Updated: June 18, 2018

Creating a website with a poor web hosting company is like building a house on quicksand. Eventually you are going to have structural problems. Because your web hosting company is so important, this review will compare two of the most popular: SiteGround Vs HostGator.

HostGator is a large webhosting and domain company with over 9 million domains and more than 400,000 clients using their service. Based in Houston, they have grown rapidly since their inception in 2002. They were acquired by Endurance International Group in 2012.

SiteGround was established in 2004 and now has 140 employees. They are strong supporters of open-source software, and have custom hosting plans for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento and other popular programs. Currently they host over 250,000 clients worldwide.

SiteGround and HostGator – Live review by current user

Lets start with live user review of SiteGround and HostGator by current users, posted by them in twitter.
Tweets about @siteground support

Tweets about @hostgator support

As seen from the twitter feed, SiteGround have a very high customer satisfaction compared to HostGator.

SiteGround Vs HostGator-Uptime Report

As you can guess from the name, uptime is a critical measurement of web hosting companies. It is the total amount of time the company’s servers are up, operational and effectively serving websites for their clients.

SiteGround states they have a guarantee to be up 99.9% of the time. This guarantee applies across the board, no matter which plan you have. Much of their strength is in their custom programming, like a detection system they built which “sniffs out” potential downtime problems and automatically corrects them.

Similarly, HostGator guarantees to deliver 99.9% uptime. You get this guarantee whether you purchase the smallest intro plan, use the reseller plan or utilize their most complex dedicated server technology. A separate guarantee offers additional coverage for Network clients.

Let’s look at the raw numbers:

• The average 6-month uptime for SiteGround during our study (tested for 10 sites based in different parts of the globe): 99.99%. This means your website could potentially be off-line for just over four hours over six months of service.
• The average 6-month uptime for HostGator tested for 10 sites based all over the planet: also 99.99%. Like SiteGround, your site could be potentially be offline for around four hours over 6 months.

But consider this: SiteGround was online with no downtime for 100 percent of the time during long periods of our study. This is unusual for any web host, and a good testimonial for SiteGround.

Further, we are tracking uptime of a test website using Pingdom and here are the results.

Here are the test website used and the results.

For SiteGround- inlinehostblogger.com

For HostGator –  hg-inlinehosting.com

From the above test result, we can conclude that SiteGround have a better uptime compared to HostGator.

Read our extensive Bluehost vs Siteground web hosting comparison review.

We have a unique interactive graph here that lets you enter different data points to see various results for each hosting service. This graph tracks real time uptime of around 150 websites hosted under these hosting companies.

More Extensive stats on HostGator can be read from this Bluehost Vs HostGator Vs DreamHost Review

★ Winner Tie.

Visit SiteGround Visit HostGator

SiteGround Vs HostGator – Speed Test

SiteGround had good quality speed results based on a unique quality of many open-source projects: They respond well to good caching systems. Knowing this, SiteGround built the SuperCacher, a custom-made cache process that keeps things moving fast. On the other hand, HostGator focused on employing more equipment and server layers to allow faster speeds and better service.

Take a look at these stats:

• The average speed of a website hosted on SiteGround (Optimized 10 sites): 1.1 seconds.
• The average speed of a website hosted on HostGator (Optimized 10 sites): 1.25 seconds.

HostGator looses to SiteGround on pure speed. SiteGround has made significant investments like VPS servers that use Supermicro Server Chassis, Dual AMD Opteron CPUs,SuperCacher, and RAID 10 Disk Arrays. To get a custom look at different speed scenarios,  I have conducted a speed test for 2 similar sites hosted on SiteGround and HostGator from different continents. To make it appealing, two websites used are similar in size, content, requests and attachments.

Speed Of Sites Hosted On SiteGround

Speed Of Sites Hosted On HostGator

As expected, SiteGround loaded faster in USA and Netherlands whereas HostGator tops in Australia. This is mainly due to the availability of servers for SiteGround in Netherlands and USA region. And also, their inability to have data centre in Australia, where HostGator manages to have a data centre.

Here’s a why website hosted on SiteGround is faster than HostGator.

