--- title: HostGator Reviews meta_title: 'HostGator Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: What are users saying about HostGator web hosting? Read authenticated reviews from 65 business users up-time, pricing, features and why it's a contender in 2018. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.6 review_count: 258 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Web Hosting url: https://www.g2.com/categories/web-hosting --- # HostGator Reviews **Vendor:** Newfold Digital **Category:** [Shared Hosting Platforms](https://www.g2.com/categories/shared-hosting) **Average Rating:** 3.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 258 ## About HostGator HostGator is a global provider of web hosting and related services. Since being founded in a dorm room, HostGator has grown into a leading provider of Shared, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated web hosting. Our guarantee to you: 24/7/365 Support Our support staff is available 24/7/365 to assist you via Telephone or LiveChat with any hosting-related questions. 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee Try our services at no risk! If you're not completely satisfied, you can cancel your hosting plan within 45 days for a complete refund. 99.9% Uptime The availability of your website is our top priority. We stand by that fact with our uptime guarantee! ## HostGator Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find HostGator to be **easy to navigate** , particularly benefiting those new to web hosting and WordPress. (5 reviews) - Users love the **easy setup** of HostGator, making it perfect for newcomers and hassle-free domain registration. (5 reviews) - Users find HostGator to be **user-friendly** , making it ideal for newbies and easy for experienced users alike. (4 reviews) - Users value the **easy-to-use dashboard** of HostGator, making website management straightforward and efficient. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of domain setup** with HostGator, finding it simple and efficient for their needs. (2 reviews) - Easy Management (2 reviews) - Hosting Services (2 reviews) - Problem Solving (2 reviews) - Reliability (2 reviews) - Setup Ease (2 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users often face **email issues** with HostGator, experiencing limits and unreliable communication that affect their services. (3 reviews) - Users report severe **billing issues** with HostGator, leading to site failures and loss of valuable content. (2 reviews) - Users express frustration with **ineffective customer support** , citing unhelpful responses and lack of phone assistance during critical issues. (2 reviews) - Users report frequent **downtime issues** with HostGator, leading to lost sites and frustration over billing errors. (2 reviews) - Users report serious **hosting issues** with HostGator, including site deletions and billing failures that ruin their experience. (2 reviews) - Users experience **poor customer support** , with unprofessional agents and difficulties in resolving issues effectively. (2 reviews) - Security Issues (2 reviews) - Service Downtime (2 reviews) - Technical Issues (2 reviews) - Backup Issues (1 reviews) ## HostGator Reviews ### 1. Hostgator FAIL **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2025 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Nothing at all, AVOID HOSTGATOR LIKE THE PLAGUE **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Hostgator is Horrible-gator!! Avoid Hostgator if you value your website. Their system deleted my WordPress site – gone! When I spoke to “support” they say that billing for my hosting failed. After I have been with them for years. The credit card on file is one we use every day. They say their ‘system’ sent an email about billing problem. Those emails never came to us, although I get emails from them all the time – MANY emails I have received, none saying they would delete my hosting. My domain name was billed fine. They have no explanation, my site is gone because Hostgater failed! AVOID THESE FAILING SYSTEMS AND USELESS, IRRESPONSIBLE COMPANY IF YOU VALUE YOUR WEB SITES!! **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** AVOID HOSTGATOR NO MATTER WHAT! ### 2. Lost all Trust and Confidence **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert L. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 30, 2023 **What do you like best about HostGator?** I am a gallery that deals in photography and artwork that often includes nudity. This was one of the hosting companies recommended to me that did not restrict nudity. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** HostGator's tech support has always been poor. Customers cannot contact tech support directly. Even if customer support promised to "escalate" the matter, it takes days for tech support to get back to us by email, and either they've closed the case prematurely or they ask us to repeat the information we gave customer support in the first place, adding several more days to down time. But, now they have also eliminated all phone support and reduced their customer support to a robotic chat, internationally outsourced. Every time we contact them, the poor customer support person comes back with the same empty promises and platitudes: "I understand your concern," "I've escalated this case," "24-48 hours," and it's still taken weeks — yes weeks — to resolve, causing loss of revenue for our business. The problems are never user error at our end, they are always serious technical problems at HostGator: image gallery malfunction, email malfunction, billing records processed incorrectly. A serious company would be deeply mortified and resolve their issues immediately. We certainly would in our business. They never do. They always make promises they don't keep. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** This was a hosting service that enabled me to present works of art and photography that included nudity and erotic subjects. It also had a store feature where I could sell items from my collection, keep an email list with e-commerce. But honestly, in recent months, it's created more problems than solved them. ### 3. Very bad technical support **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohamed A. | Founder/CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Nothing, I don't like Hostgator or recommend it to any of my clients, however, one of my clients hosted his website and I needed to contact the technical support. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** They are not nonprofessional at all, the first time the agent tried to solve the issue (Crawl the website with Semrush), and agreed that I would try and get back if still facing the same issue, today the other agent without checking anything told me that they did support the issues with Semrush and I can get back to Semrush, and close the chat without waiting for my reply. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Crawling the website with Semrush ### 4. The platform is limited in its ability to let you do what you need to do. **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leonard R. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 15, 2023 **What do you like best about HostGator?** The dashboard is somewhat friendly, but not 100% easy to navigate. It's better than it used to be. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** The customer service is one of the worst I've ever engaged with. Not only does it take a long time to get someone to respond to you, but they're interested only in getting rid of you as quickly as they can. Their listening skills are second to none. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** A client of ours utilizes it for shared hosting. I would not use HostGator for my clients. The problem it's solving for one of our clients is that they are hosted there, fairly trouble free. ### 5. auto-charged me $104 for renewal without my permission. **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ahmed C. | Principal Scientist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2024 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Their domain works smoothly and without any problems. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** We used to have a domain WSJP.INFO. We have canceled it and we have just received an e-mail that they auto-charged me $104 for renewal for 3 years. I never authorized this payment and I have called them and said that they cannot refund the money back. Be careful, make sure you cancel autopay. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** NONE ### 6. Far and away, the worst customer support of any company I've ever used **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael W. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2023 **What do you like best about HostGator?** At this point, nothing honestly. There's really nothing good about the service. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Slower than the average hosting package of the same price, they overcram their servers. Their support is literally the worst I've ever dealt with and will leave your account in worse shape than when you spoke to them. Every HostGator support interaction consists of two parts, the first agent you talk to who tells you one thing, and then the second agent you talk to who tells you the first agent was mistaken and steered you wrong. By the end of it, something WILL be screwed up on your account. Half the time you can't even get into your dashboard because of their aggressive Cloudflare configuration that rate-limits you. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** They solved the problem of needing a webhost until they became impossible to deal with. They were never *good* really, but they were acceptable for a good while. ### 7. Cheap but Support Quality is not Good **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arda İhsan A. | Head of DevOps, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2022 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Easy of Purchase, Easy of Cancellation. They are good and fast. The hosting comes with cpanel and easy to use . Website is user friendly and easy to access what you are looking for.Prices are really good. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** The support is worst I had ever seen. 1st Migration is a website takes 5-7 days which is simple cpanel -cpanel. There is no planning just you had to wait. 2nd The support personnel don't know the services limits and specs. They have limited access and knowledge. If you plan to have services without support you can think to use hostgator. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Please aware problem soution take sometimes can take time. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I couldn't solve any problems, my aim was having a cpanel hosting for the business and have a large number of mailbox (5-10GB ) Not huge. Per email. But even they supply due to bad support and slow migration. They don't give me any trust. ### 8. Went from great to outrageously bad, just like that **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vinod V. | Editor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 01, 2022 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Don' t really like anything anymore. I guess they can compete on cost with their shared hosting packages. As long as you don't need support. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** The most unhelpful support policies ever. Which is a pity because they used to be so good before they got acquired. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I no longer use HostGator because it is not solving any problems for me. ### 9. Terrible Experience **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos G. | SEO Senior Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2022 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Nothing. Really, it has been terrible, I referred my client to Hostgator to hire a dedicated WordPress hosting service, the service has been down every time we need to work on it. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** We've had to reach out to complain every time we wanted to work on the website because the service was down; there were also some issues with the SSL that they couldn't figure out what was going on. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** No benefits. We were trying to have stable and secure hosting for a WordPress website, but we didn't get what we paid for. We reclaimed and demanded a refund, but they neglect it since it had been more than 45 days after purchase, even when, during that time, we reached out at least 4-5 times because the service was down. ### 10. Low end shared hosting **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jason K. | Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2022 **What do you like best about HostGator?