Recently I had the chance to deep test both Hostgator and Godaddy, probably the biggest hosting providers around.

My websites are hosted on Hostgator, I have a nice plan from them and I like the support they have ( they are always online ), but their speed is not the best. On the opposite, Godaddy don’t have live online support at all, but their speed is far superior.

Speed

I don’t have a dedicated server at godaddy, and the speed of my website is not very good, but this was not an issue for me until I had the chance to test the Godaddy Economy plan, my website loaded in 1 second, while on Hostgator it takes 3-4 seconds to load completely.

The test may not be so accurate, because the goddady hosting was in Amsterdam and the tool I used to test the speed was located in Stockholm, while my hostgator servers are in US. Despite of this, the website loaded very fast in my browser too.

For the loading speed Godaddy hosting is far superior, let’s say 10 for Godaddy and 6 for Hostgator.

Number of Domains hosted on the same IP

Probably a cause of the slow loading of my pages on hostgator, the number of domains hosted on the same server counts a lot toward the quality of the hosting plan. While I tested shared account on both companies, on Godaddy I was on the same IP with 7 websites, while on hostagor they keep me with another 70+ domains on the same IP. This is a huge difference.

So, if i judge only by the number of domains hosted on the same IP, Godaddy gets a 10 and Hostgator a 4. There are too many websites hosted on the same server.

Support

The support is very important for a hosting company. There are many times when you need to ask something or you have an issue that you want to let them know about.

Hostgator support is excellent. They provide live 24/7 support and are always prepared to fix the things for you. One day I added a new plan to my hosting account but soon I’ve changed my mind and I contacted support. In few minutes the plan was removed.

On the other side, Godaddy don’t have live support. They still respond to support tickets in less than 12 hours but with no live support, 12 hours is a lot. So 10 for hostgator and 7 for Godaddy.

Control Panel

When you have more websites, the speed, usability and features of the control panel is a great advantage. You know Cpanel, it is used on most hosting accounts so you can control and manage your websites.

While hostgator use Cpanel software which is great, Godaddy use  a custom made control panel that a lot of people find it hard to use and most really can’t figure out how things are going. Maybe the speed of the website can be ignored, but the management not. I will give 10 for hostgator and 3 for Godaddy.

Changes turnaround

When you are managing websites, you have to make a lot of changes to the websites and hosting. Also you have to have patience to wait for a lot of things: you want for a programmer to finish his job, you want for the writer to finish the content, the more thing you wait for the hard is to manage the website. So, if you have to wait a lot for every change you make to your hosting it seems it is not the best option.

For Hostgator turnaround time is very good, they fix issues very fast, any change you make is live almost instantly, while on Godaddy you have to wait several hours for a domain to be added to your hosting plan, or to make a change to your domains. This is not a good thing for a Hosting company. And the usability of the Godady website is far inferior to Hostgator. I will give 9 to hostgator and 5 to Godaddy.

Other Related Reviews

Both Hostgator and GoDaddy have been around for some time and I am sure you can find a couple more reviews on them. In case you need further reference, I suggest Jerry’s Hostgator review on WebHostingSecretRevealed.com. The review is written based on his true experience with the Gators and it provides lots of insights that others don’t.

Summary

Summing it up, Hostgator gets 39 points while Godaddy gets only 35. The advantages of one are disadvantages of others. It is very important what you need from your hosting to provide. You want good, on-time support and to control everything, or you want just speed ?

Hostgator advantages:

  • Control trough Cpanel
  • Excellent support
  • Very good turnaround

Godaddy advantages:

  • Speed
  • Very few websites on the same IP

For my situation where I have a lot of websites to manage, I will go with hostgator, but this depend on what you need. I have clients that I get Godaddy hosting for them because what they need is speed.

I didn’t took into account the price and space they provide, because nowadays the space and bandwidth offered is unlimited everywhere, and it is not something to judge upon. The price is irrelevant as you want the best for your website, not the cheapest.