Bluehost and HostGator are dominant leaders in the web hosting industry with a reputation for low rates, free SSL certificates and money-back guarantees. Although only Bluehost offers an uptime and network guarantee, both hosts historically have at least 99.9% uptime. Both web hosts are fast, but Bluehost is slightly faster than HostGator.
Bluehost has three different categories of hosting: shared, VPS, and dedicated. For each category, there are several plans, ranging from $2.95 to $119.99 per month. They offer different prices depending on how long you commit to a service (1 year), so the monthly rate is lower than if you were to pay month-to-month or choose a longer term. Several hosts price it this way because they will raise the price after a year whereas if you sign up for a full year then it’s at a lower monthly rate than paying month-to-month or choosing a longer term.
WordPress Migration
HostGator will migrate your WordPress or cPanel site for free, and Bluehost is temporarily offering free website migration for just WordPress sites under 2 GB across all of their plans. Otherwise, professional migration costs $149.99 per site. HostGator supports both Linux and Microsoft servers, whereas Bluehost only uses Linux servers. Many sites do not require Microsoft, but if yours requires it then HostGator would be the better choice for you.One of the more significant complaints from customers about Bluehost is occasional downtime, which isn’t unheard of with shared hosting companies like these. There weren’t many complaints about this with HostGator in comparison. HostGator does have several complaints about slow customer support response; Bluehost does have 24/7 support via phone, email and chat.
Reliability for WordPress Sites
WordPress states that some hosts are better than others for hosting WordPress sites, and one of them is HostGator. That doesn’t suggest HostGator doesn’t work well with WordPress, it only means Bluehost is better for WordPress-specific training and support. Bluehost also provides community WordPress support, which means users can find help on the site if they need it.
Automatic Backups
It’s important to regularly back up your site if it breaks, and Bluehost does that automatically. If something happens, you don’t have to worry—no matter which plan you have. HostGator back ups your site using CodeGuard, but not if you have a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server.Both Bluehost and HostGator have security tools included in every plan; SSL certificates, malware scans and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection come standard, and both hosts use SiteLock. However, Bluehost’s SiteLock includes spam monitoring, site verification certificates, business verification and blocklist monitoring. You can even set up notifications to know when it blocks attacks if you want to block IP addresses manually.
Conclusion
Your site needs the basics to succeed: fast, secure servers, 99.9 percent uptime, and great 24/7 customer support. We recommend BlueHost for sites that use WordPress and HostGator for sites that need Microsoft servers.
