| Dreamhost | Hostgator |
Summary:
Dreamhost has been a factor for a long time. The company was established in 1997. Dreamhost has 1500+ servers, state-of-the-art data centers, and a full time staff of more than 100 employees. They host more than 1 million domains. Dreamhost is right in the sweet spot for being a powerful and stable web host but not too large to forget about customer service. | Summary:
Hostgator is a privately held web hosting company based out of Houston, Texas. The company was founded in 2002 by Chairman Brent Oxley who created the company from his college dorm room at Florida Atlantic University. Since then it has grown into an open source web hosting giant with more than 12,000 web servers powering nearly 1% of the world's internet traffic. |
Email:
Dreamhost provides unlimited custom email addresses on all hosting packages. | Email:
Host gator features unlimited custom POP3 accounts. This is a big advantage because most web hosts do not do this! |
Site Builder:
Dreamhost does not have a site builder but they have a feature called one-click installer which is similar to fantastico or installatron found at other web hosting sites which installs wordpress, drupal, moodle, zen cart etc quickly and painlessly. | Site Builder:
With over 4500 templates to choose from the Hostgator custom sitebuilder is a wonderful option to have. Categories include entertainment, sports, fashion, fitness and many more templates. |
Server Info:
All dream host servers are running debian linux. Their control panel is custom and written by dreamhost. They support programming languages such as Ruby on Rails, PERL, and PHP5. | Server Info:
Hostgator only supports linux. Their control panel is CPanel which is probably the most popular website control panel in the world. They support many open source programming languages including CGI, Fast CGI, PHP 5, Ruby on Rails, Perl, and Python. |
Bandwidth:
Dreamhost provides unlimited bandwidth on all web hosting packages. | Bandwidth:
Host gator features unlimited bandwidth on all linux hosting packages. |
Disk Space:
Dreamhost provides unlimited disk space on all web hosting packages (with a 50GB personal backup limit). | Disk Space:
Host gator features unlimited disk space on all linux hosting packages. |
Stats:
Dreamhost has their own custom analog stats package but you can install AWstats on your own shared server if you want to. | Stats:
AWstats and webalizer are both available to you on all of the hostgator linux hosting packages. |
Database Info:
MySQL is supported by dream host and all web hosting packages come with unlimited MySQL databases. | Database Info:
MySQL is the only database supported on the linux packages. Hostgator features unlimited databases on all packages. |
FTP Info:
Dreamhost does support SFTP. You have to set it up though. Under users -> manage users in the dream host control panel you must choose SFTP account. You will not be able to FTP in from then on. The port will be 22. Use SFTP for good after doing this! | FTP Info:
SFTP is allowed on any server, and you can connect with PuTTY or WinSCP over port 2222 (port 22 for dedicated and VPS accounts). This is the secure way to connect to your shared server. |
Customer Support:
Dreamhost uses a forum and technical support via email. They do have live chat but it requires an upgrade fee. | Customer Support:
Hostgator customer support includes an online ticket system, telephone, email, mail and (our favorite option) live chat. |
Extras:
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Deals:
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Opinion:
The biggest advantage of Dreamhost has to be the customer service. Though the actual hosting is not the cheapest, their customer service is not outsourced and that can be very important when you are trying to debug an issue keeping your website from running optimally. | Opinion:
Anytime you host over 400,000 websites you are doing something right and that is the case with Hostgator. Their smartest moves are providing unlimited everything (email, bandwidth, disk space). It doesn't hurt that they support CPanel which is super popular and effective for website management. |
