Hostgator is a cloud, shared, and dedicated hosting service provider. DigitalOcean offers unmanaged cloud services. If you’ve shortlisted these two companies for hosting your website/application, but you’re confused between the two, go through the below paragraphs where we have compared DigitalOcean with Hostgator.
Plans
Hostgator packages are grouped into three main categories – Shared, VPS, and Cloud. The company offers three plans in each category priced between 2.75 and 139.9 dollars per month. The cheapest package i.e. Hatchling belongs to the shared category. You can host only one website on a shared Hatchling server. The Baby and Business shared servers cost 3.50 and 5.50 USD per month. They let users host more than one website. Each Hostgator shared plan provides unlimited storage memory and has no limit on the traffic the site can send or receive.
HG Cloud VPS subscriptions carry the same name as the shared plans – Business, Baby, and Hatchling. Unlike shared plans where no fixed resources are allocated to the user, a site hosted on a Cloud server has dedicated resources to use. The Hatchling, Baby, and Business servers have 2GB RAM + 2-core processor, 4GB RAM + 4-core processor, and 6GB RAM + 6-core processor. They cost 4.95, 6.57, and 9.95 dollars per month. Users of HG cloud hosting get free access to cPanel and are allowed to generate unlimited email addresses/aliases.
Snappy 2000, Snappy 4000, and Snappy 8000 are the three VPS plans of Hostgator. They are priced at 19.95, 29.95, 39.95 dollars per month and come with a 2-core processor + 2GB RAM + 120GB storage, 2-core processor + 4GB RAM + 165GB storage, 8GB RAM + 4-core processor + 240GB storage memory. Users of these packages enjoy full root access, and they get free access to the Softaculous app installer. They can create unlimited email aliases/accounts as well. Hostgator will back up and store backups of the site weekly. Its dedicated servers have up to 30GB of RAM. The base configuration comprises a 4-core processor, 8GB RAM, and 1TB HDD. It will cost you 89.9 dollars.
The Power server costs 30 USD more than this plan and provides a server with good configuration i.e. 8-core processor, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD, or 512GB SSD. Enterprise dedicated server of HG features 30GB RAM, an 8-core processor, and 1TB SSD. Hostgator dedicated servers are equipped with an Intel Xeon processor. Users of its dedicated VPS plans can choose Windows or Linux OS while buying the subscription. They are given access to Plesk, Softaculous, and WHM/Control Panel.
Website transfer service is offered at no additional cost to the buyers of Shared, VPS, and Dedicated servers of HG. The firm also includes a free domain with cloud VPS and shared plans of the company.
DigitalOcean cloud VPS packages are grouped into these categories – Basic, General Purpose, CPU optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized. The Basic category has six plans, as shown below:
| Price | Configuration |
| 6 | 1-vcpu, 1GB RAM, 25GB SSD. |
| 12 | 50GB SSD, 1-vcpu, 2GB RAM. |
| 18 | 60GB SSD, 2-core processor, 2GB RAM. |
| 24 | 2-core processor, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD. |
| 48 | 4-core processor, 160GB SSD, 8GB RAM. |
| 96 | 16GB RAM, 8-core processor, 320GB SSD |
DigitalOcean can install a popular application of your choice once you buy a droplet/server from them. It lets you see the CPU/memory usage on the server in real-time. The cloud hosting company also includes a GUI firewall in the dashboard.
Data centers
Hostgator has just 2 data centers. The servers of the company are located in the US. DigitalOcean, on the other hand, has over 10 data centers. The company has set up a data center on various continents.
CDN
HG can enable/disable the free Cloudflare CDN for your website within a few seconds. DigitalOcean offers a paid CDN service called spaces. The CDN service costs 2.5 dollars (or more).
Backups
Backups on DigitalOcean is a paid add-on. Some plans of Hostgator ship with a weekly backup offer wherein a script will automatically create a backup of your website, and you won’t have to pay for this.
Support
If you’re using DigitalOcean, you will get limited help. The support staff will help you out only when there’s a server or network-related issue. You will have to write an email to the company’s support email ID to get help. HG provides live chat/phone/email-based support. You can contact the support staff and get the issue fixed quickly.
When to use DigitalOcean or Hostgator?
If you’re a developer with knowledge of web servers, database servers, and Linux, you can use the cloud/VPS service of the two firms. People without technical knowledge should go for HG because of two reasons:
Cheaper: HG provides cPanel access to the buyers of its cloud and shared hosting service. The Shared/Cloud servers of HG are cheaper than those of DigitalOcean.
Support: HG is the only company among the two that provides real-time chat support as well as support over the phone.
Closing words: The packages of HG are more affordable than those of DO. Hostgator also offers many add-on services for free (including a domain) at no additional cost. This makes its shared/VPS/cloud/dedicated plans more attractive.
