HostGator vs. GoDaddy - Hosting Review

Noor B is a renowned web hosting blogger and analyst. Since 2006, he has been testing a variety of web hosting services and publishing the results on his popular blog . For each review, he personally or with a team of specialists carefully checks the web hosting company under test. Review “Hostgator vs. GoDaddy” will help you choose the best hosting provider for your sites. We publish his translations in our blog, since a significant part of the tests was done using our service HostTracker , which we are certainly proud of.
Also, apart from comparing hosting sites, this article is also useful as a set of tools that can be used to evaluate hosting or a specific site.

Disclaimer
The translation of the previous article gathered a certain amount of feedback regarding the fact that this is a certain hosting ad. We turned to the author of the original for clarification. It turned out that the author coordinated these tests and their results with the companies being tested, and they have no complaints about the objectivity of the results. On the contrary, they took note of its results to improve their services, and some things have already changed for the better since the time of the original publication. In our translation, we present as much relevant information as possible. Also, there was a remark about the bias of conclusions on certain results. In fact, all tests were carried out many times, enough to collect statistics. Regarding the methodology, you can write comments to us, or directly to the author.

After several months of using Hostgator and GoDaddy, we were able to compare two web hosting services in eight categories. Based on our tests, Hostgator is the undisputed leader in the web hosting industry. And that's why we have the right to say so.

Hostgator vs GoDaddy. Performance

Hostgator and GoDaddy, guarantee high performance - 99.99%. Hostgator uses Linux Cent 6 64-bit operating system, their servers run on Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5520 processors. Before registering, GoDaddy provides customers with a choice between Linux and Windows operating systems. On their servers are installed Intel Core i7 processors.
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Uptime

My team spent seven months monitoring the uptime with the help of the HostTracker service.
The Hostgator result was 99.99%. Uptime GoDaddy was less than 98%.


To form an informed opinion about Hostgator, we started tracking its uptime in our personal blog. During the entire testing period, Hostgator proved to be exceptionally good. Its uptime rate was 99.99%, which corresponds to the stated.

Winner Hostgator. Both of my tests show that Hostgator during the trial period for one year showed the claimed uptime - 99.99%.

Server response time

We tested the load time and response time of the website server, under Hostgator and GoDaddy, using the Load Impact App.
The green line is an indicator showing the number of visitors, and the blue lines in turn show fluctuations in response time when traffic increases.
Traffic gradually grew from 1 to 50 visitors, while the response time was measured.

The response time of sites hosted on Hostgator:

Maximum response time: 8 seconds
Minimum response time: 258.07 milliseconds

Hostgator servers in performance seem to be stable and smooth. But there is a problem that we would not like to see a large number of fluctuations in the form of ups and downs on the chart. For any hosting company an excellent indicator is a graph with smooth (straight) lines, which means maximum stability. So Hostgator has demonstrated a faster response time than any other hosting.

The response time of sites hosted on GoDaddy:
Maximum response time: no response
Minimum response time: 483.08 milliseconds


GoDaddy started the test with a good performance of 480 milliseconds, but after the number of visitors increased, the response time began to noticeably grow and jump. Moreover, the final result was recorded a large number of requests that did not receive a response at all.

Winner Hostgator. The average response time of this company: about 600 ms. Hostgator is better than GoDaddy, since the latter showed such indicators on average - more than 1500 milliseconds, and some requests were not processed at all by the server.

Speed ​​test

For speed testing, I selected a couple of websites hosted by Hostgator and GoDaddy.
Note: Both web pages are identical, they are the same size, design, requests and images.
The website hosted on Hostgator loads 603 ms.



A website hosted on GoDaddy spends 1.4 seconds on the same download.


Winner: Hostgator. Based on the test results, we see that Hostgator web hosting is really fast and reliable.

Prices, plans and specifications

Hostgator and GoDaddy are very similar when it comes to their plans and pricing.

Hostgator has three tariff plans: Hatchling, Baby and Business.
GoDaddy company has tariff plans similar to Hostgator, but they have names: Economy, Suite and Unlimited. Economy Plan provides one domain and 100 GB of disk space. Two other tariff plans offer unlimited domains and disk space.

Winner undefined: Draw. It is worth noting that both hosting companies offer their customers favorable rates.

Hostgator vs GoDaddy. Control Panel

Hostgator uses cPanel as a control panel. For those not familiar with cPanel, it should be noted that this is the most requested control panel, known for its ease of use. GoDaddy provides users with the ability to choose between cPanel and Plesk.

The second most popular control panel after cPanel is Plesk, which can work with both Linux and Windows operating systems. This is quite an important parameter, as it can be useful and usable regardless of the OS on which your sites are based.
The winner is not defined: draw.

Hostgator vs GoDaddy. Support

Hostgator provides a high level of customer satisfaction through their live chat, which operates 24/7/365. Subscriber support service will always quickly and responsibly address any issue.

GoDaddy provides its users with the opportunity to make a free call to technical support. But this, unfortunately, is not enough for a highly professional web hosting. One of the key problems of GoDaddy customer service that limit the functionality of the service are:
- lack of email;
- lack of ticket system.

Ticket system is common with other top hosting companies, through which it would be possible to work together to solve various problems of users.
This is what GoDaddy should use, since customers are faced with a long wait for a specialist to answer during a tech support call. Moreover, their chat does not work most of the time, and also has restrictions for several countries.

However, since the publication of the original article in this regard, GoDaddy has tended to improve.

Winner: Hostgator. GoDaddy lacks live chat (already present - approx. Translator), ticket system and email support, which is a big omission.

Final verdict

Here is my final conclusion on the Hostgator vs GoDaddy review.

I found no particular differences in terms of tariff plans, prices, and characteristics. However, there are noticeable differences in support desk performance, performance and reliability.
Hostgator has a higher uptime and excellent response time. GoDaddy has a minus in support.
So, I came to the conclusion that Hostgator is a better GoDaddy.