Starting a website, large or small, is an exciting and very doable endeavor for anyone. The downside is that there are so many web site hosting companies, that it can be difficult to determine which one will meet your needs.

Hostgator was founded in 2002 and maintains offices in Houston & Austin, Texas. They have over 600 employees, 12,000 plus servers and claim to host over 5 million websites.

Pros: I loved the site builder. It was easy to use and loaded fast. A site builder demo is available on the site, so it’s easy to give it a test drive and see if it will work for you. I was very impressed with the vast selection of templates, over 4,500 high quality designs.

When I attempted to use the online customer support, I was informed that 21 representatives were available and 1 person was in front of me. Chat support was easy to use and the time elapsed from asking a question to a response was approximately 2 minutes. They provided clear answers to my questions or referred me to the appropriate pages. The site has a nice, easy to understand Help Section.

Cons: Domain privacy costs $10 extra. The privacy registration will go through a separate company and domain privacy page was difficult to locate.

Prices highlighted on front page are for a 3 year commitment. If you pay by the month there is a $5 set-up fee. Domain name registration is not included in any of the packages.

The Toll Free Number provided with the Business Package will be deactivated if no calls are received during the month. Anything over a 100 minutes will incur additional charges by the minute.

Prices vary depending on length of commitment.

Hatchling Package:
$3.96 - $7.95

Baby Package:
$6.36 - $7.96 Baby
Baby Extras:
Add on / Parked Domains
Private SSL Allowed
Dedicated IP for $2.00 a month

Business Package:
$10.36 - $11.96 Business
Business Extras:
Toll free number for your business with 100 minutes
Free dedicated IP address
Free private SSL
Anonymous FTP
Add on / Parked Domain

Domain Name:
Not Included with packages
Prices start at $15.00 per year for .com

The following information applies to all packages:

Disk Space:
Unlimited

Bandwidth:
Unlimited

Site Builder:
Yes

Reported Up-time:
99.9%

Email:
Included

Support:
24 / 7

Money Back Guarantee:
45 Days

Google AdWords Credit:
$100

Current Special: