit of 5% of your monthly hosting fee for that month”.

Basically, for uptime below 99.9%, you are entitled to only 5% of your monthly hosting fee. Asides the fact that 5% of your hosting fee may only translate to a few pennies, only GoDaddy can decide how much downtime your site experiences, and that comes with obvious problems. HostGator’s uptime guarantee is more laissez-faire, with HostGator promising a free month of hosting for every per cent of downtime experienced below 99.9%.

Uptime winner HostGator: Both hosts have impeccable uptime, but both hosts do not offer the same level of uptime guarantees. While HostGator offers a free month of hosting for uptime below 99.9%, GoDaddy offers only a miserly 5% off hosting fees. HostGator wins this round and makes it one apiece. If you want to see how HostGator compares to arguably the best host at uptime, you can check out Bluehost vs. Hostgator.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Ease of use

To put it simply, the best hosts are great to use, and they offer so many great incentives like free domains and free SSL certificates. Having said that, let’s see the extent to which users can expect to enjoy GoDaddy and HostGator.

User Interface

The best place to start is the user interface. We believe that only two answers are acceptable when answering this question, and they are Plesk and cPanel. Both interfaces are great because of two reasons, they are easy to figure out and use, and most hosts already use them, making it easier for people transferring from other hosts to make the switch. Both HostGator and GoDaddy have the cPanel interface installed on their Shared and WordPress hosting plans.

Sign-Up Process

The sign-up process for GoDaddy was quite easy. We found setting up our account rather simple, and even the greenest users ought to have no problems purchasing a plan and setting up. The same could almost be said of HostGator, but for the fact that it took over thirty minutes for our payment to be confirmed, while it took just about two to five minutes with GoDaddy. It wasn’t that much of an issue, but we just felt that we ought to mention it.

Free Domains

We feel that all plans should come with free domain registration, and that’s what GoDaddy and HostGator think too, at least on Shared and Managed WordPress hosting plans. GoDaddy and HostGator offer free domains on plans, and if you’re a newbie, that’s something you will be grateful for as it saves you some cash. Because many hosts now come with free domains, it might be easy to take this for granted. But people should remember that there are still hosts, like SiteGround, that do not offer free domains. You can even check out how SiteGround compares to GoDaddy.

Apps Integration, Installation and Market Place

GoDaddy and HostGator support a host of Content Management Systems and a host of other apps like Drupal, Joomla and Magneto. What’s more, both hosts ensure that users have access to these apps, plug-ins and even professional services, through the MOJO marketplace. The marketplace is where you can hire and buy all sorts of products and services and makes your job easier. For users who would like to install WordPress on their Shared hosting plans, both hosts have one-click installation support that ensures that you can build a WordPress site at a go.

Free Site Migration

If we owned a host, this wouldn’t even be an issue. Surprisingly, it still is one with a lot of hosts. GoDaddy, for one, doesn’t believe in such hospitable nonsense and charges $99 for migrating a single site. So if you want to move your site over to GoDaddy and you do not know how to migrate your site yourself, you had best be ready to fork out over a hundred dollars from your pocket. HostGator, on the other hand, has a more nuanced view, offering a limited number of free site migrations on a number of plans. For example, depending on the Optimized WordPress plan opted for, users can be entitled to between 1-3 free site migrations. Users on Cloud or Shared hosting servers, however, are only entitled to a single site transfer. If you purchase a Reseller plan, you have access to about thirty total free site transfers, and if you purchase a Dedicated Server or VPS hosting plan, you get access to unlimited free site transfers.

There is a catch, though; all sites can only be transferred on an “as is” basis, that is, copying an existing site to a new domain or changing the URL of an existing site is not covered by the free migration service.

Website Builder

If you do not want to use any of the CMS available, you can also build your own website without the stress of coding with the website builders provided by both hosts. GoDaddy and HostGator make use of site builders developed by them. GoDaddy has a really cool builder called GoCentral that has a clean interface, is easy to use and is free to start. That is, users, get a free month trial whenever they sign up to use GoCentral, and in most cases that is usually enough. HostGator also has an in-house developed website builder called (and we are absolutely not kidding when we say this) Gator by HostGator. Look, that’s either just plain genius or something else entirely. There is no in-between. Sadly, Gator by HostGator is not free, and the price of the plans offered are from $3.45 to $8.30. These plans all come with free web hosting, too. If you’d prefer not to pay for a site builder, you should probably check out hosts like Bluehost who use Weebly, a third party free (with BlueHost, anyway) site builder.

