Below is a comparison of HostGator (http://www.hostgator.com) and BlueHost (http://www.bluehost.com)
Plans and Features
When choosing what web hosting service you will acquire, you don’t start picking the most popular one and neither do you pick the cheapest of them all. Remember, what is at stake is your business, your money, and your future success. Therefore, the smart thing to do before settling to your chosen web hosting service is when every requirement is met and you are assured that you will gain satisfaction by the results afterwards.
And so, to assess the best web hosting service for your company, you have to know its plan, features, level of reliability, and the customer and technical support it can provide. HostGator and BlueHost will be measured in terms of the mentioned categories.
HostGator hosting plan is $7.95 per month.
Among its features are:
Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
Web hosting of unlimited websites
Free instant set up
Free site builder
BlueHost basic plan costs $6.95 per month
Unlimited hosting space and bandwidth
Hosting of unlimited sites and multiple domains
File transfer
2,500 E-mail accounts support
Lifetime free domain
Free site builder
Evidently, HostGator will cost you one dollar more. But if you will examine the hosting package it offers you will see that it is almost similar to what BlueHost has to offer. However, the 45-day money back guarantee being offered by HostGator puts them in advantageous position.
Customers would definitely want their money back as long as they don’t get satisfied with the service HostGator will give. But of course, HostGator wouldn’t dissatisfy their customers since they only want to give better service and not to disappoint their clients.
So, in terms of plans and features, HostGator gets the laurel. And don’t forget the try-before-you-buy promo they offer in site building.
Reliability
The level of reliability amongst web hosting services is being measured through average uptime service and quality of data center they can give. BlueHost and HostGator provide 99.9 per cent average uptime guarantee so the only difference would be the data center that each provider employs.
BlueHost has CGI databases and other featuress like PHP 5, Perl 5, Python, Ruby on Rails, Support For Custom PHP.INI Files, MySQL 5 Database Server, Javascript/ DHTML, and Flash / Shockwave.
On the other hand, HostGator has a wide range of databases that also employ CGI. Other databases it uses are: fast CGI, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP 5, MySQL, SSI, Cron, FrontPage, SSH, Image Magick, and Perl among others which all offer unlimited support feature.
So the difference enters since BlueHost only offers limited support. If you are seriously looking for a web hosting provider, you would certainly choose the one that provides not just high quality data centers but high level of reliability with no restriction as well. Again, HostGator gets the point here.
Support
To stray away from too much scrutiny, both providers offer impressive customer and technical support to their clients. BlueHost and HostGator have ticket system (with different processing but still same results), 24/7 customer support, live chat with knowledgeable team members, helpful articles, and so on.
In short, their support can not be measured since the two excel in this category as they aspire for customer satisfaction. So, the issue here is not to answer the question, which has better customer and technical support, but which has the real edge between the two knowing the other qualities they have?
We are finished assessing the categories, and so it would be safe to say that HostGator has a greater edge over BlueHost in terms of reliability, plans, and features.
As for the final verdict, the wide ranging data center of HostGator and the numerous features, not to mention the 45-day money back guarantee helped a lot in knowing which deserves your trust and money most.
Visit http://www.hostgator.com
Visit http://www.bluehost.com
HostGator Site Screenshot (http://www.hostgator.com)
