HostGator

On the shared, WordPress and dedicated pages, prices showed as blank placeholders ("$X.XX/mo", "Renews at $XX") for our reader, so we couldn't see intro prices there. The VPS page shows both: NVMe 2 is $2.09/mo for a 24-month term and renews at $4.68/mo. A help center price chart lists regular renewal prices for every plan, such as Hatchling at $10.99/mo on a 3-year term and $17.59/mo month to month. That chart lists the NVMe 4 VPS at $53.99/mo on a 2-year term, while the VPS page says it renews at $9.35/mo. The pages say VAT is not included in advertised prices.

The terms name the company you sign with as HostGator.com, LLC, under the laws of Texas. The contact page says HostGator LLC is an indirect subsidiary of Newfold Digital, Inc., and gives a registrar address in Jacksonville, Florida. The About page says HostGator started in 2002 and mentions its Austin and Houston communities, but doesn't name a head office. We didn't see a registered address for the hosting company or a company registration number on the pages we read.

A public status page tracks 7 components, including Hosting, Email, DNS/Domains and the Account Manager. Each component has a history page listing past incidents and maintenance, such as a "Hosting Outage" closed on 12 Aug and a "VPS Hosting issue" closed on 25 Jul. The history pages show no uptime percentages, although the status page FAQ mentions them. The shared hosting page mentions a 99% uptime guarantee, while the terms say HostGator doesn't guarantee uninterrupted service.

Support is offered 24/7/365 by phone and live chat, with US toll-free and international numbers listed. The Hatchling shared plan gets chat support only. The other shared plans and the WordPress plans add phone support. The VPS page says 24/7 priority support is not included with self-managed VPS plans. We didn't see stated response or wait times for chat or phone.

You can get your hosting fees back if you cancel within the first 30 days, on shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated plans, when you paid by credit card or PayPal. Domains, monthly-term services, setup fees and add-ons such as SiteLock are excluded, and the terms say there are no refunds after 30 days. Plans renew automatically, and you stop renewal yourself in the Renewal Center at least 15 days before the renewal date (5 days for monthly plans). If a free domain came with your plan, a domain fee is taken from the refund. The pages we read give this fee as $15.00, $17.99 or $22.99, so the amount wasn't clear to us.

Shared plans get daily, weekly and monthly backups, and managed WordPress plans get weekly backups, for accounts under 20 GB and 100,000 inodes. Only one week of backups is kept at a time. Restoring from HostGator's backups costs $49. You can make and download a full backup yourself in cPanel, up to 10 GB on shared plans. HostGator doesn't back up self-managed VPS or Linux dedicated servers, and the terms ask everyone to keep their own backups.

Every shared plan includes a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate and malware detection and removal, described as AI-powered from the Baby plan up. The WordPress plans list malware scanning too. Your customer account supports two-factor login with a code sent to your account email. We didn't see an authenticator app option.

Most servers are in Provo, Utah and Atlanta, Georgia, with some in other locations that aren't named. The help article says you can't choose which data centre your server is in. The terms say HostGator acts as your processor under the GDPR and link to a data processing addendum hosted on web.com, which we didn't read. We didn't see mention of EU standard contractual clauses on the pages we read.

Storage and website counts are on the shared plan page, from 10 GB and 10 websites on Hatchling. A help article on account limits adds database and file limits, a CPU cap of 25% per account and 25 processes. We didn't see memory figures for shared plans, and the WordPress page lists 2 to 5 vCPUs without RAM. Bandwidth is "unmetered", with a stated rule against using 25% or more of system resources for over 90 seconds. VPS and dedicated pages give full CPU, RAM and NVMe storage numbers per plan.

You can make a full backup of your files, email and databases in cPanel and download it as a .tar.gz file, or fetch it over FTP or SSH. A help article walks through moving a domain away: unlock it in the portal, get the EPP code, and approve the transfer. New domains can't move to another registrar for 60 days. We didn't see a fee for transferring a domain away.