★ Winner SiteGround.

Visit SiteGround Visit HostGator

Server Response Time

In essence, a web server is really a big hard drive in an off-site, secure location. The speed of each machine will make a big impact on how fast your site is. SiteGround, who put customer support and satisfaction above all, purposefully keep server loads low. That means they have room to allow for surges and seasonal increases, like during holidays and near the end of the year.

HostGator’s has an impressive battery of server arrays, which work instantly to balance loads and keep server response high.

These are the hard numbers:

• The average server response time for SiteGround over our 6 months study (10 Optimized sites): 650 ms.
• The average server response time for HostGator for the same time period (same 10 Optimized sites): 750 ms.

Here are some of the steps taken to ensure that all tests were fair as possible.

• Each site is a WordPress site of Installation 4 with the same theme installed and same number of images, pages size, content and request.
• All the plugins and catching system was disabled
• The test was conducted several times and the best results are displayed here.
• Server location of both this Hosting companies were located on Ashburn, VA, and Portland, Oregon.

The Green Line indicates the number of visitors and blue line represent the adjacent response time as the traffic increase.

Response time of SiteGround

Response time of HostGator

Recently, another test was conducted on a smaller test website from a different location, and the result was similar.

Response time of SiteGround – 90ms

Response time of HostGator – 120ms

This concludes the superiority of SiteGround’s server over HostGator with a 1.5x faster performance.

HostGator Vs SiteGround – Control Panel

Control Panel is where you manage all the backend part of your website. This is where you make major design changes, coding changes to your website. The ease and flexibility in using the control panel play a huge role in successful and speedily development of your website.

Both these hosting use Cpanel as their control panel, except some design and feature changes, most of the functionalities are the same.

SiteGround cPanel: Try Demo

★ Winner:  Tie

#HostGator vs SiteGround – Free migration (Transfer)

If you are someone new or someone with limited web development knowledge, it will be a tedious task for you to transfer your existing website from your current hosting to the newly chosen one.

SiteGround makes this process very easy with their super cool expert team transferring your website in less than 24 hour. Additionally, this service comes free of cost.

Similarly, HostGator offers the same service free of cost.

Here are some more details on free transfer service of HostGator.

Benchmark Test

For each web hosts, I’ve identified a set of 10 websites all hosted on different web servers. A total of 825 requests were then sent to each host in order to measure the performance of their servers.

Visit SiteGround Visit HostGator

Pices, Plans And Features

SiteGround has a wide variety of hosting service plans for everyone from individuals to large organizations. They are especially suited to open-source projects like the popular ecommerce platform Magento.

HostGator also has a number of plans, from low cost starter plans to full VPS hosting and dedicated servers.

Features	SiteGround Startup	SiteGround GrowBig	HostGator Hatchling	HostGator Baby
Disk Space	10	20 GB	Unmetered	Unmetered
Traffic Allowed	10000 Visits	25000	Unmetered	Unmetered
Email Accounts	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unmetered	Unlimited
Domains Allowed	1	Unlimited	1	Unlimited
Control Panel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel	cPanel
1 Month	$3.95	$6.45	$0.01 coupon:HGHOSTING99	$0.01 coupon:HGHOSTING99
12 Month	$3.95	$6.45	$5.95. 50% coupon code: HGHOSTING30	$8.95. 50% coupon code: HGHOSTING30
3 Year Term	$3.95	$5.95	$3.95. 50% coupon code: HGHOSTING30	$5.95. 50% coupon code: HGHOSTING30
	Sign Up	Sign Up	Sign Up	Sign Up

Check Latest SiteGround Prices Check Latest HostGator Prices

Steps to High Performance

SiteGround early on niched themselves in the world of open-source software with customized plans tailored around specific packages like Joomla and Drupal. Their server response time is on par with competitors, although not at the top of the industry. Rather, they have concentrated on superior customer satisfaction.

Hostgator has increased investment in their infrastructure including more enterprise-class servers, 24-hour monitoring and stronger UPS backup capability. Their partnership with SoftLayer, a cloud computing provider, has given them increased capability and speed to service customers.

