HostGator Alternative: Why Hostinger Is an Ideal Choice for Your Hosting

If you are a HostGator user wanting to switch to another web hosting provider, Hostinger can be a great alternative. We offer various hosting services suitable for different users, including total beginners, business owners, and web developers.

This article will explain why Hostinger is an excellent HostGator alternative. We will review Hostinger’s features and benefits to help you determine whether it fits your needs.

We will also explore pricing, security features, customer support, built-in web management tools, and data center locations. Finally, we will answer commonly asked questions about Hostinger.

Quick Comparison of Hostinger and HostGator

To help you make an informed decision, here’s a general comparison between Hostinger and HostGator.

	Hostinger	HostGator
Pricing	Starts at $2.99/month, renews at $6.99/month	Starts at $2.75/month, renews at $7.99/month
Free domain name and SSL	Yes, in the business and above plans	Yes
Multiple data center locations	Ten across Europe, Asia, North America, and South America	Only in the United States
CDN	In-house CDN and Cloudflare	Cloudflare
Uptime guarantee	99.9%	99.9%
Money-back guarantee	30 days	30 days
Free website migration services	For unlimited amount of websites	For only one website and domain within the first 30 days after account creation
Multilingual customer support	Ten languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Chinese, Lithuanian, French	Only in English
24/7 customer support	Yes	Yes
Web hosting service	Web, cloud, managed WordPress, virtual private server (VPS) hosting	Shared, managed WordPress, cloud, VPS, reseller, and dedicated server hosting
Managed WordPress features	In all plans	Only in the managed WordPress hosting plan
Free website builder	Yes, AI-powered	Yes
Security features	Malware scanner, SSL encryption, daily backups, DDoS protection, firewall, WHOIS domain privacy	SSL encryption, weekly backups, DDoS protection, firewall

Why Consider Hostinger as a HostGator Alternative

There are several reasons why you may consider Hostinger as an alternative to HostGator. In this section, we will explain Hostinger’s advantages based on factors like value for money, security features, customer support, performance, and site management tools.

Great Value for Money

Hostinger and HostGator offer similarly priced web hosting services. However, Hostinger offers a lower renewal price, additional free features, and more server resources.

Lower Renewal Price

Hostinger’s web hosting plans cost slightly higher than HostGator, starting at $2.49/month. However, we offer better long-term value due to the lower renewal price, starting at $6.99/month compared to HostGator’s $7.99/month.

Long-term cost saving is important since sites should run consistently. Whether you use a website to establish your business online presence or for personal use, a lower renewal price simplifies the operational expenses planning.

For freelancers and developers building websites for clients, an affordable renewal cost lowers their long-term service price. Moreover, it helps improve satisfaction since clients may be unprepared for the significant price jump and unexpected expenses.

Hostinger and HostGator offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for all hosting plans. Moreover, the providers offer flexible hosting upgrades to cloud or VPS plans for more performance and server resources.

In addition, both web hosting companies automatically transfer users’ website data when they upgrade their plans. However, remember that you must migrate the files manually when switching to VPS or dedicated hosting.

Additional Free Features

Hostinger and HostGator offer free domain names for one year and unlimited SSL certificates. However, Hostinger’s free domain name also includes WHOIS domain privacy protection, which costs another $14.95/year in HostGator.

In addition, Hostinger provides a free unlimited website migration service. HostGator only migrates one website and domain for free within the first 30 days after account creation. Users must pay for the service after exceeding these limits.

For freelancers developing clients’ websites, the free migration service helps simplify the task. It also enables you to lower your service price to entice potential clients.

Hostinger and HostGator also include a free drag-and-drop website builder, allowing you to create a web page without coding. Both web hosts’ builder platforms offer eCommerce functionality, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and third-party software integrations.

However, Hostinger Website Builder offers additional features such as an AI-powered website generator, logo maker, and content writer. Check the Hostinger Website Builder demo to try its features.

More Server Resources

HostGator offers unlimited storage and website support in its most expensive Shared Hosting plan. However, Hostinger offers better value for money since its starting plan offers 10 times more storage and 100 times more website support than HostGator’s.

A web page size is around 2 MB on average. Since a website generally has around 12-30 pages, you don’t need unlimited storage, even for large enterprise websites – 100 GB of storage will fulfill your needs.

Hostinger plans offer unlimited bandwidth, while HostGator’s is unmetered. Simply put, unlimited bandwidth doesn’t restrict the amount of data you can transfer, while unmetered bandwidth doesn’t measure or monitor the data you use.

However, with unmetered bandwidth, there may still be limitations or restrictions on the total data amount you can transfer.

