I wanted compare my original hosting company, GoDaddy, with my new hosting company HostGator. Now, there is a lot of hate out there for GoDaddy but I never found the service to be horrible. As a matter of fact, I’m actually glad I used this service early on because I was barely using my websites at all in the beginning and spending less for hosting was a great option. Unlike many people out there, I actually see GoDaddy as a fine option for web hosting for the hobbyist or someone learning to write web pages.
That being said, it appears to me that GoDaddy is marketing itself specifically to these types of people. I recently looked and I couldn’t even find any options for beefier hosting outside of shared hosting. That’s fine, that’s their model and as we all know (and are reminded every Super Bowl) it is working for them. Still, I believe many of us enthusiasts will find that we outgrow what GoDaddy has to offer. With that in mind, I wanted to discuss my thoughts of GoDaddy compared to HostGator, my new website host.
Why Did I Leave GoDaddy?
For someone who hasn’t moved hosting companies before, the idea of leaving your current host can be something you might want to avoid and this was my thoughts exactly. I wanted to stick things out with GoDaddy as long as I could if only for the convienence. There were two issues that led me to search for other options:
Website Speed
My website speed was great some days and then others it was bad. There was no rhyme or reason as far as I could tell. When viewing my sites in Google Webmaster, my page loads were all over the place. I also found that my site “hung” every day between 6:45PM and 7PM. I guess there was some maintenance task or possibly even some other user on the same shared server as me. Regardless, I had been looking at other hosting sites casually for a few months because of my speed issues.
Site Issues
I had several problems with my website in a three month period, some of them GoDaddy’s fault and others clearly not. My issues included:
- A database table crashed and my site was down for a few days because I didn’t realize this. This was not anyone’s fault as this sort of thing happens but for someone who was already looking into other hosting options this occurrence only caused me to look more purposefully.
- A few weeks later I enabled SSH and upgraded to PHP5 and there were instructions on how to avoid downtime (basically I had to update some configuration files). Even with following the instructions I was given my site still went down. When I called GoDaddy the first time I was told that I just had to wait. When I called 12 hours later I got a much better support person who recognized there was a problem and escalated the issue up at which point my issue was resolved (in about 4 hours).
- A few weeks after that my site was hit by this virus. Now, most people claim that you get this virus because your passwords were weak (mine were not, I generate mine and they often look like this GlIn454nnL34n), that your file permissions were incorrect (mine were not – 644 and 755 where appropriate), that your hosting configuration was at PHP4 (mine was not as per the previous bullet point), and a few other issues that my site did not have. Oh, and the problem was only affecting GoDaddy sites. Now maybe this was affecting other sites but it appears to me that there was a MAJOR GoDaddy issues that may have been more related to the security of the shared hosts and not my individual settings. At this point I felt I had little other option but to move my site.
At this point I was very glad that I had been researching hosting companies and was able to pull the trigger quickly on this. Shortly after I had switched to HostGator there was another virus that hit GoDaddy accounts so I was relieved to be out of there.
Comparing GoDaddy to HostGator
Now that I’ve been with HostGator for some time I wanted to comment on what is different between the two hosting services.
Domains
I wanted to start by talking about what I feel like GoDaddy is absolutely the best at: domain management. I will continue to use GoDaddy for my domain management. When I buy a domain at GoDaddy and point it to a site the speed at which everything is up in running is nothing short of impressive. The management of domains is easy to use and you can have confidence in the reminders offered by GoDaddy for your domains. GoDaddy in my opinion is an awesome domain company that also provides very cheap, average hosting. I’ve heard so many nightmares with other domain companies, including losing your domain, that I do believe I’ll be using GoDaddy for years to come (just not for my hosting).
Comparing Pricing
| Price Range (per month) | Hosting Options | |
|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | $5.09 to $14.99 | Only Shared Hosting |
| HostGator | $4.95 to $400+ | Shared Hosting Reseller Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Servers |
As you can see, the prices are comparable. You can save some money if getting both your hosting and domain from GoDaddy but for this comparison I’m sticking with hosting alone. The biggest difference in pricing is that GoDaddy’s solutions stop at Shared Hosting while HostGator’s options continue. In other words, it is far easier to hit the glass ceiling at GoDaddy than at HostGator.
