Hostinger vs HostGator: One Web Host Is Much Faster in 2024

Hostinger and HostGator are two behemoths in the hosting industry. Boasting affordable, high-performance shared hosting plans for beginners and advanced, state-of-the-art VPS Hosting for experienced users, both hosts make similar promises. But do they deliver similar results?

I wanted to find out for certain which host is better, which is why I ran comprehensive tests and research into both of them. I compared everything from performance, features, and security to customer support and user reviews. All of it with one purpose: to find out for sure which host is worthy of your trust and your money.

To be honest, it wasn’t much of a close fight. In nearly every category, Hostinger showed a significant lead over HostGator. That isn’t to say that the latter isn’t for anyone, but for most users, Hostinger is the clear choice.

So, keep reading to find out exactly how these hosts fared against each other, or sign up for a shared hosting plan with Hostinger today.

1. Plans and Pricing

Hostinger’s Cheap Plans Are Tough for HostGator to Beat

Hostinger offers three cost-effective packages for shared hosting. Even on the most expensive plan – Business – you’d be paying pocket change for hosting a site with Hostinger. The Single plan accommodates one website, whereas the Premium and Business plans offer up to 100 sites and extra features and enhanced functionality

The top plan, Business, includes 200 GB of NVMe SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth allowance, and unlimited databases. You’ll also get a free domain, free SSL, and free daily backups. Unless you’re on an extremely tight budget, this plan is my recommended pick for a good balance of features and pricing.

HostGator is also known for low pricing, but its plans are slightly more expensive than Hostinger’s. HostGator has three shared hosting plans – Hatchling, Baby, and Business – and each offers unmetered bandwidth. That said, HostGator only offers SSD storage. These drives run more slowly than the NVMe SSD drives provided by Hostinger.

It’s also worth noting that both Hostinger and HostGator offer a free domain name for a year with all plans. If you’re looking for something more advanced, both hosts also offer VPS hosting at reasonable prices.

Hostinger offers more storage at nearly every price point. It also offers cheaper plans and better overall performance (more on that below). In the end, there’s really no question, Hostinger offers better value overall.

2. Features

Hostinger Offers a More User-Friendly Control Panel

Both Hostinger and HostGator come with the features you’d expect if you’re new to hosting. If you’re especially interested in WordPress, both hosts come with specialized plans for WordPress hosting, which include easy installations, custom plugins, and performance-enhancing tools.

For all-purpose hosting, HostGator uses the classic cPanel, which is the industry-standard dashboard for managing your hosting environment. Meanwhile, Hostinger offers its proprietary hPanel. Not only is Hostinger’s hPanel a lot more intuitive and user-friendly, but it can also do just about anything that cPanel can.

Once again though, Hostinger takes the lead thanks to its unique and versatile tools. If you want to host a custom website, Hostinger’s Website Builder is an amazing tool for creating captivating sites. Plus its use of AI technology can ensure that you optimize your site for SEO and maximum conversion and retention.

If you’re new to hosting, you might be looking for one-click WordPress installers and website builders. Both HostGator and Hostinger will meet your requirements there.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the tools offered by both hosts:

3. Performance

Hostinger is Faster and More Reliable

Shared hosting slices a server into individual accounts; they’re separate, but share the same underlying server resources between them. There are sometimes performance problems on shared hosting when one site starts to consume resources that its neighbors need.

There’s no way of guarding against this, but HostGator does refer to “low-density servers” on WordPress plans. I’m inferring that it means it limits the number of customers per server, and if so, that should help with your site’s speed and performance. Unfortunately, there’s no real detail to go on.

Hostinger offers plenty of tools to help boost performance, such as LiteSpeed web servers and the associated LSCache optimization plugin. Both give Hostinger a definite edge, and that’s not even mentioning its NVMe SSD storage, which outperforms HostGator’s SSD drives.

The result is a definitive competitive edge for Hostinger. While HostGator isn’t bad, in their in-depth review, my colleague found Hostinger to be one of the fastest shared hosting providers out there.