Both web hosting providers also offer a free dedicated IP address in their more expensive plans – Business Shared Hosting for HostGator and Cloud Startup for Hostinger.

While HostGator doesn’t specify its shared hosting plan’s server resources, Hostinger offers up to 1.5 GB of RAM and 200 GB of nVME SSD storage. We also provide more scalable hosting resources with our comprehensive VPS plan selection.

Enhanced Security Features

Website security features are crucial, given that the number of cyber attacks and data breaches has increased significantly. Exposure to such attacks will cost money and tarnish your business reputation, driving customers away.

Moreover, various laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandate website owners to apply security features to ensure consumer data safety. Not complying with them might result in a fine.

When choosing a web hosting company, consider its security measures to ensure your website and visitors’ data safety. All Hostinger plans come with robust web hosting security features, including:

• Unlimited SSL certificates – establish a secure connection between websites and visitors by encrypting transmitted data, like personal information and credit card details. It helps prevent unauthorized people from stealing sensitive data.
• Built-in malware scanner – regularly scans your website for malicious software or code that could harm your site and visitor’s data. It also provides a security report for simpler analysis.
• Web application firewall – identifies and filters potentially malicious traffic to your host server. It helps protect your website from attacks like SQL injection, which may lead to compromised data.
• Automatic website backup and restoration – automatically creates a weekly backup to preserve your data in case of cyber attacks. You can restore these backups anytime via hPanel.
• Wanguard DDoS protection – detects traffic anomalies to mitigate potential distributed denial of service (DDoS). It ensures your website remains accessible, preventing further cyber attacks.
• PHP hardening – identifies and patches security vulnerabilities in the host server’s PHP applications which hackers may exploit for cyber attacks. Hostinger uses the Suhosin PHP hardening technology.
• WHOIS domain privacy protection – masks information about your domain’s ownership details on the WHOIS website to help prevent identity theft and spam.

HostGator offers free SSL certificates and various other security features. However, the web host lacks a built-in malware scanner, so you must manually check for malicious software or code in your hosting file manager.

Unlike HostGator, Hostinger also provides a free daily backup in most of its plans, worth $25.08. In case your plan doesn’t have this feature, you can purchase it separately and enable it directly via hPanel.

Multilingual Support

Hostinger Customer Success team speaks 10 languages to cater to users from different countries. The supported languages depend on the locales, but they all speak English.

For example, you can contact the hostinger.com.br and hostinger.fr Customer Success team in Portuguese and French, in addition to English. If you prefer to use an unsupported language, our team will use a translating tool and answer in English to simplify the communication.

Multilanguage support ensures users worldwide can easily receive solutions from our team without worrying about the language barrier.

In addition, Hostinger’s Customer Success team is also available 24/7 to serve users from different time zones. Registered users can contact the team via email or live chat.

HostGator also offers 24/7 customer support but is only available in English. To contact them using another language, users must manually translate their messages into English.

Effective Website Management Tools

An ideal web hosting provider offers various built-in tools that help users easily and efficiently manage their websites. Depending on the web hosting company, the provided tools and control panels differ.

Hostinger offers hPanel, our own custom-built control panel for all web hosting plans. With it, you can manage your account, websites, domains, and other purchased products on a single platform.

On the other hand, HostGator uses cPanel. While popular, it is less intuitive and slower than hPanel. To learn more about their differences, read our blog post on hPanel vs cPanel.

For VPS hosting, Hostinger offers operating system templates with different control panels, including CentOS 7 64bit with cPanel and Web Host Manager (WHM). Users can switch between operating system templates easily through the VPS management menu in hPanel.

Switching operating system and control panel in your virtual private servers will erase all its data. Create a backup before proceeding.

In addition to the custom hosting control panel, Hostinger has built-in tools that help users easily manage their website, including:

• Access manager – manage user access permissions on your hosting account and websites. This feature enables collaboration while preventing unauthorized modifications to your hosting account.
• File manager – edit website files without using file transfer protocol (FTP) or SSH clients. It makes tasks like troubleshooting errors or modifying website settings more efficient.
• Cache manager – enable and purge website cache directly on hPanel to improve website performance. Since it integrates with various frameworks, users can manage the cache on a single platform.
• Business email manager – efficiently manage your email hosting accounts. Set up a new account, create a forwarding address, and configure auto-responder in one place.
• Performance monitor – monitor website uptime and downtime and receive actionable insights to improve performance. It makes website speed optimization simpler since users only use one tool.
• Auto installer – install and configure a content management system (CMS) platform with one click. Hostinger offers comprehensive CMS platform compatibility, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
• Pro Panel – manage multiple client websites and hosting services using the Hostinger Pro Panel, a new centralized dashboard designed for freelancers and web agencies.

