Right from individual bloggers to large businesses, WordPress is suitable for everyone and for those who do not have knowledge of web designing. Anybody can create a professional-looking website in just a few minutes. And choosing the right web hosting is important for the growth of your site. In all these years, WP Engine and HostGator both have emerged as the popular choices for hosting WordPress. WP Engine vs HostGator – Let’s see which one is better for WordPress.
Features
WP Engine comes loaded with features that are completely advanced. They have fully managed WordPress only hosting which gives them an edge over others in the league. If you talk about their speed, it is surely unbeatable with 100% uptime and fast server response time. They take care of all the security measures with their daily backups and virus scans. They also come with complete development based features such as dedicated IP, 3rd party SSL, Integrated CDN (Content Delivery Network), WordPress multisite, GeoIP, LargeFS which enable you to connect with Amazon S3 bucket to manage large files and Staging Sites, a feature where you can detect bugs, test and redesign your site. The in-built caching technology, EverCache is the reason behind its massive scalability and super speed. Their caching mechanism also reduces the server load.
Also Read, How to Migrate WordPress Website to WP Engine?
On the other hand, HostGator is also known for providing quality services with various hosting options like shared, VPS, reseller and dedicated. They also offer hosting for e-commerce platform and professional CMS solutions. The websites hosted on HostGator are powered by Cpanel which is very easy to use and understand. You get 99% guaranteed up time and a 45 days money back guarantee. It also gives you unlimited sub-domains, FTP accounts and email accounts. Each hosting plans comes with free Weebly site builder which is an effective site building tool along with free website transfer and an amazing collection of 4500 website templates for free. If you thought that was too much then you’ll be very impressed to know that HostGator also gives $100 Google AdWords offer. Although both web hosting service providers has many alternatives available in the market but both of these stands out but by providing industry standards hosting service.
Also Read, Bluehost vs Hostgator
Hosting Plans and Pricing
WP Engine has various customized hosting plans that are designed according to user requirements. Their basic personal plan starting at $29 monthly gives only one site installs and 10 GB of local storage space with unlimited data transfer and managing 25,000 visits per month. The professional plan costs you $99 monthly with 10 WordPress sites to host, 20 GB of local storage space while managing up to 100,000 visits per month. The business plan costs you $249 monthly for supporting 25 WordPress sites with 30 GB of local storage space and giving up to 400,000 visits per month. The premium plan supports 150 installs with 100-300 GB of local storage space and managing more than 1 million visit count per month. And the enterprise plan offers you 400 GB-1 TB of local storage space with more than 4 million visits per month.
Also Read, Pagely vs WP Engine
HostGator comes with three simple hosting plans. Their basic plan is called the Hatchling plan that costs $4.86 per month giving you only 0ne site install and an unlimited disk space. The Baby plan and Business plan comes at $6.96 and $10.46 per month respectively with unlimited domains. While baby plan comes with shared SSL certificate, Business plan offers free private SSL and IP. And all these plans have the unmetered bandwidth.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Both WP Engine and HostGator are equally reliable and give a good performance. While WP Engine is a fairly young company which was started in 2010, HostGator that was founded in 2002 has more rich experience in terms of customer service and knowledge of market trends. Both web hosting providers, Hostgator as well as WP Engine have reasons to choose for WordPress hosting.
Having said, WP Engine is constantly improving and evolving with new technology. They are always looking to bring something new to offer. WP Engine sure has the best professional customer support system to take care of all WordPress specific issues, but the limiting factor remains their phone support which is available from 9 am to 6 pm only unlike the 24*7 phone support offered by HostGator. WP Engine offers a 60 days money back guarantee while HostGator offers a 45 days money back guarantee. Though HostGator beats WP Engine on the pricing value but it cannot match the unparalled speed offered by the latter.
Also Read, WP Engine vs InMotion
WP Engine vs HostGator – The Final Verdict
It’s never easy to compare two giants that are equally impressive with their features and performance. Both HostGator and WP Engine are best in the business but surely each beats the other in a few areas. Surely, HostGator is more affordable and gives all the necessary functions and features required for a WordPress hosting but it cannot match the speed, service and hardcore professionalism offered by WP Engine.