Both hosts’ uptime guarantees are similar, with cloud hosting providing marginally better uptime promises than other types of hosting.

All in all, Hostinger offers better hardware and software – and it goes to great lengths to ensure its servers are optimized. That’s why it’s the clear winner of this section.

4. Security

HostGator Has a Better Track Record

Both Hostinger and HostGator offer a free security suite to keep your sites and data safe. Each host includes a custom firewall, DDoS protection, and SSL certificates with every plan. 

These security measures are average for the shared hosting industry – it’d work fine for a basic low-traffic site, but for mission-critical projects you may wish to tighten up security further with third-party solutions. HostGator offers SiteLock for an ongoing fee, which provides automatic malware scans and protection against bot attacks.

That said, while Hostinger hasn’t always offered the best security in the past, it currently includes an impressive range of built-in security tools, at no extra fee. Hostinger includes its proprietary firewall and malware scanner on all shared hosting plans, which uses machine learning to adapt and remove potential threats on the fly.

Though both hosts offer reliable security, the fact that Hostinger doesn’t use third-party tools gives it a slight advantage in this category.

5. Support

HostGator Provides Great Support in Minutes – Hostinger Leaves You Waiting for Hours

Hostinger and HostGator both offer 24/7 support via live chat, email, and tickets. However, HostGator also offers 24/7 phone support if you prefer. Both hosts also offer extensive knowledge bases filled with tutorials and guides on the basics of web hosting.

I assessed the quality of support provided by each host by personally posing some basic questions. To initiate this process, I contacted HostGator’s live chat support.

However, HostGator left me waiting for over ten minutes. That isn’t a horrendous waiting time, but it wouldn’t be very good if I’d had a critical issue that needed immediate attention.

That said, HostGator replied much more promptly than Hostinger. Upon trying to get in touch via live chat, Hostinger informed me that the average response time is “a few hours.” 

Feel free to close the chat window whenever you’d like, and you’ll still get answers to your questions through email. However, please note that this wouldn’t be considered live chat anymore. To directly engage in a conversation with one of our agents, it appears that reaching out during non-peak hours is necessary. Even in such cases, a bit of luck might be required for a successful connection.

Fortunately, both hosts provided great support – the agents politely addressed my questions and provided me with all the information I needed.

All in all, HostGator gives you access to quality support in a fraction of the time it takes with Hostinger – even though it isn’t particularly quick either.

Hostinger vs HostGator: There’s a Clear Winner

Although HostGator achieves faster support response times, this factor was insufficient to surpass Hostinger’s superior performance, security, and overall value.

Hostinger made our list of the top ten hosting providers in 2024 for a reason – it’s one of your best options. Unfortunately, it’s more difficult to recommend HostGator.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Hostinger and HostGator to make the differences clear:

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better: Hostinger or Hostgator?

I’d have to choose Hostinger. Despite offering similarly low prices to HostGator, Hostinger offers far faster and more modern technology. Its NVMe SSD drives and LiteSpeed web servers vastly outperform HostGator’s SSD drives and Apache web servers.

Is Hostinger good for web hosting?

Hostinger offers some of the best shared hosting plans in the industry. Not only does it come with a full suite of proprietary tools to improve performance, ease of use, and security, but it’s also one of the fastest shared hosting providers out there. When we compared Hostinger to HostGator, the former vastly outperformed the competition.

Why is Hostinger so cheap?

Hostinger offers great value for money, but such a huge number of customers means you may have to wait a few hours for a response from support during peak periods. In addition, Hostinger offers a proprietary control panel that non-techies might find easier to use, but more experienced users may prefer to pay more for the more familiar cPanel. Web hosting companies are charged licensing fees to offer cPanel to their customers, and this can drive up the price of hosting plans.

Is Hostinger better than Bluehost?

Yes. Hostinger delivers better performance at a lower price, so there’s little reason to choose Bluehost. Hostinger also made our list of the top web hosts in 2024, while Bluehost didn’t even come close.