DreamHost vs HostGator | Which One Is Best for You?
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So, you’re looking for a hosting provider, and you’ve narrowed it down to two of the biggest names in the business – DreamHost and HostGator. It’s a big choice, but we’re here to help make the decision a little easier. In this web hosting comparison, we’ll set these hosting heavyweights against each other, so you can weigh up everything they offer side-by-side.
We’ve put these two through their paces, researching and testing them thoroughly. After hours of analysis, we recommend HostGator as the best out of the two. It’s a great all-rounder and takes the second spot in our overall rankings, earning a score of 4.7 out of 5 – this puts it slightly ahead of DreamHost, which sits in 4th position with a score of 4.4 out of 5.
Don’t just take our word for it – in this article, we’ll show you exactly how we came to this conclusion. We’ll measure HostGator and DreamHost against each other – digging into their value for money, overall features, ease of use, and more – so that you can make your own decision, and confidently pick the one that’s best for you.
HostGator | DreamHost |
Overall rating 4.7 | Overall rating 4.4 |
Starting from $4.95 | Starting from $2.95 |
Uptime 99.99% | Uptime 100% |
Free backups | Free backups |
Free domain | Free domain |
Storage space Unmetered | Storage space 50GB – Unlimited |
HostGator is better for you if you want shared hosting...
… It’s the best hosting provider for shared hosting, with plans starting at just $3.95 per month (billed annually). It also has excellent help and support!Try HostGator For Yourself Today!
DreamHost is better for you if want good site speed...
… It came second in our site speed tests, and also offers affordable shared hosting plans.Try DreamHost For Yourself Today!
- Types of hosting
- Pricing
- Performance
- Features
- Help and support
- Market analysis
From this data, our research team has then assigned scores to each provider across the different categories and hosting types, from shared hosting to dedicated hosting.
DreamHost vs HostGator: Quick Comparison
Check out our side-by-side comparison table to see which hosting provider best suits you.
DreamHost | HostGator | |
---|---|---|
Ease of Use Winner: HostGator | DreamHost is pretty easy to use, but tailors its services towards WordPress users. It also doesn't use the familiar cPanel dashboard and instead favors its own custom-made dashboard. | HostGator is incredibly user-friendly and its onboarding process will get you online quickly. It has a marketplace of helpful apps and use of a cPanel dashboard. |
Features Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost's plans are incredibly feature-rich, especially if you choose one of its shared, WordPress, or VPS hosting plans. Its even recommended by WordPress! | HostGator's plans come with impressive features, such as unlimited storage and a free domain. |
Value for Money Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost is better value for money - it has cheap introductory deals and affordable renewal prices. Plus, it has an incredible 97-day money-back guarantee. | HostGator's plans are very affordable, but do be wary of its steep renewal prices! |
Performance Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost is one of the best hosting providers for site speed and uptime, meaning your site is unlikely to face any downtime. | HostGator has an advertised uptime of 99% and sits just behind DreamHost in our performance testing. |
Migration Winner: HostGator | DreamHost offers free website transfers for its WordPress plans only. And if you want to transfer your domain, you'll need to pay a fee. | HostGator offers a limited number of free transfers with select plans, and each plan comes with one free domain migration. |
Help and Support Winner: HostGator | DreamHost has very poor help and support services, and doesn't offer any phone support. You can request a callback - for a fee! | HostGator is the best hosting provider for help and support, offering 24/7 live chat and phone channels and a detailed knowledge center. |
Are You Ready? | Visit DreamHost | Visit HostGator |
Ease of Use
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
HostGator is more user-friendly...
Onboarding Process
Both HostGator and DreamHost have an easy-to-follow onboarding process.
HostGator offers a free domain across most of its annual packages – including its shared and WordPress hosting plans – but it doesn’t come as a free perk on any other hosting type. That being said, it does allow you to pair an existing domain easily, or purchase a new one during the initial registration. This means you won’t have to swap between different websites when getting set up!
The same can be said for DreamHost. Its shared and WordPress (renamed DreamPress) plans also offer a free domain for the first year if you sign up for a yearly or three-year subscription.
Setting Up (and Running) Your Website
With both of these providers, it’s easy to set up and run a website with no prior knowledge or experience in hosting.
HostGator, for example, has a useful marketplace where you can install applications, such as WordPress, Weebly, and G-Suite with just one click so you can get your website ready to go in a flash. HostGator accommodates a broad range of websites, catering to the needs of the general user, as well as those with specific projects in mind.