HostGator only offers the Access Manager feature in its reseller hosting plan, which isn’t ideal for personal use. Moreover, optimizing your website can be tedious since it doesn’t have a built-in cache manager.

Unlike Hostinger’s, HostGator’s Shared hosting plan also lacks features that help ease your WordPress website management like:

• Managed WordPress – Hostinger provides automatic WordPress updates, installations, and optimizations, allowing you to focus on the website’s front-end aspects.
• WordPress acceleration – our hosting plans come pre-installed with the WordPress LiteSpeed caching plugin. It enables server-level caching and optimization features to improve your website speed.
• WP-CLI – the WordPress command line interface lets developers use commands to execute tasks that are disabled in the CMS admin panel. For example, they can generate posts in bulk and perform database searches.
• WordPress multisite – create multiple sites with a single WordPress installation. It lets you update and modify multiple WordPress sites on a single admin panel, improving development efficiency.
• Object cache – this feature duplicates database queries to speed up data delivery, improving website loading speed. Hostinger enables it by default for WordPress websites.
• WordPress staging – create a staging environment to test changes before deploying them into the live WordPress site. It helps ensure the changes will be error-free once they are live.

To get these features, users must purchase HostGator’s Managed WordPress hosting plans, starting at $5.95/month. Meanwhile, all of them are available in Hostinger’s Business Web Hosting plan costing only $3.69/month.

Global Reach With Server Locations

Your web hosting provider should ideally have multiple data center locations to ensure consistent performance. Multiple data center locations enable you to pick the one closest to your location, reducing travel distance and latency.

Speed is important since visitors will likely leave your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. For this reason, a global server network is a must to reach global audiences.

Moreover, multiple data center locations also create redundancy to ensure reliable website uptime, especially for cloud hosting services. Hostinger offers multiple data centers spread across Europe, Asia, South America, and North America.

Here are our data center locations for different plans:

Web hosting type	Server locations
Web and cloud hosting	Europe (France, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the United Kingdom) Asia (Singapore, India) North America (the USA) South America (Brazil)
Linux VPS hosting	Europe (the Netherlands, Lithuania, the United Kingdom) Asia (Singapore) North America (the USA) South America (Brazil)
Minecraft hosting	Europe (Lithuania) North America (the USA) Asia (India)

Hostinger clients can select any of the locations during the setup process and change them anytime via hPanel. We also offer an in-house content delivery network (CDN) to ensure your website performs optimally regardless of the chosen server and visitors’ location.

While HostGator provides multiple server locations, they are only in the United States. Similarly, both web hosts offer the CDN service in the Business Web Hosting and above plans.

Hostinger uses the LiteSpeed web server for all its plans, while HostGator utilizes Apache. Our test shows that LiteSpeed can significantly improve host server loading speed compared to Apache. Despite the speed difference, both web hosts offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Based on Google’s Core Web Vitals score, which measures website performance according to real-world data, Hostinger is up to 7.3% faster for mobile pages than HostGator. For desktop pages, Hostinger is faster by around 3%.

Conclusion

If you want to switch from HostGator, Hostinger may be an excellent web host for your needs. We offer various services to cater to different use cases, including web hosting for small businesses or personal use.

To help you decide if Hostinger is the best HostGator alternative for you, let’s recap its main advantages:

• Value for money – Hostinger’s website hosting service has a lower renewal cost, resulting in better long-term value for money. Both include free domain registration, an SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Security features – both hosting providers offer secure website hosting services with a free SSL certificate and firewall. However, HostGator lacks a built-in malware scanner and free WHOIS domain protection.
• Multilingual support – Hostinger Customer Success team speaks 10 languages and is available 24/7 via email or live chat. While HostGator also offers 24/7 support, it is only available in English.
• Built-in management tools – Hostinger offers hPanel, a custom-built hosting control panel, with a built-in User Access and Cache Manager, which HostGator doesn’t have. It also suits WordPress users for its staging tool, WP-CLI, and multisite support.
• Multiple data center locations – HostGator has multiple data center locations, but only in the United States. Meanwhile, Hostinger has servers around the globe and an in-house CDN solution.

We hope this article helps you decide whether Hostinger is the best hosting provider for your needs. If you have any questions, leave us a comment below.

HostGator Alternative FAQ

To help you understand why Hostinger is one of the best HostGator alternatives for your needs, we will answer some commonly asked questions about it.