HostGator Alternative: The Benefits of Choosing Kinsta

How Kinsta Compares to HostGator in a Nutshell

Before we get into the specifics of Kinsta vs HostGator, we want to first take a look at some of the key differences between the two hosting solutions. 

As we mentioned, HostGator is largely known for its shared hosting plans. They only recently added WordPress hosting to its offerings. On the other hand, Kinsta is the highest-rated managed WordPress host on G2, which is the world’s leading software review and comparison site:

#1 Managed Hosting Provider by G2

Enjoy a 29% Faster Website Simply by Moving From HostGator to Kinsta

We measured 3,200+ migrations over the course of a three-month span. On average, client sites that came from HostGator to Kinsta experienced 29% faster load times.

How is this possible? Our customers enjoy:

• The fastest Compute-Optimized C2 VMs and Google Cloud servers
• A stack that’s been fine-tuned for WordPress over the past 8 years
• Google’s Premium Tier Network to deliver website data faster
• Free CDN powered by Cloudflare’s global network of 275+ locations
• Built-in Edge Caching that cuts the time needed to serve cached WordPress HTML by an average of more than 50%!

Migrate from HostGator to Kinsta hassle free with our free expert migration service. With our 30-day money-back guarantee, you can test out the service and improved speeds completely risk-free. You only lose if you don’t give this a try!

We’re also the first hosting provider to be powered exclusively by the Google Cloud Platform. Using Google’s global premium-tier network enables Kinsta to maximize speed and performance for each of the websites we host. 

Let’s take a look at some of the other major differences between Kinsta and HostGator:

• Unlike HostGator, Kinsta is not a general host, nor do we offer shared hosting. We only work with WordPress and our team consists of WordPress experts and Linux engineers.
• Kinsta has been the fastest WordPress host for five consecutive years (based on independent benchmarks).
• We have 35 data centers across the globe, while HostGator only discloses two locations for its data centers (one in Texas and the other in Utah). 
• All sites on Kinsta are protected by a secure Cloudflare integration.
• Unlike HostGator, Kinsta gives customers the option of choosing which data center location they’d like to use for each of their websites. 
• Automated daily backups at HostGator are limited by the size of your site (GB) and this can be problematic for most sites. Kinsta doesn’t have a limit like this in place.
• Kinsta performs weekly automatic MySQL database optimization on all your sites to ensure better performance.
• The latest (fastest and most secure) PHP 8.1 is available on all Kinsta plans while HostGator supports only PHP 7.2
• All of Kinsta plans include a free premium DNS. 
• All Kinsta plans come with a free CDN powered by Cloudflare.
• Kinsta works with Google Cloud’s premium global tier network and all of the plans come with an enterprise-level Cloudflare firewall. 
• Kinsta provides free website migrations for all plans. HostGator offers free content migrations within 30 days, and after that for a fee. Also, the number of sites you can migrate for free with HostGator varies by plan.
• Rather than the traditional cPanel that HostGator offers, Kinsta provides a custom-built, WordPress-specific MyKinsta dashboard. 
• All of Kinsta plans include a free security guarantee.
• You’ll get a free staging environment and SSH access with all Kinsta plans. SSH access is only available to HostGator users on shared and dedicated plans.
• There’s reverse proxy support on all Kinsta plans.
• Kinsta provides a 30-day no questions asked money-back guarantee.
• Kinsta support’s initial ticket response time is less than 2 minutes.
• Kinsta offers premium 24/7 multilingual support for all clients.
• We offer six types of backups: free automatic/daily, optional hourly, manual, system generated, downloadable and backups sent automatically to your Amazon S3 or Google Cloud storage.
• Kinsta provides an automatic site healing feature and 720 daily uptime checks.
• Kinsta support multisite setups out of the box.
• The Kinsta infrastructure is highly optimized for WooCommerce stores.
• Kinsta has a very attractive affiliate program with recurring commission.

MyKinsta: A Custom-Built Dashboard for Powerful Site Management

Like so many hosting providers out there, HostGator uses cPanel for most of its plans. That platform can be difficult to navigate, as well as limiting in terms of available features.

At Kinsta we’re unlike other web hosts. We know our clients deserve the best and we didn’t feel like most of the control panel solutions on the market delivered that. 

That is why we custom-built our own user portal from scratch: MyKinsta. It’s specifically designed for WordPress site management:

Some of the features that make our MyKinsta dashboard so powerful include:

• Quick phpMyAdmin access.
• Premium Amazon Route 53 DNS included, so you can directly manage your DNS records within the dashboard.
• One-click CDN integration.
• Detailed insights and analytics, including performance analysis data, CDN usage and insights, bandwidth and visitor data, and cache HIT and MISS ratios.
• Search and replace tool for performing bulk updates.
• Ability to toggle between PHP versions with one click, and restart PHP if and when needed.
• Website redirect management.
• Option to purge site cache within the dashboard.
• Ability to create a staging environment in seconds.
• Features to restore backups to staging and push staging sites live.
• Ability to add SSH keys to the dashboard to enhance login security.
• IP Deny tool for quick and easy IP address blocking.
• New Relic integration (license is required)
• Advanced WordPress debugging tool.
• Simple password protection for your environment.
• Free Cloudflare SSL certificates, and the option to import your own.
• A built-in Cloudflare integration with optimized settings to secure and boost the performance of your site without the need for a separate Cloudflare subscription.
• Multilingual dashboard that’s available in 10 languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch.

