Cloudways vs. HostGator

Cloudways has been a great fit for our organization and has allowed us to host as many sites as we need and scale those websites. We have a paid service plan and their team of support agents is the best that I have ever worked with. They have helped us through numerous scenarios over the years and are always there 24/7/365. From simple questions to the most complex hat we could come up with they are always willing to roll up their sleeves and see issues through to completion.

Incentivized

HostGator is cheap and will host your website and the users of your email. However, we did run into some issues over the years. They sold us SiteLock, which is supposed to be an extra layer of security. We had it for a while, when our site was hacked. When I called HostGator they said that the SiteLock plan we had wasn't the right one to protect you, so they tried to upsell me on more SiteLock. This was very frustrating, as our site was down due to hacking and we were seen as a sales opportunity instead of clients who needed help. It turned out during this time that the basic backup that was included with HostGator was not going to work to get us back up. The problem is that it backs up once per week, and overwrites whatever was there before. So, it had backed up after the hack. After that we decided to get their premium backup plan. HostGator is good if you only need the most basic of services, unless you are willing to pay for the add-ons, and you might not even be aware of the add-ons until there's a problem.

Incentivized

• Automatic Daily One Click Restore Backups
• Integrated CDN
• Easy & Intuitive Alternate Interface to cPanel and WHM
• Very Affordable for High Specs
• 24/7 Customer Support is Extremely Helpful
• Serve & Application Management is a Breeze
• Choose from Multiple Server Locations

• HostGator is a very reputable company. So you know that your website is in good hands.
• They have one of the most affordable cPanel cloud hosting services that you can find.
• The speed of HostGator's hosting is pretty fast. And little to no downtime.

Incentivized

• Their free alternative to WP Rocket could be made more user-friendly and easier to understand
• Create a function to automatically report heavy usage to specific email IDs

Incentivized

• Tech support is responsive and helpful, but not without a special pin code. Since we need tech support infrequently when I do, I can never find that pin. It would be nice to have a quick client verification system.
• Publishing updated pages are quick but could be faster by eliminating a couple of extraneous click.

Incentivized

Because we have in house technical support to compensate the lack of quality HostGator tech support, and because the price continues to be affordable the business is likely to continue using HostGator. They provide what the business needs and we have in house support to maintain it.

They are constantly improving their dashboards and interface to make it easier to use and find the things that we use the most. It's a lot of features to pack in to one UI and they have done a great job of making it user friendly. Their layout is intuitive and easy to learn and is extremely granular. We are able to control every aspect of our websites and applications from an individual level from scaling, to cache, to DNS, security, WAF, and everything in between.

Incentivized

Technical support is just 2-3 clicks away and the Cloudways homepage and the operators are available almost 24/7. They also are able to answer any kind of question related to their services, whether economical or technical. I sometimes made mistakes while using their services and they have been keen to help me, and fixed my problems really fast.

While you will get support from HostGator, it seems to be a different level from 8-10 years ago. It may take 15-20 minutes to get someone on chat, and unless you follow up, I've found followup email support to take a couple of days. If you stick with it, though, you will get support, and I've never had a problem they couldn't help with.

Incentivized

VPS and dedicated hosting are costly, Therefore cloud hosting provides a cheaper way to own a powerful server, and IP is dedicated as well. Cloudways was the decision because:

1) Easy to set up without any linux commands we can set up the server

2) Live chat for technical help. (Excellent agents, they helped out of the scope issues too)

Incentivized

This is for web design purposes. In versatility, not as good as WordPress, but pretty close to Squarespace and Wix. In ease of use, much easier than WordPress, about the same as Squarespace and Wix. In the choice of design templates, as good as all three. The current client chose HostGator after we poured through hosting, email, and web design comparisons. She wanted all these services through the least number of vendors, and the price was right.

Incentivized

• It simplified our systems, it's Cloudways + mainwp for maintenance and hosting now.
• It allowed us to save on server maintenance work costs.
• The email is easy to spin up around it if someone doesn't want google workspace.

Incentivized

• Usage of resale options easily quadrupled the money I was spending on HostGator
• Trust in the host has to be earned, and HostGator has not retained that for me -- it will be a while before I feel confident in their uptime again
• Overall, HG has been a positive impact on my business as a web developer

Incentivized