HostGator is a great website builder at a competitive price. This website builder 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 designer. What’s more, email marketing and e-commerce tools are included as standard on all HostGator websites. In short, this website builder is a great choice for beginner designers and growing online businesses.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent technical support
- Competitive pricing
CONS
- Editor is somewhat limited
- Can’t add custom code
Overview
HostGator is a web hosting company that was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. The company 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 range of marketing and sales tools it includes. While other website builders may be better suited for growing online stores, HostGator’s platform is ideal for new online businesses or existing companies looking to get online.
How HostGator Works
We were very impressed with the ease of use of HostGator’s website builder. The control panel is well-designed and makes it easy to switch between designing a website, managing an online store, and launching marketing campaigns. The drag-and-drop website editor is also easy to use, and we liked that it includes an AI-powered design option that can help you get online 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 you can use an AI-powered design tool to create a custom website.
With the AI-powered designer, you simply enter some information 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 customization options will be somewhat limited. You can add page sections, including text and images, but you don’t have the option 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 a more traditional design process. HostGator offers over 220 mobile-friendly templates.
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 that the elements are automatically arranged using a series of translucent gridlines. This simplifies the design process and ensures that your site design looks professional.
The only issue we found with HostGator’s editor is that you can’t change templates. With so many customization options, we don’t think this is a major issue. However, it can be frustrating if you decide you don’t like your template early in the design process, as you’ll have to redo it. It’s also worth noting that you can’t migrate your site to another platform, although this is common with website builders.
Adding Multimedia to Your HostGator Website
HostGator lets you add images, videos, audio, text files, and even Flash designs to your website. All of your files are stored in a media library that you can organize into folders with search options.
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 and social media platforms would also be a nice feature, but not essential.
Marketing Functionality with HostGator Websites
All HostGator websites include a very comprehensive email marketing package. Every time a visitor fills out a form on your website, 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 can personalize your emails. The emails use the same section-based page editor that you use to build your website with AI Designer, making it easy to create professional-looking email marketing campaigns. Keep in mind that you can send up to 3 email marketing campaigns per month with the basic plan, and up to 10 with HostGator’s most comprehensive plan.
To analyze your marketing effectiveness, HostGator lets you track how many people open 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 weaknesses is SEO. You can edit the meta title and description for each page, and it’s easy to create a blog for any HostGator site. However, the platform doesn’t let you add alt text to images or provide tools to analyze your site’s SEO and suggest improvements.
However, we’re pleased with HostGator’s analytics capabilities. You can enable Google Analytics on any site. You can also 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 visiting.
Ecommerce
All HostGator sites support ecommerce, 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 offers tools for inventory management, shipping, and taxes.
However, HostGator lacks some of the more advanced features that growing stores will likely 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 store pickup as a shipping option.
HostGator Customer Support
HostGator offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. The platform also offers a comprehensive online knowledge base with hundreds of articles. This includes not only designing your website, but also email marketing packages and tools for online stores.
HostGator Pricing
Pricing & Special Offers
HostGator offers three plans: Starter, Site, and Store. All of them include hosting, email marketing, analytics, and e-commerce. However, they differ in the number of campaigns sent, data analyzed, and number of products sold.
HostGator offers an introductory price for up to two years for new customers. 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 your blog posts. However, WordPress.com’s website builder is not 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 relatively simple and ideal for smaller sites, such as one-page portfolios. HostGator’s website builder offers many more design options and marketing tools, and we recommend it over HostPapa for most website building needs.
Bottom Line
HostGator’s website builder is easy to use, flexible, and very effective. 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 plans. It is one of the most affordable website building tools for creating a fully functional online store. Although HostGator has some drawbacks that can hinder a fast-growing business, it is ideal for individuals and businesses getting online for the first time.
