HostGator is a great website builder at a competitive price. It offers a flexible page editor with drag-and-drop functionality and over 200 templates. If you want to get your site up and running faster, you can use its AI-powered website builder. Email marketing and e-commerce tools are also included as standard on all HostGator websites. All in all, this website builder is a great choice for both new designers and growing online businesses.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent support
- Competitive pricing
CONS
- Editor is somewhat limited
- Doesn’t allow you to add custom code
Overview
HostGator is a web hosting company that was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. It has won numerous awards for its web hosting services. In 2019, it launched a website builder to help individuals and small businesses create their own websites.
HostGator’s website builder is incredibly flexible and easy to use. It’s also one of the most affordable options for small businesses, especially considering the variety of marketing and sales tools it includes. While other website builders may be better suited for online stores looking to grow, HostGator’s platform is ideal for new online businesses or existing businesses looking to establish an online presence.
How HostGator Works
We were very impressed with the ease of use of HostGator’s website builder. The dashboard is well-designed and makes it easy to switch between designing a website, managing your online store, and launching marketing campaigns. The drag-and-drop website editor is also user-friendly, and we liked the AI-powered design option that lets you go live right away.
HostGator Features and Tools
Unlimited Web Hosting
All of HostGator’s website building plans include free hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth. HostGator is an award-winning web hosting provider, so this service is very high quality. All websites also include a free SSL certificate and a custom domain for one year.
Logo Builder
If your business doesn’t have a logo yet, you can use HostGator’s logo creator tool to create one. Simply enter your business name and choose from several pre-made designs. You can then customize your logo’s shape, colors, fonts, and more.
How to Create a Website with HostGator
HostGator offers two ways to create a website. You can follow a more traditional design process or use an AI-powered design tool to create a custom website.
With the AI-powered designer, you simply enter a few details about the website you want to create. Based on this, the designer will suggest some options to get you started, then guide you through the process of creating your new website.
If you choose this option, your site’s customization options will be somewhat limited. You can add page sections, including text and images, but you won’t be able to drag and drop individual elements onto your pages. However, we’re quite happy with the selection of page sections and think this editor will be sufficient for most basic websites.
If you want more control over your site’s design, you can opt for the traditional design process. HostGator offers over 220 templates, all of which are optimized for mobile devices.
The drag-and-drop page editor lets you add individual content elements to your site, giving you a lot of freedom in how you present your content. We especially liked the automatic layout of elements using a translucent grid. This simplifies the design process and ensures a professional look.
The only downside we found with HostGator’s editor is the inability to modify templates. With so many customization options, we don’t think this is a major issue. However, it can be frustrating if you decide during the design process that you don’t like a template, as you’ll have to start from scratch. It’s also worth noting that there’s no way to migrate your site to another platform, although this is common with other website builders.
Adding Multimedia to Your HostGator Website
HostGator lets you add images, videos, audio, text files, and even Flash designs to your site. All of your files are stored in a media library that you can organize into searchable folders.
You can upload multiple files from your computer at once, which we liked, but the library doesn’t let you import images from social media or cloud storage. HostGator also offers thousands of free images from Unsplash.
Overall, we found the process of adding media to be simple and seamless. Integration with cloud storage platforms and social networks would be a plus, but it’s not essential.
Marketing Functionality with HostGator Websites
All HostGator sites include a comprehensive email marketing package. Every time a visitor fills out a form on your site, their information is automatically added to your contact database. You can share your contacts or download a database if you want to use a third-party email service.
HostGator’s email marketing tool lets you launch campaigns for product announcements, offers, events, and more. You’ll customize your emails with the same section-based page editor that you use to build your website with AI Designer, making it easy to create professional-looking email campaigns. Keep in mind that the number of campaigns you can send per month is limited to 3 with the Basic plan and 10 with HostGator’s Premium plan.
To analyze your marketing performance, HostGator lets you see how many people opened your campaigns. However, you can’t retarget customers based on this data or create custom coupon codes.
SEO Functionality and Add-Ons with HostGator Websites
One of HostGator’s drawbacks is SEO. You can edit the title and meta description of each of your pages, and it’s easy to create a blog for any HostGator site. However, the platform doesn’t let you add alt text to images, nor does it offer tools to analyze your site’s SEO and suggest improvements.
However, we were pleased with HostGator’s analytics capabilities. You can connect Google Analytics to any site. Alternatively, you can use the platform’s built-in traffic analysis tool, but you’ll need to upgrade your plan to see details like where your visitors are coming from and what pages they’re viewing.
Ecommerce
All of HostGator’s sites support e-commerce, and the platform works well for small or relatively new online businesses. You can sell digital downloads, accept online bookings, and easily publish coupons and offers. HostGator also provides tools for inventory management, shipping, and taxes.
However, HostGator lacks some of the more advanced features that growing stores may need. For example, you can track abandoned carts, but you can’t create automated emails. You also can’t sell gift cards online or enable in-store pickup.
HostGator Customer Support
HostGator offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. The platform also has a comprehensive online knowledge base with hundreds of articles. This covers not only designing your website, but also using the email marketing suite and online store tools.
HostGator Pricing
Pricing & Special Offers
HostGator offers three plans: Starter, Site, and Store. All plans include hosting, email marketing, analytics, and e-commerce. However, they vary in the number of campaigns sent, data analyzed, and number of products sold.
HostGator offers introductory pricing for new customers for up to two years. After that, you can get a 25% discount when you purchase an additional two-year plan.
HostGator vs WordPress.com
WordPress.com is one of the best website builders for bloggers because it allows you to sell ads on blog posts. However, WordPress.com’s website builder isn’t as user-friendly or flexible as HostGator’s. For non-bloggers, we recommend HostGator.
HostGator vs GoDaddy
HostGator and GoDaddy’s website builders are very similar in terms of price and features. We think HostGator’s website builder offers a bit more design flexibility, and we appreciate that it has twice as many templates.
HostGator vs HostPapa
HostPapa’s website builder is fairly simple and best suited for smaller sites, such as one-page portfolios. HostGator’s website builder offers a lot more design options and marketing tools, so we recommend it over HostPapa for most website building needs.
Bottom Line
HostGator’s website builder is easy to use, flexible, and very powerful. We like that you can choose between a traditional drag-and-drop editor or an AI-powered design process, depending on how much time you want to spend building your site. We were also impressed with the overall ease of site customization and the simplicity of HostGator’s control panel.
HostGator really stands out with its email marketing and e-commerce support across all of its plans. It is one of the most affordable website building tools for creating a fully functional online store. Although HostGator has some limitations that can slow down the rapid growth of a business, it is ideal for individuals and companies that are getting online for the first time.