DreamHost, on the other hand, focuses its attention on WordPress as its partner of choice. This does come with benefits, such as WordPress being pre-installed on DreamHost’s plans, but it might not be the most suitable choice for all websites.
Like most popular hosting providers, HostGator also makes use of a cPanel dashboard. If you’ve hosted a site before, this will feel familiar to you, and you’ll be able to get stuck in with ease. Still, even if it’s totally new for you, the modern and intuitive interface makes it easy to pick up quickly.
DreamHost is a whole different ball game, however – it uses a custom-made dashboard instead of the popular cPanel route. While this is also relatively simple and straightforward to use, it can take many users time to adjust to the alternative.
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1654628.png)
Features
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
DreamHost's plans come with impressive features...
There are a few different types of hosting, but both HostGator and DreamHost provide the following: shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. For this comparison article, we’ll focus on these four hosting types, but it’s worth noting that HostGator also offers reseller hosting, while DreamHost has additional cloud hosting plans.
- Shared hosting means your website is hosted on the same server as other sites, and you share resources like storage and bandwidth.
- WordPress hosting is shared hosting, specifically optimized for WordPress websites.
- Cloud hosting is similar to shared hosting, but resources are shared between a network of connected servers, rather than just one. Cloud hosting is very reliable, because the burden of uptime is shared between servers.
- VPS hosting stands for virtual private server hosting, and it’s basically a shared server that mimics the environment of a dedicated server. This means more resources will be allocated to your site, but you won’t be paying the price of a real dedicated server.
- Reseller hosting is a little different from the rest. This is where you purchase server space from a hosting provider, but not to use yourself – you’d actually then rent it out to other people, as a sort of business model. HostGator and DreamHost don’t offer this.
- Dedicated hosting is the real version of what VPS hosting is mimicking. With dedicated hosting, you get an entire server to yourself – all of its resources are dedicated to your website.
Hosting Type | DreamHost | HostGator |
---|---|---|
Shared Hosting | ✔ | ✔ |
WordPress Shared Hosting | ✔ | X |
WordPress Managed Hosting | ✔ | ✔ |
VPS Hosting | ✔ | ✔ |
Dedicated Hosting | ✔ | ✔ |
At first glance, HostGator and DreamHost have very similar offerings. Their shared hosting packages come with a free domain on the annual plan, unmetered bandwidth and storage, and a free SSL certificate. However, there are some key differences and a few added extras to set them apart.
In our latest research, HostGator scores 4.1 out of 5 for its overall hosting features. Along with the features already mentioned, HostGator also offers unlimited free email accounts on its most basic shared plan – something that’s normally only available with more expensive packages. And speaking of expensive plans, HostGator is the best hosting provider on the market for VPS hosting features, scoring 4.3 out of 5. So keep it in mind if VPS hosting is what you’re after!
HostGator also offers a free email marketing service – provided through Constant Contact. Email is one of the cheapest and most reliable marketing methods, especially if you’re looking to build a loyal following. The fact that HostGator gives you this premium feature for free (for the 1st free months) is a real selling point.
DreamHost, meanwhile, scores a high 4.3 out of 5 for its overall hosting features. Its plans come all of those staple features we already mentioned, but you will need to pay to add email accounts to your DreamHost plan unless you upgrade to the Shared Unlimited plan.
Concerned for website security? DreamHost’s plans also provide an added layer of protection with free domain privacy to keep your personal information safe. Additionally, DreamHost offers daily automated backups so you site data is safeguarded in case of an emergency or malicious attack. Phew!
The real benefit to choosing DreamHost, though, is that the hosting provider is recommended by WordPress itself – something that HostGator can’t boast about! Not only is WordPress pre-installed on DreamHost’s plans, but you also get free WordPress migrations and updates too.
So, that covers shared and WordPress hosting for these two providers, but what about more advanced plans? Let’s take a closer look:
VPS Hosting Features
Feature | DreamHost | HostGator |
---|---|---|
RAM | 1-8GB | 2-8GB |
Storage space | 30-240GB SSD | 120-240GB SSD |
Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Dedicated Hosting Features
Feature | DreamHost | HostGator |
---|---|---|
CPU | 4-12 Cores | 4-8 Cores |
RAM | 4-64GB | 8-30GB |
Storage space | 240GB SSD - 2TB HDD | 1-2TB HDD |
If you’re new to hosting, we’d recommend opting for either a shared or WordPress hosting plan since they’ll give you the basics to get started. Then, as your website grows, you can upgrade to a VPS or dedicated hosting plan.
