HostGator Baby vs Business Plan – In-Depth Comparison

In a nutshell, here’s the main difference between these plans:

HostGator’s Business plan offers many extra features like free dedicated IP, upgrade to positive SSL certificate, and access to SEO tools. Whereas, the Baby plan lacks these. Other than that, both plans have the same hardware resource limits. 

Keep on reading to dive deeper into the HostGator Baby vs Business plan comparison:

Is HostGator a Good Hosting Solution for You?

Choosing a web hosting provider to power your website is a critical decision. It will impact your website’s performance & security and thus, the user experience of your visitors. 

Therefore, it’s important that you choose a reliable, powerful, authoritative, and friendly hosting provider that doesn’t cause you problems down the road. 

We’re a team of experts who test and review web hosting companies every now and then. HostGator is one of the significant hosting providers we’ve tested so far. 

Here is an overview of HostGator’s performance in the core aspects:

Server Uptime

When it comes to server uptime and availability of your website, HostGator performs really well. It provides a consistent uptime score (around 99.98%) backed by a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

Performance

Regarding performance, though HostGator’s servers aren’t backed by SSD drives (that are faster than traditional hard drives) it still tends to offer a good page loading speed. 

Customer Support

HostGator’s 24/7 customer is not accessible at times and can take over 10 minutes to connect to. But, it’s quite dependable since the team usually always responds back within 30 minutes. 

Simply put, HostGator has performed well in our tests and we recommend it to anyone – from businesses to freelancers and bloggers. 

HostGator’s Baby vs Business Plan: Pricing, Features, & More

Here we’ll thoroughly compare HostGator’s Baby vs Business plans in different aspects to help you decide which way to go. 

Domains Allowed

HostGator’s Baby and Business plans both offers unlimited domains. It means that with a single plan, you can host as many websites as you’d want.

But, note that it doesn’t apply to traffic-oriented sites. Since the hardware resources are still limited with both these plans, the performance would be limited. So, only a few websites would work fine on one plan.

Website Builder

A website builder can bring comfort to your life by building a website with a graphical interface, without knowing how to code. 

Thankfully, HostGator has a website builder of its own, called the Gator site builder. It offers a lot of standout features like quick logo maker, extensive image gallery, and pre-made templates. 

If you’re not sure, this website builder gives access to a lot of pre-designed themes that you can preview and apply to your website. Then, you can customize that theme further to make it complement your business. 

Control Panel

A control panel highly impacts your user experience. A graphical control panel that’s easy to navigate and makes it easy to perform repetitive tasks can help you be more productive. 

Like many other hosting services, HostGator offers a cPanel control panel with its shared plans to manage your hosting account. It’s graphical, easy to navigate, and powerful. On top of that, it’s the first choice of most webmasters. 

Both Baby and Business shared plans of HostGator offer cPanel for FREE.

Performance & Uptime

What kind of performance your hosting provider offers will affect your website’s responsiveness and page loading speed. According to research, 53% of visitors leave a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. 

If you want your visitors to remain on your website, it’s important that you choose a trustable hosting service backed by powerful servers. 

When it comes to HostGator, it lacks SSD-based storage drives that are faster than traditional drives and offer better performance. 

But, with a blazing-fast network connection and powerful processors, the provider has managed to provide its customers a good page loading speed for their websites, whether they choose the Baby or the Business plan. 

Other than that, HostGator performs pretty well in terms of server reliability and makes sure your website is available 24/7. 

Takeaway: Both plans come with the same performance and uptime. 

Email Hosting

An email hosting service allows you to have a business email that’s more authentic and professional than a regular email.

Regular email: [email protected] 

Professional email: [email protected]

Some providers, including HostGator, offer it for free, with their shared plans. However, there are some limitations on how many professional email accounts you can create and which email tools you can access.

Thankfully, both the Baby and Business plans of HostGator come with unlimited email accounts and advanced email tools like

• Email autoresponders.
• Mail forwards.
• Unlimited email aliases.
• Mailing lists.
• And, many more. 

Features

This is where HostGator’s Business plan stands out among the Baby plan of HostGator – by offering more SEO & better features. Let’s explore the details below.

SSL Certificate

An SSL certificate improves the security of your website by protecting the sensitive information of your visitors – like their device’s IP address. Moreover, it also makes your website trustable in front of search engines and browsers. 

Thankfully, both Baby and Business plans of HostGator throw in a free SSL certificate. 

