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HostGator is one of the top ten web hosting companies in the world. Based in Houston Texas, Hostgator has been in business since2002. Hostgator was recognized by Inc. Magazine as the 21^st fastest growing private companies in the US and the fastest growing private company in Texas.

Reliable servers with 99.9% uptime guaranteeI have been using the hosting service of HostGator for more than 3 years.  I have never faced any downtime for my websites. What really makes this possible is a dedicated team of professionals who are always on their toes to make sure that your website is up and running. HostGator has its own data center in Texas which houses a wide selection of dedicated as well as shared servers to cater to the needs of different clients.

The dedication of HostGator management can be gauged from the fact that it is not uncommon for CEO Brent Oxley to handle clients’ concerns personally

HostGator’s Top features

·        Unlimited Bandwidth

·        Unlimited domain hosting

·        Unlimited MYSQL database

·        99.9% uptime guarantee

·        24/7 customer support on phone/chat

·        Reseller hosting services

Hostgator’s Plans

You get 3 different offers from HostGator. Hatchling, Baby and Swamp Plans have different features and prices. One of the most important features of Hostgator’s plans is that you can opt for paying on month to month basis. No commitment for a long term contract is required, though a longer contract if always cheaper.

Hatchling:  $4.95 Per Month (for 3 years) - Only one domain hosting

Baby Plan:   $ 7.95 Per Month (for 3 Years) – Unlimited domains

Swamp    :    $12.95 Per Month (for 3 Years) – Unlimited domains

The best part is you need to pay just $0.01 for the first month. Once you are satisfied with the services you can continue with it or you can cancel it. Hostgator offers various reseller plans as well. Very few web hosting service providers have reseller’s plan with so much flexibility and security options

A good Web hosting service is the lifeline of your company’s online existence. If your online presence is interrupted because of any reason; it will severely affect your business. As your website’s existence is entirely dependent upon your hosting service, you must spend enough time on choosing a good hosting service provider.There are various parameters on which you decide which is the best hosting service for you. There are some common features that are usually available with most of the hosting services.

 Some of the Common features of these top hosting services are

·         Unlimited space

·         99.9 percent uptime guarantee

·         Unlimited bandwidth

·         Free search engine submission

·         Free set up

Following is the price comparison and some other features that differentiate these hosting providers from one another

Pros and Cons of some of the best hosting service providers

HostGator    : Three plans available $4.95, $7.95 and $12.95

·         Reseller hosting package

·         business package comes with chilisoft ASP ,  45 Days money back guarantee

·         $50 Google adword credit ·         No private SSL or dedicated IP in cheap plans,

·         No windows hosting

·         Cheapest plan offers only one domain hosting 

Blue host     only one plan available $6.95 

·         Good for starters, budget hosting

·         $50 Google credit, $25 yahoo credit ,  Free domain name

·         Offer only Linux hosting, ·         only one plan available 

Host monster         $3.95 limited time offer

·         One of the best hosts if your website has less than 500 visitors a day

 ·         $50 Google adword credit, $25 yahoo credit

 ·         1 year commitment required for cheap plans 

·         Billing in 24 months increment  

 ·         Non US based customer service 

Once you have chosen and registered your domain name, you need to find a good web hosting company. There are many web hosting providers to choose from. First analyze your requirements and try to get quotes from a few web hosting companies. All of them claim to be better than others. You need to compare their service and charges. Good web hosting companies always give you 99.99% uptime guarantee. Unlimited Domain Hosting Only $9.95 a Month

Efficient web hosting provider will have redundancy incorporated throughout its hosting infrastructure. It means a good hosting company will have redundant servers. If one server goes down another server takes over ensuring uptime, without interrupting your website’s performance and accessibility.

If your website has e-commerce feature, then you need to take security issues very seriously. Are the credit card transactions safe and secure? How much time does it take to process the transaction? These things should be very clear before you choose your web host.

Now what keeps traffic coming to your website is the content of your website. Remember, no one would bother to come back to your site if you do not update your site with new information. A nice looking web site with a lot of multi media features is good only if your web site also contains fresh content. You need to analyze your target market the content of your website should center on it.