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1654629.png)
More Information
- HostGator Review: Want to know more about HostGator? Check out our in-depth review of the hosting provider.
- DreamHost Review: We’ll dig deeper into what DreamHost has to offer in our full review.
Pricing & Value for Money
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
DreamHost is better value for money...
We’ve already discussed what types of web hosting are offered by DreamHost and HostGator, but we’ll dig a little deeper in this section to highlight the various plans and price points.
So which hosting provider is the best value for money? From our latest research, DreamHost beats HostGator for price, scoring 4.2 out of 5 in contrast to HostGator’s score of 3.5 out of 5.
For a fair comparison, we’ll be focusing on the 12-month pricing for both providers. Plans are usually cheaper the longer you commit, and both DreamHost and HostGator offer monthly, yearly, and 3-year plans, along with some additional extras depending on the hosting type.
Let’s take a look at the 12-month introductory prices for both providers below:
Hosting Type | DreamHost | HostGator |
---|---|---|
Shared Hosting | $3.95/mo | $2.95/mo |
WordPress Hosting | $16.95/mo | $7.95/mo |
VPS Hosting | $13.75/mo | $23.95/mo |
Dedicated Hosting | $149/mo | $109.97/mo |
No matter what hosting provider you choose, you’ll find that introductory deals are pretty standard. These discounts mean you pay a lower price for your first term. After that, you’ll need to renew and pay the regular price which can be an expensive jump sometimes. For example, HostGator’s Snappy 2000 VPS plan starts at $23.95 per month for the first year, but will then renew at an eye-watering rate of $79.95 per month for the time thereafter. Yikes!
As you can see, HostGator’s prices might appear cheaper initially – especially when it comes to shared and WordPress hosting – but its steep renewal prices are a real letdown. And, according to our recent research, DreamHost’s shared hosting plans are the best value for money, scoring 4.4 out of 5.
Plus, DreamHost has an incredible 97-day money-back guarantee, so you can give it a real test-run before you get locked in to a plan.
Both DreamHost and HostGator have pretty feature-rich plans, so it’s important to pay attention to price when comparing these two.
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1654629.png)
More Information
- DreamHost Pricing Review: A dreamy bargain or a waste of money? We’ll find out in our thorough pricing review, where we’ll put all of DreamHost’s plans under the microscope.
- HostGator Pricing Review: If you’re wondering whether HostGator is worth your hard-earned dollar, this is the place to find out. We’ll examine everything this provider has to offer so you can see if it’s the platform for you.
Performance
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
DreamHost has excellent uptime and site speed...
Dependable uptime is a big selling point for most businesses, especially if you run an ecommerce store where downtime means loss of sales.
It’s impossible for any hosting provider to achieve an uptime of 100% – despite DreamHost advertising as such! There will always be unexpected and unavoidable situations that could interrupt your site’s performance, such as power outages.
Still, for its uptime and site speed performance, DreamHost scores an impressive 4.5 out of 5, which puts it just behind our top provider for performance, IONOS. HostGator, in comparison, follows shortly behind the two with an uptime performance score of 4 out of 5. Though DreamHost takes the lead, it’s important to note that both hosting providers are pretty strong when it comes to performance.
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1654629.png)
Migrating Domains and Websites
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
HostGator's switching process is straightforward...
Switching Websites
Circumstances and priorities change, so having the option to swap hosting providers is a necessity. And the easier it is to do, the better. So how do DreamHost and HostGator measure up in this capacity?
HostGator offers a limited number of free transfers depending on your plan – however, these are only valid within the first 30 days of registration. If you’re outside of this window, or you’ve already used your free transfer, you’ll need to contact HostGator for a quote if you want them to do it for you. Alternatively, you can do it manually yourself, but it’ll be a time-consuming process.
DreamHost also offers free website transfers, but only for WordPress sites. If you use any other CMS, you’re going to have to do it all manually. This is easy enough, but it can feel quite complicated if this is your first transfer.
Migrating Domains
HostGator offers one free domain migration with your hosting account and uses Launchpad to make the transfer. This is only applicable for .com, .net, or .org domains. Before migrating your domain, you’ll need to go through a few steps, such as unlocking your domain with your old registrar.
However, migrating your domain with DreamHost is even easier, but it’s not a free service. Transfer prices start from $9.95 unless you still have a free registration transfer available with your plan. Once you’ve selected the correct one and contacted your current registrar, everything can be done from the DreamHost panel. You’ll receive an email when the transfer has been completed.