Customer Support

SiteGround offers telephone support in addition to chat and an email-oriented ticket system. The ticket system boasts a “first reply” within ten minutes, while live chat and telephone support are almost instantaneous.

HostGator has beefed up support to deal with their strong growth in the last few years. They have built an entire support portal on their site with quick access to live chat (Still has longer waiting time compared to SiteGround), ticket submission or billing management. There is also a customer forum with lots of quality content built up over years of service.

SiteGround Support Waiting Time – 0 Minute (Instant)

HostGator Support Waiting time – 0 Minute (Instant)

★ Winner SiteGround. Both Web hosting companies have a fast, knowledgable and friendly support team to help on problems associated with our website.

Visit SiteGround Visit HostGator

HostGator vs. SiteGround – My Recommendation

We’ve taken a good look at the features and benefits of two of the most prominent web hosting services on the Internet. No other site looks as closely as we do at customer support, uptime, site speed and overall performance.

That said, my recommendation is to go with SiteGround. Their considerable client base allows them to continue to invest heavily in increasingly complex server technology like DDR3 ECC Ram and customized hardware specs. The end result is their servers are faster, have better uptime and make fewer errors. For that reason, I can easily recommend SiteGround as the home for your next web hosting.

HostGator Vs SiteGround Score Sheet

SiteGround: 2 win

HostGator: 1 win

Tie: 4

Visit SiteGround Visit HostGator

Coupon Code for HostGator And SiteGround

SiteGround Provide limited time 60% Discount coupon code.

Get 60%  Discount coupon code.

30% HostGator Coupon code :  IHB30

$9.99 HostGator coupon code :HGHOSTING99

Updated: June 2, 2018

Are you in the market for a web hosting company? Confused by the myriad of options out there on the Internet? It’s understandable because your website is your connection to the online and off-line world. It connects you to your community, company, clients and customers.

This comparison of WP Engine vs SiteGround, two popular web hosts, will help you make the best choice.

WP Engine will be a good fit if you are a WordPress user. That is because WP Engine only hosts WordPress sites. Because of this focus, they offer a unique value proposition in combination with aggressive customer support. SiteGround is a web hosting company that began operations in 2003. They have been known for their progressive approach to Internet security. When they recognize that an attack is in progress, their custom security team works quickly to create patches to ensure security of their client sites.

Let’s take a closer look at these two firms.

WP Engine Vs SiteGround – Uptime Report

Uptime refers to the percentage of time that a web hosting company is able to keep their servers online and serving websites properly. If a server is down, either all or some of the client websites are down as well. This is not good, because many people rely on their websites to generate sales and leads. Any amount of down time is lost revenue.

WP Engine has a fanatical desire to try to achieve a perfect uptime record. While this would be almost impossible, they come very close at 99.9%.This is partly due to their No Overselling Policy which makes sure they have enough server space to properly service their customer base.

SiteGround has a 99.9% uptime guarantee which applies to all of their plans, even the more inexpensive ones. They have real-time detection technology which alerts them to any downtime and quickly works to find a solution. They have customized software that automatically repairs any errors that would usually cause downtimes.

Here are the statistics:

• Average 6-month uptime for WP Engine (tested for 10 sites based in different parts of the world): 99.99%. That means your site would possibly be down almost 4.4 hours over six months of service.
• Average last 6 month uptime for Siteground (tested for 10 sites based in different parts of the world): 99.99%. Like a WP Engine, this level of service means that your website could potentially be off-line for just over four hours over six months of service.

It is clear both WP Engine and SiteGround have strong uptime performance numbers. They both clock in at 99.9% uptime.

Below is an interactive graph that will allow you to plug-in different sets of data to see various outcomes for each company.


★ Winner Tie.

  Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

WP Engine Vs SiteGround –Speed Test

In the past, website surfers were more patient with slow loading sites. Those days are in the rearview mirror, however, and fast loading sites have become a common expectation. Site speed is becoming so important that Google has incorporated how fast your site delivers webpages as a contributing factor to how well they rank your pages.