Your website must be user friendly and easy to navigate. A nice and eye catching website is useless if the visitor cannot navigate easily. It costs you your prospective customer. Once a visitor leaves your site because of poor navigation and site map, he/she will hardly come back to your site.
Once your site is up and running and hosted by an efficient web hosting company, all you have to do is keep adding new content to your site regularly so that traffic keeps increasing. The more traffic your site receives the more revenue it generates for your business.

Once you have chosen and purchased a domain name for your business/services, the next important thing is how to choose an efficient and dedicated hosting service. Hosting service can make or break your business. There are mainly two types of hosting services. A dedicated host means a full computer is dedicated to host your websites. Shared hosting may host thousands of other websites on the same server which means slower response time.

If you are new to internet you can go for starter packages with shared hosting services. Gradually when you start expanding your business and require more programming go for dedicated hosting services. Spend some time about your needs and the kind of feature you are going to use on your website. If you are going to use multi media and videos, then disk space and bandwidth are very important to be taken into consideration.

Do you need UNIX or windows hosting? If your site is based on .Net or Active Server Pages, SQL Server or Access then you need windows hosting as these technologies only work with Microsoft operating systems. Normally most of the hosting companies offer both.


If your site is selling something online and needs credit card processing you should go for dedicated hosting service. Dedicated hosting is always much more reliable for ecommerce features because they are more secured than shared hosting services. Since there are at least hundreds of other websites on a shared server security becomes a problem.

How much you want to spend on your website hosting. Free hosting services are very attractive but full of ads and pop ups which can divert your potential customer. Now days hosting services are available at throw away prices like $3.95 to $ 9.95 per month. These are quite affordable for every one. Almost all companies offer a lot of disk space and enough bandwidth. Simply going for free hosting services and suffering loss just to save a few bucks doesn’t make sense, does it?

A nice website properly hosted by a reliable host guarantees your presence in cyberspace all the time no matter whether you are sleeping or enjoying a vacation. But how do you decide which host is reliable enough for your website so that your business doesn’t suffer.

Though web hosting you require depends a lot upon the products or services you are offering on your website, a few common criteria that you should take into considerations are.
If you are new to internet business or simply want a web site to offer your services/products going for free web hosting services is not a bad idea. Free websites offer you all the services that you need to start your business. Once your business is established go for paid services as they are more professional and give you a lot of other services. Now days hosting services are available at very cheap prices with very attractive packages.

Uptimes guarantee all the time is what decides how efficient your hosting service is. Go for hosting services with 99.99% uptime guarantee. Check their service and efficiency by calling up at odd hours.
How much space you need and how much is offered by your host? Check if the space is enough for your website. How is their customer support?

Initially 200MB space is enough. If traffic on your website increases, you can go for dedicated server for you site. Are you getting free domain name, chat facility etc. If you get all the facilities spending a few $$ is worth it.

Internet has revolutionized the way we conduct business. We can make our presence felt and reach our prospective customers at the click of the mouse. All these things were not possible so easily just a decade ago. With the easy and cheap accessibility of internet it is important to have a website and a domain name of your own to run your business. Building a website and then having it hosted by a reliable host is a real challenge that requires some thought before we decide our host.

Before deciding our host, what is really important  is  to prioritize our requirements. Customer care and uptime guarantee is what  should be of paramount importance. Secondly if you are really expecting very high traffic at your website, bandwidth is very important. There are hundreds of hosting service providers in the market today. How should we go about choosing a host for our website?

There are a lot of things that you can do to check if your web host is reliable. Try calling their customer care at odd hours and see their response time. If the response time is quick, go ahead and take their hosting service. Some hosts also provide chat support which is very helpful if an international call doesn’t seem to be a cheap option. Start chatting with their chat representative. Check if they are technically competent enough to resolve your issues.

Free hosting services are very attractive initially, but they can cost you more in the long run. Normally free hosting services are based on advertisements and pop ups. Remember, unwanted pop ups and advertisements  may not only be irritating for your visitor , but also be a reason for your visitor not to visit your site again. So going for paid hosting is always more professional than  free hosting.

Disk space is another important point to be kept in mind before selecting your host. You need to keep updating your website all the time with new contents. See how much space is your required for your  website at present and in near future. Hostgator provides good hosting service with $0.01 for the first month. You can check their service and opt for your plan as per your requirements.