Comparing Support
As I described above, I did have some issues with GoDaddy support but if I’m being honest I think you will, given a long enough time line, have issues with any hosting company you use. My thoughts in regards to support are not that GoDaddy has bad support but rather that HostGator has such great support.
For example, when the virus was hitting people at GoDaddy this is the message they were sending out:
Measures are in place to protect the overall security of the shared hosting server on which your website resides. The compromise of your account is outside of the scope of security that we provide for you. Virus scans are performed on the content that is hosted, but they may not pick up everything, largely due to the fact that hackers tend to upload custom scripts which are not picked up by traditional malware scanners. However, if a virus is detected, you will be notified. The overall security of your password and the content within your account is your responsibility, as password compromises and compromises due to scripting can only be prevented by you.
Now I don’t see a problem with this. If we assume that the problem is caused by some deficiency in how the user has their website set up (even ignoring my experience otherwise) then it is a fairly reasonable response. However, that is what causes HostGator to stand out: their handling of support is unreasonable (in a good way).
Within in my first week I had one issue and several questions and HostGator support went out of their way to fix my problem…they even were logging into my WordPress instance to check plug-ins and other settings. I promise you that this will not happen at your average host because it is going above and beyond the “reasonable” level of support. In my experience so far, HostGator hasn’t just been one of the best customer experiences I’ve had with web hosting, it has been one of the best experiences I have had with any support.
Comparing Speed
My opinion of GoDaddy is that if you can avoid databases, then you will find that the speed of your website is spectacular. The problem is that most of us are not going to be able to avoid databases and then things go downhill quickly. The database will be your bottleneck. I had one WordPress site I was hosting at GoDaddy that took longer than 20 seconds to load a page (prior to installing some WordPress caching plug-ins). Even with the caching plug-ins the site could take as long as 15 seconds to load…although it was often loading in 8 or 10 seconds.
Now this site was on the lowest tier of hosting and I believe that the lower your tier the more people you share your server and database with because another site I had at a higher tier had better, if not great performance. I suspect the same is true of HostGator’s tiers which is why I went with the Reseller Account. Since switching all of my sites to this Reseller Account, I have seen improvements in every site. The site that took 20+ seconds to load now only takes between 3 and 5 seconds normally (and that is without caching enabled). Clearly HostGator was a big step up as far as hosting speed goes and I am extremely happy with the performance I’m seeing with the Reseller Account.
On a side note: if you are looking for WordPress caching I recommend W3 Total Cache. It’s awesome.
GoDaddy Database Tip: If you find your database is loading slowly on GoDaddy but do not want to switch hosts, one thing you can try is to create a new database. Then restore a backup of your current database to the new database and point your web application to the new database. This on its own will not make your site blazing fast however if you’ve noticed a slow down it is something that worked for me in the past. I think the trick is randomly finding your database on a less populated server. I make no promise that this will work and admit that it could have all been in my head! If you find the new database is even slower for some reason just point your web application back to the old database.
Comparing Hosting Management
The hosting tools provided by both companies are solid and I wouldn’t even bring this up except for one fact: every time I navigated through GoDaddy it would open a new tab or window. I swear, just getting to the database management screen would leave me with 4 or 5 tabs. Thankfully, HostGator is less tab crazy and you can navigate through one window through most of the hosting screens.
Final Thoughts on GoDaddy vs. HostGator
As I said in the beginning, I don’t see GoDaddy as a horrible hosting option, I just think you need to be in the audience that they are marketing themselves to. I believe that even GoDaddy would admit that their hosting options are too limited to support every site out there and you need to recognize when you need to move up. With any luck, my sites will continue to grow and I will someday find the Reseller hosting at HostGator inadequate (in a good way). The good news is when this happens I won’t have to change hosting providers again: HostGator has many more options that will allow me to grow with a company that is offering the speed and support I’m looking for in a hosting company.
