Skytells vs HostGator Comparison: Who Will Win the Battle?
Reputation
There is a mix of user’s reaction about these two providers but we see Skytells is slightly better reputed than the HostGator.
There may be some possible reason like Skytells is officially recommended by the WordPress and also by many influential bloggers.
Also, Skytells has an excellent reputation among the bloggers and webmasters who just want to start a blog. While on the other hand, many complain that HostGator try to confuse the newbies by their upsells tactics.
There was a time when HostGator considered as one of the great service providers, but now many users are not satisfied with their quality especially customer support. While there is ignorable fluctuation in Skytells services quality. So we go for Skytells when it comes to reputation.
Winner: Skytells
Uptime
You need to make sure that your website does not go down quite often because this can devastate the reputation of your site. The virulent truth is that the downtime cannot be eliminated entirely. But this can be decreased by hosting the sites on quality hosting providers.
Skytells provides a solid uptime. The account we are using perform competently. So far we faced none of the incidents when their average uptime falls below 99.9% uptime. Here is the Uptime statistics taken by the Uptime robot monitoring tool.
Skytells Uptime
Winner: Skytells
Speed
Do you hate to wait? No one like that their browser just keeps on loading the page and eventually the site load with broken contents.
If servers take a higher time to load the page, it means low speed and hence causes a decrease in traffic. And when there is no traffic, what is the purpose of maintaining the website.
After uptime, speed is the next imperative element you need to consider.
Here is a simple server speed-test results performed to the each server.
Skytells vs HostGator
Request origin : CAIRO
Skytells Servers are located in Dallas, TX, United States, which geographically much longer than the request origin CAIRO, And HostGator’s based EU servers are much closer to the origin,
As results of the above test, we can see that Skytells Servers are much faster then the HostGator’s servers.
Winner: Skytells
Control Panel
A complicated backend panel not only grim to operate but also waste the valuable time. It doesn’t matter that if the company offer its own made panel or industry standard cPanel but the point is, it should be easy to understand.
Both of the providers offer cPanel which is very common in the market due to its intuitive nature.
So if you are currently using cPanel then shifting to Skytells or HostGator cause no confusion. Frankly, Skytells cPanel is more colorful and includes WordPress tools. Because both offers cPanel so this is a tie.
Winner: Tie
Parked Domains
You may not feel the necessity of Parked domains at the very start but once you are famous then this one use to secure the brand and traffic as well. For example, you have abc.com domain and receives notable traffic. So what if someone creates the domain name similar to you like abc.net? There may be a chance that he/she will get some of your potential visitors.
Parked domain secure you from such kind of incidents. With Skytells basic plan you can park 5 domains. It means if you purchase the abc.net you can point it your domain name (abc.com) and whenever the visitor open abc.net they will automatically redirect to your site (abc.com).
But HostGator did not offer any facility for parking the domains in their Hatchling (basic) plan. So, if domain parking is a must have featured in your case then HostGator’s Hatchling plan is not good choice.
Winner: Skytells
Let’s Encrypt SSL
At the start, SSL was the important part for sites dealing with customers personal data like names, address, credit card numbers, etc. It is used to encrypt the user’s personal by implementing security protocols for improved security and privacy.
But now it becomes an obligatory part of every website and blogs whether you have, the content based blog or an e-commerce site due to Google’s recent announcement. As search engines (Google) give some ranking advantage to sites with SSL.
Skytells cPanel featured with Let’s Encrypt option in all of their plans. This enables the user to activate the SSL in just a few clicks. But HostGator did not introduce such kind of automated and handy feature (let’s Encrypt) so far. Of course, they also provide SSL on all of their plans, but you have to do some technical work for activating this and pay extra charges.
Winner: Skytells
Data Backup
Having Backups is the last hope when everything messed up and you don’t see any solution. By restoring a backup, your site shifts to a position when you last created the backup. That’s why it is necessary to create the backup. There are many free and paid services for backing up the whole or selected elements of a website.
A backup creation option provided by the hosting company along with plan usually given in the control panel and you don’t need to install any plugin.