** It was cheap, but that is about it. I didn't know much about hosting when I selected it. So as a very basic, affordable solution, it was fine, but always cumbersome to use. As my needs grew, this became an inpediment. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Cpanel, and not very well implemented at that; poor performance; add on costs for SSL and backups **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** You should really look into a more robust hosting platform with a more modern Admin Console and better support **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Performance, ease of use, feature integration ### 11. Stay Away from Hostgator and other EIG owned companies **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rich W. | M, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2020 **What do you like best about HostGator?** I hate that I have to leave such a terrible review for this company. I was with them prior to the EIG buy-out and they were one of my favorite providers at that time. Unfortunately, the company has gone south quickly. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Stay far away from Hostgator. The quality of their servers (they still use HDD servers for most hosting plans) and customer support has tanked since EIG bought them out in 2012. My experience: On September 15th, 2020 I spoke with Joel N who is one of their representatives. He assured me that I'd be eligible for a complete refund if there were any issues with my hosting package. He not only stated that the services would be refunded, but went on to say that Hostgator would issue a prorated refund if I decided to end the relationship at any point in the future. His reassurances were what prompted me to pay $4,316.17 up-front for a 3 year hosting package during our call. Earlier today (October 2nd, 2020), I canceled my service due to their problematic servers and lack of support. Hostgator did not honor their refund policy and attempted to keep my money. I had to dispute the charge through my credit card company to get the money back. Hostgator along with other EIG companies are not reliable hosting providers. EIG has a very bad reputation of ruining the hosts it acquires. They fire great (expensive) support staff and migrate clients to a worse hardware infrastructure. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hostgator along with other EIG companies are not reliable hosting providers. EIG has a very bad reputation of ruining the hosts it acquires. They fire great (expensive) support staff and migrate clients to a worse hardware infrastructure. ### 12. Very bad experience with domain registration. **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 18, 2021 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Nothing, the prices are too much high compared to other hosting providers. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** I bought a domain and hosting. After successful purchase the domain was still pending for two days, I contacted customer service, they said that due to some system error the domain was showing available but you cannot register. And they cancelled my order and I was asked to register another domain or find another registrar. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are no specific benefits with HostGator. They are making big illustrations on their website to lure customers but their service is worst. ### 13. Hostgator Refund And Services Are Deliberate Scam - Stay Away Before You Loose Your Money **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Staffing and Recruiting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 17, 2021 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Absolutely Nothing. This review is to inform others of a huge refund scam being run by hostgator and other dubious practices going on. I will update you guys as to if i ever receive my refund. For avoidance of doubt to any hostagator rep that sees this, here is my transaction ID : 83D34A7E60FB11EBBDE1988ED57BBFB6 and hosting plan SH-4143452 (as provided by your support team). Sumary Of The Whole Issue: I bought a 3 year hosting plan, then canceled it for refund to the card used to purchase (per their policies) the next day due to deliberate technical challenges from their technicians, probably to get me to pay for their assistance. They agreed to refund, I waited two weeks for my refund, it never came, I contacted them they refused to reply after days, until i threatened to make this known to the world. After replying, knowing that PayPal has restrictions on my country, they requested to pay through paypal thinking i couldn't get one, i provided one from an unrestricted country which could receive funds. Their next message was that i would receive it in six weeks in addition to having waited 3 weeks already, making it 9 weeks. I knew this was scam delay tactics just like the earlier waiting time, in the end they will come with another excuse. I will be glad if anyone here knows how i can report this to an authority that is capable of sanctioning them. In short, if you don't reside in their jurisdiction (USA) were authorities can assist you if you report such scam, you wont receive your refund. This is a deliberate scam. Stay away from hostgator, Details below. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Hostgator Refund And Services Are Huge Deliberate Scam. Full Story: On 28th January 2021, I purchased a three year hosting plan based on the confidence given that there would be a 45 day refund if i didn't like the service. I migrated one of my websites to hostgator the same day. After the migration i realized my SSL was not working so i contacted support to show me where to install ssl on their dashboard as i couldn't find it. The support guy instead went into the .htaccess of the website without letting me know and did http - https redirection which broke the site instantly. He was unable to fix it and said support will email me and fix it (it never came), i definitely couldn't wait since this was an active website. I spent hours doing a re migration and fixed it overnight. The next day i realized while monitoring my real time page views traffic in google analytics, that majority of my visitors where landing on 404 pages (This is definitely not a dns propagation issue as DNS had fully propagated, and visitors wouldn't land on the website at all if it was DNS propagation issue). Surprisingly i couldn't replicate it since my visits to the links