Hostgator VPS Hosting Overview
Hostgator is one of the first hosts to offer modern VPS hosting and their experience and expertise really makes a huge difference.
Preloaded with Cpanel so you can get started with your website and email immediately.
Service is guaranteed
High specs at a competitive price
Responsive support based in the United States
One good and bad thing about Hostgator is the “ready to go out of the box” aspect of Hostgator’s vps hosting. We like it, but super technical people might not.
Hostgator Evaluation
Performance
There are three things that drive VPS hosting performance – hardware, number of virtual private servers on the hardware, and the resources each VPS gets. Hostgator uses Dell 2950s with 16GB or 32GB of RAM, 2 high end Quad Core Xeon Processors and most importantly, 15K SAS hard drives. We wish they would release the number of VPS they put on a server, but they probably don’t want their competitors to know. They do say it is tied to actual performance of the individual VPS and the types of packages that are on the hardware (they offer three). It would be good to know this, but their customer feedback often talks specifically about how fast the service is.
Reliability
Their uptime is excellent, and we believe this is probably for a few reasons. Their servers are really high end with redundant power supplies and RAID5. This means that failed electronic components (like a hard drive) won’t matter, your VPS will continue to run. Also, Hostgator uses BGP4 bandwidth to help protect from problems with routing on the Internet. They also do a lot of “peering” with really big ISPs to help keep the routes short and fast. Last, Hostgator allows for bursting of usage by your VPS, meaning that when your VPS gets a spike in traffic, it stays up and does not shut your site down.
Ease of Use
A virtual private server is basically your own computer. Many hosts will have a limited setup and you will need to configure the vps to support a web site. One of the nicest things is Hostgator’s VPS hosting comes with all the software you will need to use your email and run your website. When you get your vps they will have preloaded Cpanel, setup your firewall, and configured your first account. Hostgator will even configure different versions of PHP and MySQL if you want. Just upload your web site, change your DNS and you are done. To someone who is busy or not that technical, this is really important.
Price
The price is very good, especially considering a Cpanel license is included. There is no setup fee like some other hosts and they have a 30 or 90 day money back guarantee. You can also use Hostgator Coupons to get discount on Hostgator.
Technical Support
VPS technology is still quite new, but Hostgator Hosting has been providing VPS hosting for over 4 years. They have great technical support that really understands how virtual private servers work. A lot of customer feedback is really positive about Hostgator’s technical support.