HostGator, from Newfold Digital (formerly Endurance), is a web hosting service with WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting capabilities.
$2.75
per month
Liquid Web
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Liquid Web is a fully managed hosting service, boasting VPS hosting on the Storm Platform, and cloud dedicated hosting on the Storm Platform. Liquid Web supports managed WordPress, managed WooCommerce, VMware Private Cloud, as well as HIPAA and PCI compliant hosting, high availability database hosting, and dedicated or server clusters available for a variety of purposes, as well as websites.
HostGator is cheap and will host your website and the users of your email. However, we did run into some issues over the years. They sold us SiteLock, which is supposed to be an extra layer of security. We had it for a while, when our site was hacked. When I called HostGator they said that the SiteLock plan we had wasn't the right one to protect you, so they tried to upsell me on more SiteLock. This was very frustrating, as our site was down due to hacking and we were seen as a sales opportunity instead of clients who needed help. It turned out during this time that the basic backup that was included with HostGator was not going to work to get us back up. The problem is that it backs up once per week, and overwrites whatever was there before. So, it had backed up after the hack. After that we decided to get their premium backup plan. HostGator is good if you only need the most basic of services, unless you are willing to pay for the add-ons, and you might not even be aware of the add-ons until there's a problem.
LiquidWeb is web suited for small and large companies as they offer VPS and dedicated servers, from small to very big servers if you need lot of CPU, RAM or disk.
Phone support is somewhat rare, but rapid, knowledgeable, and English-speaking phone support is rarer still. Liquid Web ticks all these boxes and more.
Easy staging environments.
Partnership with iThemes for complete site management.
Tech support is responsive and helpful, but not without a special pin code. Since we need tech support infrequently when I do, I can never find that pin. It would be nice to have a quick client verification system.
Publishing updated pages are quick but could be faster by eliminating a couple of extraneous click.
The only con I can think of is Liquid-Web is more expensive, but it is a managed VPS so the price is on par with other similar services. There are some cheaper managed VPS plans out there, but in my experience, those often come with mediocre support and periodic server issues.
Because we have in house technical support to compensate the lack of quality HostGator tech support, and because the price continues to be affordable the business is likely to continue using HostGator. They provide what the business needs and we have in house support to maintain it.
While you will get support from HostGator, it seems to be a different level from 8-10 years ago. It may take 15-20 minutes to get someone on chat, and unless you follow up, I've found followup email support to take a couple of days. If you stick with it, though, you will get support, and I've never had a problem they couldn't help with.
This is for web design purposes. In versatility, not as good as WordPress, but pretty close to Squarespace and Wix. In ease of use, much easier than WordPress, about the same as Squarespace and Wix. In the choice of design templates, as good as all three. The current client chose HostGator after we poured through hosting, email, and web design comparisons. She wanted all these services through the least number of vendors, and the price was right.
Liquid Web is more professional than all of them. The main reason is the rock solid support which is 24/7 available. Whenever we contact with queries, the solution is guaranteed. There is no need to create support tickets, all the queries gets solved over live chat.
The organization backend is strong. Servers are costly but good.