worked fine, i confirmed this by checking the page views in analytics and realized majority of the pages were really 404 pages. I reported to their support and their excuse is that it is an issue with google analytics, that was definitely ridiculous and i knew it was time to leave. The site was a backed up and migrated to hostgator with no change made to it, also it had always been on analytics and i always checked real time traffic without an issue. I contacted support to make sure if i would get a refund to the card, they confirmed and detailed how to go about it which i did, I received an email confirming i would receive the refund in two weeks, it never came. I contacted them they refused to reply after days, until i threatened to make this known to the world. After replying, knowing that paypal has restrictions on my country (ie does not support receiving funds to Ghana PayPal accounts) they requested to pay through PayPal thinking i couldn't get one, i provided one which could receive funds. Their next message was that i would receive it in six weeks in addition to having waited 3 weeks already, making it 9 weeks. I knew this was scam delay tactics just like the earlier waiting time, in the end they will come with another excuse. In short, if you don't reside in their jurisdiction (USA) were authorities can assist you if you report such scam, you wont receive your refund. This is a deliberate scam. Stay away from hostgator. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Hostgator Refund and Services Deliberate Scam **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I will be glad if anyone here knows how i can report this to an authority that is capable of sanctioning them. For now i will make this known across all review platforms and social media platforms to warn others. This is a huge scam and it is deliberate, visit other websites and you will see them actively advertising through AdSense, encouraging you to just buy that they will give a refund if you don't like their service, they definitely earn more scamming people than advertising, that's the strategy. I will equally update you guys if i ever receive my refund. ### 14. Worst Service !! Uptime is a scam! **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John N. | owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 15, 2019 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Actually nothing,, we've been with them now for year and thinking every damn day to move out to any hosting service....... **What do you dislike about HostGator?** They can mess with your files anytime!! just like you feel in the street!!!Uptime is a scam really,, coz they're locking the sites,, so they're always online !!! They will show you files duplicated in size only in their stats!! and then telling you you have a huge sitee, while actually all this numbers are fake and fradulent comparing to what you got from phpmyadmin....... they can do anything then will tell you sorry !!! plenty of lies from their support agents,, everyone is not responsible for other agents,, **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** just hosting and actually they'reexporting issues to us,, no service at all,, we have to look after our buissness and look for solution their agents are making to us !!!!!!! ### 15. Not a good experience **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samantha F. | Executive Assistant Office Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2019 **What do you like best about HostGator?** I tried out Hostgator with a site I was building for my freelance business. Hostgator was easy to navigate. I was able to get my site built fairly quickly. Everything is at your fingertips. From a set up and designing perspective it was very intuitive and easy to use. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** It was the first time I had used another hosting company outside of my regular one and it makes me wary about doing it again. I had website issues within 2 days due to an attack on my site. I was fairly new and upon setup it said I had security included but I did not read the fine print. Apparently the "type" of security I needed was an extra cost. They wanted over $1,000 to fix it and my site was not even live yet. I shut it all down and cancelled my account. Support was very helpful with the problem and gave me my money back and did a backup of my site. I have been with another hosting company for over a year and not one malicious attack nor do I have any concerns of one. I think it should be automatic that your hosting company secures your site. I guess it is just another way to get more money but before my site was even live....and then to want over $1,000. Ridiculous. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Make sure to read the fine print to ensure your site is safe. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am not solving anything with HostGator. I did my research before choosing them as they have very positive feedback and the pricing is good upon first look. Maybe my case was a one off. I won't go back. ### 16. They are stealing money **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Broadcast Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2019 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Do not use the site and do not enter any of your personal information. Otherwise you will find out one year later, that their system kept your information and settled the payment method as an automatic and you will be charged for whatever package you were looking for. even though you thought you deleted your information there. Most importantly, they do not refund? Because they want so. Because they are desperate, hunting for every penny they can steal! **What do you dislike about HostGator?** They are charging you after a year for service you were not aware you were using **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Do not use the site and do not enter any of your personal information. Otherwise you will find out one year later, that their system kept your information and settled the payment method as an automatic and you will be charged for whatever package you were looking for. even though you thought you deleted your information there. Most importantly, they do not refund? Because they want so. Because they are desperate, hunting for every penny they can steal! **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I did not get any benefit from them. I tried to cancel my membership at the very first day **Official Response from Marissa S:** > Hello, We'd like to make this right for you and get you the refund that you deserve. If you'd like help with the refund please send us an email at reputation@endurance.com from the email associated with your account and we'll get you taken care of. Thank you. Erinn Reputation Manager at HostGator ### 17. Customer Support and their service sucks!! **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 05, 2019 **What do you like best about HostGator?