We care deeply about our clients’ feedback, which is why we’re constantly making improvements based on the requests we receive. We’re always looking for ways to make everyone’s lives easier and more productive!

Web Performance Benchmarks (Starter Plans)

These web performance benchmarks tests were run using identical WordPress dummy websites with the same plugins installed (aside from ones needed for the provider’s particular caching mechanisms).

WebPageTest.org was used to measure in seconds the overall loading time for the first view only, from 11 different geographical locations. Note: The lower the loading time is, the better:

As you can see, Kinsta outperformed HostGator in every category, often by a wide margin.

Free Performance Monitoring Tool

WordPress is a dynamic CMS, which means it’s constantly executing PHP code in the background. Depending on your theme and plugin configuration, it’s possible for your site to get bogged down with bloated and inefficient code.

That’s where APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools can help. An APM monitors requests to your site, and tracks various metrics like external API requests, database queries, PHP execution time, and more. This information allows you to quickly debug and troubleshoot performance bottlenecks.

All Kinsta plans come with a free custom-built APM tool that can be easily accessed right in the MyKinsta dashboard. Kinsta APM provides you with key WordPress performance insights without the need for expensive third-party subscriptions to other APM services.

With Kinsta APM, you can debug the following and more:

• Slow WordPress plugins and themes.
• Long calls to external APIs and domains.
• Unoptimized MySQL database queries.

HostGator plans do not come with a free APM tool, which makes it very difficult to quickly troubleshoot performance issues on your WordPress site.

Feature Comparison Overview

Let’s take a moment to review some of the key differences between Kinsta and HostGator:

At Kinsta, we only allow encrypted SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) and SSH connections for direct WordPress access. HostGator, on the other hand, only allows less secure FTP connections. Also, SSH access isn’t available by default at HostGator and requires shared or dedicated hosting.

Expert Support

We don’t have anything against HostGator, but without bias we are in a different league and customer support is our top priority. By searching for their reviews online you will see that HostGator’s customer support is slow, unresponsive and lacks technical knowledge about WordPress. Their Trustpilot score is very low and you will find hundreds of negative reviews about their customer support.

At Kinsta, our customers always come first. It doesn’t matter what plan you have, either. We don’t have support tiers. Instead, we treat each and every customer as a priority, and our team of engineers and WordPress experts are available 24/7. Whether you’re a blogger or a Fortune 500 company, if you need us we’re there. 

We use the Intercom customer messaging platform to make support as convenient as possible. We’re also quick, too. In fact, our average initial ticket response time is under two minutes!

Just check out our customer support ratings for the past two years. More than 97% of our customers closed a chat support session happy or satisfied:

Our team is filled with WordPress experts and engineers, so you always get knowledgeable advice. No problem is too big or too small. In addition to multilingual customer support, our Kinsta knowledge base has resources available in 10 languages.

Unlike HostGator, our 24/7 support also includes technical support. While HostGator says it includes 24/7 support for all its plans, it only lists “live 24/7 support” for the dedicated plans. Plus, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a response in mere seconds like you do with Kinsta.

Kinsta Has a Global Presence

Powered exclusively by the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta has 35 data centers (and counting) around the world, spanning five continents. Regardless of your plan, you can choose a different data center for each of your websites, with no extra fees or hidden charges.

Kinsta data center locations include:

The only two data center locations that HostGator discloses on its website are both in America (Utah and Texas). Also, it doesn’t let you choose which data center to use for your site.

Best Affiliate Program in the Industry

Kinsta has become one of the fastest-growing managed WordPress hosts, thanks in no small part to our many happy customers eager to help spread the word about our products and services.

Therefore, whether you’re an agency or a blogger, Kinsta is proud to offer true profit sharing through our affiliate program. In fact, it’s one of the highest-paying programs in the hosting industry! 

Here’s how it works: For each signup you refer, you can earn between $50 and $500 (depending on the plan). In addition, you get a 10% monthly recurring commission for the lifetime of the customers you refer. Kinsta customers have a low 4% churn rate, making our affiliate program a powerful opportunity for earning a passive income.

Also, we created our own unique WordPress hosting affiliate dashboard. That way, you won’t have to worry about dealing with confusing third-party platforms.

HostGator also has an affiliate program. However, the max commission you can make per month is $125 (and that would require at least 21 qualified signups).