WP Engine has servers in the United States, Great Britain and Japan. Customers can choose which server they want to keep their data on. More importantly, the international network of servers ensures that there is strong redundancies and stability.

SiteGround also has fairly fast-loading websites. This is partially due to their Supercacher which uses custom computations to cache items like images and theme elements that are used repeatedly.

Here are some specifics:

• Average speed of website running with WP Engine (Optimized 10 sites): 1.3 seconds.
• Average speed of website running with Siteground (Optimized 10 sites): 1.3 seconds. This number was 1 second just six months ago when we last tested it. They have slowed slightly due to an influx of new customers.

WP Engine has the edge on SiteGround when it comes to site speed. With over 250,000 customers, it could explain why SiteGround is slightly slower than WP Engine who only has to accommodate 20,000 customers. However, SiteGround does have servers in other countries like Singapore and the Netherlands, so this may be a temporary condition for the company. As mentioned, it may be due to an influx of your customers bogging down the system.

Refer the below images to check the speeds for both companies over time.

  Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

Server Response Time

Server response time refers to the speed it takes for a web hosting company to deliver all of the various elements of a webpage and present them in your browser. Several factors influence server response time, and quality of servers is a primary one. WP Engine has enterprise-quality servers and, unlike some competitors, they also have enterprise-quality system administrators managing their servers. That means you get high level technology and support no matter which package you purchase.

SiteGround makes a point to keep the load on their servers below industry standards, so there is plenty of power and space to accommodate both temporary bandwidth spikes as well as long-term growth. Because they support a number of open-source software packages, they provide server optimization tutorials for a number of content management systems including Drupal, Joomla and vBulletin.

Here are the average server response times for both companies:

• Average server response time of WP Engine for last 6 months (10 Optimized sites):  200 ms.
• Average server response time of SiteGround for last 6 months (same 10 Optimized sites): 190 ms.

As is the case with many other web hosting services, SiteGround beats WP Engine in server response times. WP Engine is no doubt helped in this aspect by their focus on WordPress, while SiteGround accommodates multiple software packages from content management systems to bulletin board programs.

To get a better idea, you can alter the data in this interactive graph to display several different response times over a number of date ranges:

  Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

Benchmark Test

For each web hosts, I’ve identified a set of 10 websites all hosted on different web servers. A total of 825 requests were then sent to each host in order to measure the performance of their servers.

You can clearly see that SiteGround Engine is faster in Time per request, average transfer rate, median connect time, median processing time and median waiting time. In addition, WP SiteGround has less than half the amount of failed requests.

★ Winner SiteGround is the performance winner compared to WP Engine. With a better record on failed requests, more impressive statistics in all relevant speed measurements and possibly the most committed team to customer service in the business, SiteGround is the clear performance leader.

WP Engine Vs SiteGround – Hosting Plans

WP Engine has a number of hosting plans that range from $29 a month for a Personal plan to enterprise-level plans that accommodate large corporations and organizations. While the entry-level plan is higher in cost than some competitor’s beginning plans, WP Engine offers tremendous value due to their level of service, customer response time and quality of server uptime and speed.

SiteGround has Linux-based hosting offers for shared, VPS, cloud and dedicated servers. They have very basic introductory shared plans starting at only a few dollars per month, making them one of the more affordable web hosting companies at this level. Cloud hosting is available in the United States, Asia and Europe and begins around $70 per month. Their GrowBig feature allows you to restore a website from a backup quickly and easily.

The following table outlines the relevant features, prices and plans available from both services.

★ Winner SiteGround, It has more affordable plans with choice of CMS other than WordPress.

  Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

Steps to High Performance

Enterprise-level companies are finding that with WP Engine they are able to lower their overall spend on technology while increasing their company’s website speed and uptime. WP Engine, while focusing on customer service, has also developed solid, stable technology. For example, during a recent Country Music Association Awards television show in the United States WP Engine delivered over 71 million page views in less than a day easily and effortlessly.

They have a good customer satisfaction level, although their overall performance lags behind SiteGround.

SiteGround has a good performance record in the open-source CMS and bulletin board worlds. They have quality server response load times as well as an easy-to-use control panel.