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1654628.png)
More Information
- How to Transfer Website Hosting: If this is your first time transferring a website, we’ve written a handy step-by-step guide to help you get it right.
- How to Transfer Your Domain Name: If you’re not sure where to start, check out our guide on transferring your domain name for a helping hand.
Help and Support
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1650e9b.png)
The Winner
HostGator has the best help and support...
Before we get into detail, take a look at the help and support offered by both hosting providers:
Support Type | DreamHost | HostGator |
---|---|---|
Knowledge Center | ✔ | ✔ |
Live Chat | ✔ | ✔ |
24/7 Live Chat | ✔ | ✔ |
Phone | Callbacks only | ✔ |
24/7 Phone | X | ✔ |
Tickets | ✔ | ✔ |
As you can see from the table, HostGator sweeps the board – it scores top marks in our research for help and support with a perfect 5 out of 5. HostGator puts its customers first, offering 24/7 live chat and phone services so it can always be on hand at a time that’s convenient for the customer. Plus, its Knowledge Base has tutorials and how-to guides on virtually everything, and there’s a search function so you can find the answers to your specific questions quickly.
![HostGator Support HostGator's help and support homepage featuring information on how to contact its support team](png/hostgator-support.png)
On the other hand, DreamHost scores a very low 2.2 out of 5 for its support services. Though it has a detailed knowledge center and 24/7 live chat, DreamHost doesn’t offer telephone support at all – a weak point for the hosting provider, especially for customers who prefer to talk with a real person. You can request a callback, but you won’t get an answer immediately, leaving you stuck on a problem! And the worst thing? It’ll cost $9.95 per call unless you’re on a specific DreamHost plan with callback credits.
![Dreamhost customer support DreamHost customer support form with fields to fill out](png/dreamhost-customer-support.png)
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1654628.png)
DreamHost vs HostGator: Summary
DreamHost and HostGator are both popular hosting providers, but their strengths lie in different areas. While we can say HostGator performs better across our research categories and caters to a wider audience, DreamHost could be a more suitable fit for your website, especially if you’re a WordPress user.
It’s a close race between the two hosting providers, but HostGator wins out with an overall score of 4.7 out of 5. Not only is it user-friendly and a high-quality provider, but HostGator is also the best hosting provider for help and support. Although its plans are less cost-effective than DreamHost, you still get a lot of bang for your buck and they serve up excellent features, even on the cheapest plans.
DreamHost, however, receives an overall score of 4.4 out of 5 in our latest hosting research. It channels its energy towards WordPress sites – and is even recommended by WordPress itself – and DreamHost’s plans are great value for money. We’d recommend it for anyone on a budget or if you’re looking for shared hosting at an affordable price.
Here’s a quick reminder of how each provider performed in six key areas of our comparison:
DreamHost | HostGator | |
---|---|---|
Ease of Use Winner: HostGator | DreamHost is pretty easy to use, but tailors its services towards WordPress users. It also doesn't use the familiar cPanel dashboard and instead favors its own custom-made dashboard. | HostGator is incredibly user-friendly and its onboarding process will get you online quickly. It has a marketplace of helpful apps and use of a cPanel dashboard. |
Features Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost's plans are incredibly feature-rich, especially if you choose one of its shared, WordPress, or VPS hosting plans. Its even recommended by WordPress! | HostGator's plans come with impressive features, such as unlimited storage and a free domain. |
Value for Money Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost is better value for money - it has cheap introductory deals and affordable renewal prices. Plus, it has an incredible 97-day money-back guarantee. | HostGator's plans are very affordable, but do be wary of its steep renewal prices! |
Performance Winner: DreamHost | DreamHost is one of the best hosting providers for site speed and uptime, meaning your site is unlikely to face any downtime. | HostGator has an advertised uptime of 99% and sits just behind DreamHost in our performance testing. |
Migration Winner: HostGator | DreamHost offers free website transfers for its WordPress plans only. And if you want to transfer your domain, you'll need to pay a fee. | HostGator offers a limited number of free transfers with select plans, and each plan comes with one free domain migration. |
Help and Support Winner: HostGator | DreamHost has very poor help and support services, and doesn't offer any phone support. You can request a callback - for a fee! | HostGator is the best hosting provider for help and support, offering 24/7 live chat and phone channels and a detailed knowledge center. |
Are You Ready? | Visit DreamHost | Visit HostGator |
![hostgator logo](png/hostgator-logo-1654628.png)
![dreamhost logo](png/dreamhost-logo-1654629.png)
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