But, the Business plan also offers a free upgrade to the positive SSL certificate that’s even more secure. On top of that, the Positive SSL certificate is backed by up to a $10k warranty if it doesn’t properly protect your website. 

Free Domain

Like many other hosting services, HostGator offers a free domain with its hosting packages. Thankfully, this bonus is included with both Baby and Business plans.

However, you should note that the free domain won’t be included if you upgrade to the Baby or Business plan of HostGator from the Hatchling package.

Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth

One of the standout features of HostGator is it doesn’t put a limit on storage or bandwidth. Both these resources are almost unlimited. But, if your website overuses storage or bandwidth, you may be notified and even charged for the extra usage. 

That said, HostGator’s Baby and Business packages both offer the same amount of storage and bandwidth. So, this part of the comparison is a tie. 

45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

All shared hosting plans of HostGator also include the 45-day money-back guarantee. 

But, you should note that this refund guarantee is only applicable to the hosting service. So, HostGator won’t refund for the extras you purchase – a premium website builder, domain name, or SEO tool, for example. 

1-Click WordPress Installation

Unless you’re comfortable with uploading content on your website using code, it’s important that you use a content management system (CMS) platform. Most people who build their websites choose WordPress.

For the convenience of users, hosting providers usually offer pre-installed WordPress that can be activated within a few clicks. Thankfully, HostGator is among them.

With HostGator, you get to install WordPress with just a click, whether you choose the Baby or the Business plan. 

SEO Tools

If you’re looking to improve your website’s visibility across search engines (like Google), optimizing your website and its content for SEO is important. 

SEO tools make it easy to do that by helping you target the best keywords with your website and get insights into how you can improve your site’s SEO score. 

Moreover, they also help you track the pageviews of your website and other important information to make profitable decisions for your business’s growth. 

The basic shared hosting plans of HostGator, including the Baby plan, lack such features. But, the Business plan throws in the starter package of SEO tools for free ($50/year value) – a win-win indeed. 

Pricing

The Baby plan at HostGator starts from $3.50/mo while the Business costs $5.25/mo. Note that these are the initial rates of these plans and come with a 3-year subscription only. If you want to sign up for a shorter period, you’ll have to pay a slightly higher price. 

The table below will give you a better insight into it:

Summary – HostGator Baby vs Business Plan Comparison

Here is the summary of the HostGator’s Baby vs Business plan comparison:

So, Which One Do You Pick?

Until next time cheers!

FAQs Regarding HostGator Baby vs Business Plan

Here we answer the frequent queries regarding HostGator’s Baby vs Business plan. 

Does HostGator charge monthly?

HostGator offers many types of subscriptions with its packages. You can choose a monthly subscription or subscribe longer for a year or even 3 years. The longer you subscribe for, the bigger discount you’ll get. 

Can I upgrade my HostGator plan?

HostGator lets you upgrade to a higher hosting plan anytime. For instance, if you’re currently using HostGator’s Hatchling plan, you can easily upgrade to the Baby or Business plan. The duration of your current plan is turned into the duration of the plan you upgrade to. 

Is HostGator free?

HostGator is not free but it’s affordable and offers a 45-day money-back guarantee. However, HostGator does offer a free trial from time to time. You can subscribe to the news regarding HostGator to keep up with any such bonus HostGator brings out. 

Will the business plan in HostGator give more speed and resources?

The Business plan of HostGator doesn’t offer more speed or resources than the Hatchling or the Baby plans. However, you do more features with the Business plan, including dedicated IP address, positive SSL certificate, and SEO tools. 

Will I get free SSL in the baby plan?

The Baby plan of HostGator offers a free SSL certificate. However, you only get a single SSL certificate for free. So, if you host more than a single website on your HostGator plan, you’ll have to purchase more SSL certificates additionally. 

Is the HostGator Baby plan worth it?

HostGator’s Baby plan is definitely worth it if you’re looking to host multiple websites or one high-traffic site. It offers essential features like a domain name, an SSL certificate, and website builder for free while giving you the freedom to host as many websites as you want. 

Is the HostGator Business plan worth it?

HostGator’s Business plan is completely worth it if you’d love to get a starter pack of premium SEO tools and a positive SSL certificate for free. The Business plan of HostGator also offers the dedicated server IP which improves your website’s overall performance.

Can Magneto be hosted on HostGator shared hosting?

HostGator’s shared hosting packages allow you to host Magneto. If you’re looking to host Magneto on a web hosting server and wondering if HostGator is the right fit, we would definitely recommend HostGator. In fact, HostGator lets you install Magneto on your server quickly, within a few clicks.