No playing games here, we’re talking about the behemoths of the hosting industry. Both Go Daddy and Hostgator have been around for more than a decade, and provide a “place to stay” for millions of websites each.
Go Daddy Group was founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons with an idea to deliver top-class domain registration and hosting services to the mass market (back then it was an innovative, almost crazy view indeed). Over the years the company expanded exponentially, and currently hosts over 5 million websites; domains still remain at the core of Go Daddy’s business, which is clearly illustrated by the fact that Go Daddy’s clients entrust it with managing over 50 million domain names (making it the largest company of its kind). Visit Go Daddy official website »
Hostgator is more focused on the hosting market, with over 9 million hosting clients worldwide; according to the company’s calculations, the entire bulk of websites hosted by Hostgator accounts for approx. 1% of the total worldwide web traffic. From a single room with 3 servers at its foundation point in 2002, Hostgator was able to grow into one of the industry leaders with 12000+ servers and hundreds of employees in the US and Brazil. Visit Hostgator official website »
Below you can see a side-by-side comparison of the most important parameters:
| Criterion | Hostgator | Go Daddy |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting Plan(s) | 3 | 3 |
| Free Domain |  |
 |
| Domains per account | Unlimited (Baby and Business plans) | Unlimited (Deluxe and Ultimate plans) |
| Monthly price (1 yr subscription, basic plan) | $7.96 | $2.99 |
| Monthly price (1 yr subscription, standard plan) | $7.96 | $4.49 |
| Monthly price (1 yr subscription, business plan) | $7.96 | $7.49 |
| Disc Space | Unlimited | Unlimited (Deluxe and Ultimate plans) |
| 24×7 Support | Phone, chat, email | Phone, email, forum, knowledgebase |
| Money back | 45-Day | 30-Day |
| Uptime | 99.90% | 99.90% |
| Bonuses | $100 Google AdWords Offer | Free mobile site converter |
| PHP | |
|
| CGI/Perl | |
|
| Ruby on Rails | |
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| SSI | |
|
| ASP.Net | |
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| MySQL | |
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| PostgreSQL | |
|
| Microsoft SQL | |
|
| Cron Tasks | |
|
| Control Panel(s) | cPanel / WHM | Proprietary |
| Click to visit official website |  |
 |
Different Focus
While both Go Daddy and Hostgator offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee (ensuring that your website will be up and running in any occasion), it is easy to see from the table above that the two companies are quite differentiated in terms of their value offerings. Go Daddy focuses on the price and leverages on its vast domain expertise, while Hostgator provides free advertising coupons and an extended money-back guarantee. More specifically:
- As a domain professional, Go Daddy offers a free domain with any annual hosting subscription.
- All Hostgator’s hosting plans are about 40% more expensive than the comparable by Go Daddy.
- Hostgator offers $100 worth of free advertising coupons with every hosting plan.
- Go Daddy’s hosting plans include a tool that easily creates a mobile version of your website.
- Go Daddy uses an in-house custom hosting control panel, which may be a challenge to get used to for those who have been working with standard panels such as Plesk or cPanel.
- Hostgator has a longer money-back guarantee period (45 days vs 30 days).
- Go Daddy does not offer live chat support. It does, however, have a more extensive knowledgebase and a large support forum.
Choose Wisely
To conclude, Go Daddy is recommended for those who are price-sensitive and want an advanced domain solution, while Hostgator is a more pricey solution for individuals and businesses looking to kick-start their AdWords promotion campaigns and who value live chat support.