FastComet vs HostGator
FastComet and HostGator compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. FastComet scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
FastCometWins overall
cPanel hosting on LiteSpeed with 30 daily offsite backups and 12 locations; small disks, now part of World Host Group
Newfold's Texas-born cPanel host: four shared tiers on a 36-month term with a free domain, Cloudflare CDN and staging
FastComet wins 2 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.5 vs 7.4).
How do the scores compare?
FastComet leads on 2 sub-scores, HostGator on 2. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, FastComet is cheaper ($9.95/mo vs $10.99/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| FastComet | HostGator | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | First year on every plan; $22.99 is deducted from a refund if you cancel within the year |
| Free SSL | Yes | Let's Encrypt, auto-renewed |
| Daily offsite backups | Up to 30 daily backups in a separate data center, unlimited full or incremental restores from the web interface | Not stated |
| Free migration | Website and server migrations by staff | A free site migration tool is listed on the plan cards; the comparison table on the same page says paid migration is available |
| Web server | LiteSpeed Enterprise with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress, AMD EPYC CPUs, NVMe storage | Not stated |
| Malware scanner | Yes | Not stated |
| Node.js and SSH | Yes | Not stated |
| Choice of data center | Six locations at shared checkout (Dallas, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Sydney, Mumbai); 12 locations across all products | Not stated |
| Resource policy | No constant utilisation of 80% of plan resources for an hour; 400 emails per hour; 10 simultaneous IMAP/POP3 connections; slow queries under 1% a day | Not stated |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% website availability excluding maintenance; 10% of the monthly fee credited per hour of downtime, up to 100% | The plan page says 99 percent; the terms we read contain no uptime clause or credit schedule |
| Phone support | 24/7, +1 855 818 9717 | Baby, Business and Pro; Hatchling is chat only |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| Backups | Not stated | Weekly courtesy backups, restorable with one click; the terms call them a courtesy, so keep your own |
| Free CDN | Not stated | Cloudflare with Argo routing on every plan |
| Caching | Not stated | Static content caching and object caching on every plan; the feature list names an NGINX caching layer |
| Staging | Not stated | WordPress staging site on every plan |
| SSH and languages | Not stated | SSH, WP-CLI, cron, PHP 8.2, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, unlimited MySQL and SFTP users |
| Resource limits | Not stated | No |
| Data center choice | Not stated | No |
| Security | Not stated | Malware scanning, AI-powered detection and removal from Baby up, web application firewall, DDoS protection, DDoS scrub center |
| Not stated | Unlimited POP3 and IMAP mailboxes with SpamAssassin; Pro Email is a paid product after a free trial |