There is nothing more important than the hosting company that you want your blog or website to be hosted with it.
The majority of people start with a shared hosting plan with HostGator, Bluehost, or Dreamhost, simply, because they are the biggest shared hosting providers. However, when it comes to comparing those companies, you will notice a big difference in performances and prices, and it depends on your needs in the end.
This post will compare Hostgator, Bluehost, and Dreamhost, but I will only focus on their Shared hosting plans this time. If you need a comparison of their VPS servers, you can read What is the best VPS hosting service and find more detailed information there.
The next comparison table is based on the main options and features that every shared hosting account should have. At the same time, you will find the negative points of all the three, Bluehost, HostGator, and Dreamhost.
Please note that I do not include customer review statistics, for the reason that no one can tell you the truth. If you find some reviews, be sure that most of them are not real, and everyone can contact people to say good words about their business.
I also will forget completely the so-called “speed test”, because it needs the same website with the same content such as theme and plugins to be hosted in with the three companies, and that needs lots of work to give a real test on their loading time.
| HostGator | Bluehost | DreamHost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Price | $9.96 | Not offered | Not offered |
| Yearly cost | $95.52 | $83.4 | $119.4 |
| Disk Space | Unlimited | 50 GB | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered | Unlimited |
| Allowed Domains | 1 | 1 | Unlimited |
| Free Domain Name | No | Yes | Yes |
| Money Back | 45 Days | 30 Days | 97 Days |
| Visit HostGator | Visit Bluehost | Visit Dreamhost |
HostGator shared hosting
If you start a simple Google search about the best-shared web hosting providers, you will see immediately HostGator as the first one. That’s normal if you know that this company hosts millions of websites, and it is known for its good shared hosting services.
The wrong thing that people still make with HostGator plans is to choose their Hatchling plan, and lose many features, and services that the Baby plan, offers without any real difference in the price.
This is only for the monthly payment. If you want to pay each month, then select the Baby plan with an additional $0.8, and get more resources and options.
The Hostgator Baby plan offers unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth with a shared SSL certificate. At the same time have a monthly payment option if you want to try their service and pay each month for your hosting service. This is a good option that a few companies are offering.
Most of their competitors have a yearly plan which is not a big thing for newbies who want to try them. At the same time HostGator, unlike the others does not offer a free domain name for new customers. You need to buy it from them or transfer it from another registrar, and in this case, I recommend NameCheap.
Bluehost shared hosting
Bluehost offers a reliable shared hosting plan with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, and of curse unlimited bandwidth. They do not have a monthly payment option, but their yearly plan cost is cheaper than HostGator. With Bluehost, you have full SSH access, and that is a good option especially for developers.
The Bluehost WordPress hosting comes with a free domain name in the new account registration. It’s a quality hosting provider and especially for shared accounts. They are working with customized hardware and exclusive features.
In terms of speed, Bluehost and HostGator are the same.
Bluehost backup your site every day for free, and save a local copy to restore it if something wrong happens. But, with Hostgator, their automatic backup runs every week, and you need to pay for their daily backup fees.
Bluehost is one of the rare hosting companies that are active on YouTube and other social media in general. They create good videos and explain things or create tutorials to help their customers in their business and show them how to set up their site the right way.
That’s an important point that I should include, they work on transparency and share videos about their data centers and their servers.
That’s not the case for HostGator, I’ve never seen any video that talks about their data centers, and employee in real work. This never means that every company should create videos, but, it is an action that can build trust, and people appreciate watching their best hosting as human, and not a business only.
Dreamhost shared hosting
Dreamhost is an established company that started in 1997 and they are one of the biggest hosting companies today. They offer unlimited bandwidth with unlimited disk space and a free 50 GB of personal storage.
New customers get a free domain name with free Free WHOIS Privacy to protect their identity if you want. If you want additional domain names, you can buy a domain for $9.95 which is cheaper than the others. However, the hosting price is expensive compared to the others.
What I do not like is that they do not offer free phone support for all their plans. Unlike the others, you have to pay additional fees if you want phone support. They only have normal email support. Please remember that the Dreamhost Control panel is not a cPanel.
Now, what’s the best host?
If you look again at the table above, you will notice that Bluehost is a good choice. If you want to go professional from the beginning and pay for a full year of hosting at least. Their price is $83.4 and it is cheap. You get a free domain name which is not offered with HostGator.
At the same time, Hostgator does not offer a free domain name. But, they offer a monthly payment option. And they offer a free website or blog migration.
So, if you want to migrate an existing site and you need someone to transfer your site and files to a new server, then, I recommend HostGator. You will save the $99.99 that you should pay for the Bluehost technician.
Honestly, I never recommend Dreamhost, their price is too expensive, and they offer fewer services. You have to manually do the backup or configure a plugin. At the same time and the most important thing, you will never get real support. They only have an email system and that will never solve problems.
The final classification will be HostGator first, next Bluehost, and third Dreamhost.
Bluehost and HostGator are nearly the same in the features, but Bluehost will be the winner, with a free domain name and lowest price, with daily free backup.
I hope that this shared hosting comparison for Bluehost, Dreamhost, and HostGator helped. Please share your experience with each one of these hosting providers in your comments. Sure, there are negative points and reviews for each one of them and that is normal for any business in the world.
