Comparison & Experience With Both of 1&1 Hosting vs. HostGator (Part I)

Comparison & Experience With Both of 1&1 Hosting vs. HostGator (Part I)

   1&1 hosting is one of the oldest and biggest hosting brands in the world, while HostGator is one of the fastest growing web hosting companies in recent years. I wanted to compare 1&1 Hosting vs. HostGator specifically after receiving several reader questions about the 1&1 brand (mainly b/c 1&1, like GoDaddy does a ton of advertising).

   With site test (and most of my others) runs on HostGator hosting (see HostGator’s plans here), and I’ve had the opportunity to use 1&1 hosting (see 1&1’s plans here) with several client sites, in addition to a recent side project that uses 1&1 hosting. After using each for quite a while, here’s my experience with how 1&1 and Hostgator compare on pricing, features, performance, usability, and customer service.

Pricing

Comparing web hosts on pricing is always a bit difficult since they try to make sure the comparison is never apples to apples, when really they are all selling the same thing.

For price comparisons, I try to keep the 3 D’s straight – domains, databases, and disk space. When it comes to shared Linux hosting (which, unless you know otherwise is probably going to be the best fit for you). Those are the 3 features that you are really paying for – everything is else is nice, but can’t really be compared directly.

Domains is the number of domains you can point to your hosting account. Depending on the exact account – you could have unlimited “websites” that live all on 1 domain. You could have blog.domain.com along with shop.domain.com and support.domain.com – each would be distinct site but all on the single domain.com. HostGator’s cheapest account (Hatchling) allows 1, as does 1&1’s two cheapest (Starter & Basic). Both their mid-tier options are unlimited.


Databases are what “powers” your site – especially if you use something like WordPress to manage your website. Basically 1 database = 1 distinct website. In the example above, your blog, support, shop, and main site would be 4 different websites and would need 4 different databases. Disk space is simply how much storage you can have (think photos, videos, text,etc). Databases and diskspace are where you need to be careful when comparing.

All of HostGator’s plans allow unlimited databases & diskspace whereas 1&1’s cheaper plans cap them. All that to say is that to compare apples to apples, we need to look at 1&1’s Unlimited Plan vs. HostGator’s Baby Plan.

The default 1 year price for 1&1 is $8.99/mo vs. HostGator’s $7.96/mo. 1&1 however will run frequent promotions (see here for their current one), while HostGator generally offers 20% off for 1st time customers (and you can get 25% off with the coupon code swampland25 when entered at signup).

1&1’s main advantage in pricing is that they have a super-limited but super-cheap tier called the Starter for just $2.99. If you are looking for something very limited for a short-term project – 1&1 is going to win with this tier. However, if you are looking for a longer-term solution, then HostGator wins the pricing war – but only slightly when taking into account 1&1’s promotions.

It’s close enough to consider other factors for 1&1 hosting vs. HostGator. Let’s look at specific feature offering.

Features

For price comparison purposes, you should looks at domains, databases, and diskspace. However, features do matter to you overall purchasing decision – especially if you have certain goals or needs (such as hosted email, etc).

Both 1&1 and HostGator provide huge lists of super-technical terms trying to convince you that they provide more than the other. What really happens is that it’s too much to process and actually compare, so you focus on the small differences (like how HostGator gives you $100 in Google AdWords credit whereas 1&1 gives you $50 in Facebook and $50 in Bing ads) instead of features that actually matter.

That said, there are a few features that I want to call out. First, HostGator does weekly backups of your site. 1&1 does daily backups. If you publish a lot – that can be a big deal. Now, you should never rely on your hosting company to do backups for you (it’s important enough that you shouldn’t entrust that to someone else). But the additional frequency of 1&1 backups are nice, and a feature that HostGator ought to add.

As far as return policies, HostGator does a 45-day return policy, whereas 1&1 provides a 30-day. Not a ton, but worth calling out.

They both offer unlimited bandwidth (ie, they will support unlimited amount of traffic to your site). Every host should asterisk this since if your site hits every news network at the same time…it’s probably going to crash. That said, I do need to call out that when my a post of mine went viral in July 2013, I had 4,000 on my site at one point and HostGator handled it gracefully (unfortunately the sites I own that run on 1&1 have not had a viral hit yet).

For first-time website owners, 1&1 offers an “App Center” that has guided setup of WordPress and other common software. HostGator, however, stands out with their Quick Install feature (detailed here), which provides a much better experience that I’ll detail in the usability section.

Overall, in features I’ll call 1&1 hosting vs. HostGator a bit of a tie, depending on exactly what features you really value. But features don’t matter if they don’t work, so let’s dive into performance.