Staging Environments

Staging environments are great because they allow you to test out changes made to your website before they actually go live. While you can create a staging environment yourself using a plug-in, or creating one on a subdomain, it’s usually better if your host offers one with your plan. GoDaddy only offers staging environments on managed WordPress hosting plans (except the basic plan). HostGator, unfortunately, doesn’t offer staging areas, so you’ll have to create them yourself if you’re interested in having a staging area.

Ease of use winner GoDaddy: We didn’t have any problems using either host. The interface was clean and uncluttered and we were able to find our way around without a lot of trouble. However, GoDaddy, despite not offering free site migration, does more for free than HostGator, that’s why GoDaddy wins this round for us.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Money-Back Guarantee.

GoDaddy offers the standard money-back guarantee of thirty days on annual plans, and if you purchase a plan less than an annual plan, you have a much less impressive 48 hours to cancel. While that sounds all well and good, GoDaddy also has a clause in their service agreement that is quite vague. It goes like this;

“If a Hosting Service has already been performed, then it is non-refundable (if not yet performed, eligible for a refund within 30 days of the date of the transaction).”

Proper vague, that. HostGator, on the other hand, has a much more impressive uptime guarantee of forty-five days, which isn’t optimal as we’ve seen much better, but at least it isn’t the industry standard. This applies to all HostGator’s plans except Dedicated Server plans.

It’s also worth knowing that refunds of both hosts only cover actual hosting fees, and any add-ons purchased at the checkout are nonrefundable. In addition, if you’ve received a free service like free domain registration, about $15 will be deducted from your refund.

Money-back guarantee winner HostGator: This was pretty straight to the point. Even though both hosts did not really impress us (unlike Dreamhost, with an amazing 97-day money-back guarantee), the host with the longer money-back guarantee was always going to get the win, and that’s precisely what HostGator has done.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Customer support and reliability.

Regardless of how great you are at setting up websites and all that stuff, if you run projects for a long period, there’s always the chance that you’ll come upon a problem that you won’t quite be able to solve. That’s where great customer support comes in. When in a fix, you don’t want to be stuck with support that is unhelpful or that is difficult to reach.

Customer Support Channels

Both hosts offer the same customer support channels which are ticketing, live chat support and phone support. These channels are open 24/7 too.

Testing Customer Support

Before testing, we certainly didn’t expect great things from either host in terms of customer support. This is because the best customer support (with the exception of SiteGround and a few other hosts, of course) we’ve received has always been from the small hosting companies. We first tried to connect to a live rep through GoDaddy live chat channel, and while we always connected to a live rep, the wait time wasn’t always so great. In fact, we had to consistently wait over ten minutes to connect to a live host, and there were times that we were forced to wait over half an hour to connect to a live rep. Our experience with HostGator wasn’t all that different. The only difference is that sometimes we connected to a live rep pretty quickly (under two minutes or so) and sometimes, we had to wait for over half an hour before we could speak to a live host.

The quality of customer support was more of the same, still. Both hosts had live reps that were friendly enough, but only a few reps that we spoke to showed enough knowledge to inspire confidence in us. For a majority of the reps that we texted, we either got links telling us to go through relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) literature or our answers went unanswered totally. Not good enough.

While, surprisingly, things were better with the phone support channels, we still experienced the same sort of problems; long wait time and low-quality support. There is some good news, though. Tickets were attended to within twenty-four hours and reported issues and questions were usually carefully solved.

Knowledge Bases

Both hosts maintain great knowledge bases that almost, just almost, excuses the level of customer support provided. Users can find tutorials and articles on virtually anything that concerns hosting, and thus will have fewer reasons to contact customer support.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT WINNER HOSTGATOR: Let’s be honest. We were not particularly disappointed with the quality of customer support that both hosts offer. We kind of expected something of the sort. On the whole, we’ve experienced better. Hosts like SiteGround and WP engine offer far superior customer Support. Generally, though, HostGator live reps were easier to reach and able to solve our problems and answer our questions better and faster than GoDaddy’s.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Security

The internet is a wonderful place, but it comes with its own dangers. There are a lot of malware and hackers looking to take advantage of sites with weak security, and while a lot of the responsibility of security lies in the hand of the end-user, web hosts also have their own part to play. Things like daily Backups, Site security, SSL certificates and firewalls are all within the purview of hosts, and each host has a different policy regarding them.

Backup Policy

Whether you have only a few pages on your website, or you have multiple websites, it’s important to have backups. HostGator, for one, has a backup service that runs on a random day each week. The backup overwrites previous backups as only one week of backup is available at any moment in time. However, HostGator warns that backups are created as a matter of courtesy and aren’t guaranteed. In other words, if you really need backups, you should consider seeking the services of other third-party services like Codeguard.

GoDaddy offers free daily backups on all managed WordPress hosting plans, and that’s about that. For other backup services, there is the GoDaddy website backup tool that costs under three dollars per month (£1.99) for UK users.

 SSL certificates

HostGator offers SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt for free on all plans. GoDaddy isn’t into such generous behavior, though, and doesn’t offer free SSL certificates on all plans (they do offer it on higher up select plans, though). What GoDaddy offers, though, is an opportunity to pay around $48 for an SSL certificate. Pricey.

Firewall Protection

HostGator has an extensive Firewall rule and large security sets that protect servers from different forms of attack. In case heavy flooding is experienced, network-level flood protection can be easily enabled. In addition, HostGator data centers are highly secured with extremely restricted access. GoDaddy, on the other hand, has a standard Web Application Firewall that protects against attacks such as SQL injection techniques and cross-site scripting. However, just months after being bought, Touseef Gul (a web application firewall expert) claimed to have been able to breach the firewall and gain access to sensitive databases with the use of simple SQL injection strings. Is this worrying? Extremely.

Site Security Features.

Most hosts make use of SiteLock, a third party advanced warning and malware scanning system. The system also removes malware automatically (this, however, depends on the kind of plan you purchase for the site). The system also checks if you’re blacklisted by Google and alerts you so that you can make changes quickly. HostGator makes use of SiteLock and you can purchase the feature for your site hosted on HostGator servers for as little as $1.94

GoDaddy doesn’t offer direct access to SiteLock and instead offers a proprietary Website Security feature that performs most of the same services that SiteLock performs. The service starts at £3.99 for UK users.

Security winner HostGator: Not offering a free SSL certificate like most hosts was always going to hurt GoDaddy, and this section, better than any, shows exactly that. Despite offering no guaranteed backup service, HostGator comes out as the winner of this round for us.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator: Pricing

One of the most important things (and if you’re sufficiently cheap the most important thing) to consider when purchasing anything at all, and that includes hosting. Some hosts offer great value at really low prices, while some just do not. Of course, we want to maximize our gain, so we want to check which host offers the most value at the best price?

We’ll be comparing only the Shared Hosting and Managed WordPress hosting plans of both hosts for obvious reasons. What are these obvious reasons, you may ask. Well, an overwhelming majority of the websites on the internet are hosted on Shared Hosting servers (WordPress hosting is based on Shared servers too), and unless you get over a hundred thousand visits per month, you don’t have a reason to purchase a plan higher than a Shared Hosting Plan.

Shared Hosting Plans

GoDaddy has four levels of hosting plans which are the Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate and Maximum plan while HostGator has three levels of Shared hosting plans which are the Hatchling Plan, the Baby Plan, and the Business plan.

The Basic plans.

GoDaddy’s Basic plan is the Economy plan and it comes with 24/7 support infrastructure, one website, 100GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited emails, and one free domain. This offer sounds real nice, till you discover that $2.99 is a promotional offer and the renewal price actually looks something like $7.99, which is a whole lot more than $2.99. HostGator’s the Basic plan is the Hatchling plan which comes with a single domain, one-click installations, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unmetered bandwidth and subdomains,  and a free SSL certificate all at a  price of $2.75 per month and renews at $10.95.

