HostGator Website Hosting Plans Reviewed

Randomly Finding Cheap Bargains for You Daily!

I am often asked what type of hosting we use for the sites we use, so I figured it was time to write about the different types of hosting we use for our 25+ sites! Of course, being a bargain site, I only use bargain hosting!

The site you are reading this from is hosted on HostGator, as are most of our sites. Therefore, it's not going to be a surprise that I recommend HostGator for your hosting needs if you just want to setup a single site. It's extremely cheap ($8.95/month for the Hatchling Plan), and the setup includes unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space. Plus Hatchling includes full CPanel access, which helps in easy backups of MySQL database backups and site compression and backup processes.

When I started out, I signed up for this single site plan. At the time, I knew nothing about CPanel, MySQL databases, Chron jobs, add-on domains, or really anything webmasterish (is that a word??), so the HostGator single site plan was a great starting point for me. If you are just starting out, I definitely recommend the Hatchling HostGator plan!

If you decide you like this web design/website building business as much as I do, you will find yourself building more and more sites over time. This means you will quickly need to step up to another hosting plan, as just adding on extra single site HostGator plans can get expensive and difficult to manage. The Baby HostGator plan lets you assign one domain to the account, and then place your other domains as "add on domains" to the same account. This allows you to manage all of your databases and files from one single CPanel portal (or ftp account) instead of multiple accounts.

I recommend this Baby plan if you are running around 5-6 medium-sized sites, or even 20 small niche sites. You can run more than that on one Baby HostGator account, but the more sites you run, the more you will find that your niches compliment each other. So, after building 6 sites, I suggest you create the 7th site on another Baby HostGator plan. It should have a different ip, so you can spread backlinks from your older sites on your first plan to the new sites on your second plan. The Baby plan is $9.95/month, but can be purchased lower if you prepay for 2-3 years.

HostGator also has a 3rd hosting package, which allows the account holder to have their own IP address. This really comes into play when you realize that on the lower packages you are on a shared IP, and if anyone decides to run something risque and get the IP blacklisted, then it could cause harm to your sites. So, for an established site, the HostGator Business Plan is good to have to keep your sites clean and clear of any sites you cannot control. (Note: having a dedicated IP does not mean you will have a dedicated email server, and could still get blacklisted). The Business plan runs around $12.95/month at HostGator.

There has been a lot of talk about using private virtual servers, or VPS, for hosting websites. This will give you complete control over your own sites, and what type of data is running on the server your data resides (since it's private). I have not tried this as of yet, mainly because it's a good bit more expensive than shared hosting (around $50/month). Many people talk up VPS as the way to go, but I'm just not there yet. If you have a comment on VPS, VPS on HostGator, or on Servint, please share below!

One last note: whatever hosting you choose, be sure you understand the backup procedures, and find a way to MAKE YOUR OWN BACKUPS! I don't care who they are or what they say they will do for you in the event of a disaster. HostGator only has $10/month invested in you, so you are going to be small fish on the importance scale. Servint, with their $50/month aren't going to be much more interested in moving you to the front of the line if they have a disaster or if you have a disaster. So always remember that it's up to you to get your sites back online!

Do you have a hosting plan that you like more than any other? Let us know in the comments below!