** A bit faster than other hosting services but nothing uniquely great about them. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Tech support and their services. I can't believe that their billing system was down for 3 days and they couldn't solve it. Their teams must be all in various global locations with no real time 24X7 support which they claim they have. Just a G-Suite upgrade took us several tries over many support calls and chats. Their tech support don't even know the process of upgrading. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** These types of companies need to provide good tech support and high availability. If those are missing, it's hard to recommend this product to anyone. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Domain and email hosting. ### 18. Disappointing, Unreliable, Poor Investment **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sue C. | Small Business Consultant, Social Media Consultant, WordPress Website Designer & Consultant, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** If asked 3 years ago what I liked about HostGator the list would have been long. I dealt with them for roughly six years with no complaint. I no longer refer/recommend clients to HostGator. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** I used HostGator for several years before they started to go downhill, in my experience. Over the past year, I've moved twenty plus WordPress websites away from the HostGator platform for a number of reasons. #1 I no longer trust or have confidence in the product or services they offer. Their marketing is top notch, their delivery on the shared server hosting side less so. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Double check their cash back policy and what they are offering for their services. In particular, areas like what version of PHP is offered with their shared hosting and is it the most current or dated. Beware that trying to cancel your hosting 4 months into a 3-year hosting package will see you forfeit the full amount you paid with no refund. This is true on first purchase and on renewals. Know before you buy that you will be committed to the plan for the full term. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am no longer solving any problems with HostGator. ### 19. How I lost more than I bargained for **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** The initial Prices were cheap and they offered SSL - but then after a while you find out its only for one domain compared to their other brand bluehost its for all domains. You will soon find out that backups also have a cost, simple services will usually come with a $25 cost to them when you contact customer support. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** I didn't listened to the reviews on here and purchased their service, only to find out the hardway. That what everyone was saying about them would happen to me too. These guys have lots of employees/contractors and can manipulate reviews to burry the real ones. My word of advice, look for an alternative solution to hostgator. I took the free SSL service they offered me when i signed up, then my website got hacked. Because all of my other sites and subdomains were under the same folder, they all too got hacked. (they put everything under one folder for some reason) I had previously contacted them about this being a vulnerability and how can we fix this, they would always just try to upsell to a different plan that didnt fit my needs. After I got hacked, they offered their partner service "SITELOCK" its about $70/month/12 months per site, you can do the math if you have multiple sites. I got a 3rd party service to remove the malware but I was told by the 3rd party company that timestamps were different from the previous day and now my account had virus again. Everytime i contacted hostgator they made me wait long periods of time, then after waitting they would tell me they could not help me, it violated terms of agreement. To purchase sitelock. I contacted them to confirm if my account was still infected or not. They would always tell me, to purchase sitelock they would be able to tell me. I contacted sitelock, they said they couldn't tell me, only hostgator would be able to do that. I literally had to purchase their service for everysite, wether it had virus or not as they couldn't verify anything for me, and thats pretty much what I had to do. I paid them more, way more than I needed to have my server cleaned, then cancel the service with hostgator a year before end of term and got no refund and had to migrate my servies to another provider. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU NOT PUT YOURSELF IN A VULNERABLE POSITION AND BUY HOSTGATORS SERVICES. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** I didn't listened to the reviews on here and purchased their service, only to find out the hardway. That what everyone was saying about them would happen to me too. These guys have lots of employees/contractors and can manipulate reviews to burry the real ones. My word of advice, look for an alternative solution to hostgator. I took the free SSL service they offered me when i signed up, then my website got hacked. Because all of my other sites and subdomains were under the same folder, they all too got hacked. (they put everything under one folder for some reason) I had previously contacted them about this being a vulnerability and how can we fix this, they would always just try to upsell to a different plan that didnt fit my needs. After I got hacked, they offered their partner service "SITELOCK" its about $70/month/12 months per site, you can do the math if you have multiple sites. I got a 3rd party service to remove the malware but I was told by the 3rd party company that timestamps were different from the previous day and now my account had virus again. Everytime i contacted hostgator they made me wait long periods of time, then after waitting they would tell me they could not help me, it violated terms of agreement. To purchase sitelock. I contacted them to confirm if my account was still infected or not. They would always tell me, to purchase sitelock they would be able to tell me. I contacted sitelock, they said they couldn't tell me, only hostgator would be able to do that. I literally had to purchase their service for everysite, wether it had virus or not as they couldn't verify anything for me, and thats pretty much what I had to do. I paid them more, way more than I needed to have my server cleaned, then cancel the service with hostgator a year before end of term and got no refund and had to migrate my servies to another provider. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU NOT PUT YOURSELF IN A VULNERABLE POSITION AND BUY HOSTGATORS SERVICES. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have moved to GoDaddy, as they own Bluehost and a few more. ### 20. I Wanted To Cry **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pritesh P. | Marketing Consultant, Owner and Chief Struggle Officer , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Literally the only thing to be excited about is if you are really poor and need a mega affordable option but please understand you will be responsible for all the troubleshooting, failures, security lapses and may the Goddess give you strength if you ever need to deal with their customer service “team” like I did multiple times. It’s very low cost but the quality and lack of support are too much to ever want to renew the far too much time I had bought in advance for deeper discounts **What do you dislike about HostGator?** They’re support is basically non existent. You can even outright say that you have had issues where you have to repeat your issue because their call will get dropped and under no circumstances will they listen to reason about about taking your number to call back since they will not give you a number to call them back. I have been put on hold and accidentally hung up on, dropped calls, spending whole nights living a waking nightmare of explaining from the beginning issues/troubleshooting I’m having with one of their products. Its pretty wild when I think back at how much time I wasted with their call in system. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Really really ask if the hair-pullingly bad customer service and managements disregard for poor strategies for addressing those issues is worth the few extra dollars you save or if there’s an equal if not cheaper options out there that marks higher for customer support. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hosting client websites and they didn’t have any benefits aside from being affordable. The UI is bad, the product leaves you with more work than it should. If you have a full tech staff that can fix the issues that can arise when hosting multiple websites, maybe the price point is worthwhile but you still have other options. Customer service factor isn’t a huge issue until it is. ### 21. Founder Sold Out and New Owners don't Value Customer Satisfaction **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Shared hosting plan pricing, unlimited domains. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Customer support is the absolute worst that I've experience in tech and I'm a systems engineer with decades of experience under my belt and at the exec level of tech companies. It's a choice between to either keep accepting their many shortcomings or don't and leave, no inbetween. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Don't expect much. The support people just read from "terms of service" notes and you're left with a decision to stay or leave, no customer retention efforts whatsoever. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm actively looking for another hosting company to migrate my ecommerce business sites to and just go on with life. After nine years, its time to move on. ### 22. Worst hosting: no support, incompetent agent, limited resources, they will kill your site & business **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 06, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** There is nothing to like, this is by far the worst service ever **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Everything about hostgator. I purchased a 3 year hosting from them and what a big mistake. The few times ive contacted support theyve responded with stupid solutions like refresh your browser. Pretty much every time they also say we will fix the issue asap then they kill the site. They insert bad code into the htc access file and then i have to hire a developer to delete all the malware they've inserted into my site. Then they say wait maam i am googling the issue. Seriously. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was trying to build my business, which they then effectively destroyed ### 23. There Are Better Hosting Websites Available **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicholas K. | Digital Production Artist, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about HostGator?** I am a very unbiased reviewer, so this review comes straight from my experience. There is really not a lot that I enjoy about HostGator. Really the only thing that I enjoy about using HostGator is that the hosting itself is fairly reliable, but even that is still spotty. See dislike section for the majority of my review. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** While HostGator is cheap, remember that you get what you pay for. Like I said before, the hosting itself is fairly reliable, but even that is still spotty. My server has been breached many times while with HsotGator, I constantly receive spam email through their "secure servers," the up/downtime on website hosting is spotty at times. Most of the time the websites are live, but when they go down - expect them to be down for a couple hours. Now, let's get to the customer service. This is one company that I will never want to deal with their customer service ever again. Their online chat is awful, the representatives do not seem to be very knowledgable about what services they offer (or how to fix issues.) **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** I would not recommend this company to anyone. While the hosting is not awful, the customer service is not good at all. I have much more frustration with this company than any other hosting website I've used in the past. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing, the only thing we figured out is how to transfer domains away from HostGator. ### 24. The worst tech support I have ever seen. **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dominic C. | Principal, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2017 **What do you like best about HostGator?** HostGator is fairly cheap and has good uptime. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** With HostGator we had one technical problem after another. Even very basic things like migrating a small website or setting up SSL caused a tear-your-hair-out level of frustration. In the last three months, I've spent at least 15 hours dealing with their tech support and most of that time is spent trying to clear up the contradictory answers I get from different people in different departments. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** HostGator seems appealing on paper, but you're better off just staying away. What you save in monthly fees will never make up for the amount of time you have to spend dealing with even simple technical issues. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** We build and manage websites for clients. I've used many different hosts and HostGator would rank at the very bottom of that list. We had numerous technical problems that ultimately delayed a project by nearly a month and required a huge effort from the team to try to get HostGator Support to fix it. But Support seemed to be just guessing most of the time and we eventually gave up and built a workaround that was good enough. ### 25. Okay Hosting - Terrible Customer Service **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michele G. | Web Developer & Graphic Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2017 **What do you like best about HostGator?** They are affordable for anyone starting a website. They use well-known tools like cPanel so it's easy to manage your website with whatever platform you use to update it. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Their billing portal is confusing. They do not make it easy to contact them, especially if you are wanting to downgrade or cancel your services. They put you in an endless wait cycle and suddenly the chat person is no longer available. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Their customer service has gone down hill majorly in the past few years. Until they fix this, I'd say stay away from them. I recently contacted them as they billed early for a hosting plan I wanted to cancel but couldn't find an easy way to cancel it. I finally reached someone and they told me I must be new to web hosting..though I had signed up in 2006...they also told me they want me to keep my account and didn't cancel it. I had to go though another person there on a long wait cycle of their "support chat" who did, finally cancel the plan. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** HostGator is okay for small websites that require no customer service at all. I have realized having support with hosting is just as important as having a fair price. With HostGator its cheap, you really do get what you pay for. ### 26. Ok, but can do better **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dev B. | Co-Founder / Cyber Security, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2017 **What do you like best about HostGator?** easy to setup and fast turn around time. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** too basic, too expensive, not alot of options or flexability **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** domain hosting and dns ### 27. Absolutely Worst Hosting Service Ever Used **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Louisa N. | Senior Interactive Designer, Education Management, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2016 **What do you like best about HostGator?** The price is the only reason anyone would sign up for service here. If price is the main consideration, you have many other options for your website that are better than HostGator. Any option is better, literally, any option is better. It does not matter which tier of plan you are on, it is a horrible, horrible service that I was unlucky to have had to manage in two different occasions, both of which ended up in switching hosting providers. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** Their servers fail all the time for no reason and IT has no idea what's wrong in any bad situation. Their email hosting fails to receive and deliver email and you have no idea how bad the problem is. The hosting is slow. The customer service is ridiculous, it takes many calls to escalate an issue to a person with a pulse and maybe the knowledge on how to fix the issue. I have been in many situations with hosting with HostGator where our company had to send notices to our clients on MANY occasions when their websites would no longer load because of HostGator's service. It was pretty bad, at least once a month. This has got to be the worst hosting service provider in the world. I have nothing to like about the company. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Don't use them, ever, period. **What problems is HostGator solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used HostGator for many purposes and it did not even meet expectations. The service provided more problems than solved. ### 28. Once-great giant crippled by downtime and upselling **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jack K. | Development Engineering Intern, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2016 **What do you like best about HostGator?** UI and administration interface within cPanel is clear and contain great options for email administration, backup generation, up-to-date manipulation of databases and custom DNS settings, and more. Customization of email quotas, redirects, and similar settings are simple and easy to find. General administration is a breeze. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** The two biggest issues easily overshadow all the quality in the product - downtime and upselling. Since HostGator's acquisition by EIG, they have gone with a company with nearly 100% uptime (by my records) to having issues at least once every few weeks, ranging from hour-long-plus downtime to transient dips for minutes. It's frustrating that tickets following up or requesting cause information go unheeded or unresponded to. Upselling is almost as large of an issue in terms of annoyance - despite my already paying them, each time I log in to the billing or cPanel client I'm bombarded for ads for services I neither want nor need, intent on upselling me on services that are clearly not applicable to my site - it's extremely frustrating. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Stay. Away. Go for any of the other smaller and higher quality shops for shared hosting, and use a real VPS solution for anything else. ### 29. Good Company; Obsolete Product **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas G. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2016 **What do you like best about HostGator?** Hostgator has a good customer service department that is easy to work with and timely in their responses. **What do you dislike about HostGator?** HostGator is best known for the shared hosting which is not very useful in the modern world. Their VPS hosting is much better now, but still not as streamlined as a firm like DigitalOcean. So why would I want to use HostGator? If hosting a static site, there are far cheaper options. If running a Wordpress site, it does not make a very strong case against a paid account on Wordpress.com. HostGator has a problem finding it's niche in the modern web. **Recommendations to others considering HostGator:** Seriously consider why HostGator vs. "real" cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or DigitalOcean. The competitors tend to be cheaper and have more features with a stronger eco-system. ## HostGator Discussions - [How do i report the refund scam to an authority that is capable of sanctioning them.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/39022-how-do-i-report-the-refund-scam-to-an-authority-that-is-capable-of-sanctioning-them) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is HostGator used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-hostgator-used-for) - 1 comment - [Does HostGator have a website builder?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/does-hostgator-have-a-website-builder) - 1 comment - [Does HostGator support MongoDB?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/does-hostgator-support-mongodb) - 1 comment - [View HostGator pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/hostgator/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=1§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+13%3A32%3A30+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b720172e-87be-4659-9d23-4ca2973d0567&secure%5Btoken%5D=e80dcd0ba4ad754bd2ee42140069765bf531665946c5006cfd126b65af648db2&format=llm_user) ## HostGator Integrations - [WordPress PHP7.4](https://www.g2.com/products/wordpress-php7-4/reviews) ## HostGator Features **Support** - Technical Support - Multiple Website Hosting - Bandwidth Support - Knowledge Base Support **Set Up** - Customization - Ease of Installation - Speed **Customization** - Custom DNS name servers - Self branding - Bandwidth support - Flexible hosting plans **Performance** - Plugins and Theme support - Site management - Technical Support - Caching - Free Website Transfers **Security - Domain Registrar** - Advanced DNS management - WHOIS privacy protection - Two-factor authentication (2FA) **Agentic AI - Virtual Private Servers (VPS)** - Autonomous Task Execution - Adaptive Learning - Decision Making **Hosting Management** - Storage Limits - Bandwidth Allowance - Email Hosting - Control Panel Integration - CMS Support - Web Framework Support - E-Commerce Integration - File Management - Database Support - Security Tools - Remote Access/Control - Third-Party Integration - CMS Integration - Website Hosting - Configuration Management - Data Storage Management - Performance Management - SSL Security **Customizations** - Templates - Drag and Drop - HTML Input - Domain Name - Custom Domains - Customizable Forms - Customizable Branding - Customizable Templates **Free Resources** - Free Website Builder - Free Domain Name - Free Migration **Security** - Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate Provision - Data Backup and Restoration - DDoS Protection - Malware Protection **Support** - Scalability - Backup and restoration - cPanel Management - Domain Reseller Account Support - Fully Managed Service - IP Addresses Support **Security** - Backup - Activity monitoring - Malware identification and removal - WAF and DDoS Protectiob **Convenience and automation - Domain Registrar** - Bulk domain management - Domain parking - Auto-renewal **Additional Functionality** - Generative AI - Virtual Server - Reporting/Analytics - Mail Server Monitoring - Access Controls/Permissions - Resource Optimization - Dashboard - Role-Based Permissions - Control Panel - Monitoring - Backup and Recovery - Uptime Reporting - Bandwidth Monitoring - Server Monitoring - Alerts/Notifications - Resource Allocation & Planning - AI Copilot - Real-Time Updates - Load Balancing - Dedicated Virtual Resources **Growth** - SEO - Site Analytics - Marketing Tools - E-Commerce - Hosting - Online Booking Tools - Website Analytics **Support** - Domain and Sub-Domain Support - Technical Support - Hardware Support **Free Resources** - Email - Domain - SSL Certificates **Support and service - Domain Registrar** - Knowledge base and tutorials - Domain transfer assistance - 24/7 customer support **Content** - Email Integrations - Content Management - Permissions - WordPress Tool - Design Management - Website Management - eCommerce Management - SEO Management - Website Integration - Social Media Integration - Third-Party Integrations **Support** - Customer Support **Advanced management and features - Domain Registrar** - Email forwarding and hosting - Website builder integration - Domain auction and backordering **Additional Functionality** - Shopping Cart - Online Store Builder - Real Time Editing - Multi-Language - Landing Pages/Web Forms - CRM - API - Activity Tracking - Generative AI - Alerts/Notifications - Visitor Tracking - Survey Builder - Auto Update - Widgets - AI Copilot - SSL Security - Data Import/Export - Customizable Fields - Activity Dashboard - Media Library - WYSIWYG Editor ## Top HostGator Alternatives - [Hostinger](https://www.g2.com/products/hostinger/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (813 reviews) - [A2 Hosting](https://www.g2.com/products/a2-hosting/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (204 reviews) - [Hostwinds](https://www.g2.com/products/hostwinds/reviews) - 4.9/5.0 (419 reviews)