Customer Support

WP Engine has established a rapid reputation for customer service. They are able to do this based on a singular focus on the WordPress content management system. By focusing on one CMS, and not spreading their attention to Drupal, Joomla and other products, they have become experts in WordPress hosting and troubleshooting. That concentration helps them answer questions quickly and accurately. Customers can contact them via online knowledge base, e-mail support and a toll-free telephone service. In addition, clients can access a chat box that is available on every page of their site.

WP Engine’s customer service goes well beyond their customer support options. For example, their security systems include disk write protection, disk write limitations, script protection and “disallowed plug-in” monitoring. Backups are separate from databases and are stored as tarballs on the Amazon S3 platform. This level of care and secure handling of data shows the level of customer support the WP Engine provides their clients.

SiteGround has a quality support staff that can be reached by telephone, chat or through the ticket system via e-mail. Customer support is adept at handling redirects, security questions, database installs and other common technical questions related to open source software programs.

Because of their singular focus on WordPress, and their unparalleled concentration on security, WP Engine ties with SiteGround for the title of best customer support.

★ Winner Tie.

Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

Last Two Years

WP Engine has enjoyed remarkable growth since they exploded on the market four years ago. Just last year, they hired their 80th employee, asign of rapid maturity and development. They have a stellar reputation of customer service based on speedy response, helpful personnel and attention to detail.

Other web hosts may charge less, but for entrepreneurs that want a service that is reliable and fast, and backed up by a highly trained support team, WP Engine is the way to go.

WP Engine has continued to innovate since they splashed on the scene in 2010. In only a short period of time, they expanded their employee count to accommodate over 20,000 customers.

Recently, WP Engine announced a new WordPress hosting platform called Mercury. It uses a new technology called HHVM which is an open source project developed mainly by the gearheads at Facebook. In terms of speed, it is like comparing a regular family sedan to a NASCAR race car. While this technology has yet to be implemented, it shows WP Engine’s continuing commitment to pushing the boundaries of their value proposition for their clients.

SiteGround enjoys a strong reputation for quality they have developed slowly since they began in 2003. With a focus on Drupal, Joomla and similar content management systems, they are well-known as a quality host for those platforms. They have created their own custom-made programs for accounts isolation, speed optimization and server monitoring, all of which indicates an ongoing focus on innovation.

Control Panel

WP Engine elected to make their control panel very simple and plain. It allows clients to manage their own websites with a minimum of technical knowledge. WP Engine is unique in that they have created a staging area so that customers can plan and test their website changes before going “live.” They have taken a professional web developers technique and made it available for every day clients.

Compared to well-known control panels, WP Engine’s custom-made Control Panel is simple and direct. You not need to be a web technologist to do fairly involved manipulations of your WordPress database and file structure. For example, you can set up and test new plug-ins and themes without affecting your live website. This “pre-staging” is a high-level function of web developers and WP Engine has made it available to normal users.

SiteGround, on the other hand, is more suited to open-source aficionados who know the ins and outs of their particular software packages fairly well. Whether they are Drupal fans or Joomla followers, they will find SiteGround is a good home for their particular software needs.
★ Winner SiteGround.

  Visit SiteGround Visit Wp-Engine

WP Engine Vs SiteGround – My Recommendation

This review has covered the extensive details of WP Engine vs SiteGround in the areas of server times, page load speed, site speed, customer support, control panels and overall performance. Looking at all the data, I recommend WP Engine for WordPress users at WordPress level who can afford their high prices. SiteGround along with HostGator can be an ideal choice for other type of hosting with reasonable price.

I would recommend you to have a look at this SiteGround Vs Bluehost review if you are planning for Multiple CMS hosting.

This company has dedicated their entire organization to optimizing WordPress hosting. This is particularly apparent when you look at the development of the WP Engine Mercury platform. This high-speed WordPress hosting environment is the result of WP Engine’s innovative approach to web hosting services.

If you have plans on creating your own site, SiteGround is the complete choice for web hosting.

 Click here to claim limited time special 60% discount on SiteGround Hosting