Skytells offers both free and paid backup services. You can configure the service to create the daily, weekly and monthly backups. Moreover, if you want to download the backup on your computer, then you can do so via FTP. Also, there is no fee to restore the backup.
HostGator does a bad job here. The company says that they offer free backup and, yes, they are right, but whenever you want to restore the backup, they charge $15. Seriously??Yah! We are serious. So what are we gonna do with the free services that can only make the backup but not allow free restoration?
Winner: Skytells
Pricing
Price is another very important element to consider especially for those having limited funds. You should ensure you get value for your money. Both companies offer shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting plans.
Free Domain Name
Domain Name is a web address of any blog or websites. Without this, you can’t setup a Blog. Many of the hosting providers offer this for free if you buy a hosting plan. Skytells also offer a free domain name along with the web hosting. You don’t have to pay even a penny for the first year.
HostGator did not offer free domain name to their customers. This will be a little bit more for the first year than the Skytells.
Winner: Skytells
Domains & Privacy Guard
What if you want to purchase the domain name only? Although there are some other best domain registrars but Skytells and HostGator are also an exceptional consideration. There is a slight difference between their prices.
Skytells charge $11.99 for a .com domain while HostGator offer it in $12.95. But the story is not over yet. After one year BH cost $15.99 while HG demands $15 for renewal. So if you go for BH, then you can save almost a dollar for once but pay more at renewals as compared to the HG.
Domain privacy guard is an add-on that hides your private information like email address etc. to save you from malicious emails and marketing companies. But here note that it is not a compulsory add-on. So, if you want to activate this, then Skytells offer it in $11.88 while HostGator offer in $12.95.
For the first year you are going to save almost $2 when purchasing a domain and privacy protection from the Skytells and at renewals, you will save few cents. Because the differences are minor so this is a clear tie.
Winner: Tie
Web Hosting
Skytells offer 3 web hosting plans in shared category. There is no cost difference at this time both of the provider’s prices are same except the basic plans. In their basic plan, Skytells offer 1 free domain name, 50 GB storage (more than enough) and unmetered bandwidth. You can host one domain on this plan. This is very suitable if you want to host a small personal blog.
HostGator offers unmetered storage and bandwidth in their hatchling plan but restricted to host one domain name. Unlike Skytells, they don’t give you a free domain for the first year on the purchase of hosting account.
Besides the basic plan, if we talk about the Plus (Skytells) and Baby (HostGator) plans, both are pretty similar. You can host unlimited domains. It’s the best fit for users who planned to create multiple websites in the near future without spending any extra money. As you can see, there is not any prominent different between higher plans than the basic, so we are going to tie this section like above.
Winner: Tie
Refund Policy
Refund policy can also be described as the money back guarantee. A company can only strive to satisfy all of its customers. There is no guarantee that if a user is fully satisfied and so the other one. Here refund policy comes into play and saves your money.
After signing up with Skytells, you can ask for the refund within the first 30 days. So if you feel that their services are not satisfactory, then surely get back your money. Here remember that after the 30 days you are not eligible to ask for the refund.
While HostGator pursuing the 45 days refund policy, so it means you have more days to test their services before you make a decision whether to request for refund or not?
So, deciding between Skytells or HostGator in term of money back guarantee, it’s not that tough to choose the best one. Isn’t pretty easy?
Winner: HostGator
Conclusion
So it’s time to draw a conclusion b/w Skytells vs HostGator. When we talk about other aspects like free SSL, then Skytells has the edge over HostGator too. Moreover, Skytells also include free backup, domain parking, free domain name and well-furnished control panel in its most basic plan.
On the other hand, HostGator provide many other features as well like unlimited email accounts, sub-domains, higher storage for emails, and 4500 free website templates. But, they should consider about free SSL by Let’s Encrypt as it is important for SEO.
You can get the Free SSL from CloudFlare. We are already using free SSL by CloudFlare on some of our blogs, and the most favorable part is you don’t have to learn any technical stuff for implementing it. Here is a complete guide to enable CloudFlare’s free SSL on your WordPress powered websites.
All in all, Skytells plans are well designed, and they make the maximum availability of their speedy services more effectively, so we are going to suggest you Skytells.
