HostGator vs IONOS
HostGator and IONOS compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. HostGator scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
HostGatorWins overall
Newfold's Texas-born cPanel host: four shared tiers on a 36-month term with a free domain, Cloudflare CDN and staging
The former 1&1: unlimited sites and traffic from $8 a month at renewal, with a free domain and wildcard SSL
HostGator wins 4 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.4 vs 7.1).
How do the scores compare?
HostGator leads on 4 sub-scores, IONOS on 2. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, HostGator is cheaper ($10.99/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| HostGator | IONOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | First year on every plan; $22.99 is deducted from a refund if you cancel within the year | One domain free for the first year on every plan: .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz or .online |
| Free SSL | Let's Encrypt, auto-renewed | One DV wildcard certificate on Essential, Starter and Plus; unlimited wildcard certificates on Ultimate |
| Backups | Weekly courtesy backups, restorable with one click; the terms call them a courtesy, so keep your own | Daily backup of storage and databases with data recovery, every plan |
| Free migration | A free site migration tool is listed on the plan cards; the comparison table on the same page says paid migration is available | No |
| Free CDN | Cloudflare with Argo routing on every plan | Starter, Plus and Ultimate; not on Essential |
| Caching | Static content caching and object caching on every plan; the feature list names an NGINX caching layer | Server compression and HTTP/2 listed; no caching layer named on the plan page |
| Staging | WordPress staging site on every plan | No |
| SSH and languages | SSH, WP-CLI, cron, PHP 8.2, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, unlimited MySQL and SFTP users | Not stated |
| Resource limits | No | CPU priority 1x, 3x, 5x and 10x by plan; 262,144 inodes on every plan; cron jobs 10, 25, 50 and 100 |
| Data center choice | No | No |
| Uptime guarantee | The plan page says 99 percent; the terms we read contain no uptime clause or credit schedule | 99.99% in the general terms, with a credit for the month proportional to the downtime, on request and at IONOS's discretion |
| Security | Malware scanning, AI-powered detection and removal from Baby up, web application firewall, DDoS protection, DDoS scrub center | Daily malware scanning (basic, or advanced with automatic removal on Ultimate), DDoS protection, geo-redundancy |
| Unlimited POP3 and IMAP mailboxes with SpamAssassin; Pro Email is a paid product after a free trial | 1, 2, 4 or 5 accounts of 2 GB by plan, with forwarding, webmail and anti-spam | |
| Phone support | Baby, Business and Pro; Hatchling is chat only | 24/7, with a personal consultant |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git | Not stated | Every plan, with 200 SFTP accounts, Perl and Python |
| PHP versions | Not stated | 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, with paid extended support for 5.6 and later |
| Websites and traffic | Not stated | Unlimited websites and unlimited traffic on every plan; 5,000 subdomains |