The difference in the initial price of both hosts is negligible, but the difference in the renewal price is hardly so. They both offer roughly the same specs, however, with unlimited space compared to GoDaddy’s 100GB of storage, HostGator offers more. We do think it is semantics though, as it is unlikely that one website will use up to 100GB, and it is unlikely that Hostgator’s “unlimited” offer covers over 100GB. Generally, though, GoDaddy’s basic plan offers more value for money.

Medium Range plans

GoDaddy’s medium-range plan is the Deluxe plan. It comes with all the features of the Economy plan and has the added advantage of unlimited websites, storage, and subdomains. It costs $4.99 (however, you have to pay $10.99 to renew). HostGator’s medium-range plan is the Baby plan and it comes with unlimited domains, a free domain plus all the features of the Hatchling plan. It costs a promotional price of $3.95 per month but the same conditions as the Hatchling plan applies.  The normal price per month is $11.95 and renewal cost $9.95.

Both hosts go all out, maxing out on all the important specs, especially offering unlimited websites. However, for this plan, HostGator matches GoDaddy perfectly as both hosts offer roughly the same price for the same level of quality.

High Range Plans.

This section is probably not particularly fair, as GoDaddy has two entries and HostGator only has; the Business plan. That sucks, but it is what it is. GoDaddy’s Ultimate plan which can be purchased at $5.99 (The renewal fee is $16.99). It has all the features of the deluxe plan, and in addition, has double the processing power, a free SSL certificate (for a single term) and unlimited databases. So, GoDaddy does offer a free SSL certificate but only on higher-tier plans. HostGator’s highest Shared hosting plan is the Business plan and it comes with all the features of the Baby Plan plus a free dedicated IP and free SEO tools. The plan costs $5.95 per month (renewal is $14.95 per month). GoDaddy’s highest Shared hosting plan is the Maximum Plan and it costs $12.99 for an initial purchase and $24.99 upon renewal. It comes with the Ultimate plan features and ×2 the processing power and memory, ×2 maximum site traffic and a free SSL certificate for the full term.

While HostGator’s plans are generally cheaper, GoDaddy’s plans (even the most expensive one) packs more value than HostGator and is certainly more value for money.

Managed WordPress Hosting Plans.

GoDaddy, like in the Shared hosting aspect, also has four managed WordPress hosting plans. All GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting plans come with

a free domain (when you sign up for an annual plan)

free daily backups (these aren’t offered on their shared hosting plans)

malware scans,

And sign up forms that are built-in for capturing client data.

HostGator has three managed WordPress hosting plans and they are the Starter, Standard, and Business plan. According to HostGator, their managed WordPress hosting plans come with;

2.5× faster load times because of supercharged could architecture, CDN, low-density servers, and multiple caching layers.

Lightening fast request processing because of exclusive cloud hosting servers.

and WordPress turbocharged delivers faster load time .

(Is it just us or does all of this sound slightly like the same thing but in different words?)

Basic Managed WordPress Hosting Plans

GoDaddy basic plan, which is appropriately named the Basic Plan, comes with one website, 10gb worth of space, and maximum traffic of 25,000 visitors per month. The cost of the initial price is $4.99. The price for Basic Plan renewal, though, is $9.99 per month.

HostGator basic plan is the Starter plan and starts us off with one website, a hundred thousand visitors per month (capacity), one gigabyte of backups, a free SL certificate and free domains. It costs $5.95 for new customers who would like to purchase an annual plan. After the first period, though, the plan renews at $9.95

Which plan would we opt for? We really don’t know. Both hosts offer great specs at cutthroat prices. However, if we had to choose, we’d go with Hostgator because of the larger capacity compared to GoDaddy.

Medium Range Managed WordPress Plan

HostGator medium-range plan is the Standard plan and it comes with two websites, two hundred thousand visits per month, two GB backup space, a free SSL certificate and a free domain. It costs $7.95 and renewal costs about $15.95. GoDaddy medium-range WordPress hosting plan is the Deluxe plan which comes at an initial cost of $7.99. (renewal is $14.99). It comes with one website, maximum of 100k visitors per month, 15GB of space, support of free daily backups, malware scans, built-in sign-up forms, and a free domain.

The main difference here, perhaps, is that HostGator Standard Plan comes with two websites, while GoDaddy Deluxe Plan comes with only one, and coincidentally, they cost about the same thing. Again, HostGator plan offers better value for money.

High Range Managed WordPress Hosting Plans.

Like Shared Hosting Plans, GoDaddy has two high-level plans and they are the Ultimate and Pro 5+ Plans. The Ultimate plan can be purchased for $9.99 ($19.99) per month and offers 2 websites, 30GB of storage, a free SSL certificate for the first year, a maximum of 400k visitors, and all the features of the Deluxe plan.

HostGator only has one high range managed WordPress Plan which is the Business Plan and it comes with 3 websites, 500 thousand visits per month, 3 GB of backups, a free domain and free SSL certificate. The plan costs $9.95 per month for an initial annual plan purchase, and renewal costs $22.95.

GoDaddy highest plan is the Pro 5+  plan and it offers 5-50 websites, support of up to 800k monthly visitors, a free SSL certificate per site, 50-200GB of storage and all the other features of the Ultimate plan before it. It costs $27.99 (same as renewal)

Here, it gets a bit more difficult to compare. Of course, the Pro 5+ plan has immense value, but it also costs $27.99 for even initial purchases. Again, as unlikely as it may be, HostGator plan offers the most value for money.

Pricing comparison winner HostGator: We never thought we’ve ever say this, but GoDaddy has lost at a pricing comparison. It was really close, close enough for it to have tilted either depending on the needs of your site, but even with only three plan tiers, HostGator pricing module is really impressive. As a result of this, they’ve won this round for us.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator Extra Features

GoDaddy has the following extra features:

• GoDaddy offers a free domain name for the first term for every created website.
• An extensive knowledge base that ensures that you do not have a lot of reasons to contact live support.
• All hosting plans have access to a free to start website builder.
• Access to over 125 apps with one-click installs. This includes the more popular applications like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
• GoDaddy helps new websites to get their name out on the big worldwide web through  $100 worth ad credits for every $25 spent. The credits also include $50 in Bing and Facebook ads.
• GoDaddy has a reward and referral program called Pro rewards that lets you buy upgrades or pay for websites with reward points.
• People with a Deluxe hosting plan or higher have access to the one-click website staging tool. This ensures that you experience zero downtime while updating your website. This tool makes sure that your website is still online while you’re working and a copy. It also allows you to see firsthand the results of your updates and correct your mistakes, if any, before going live.
• GoDaddy Pro is an extra feature provided by GoDaddy that allows resellers or people with multiple products to manage their accounts from a single dashboard. This means that you can control all your products with GoDaddy including domains multiple websites via one central panel. You are also allowed to clone your websites, get real-time analytics, perform migrations, and set automatic backups as you deem fit. Users can also manage online stores and/or websites, and make purchases on behalf of others with GoDaddy pro client.

HostGator has the following extra features:

• Better performance with Opteron 6000 series CPU combined with DDR3 ECC RAM
• Support of multiple languages including Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, and Perl.
• HostGator has only one database, MySQL
• Unlimited FTP and email accounts.
• $100 in free advertising credits.
• Extra features comparison winner, draw: Neither host really impressed us despite having pretty decent features.
• Major differences between GoDaddy and HostGator
• HostGator offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, while GoDaddy it offers a thirty-day money-back guarantee
• GoDaddy has four tiers of Shared hosting and Managed WordPress hosting plans while HostGator only has three
• GoDaddy plans come with GoCentral as a site builder while HostGator plans come with Gator by HostGator.
• HostGator offers free site migration, while GoDaddy doesn’t.
• GoDaddy has global Datacenters while HostGator only has Datacenters within the US.

Final winner HostGator

This was probably our closest comparison. Both hosts offer almost identical quality in terms of value, and they even have almost the same business model. However, even though GoDaddy has better speed and is easier to use than HostGator, HostGator was more impressive in all other aspects of hosting. In terms of performance, both hosts probably won’t be able to stand up to hosts like SiteGround and Bluehost, but in terms of price/quality offered, we don’t think any other group of hosts hold a candle to HostGator and GoDaddy. In the final analysis, though, HostGator edges this one for us because of superior security, pricing and customer support.

So, GoDaddy vs. Hostgator? It’s close, but the Gator wins this one.