Hostgator vs Lunarpages (detail comparisons)

Introduction

Both Hostgator and Lunarpages are not new names in the hosting industry. Hostgator, founded by Brent Oxley in year 2002, currently based in Houston, Texas. The Gator is currently hosting more than 2,200,000 websites and they were recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America.

Lunarpages, on the other hand, first started in web hosting business as part of Add2Net Inc. in year 1998; the name “Lunarpages” is introduced in year 2000. At this time of writing, Lunarpages is managed by Ron Riddle and the company operates in One Wilshire and Las Vegas.

Both Lunarpages and Hostgator run their own data centers and offer a wide range of different hosting services – including shared, dedicated, and reseller hosting. This makes comparing the two reasonable as they often appear in the same shopping list.

In this article, we are going to dig deep and compare both hosting companies in term of general popularity, hosting features, as well as customer supports. Alternatively, you can check out Lunarpages and Hostgator separately in my hosting reviews.

Hostgator vs Lunarpages in term of popularity

From Google Insights, the graph clearly indicates that Hostgator is much favored than Lunarpages. More over, Hostgator is showing a strong growth trend in term of popularity where more and more Internet users are searching on Hostgator; while Lunarpages stays more or less the same in term of general popularity.

Regional Interest on Hostgator and Lunarpages

Hostgator gets more attention from the Asia countries where Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and India appear as the top five countries with the most searches on Hostgator; while for Lunarpages, United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Canada are the top five countries in the regional interest list.

Compare Hostgator and Lunarpages hosting plans

Based on 12 months subscription period, below are the comparison of Hostgator and Lunarpages hosting plans.

Shared Hosting Plan

Dedicated Hosting Plan

Hostgator is better and cheaper!

From the tables, we can see clearly that Hostgator outranked Lunarpages in term of features and prices. Hostgator shared hosting plan is slightly more expensive than Lunarapges however the Gator users get free $25 Google Adwords credit, longer trial period, private SSL features, and around-the-clock customer supports.

On dedicated hosting plans, Hostgator’s Standard package provides better features and lower price when compare to Lunarpages top dedicated hosting plan (package name Dedi III). With Hostgator, you get 10 dedicated IP address (in contrast, 2 with Lunarpages), free Fantastico supports, 24/7 supports, server monitoring (in contrast, Lunarpages charge extra $9.99/mo for server monitoring), and best of all – with all these advantages over Lunarpages, the Gator is still charging less on their customer ($219/mo).

Hostgator vs Lunarpages in term of customer supports

There is a H-U-G-E different between Lunarpages and Hostgator when it comes to customer supports.

Lunarpages simply failed to live up to the industry standards on after-sales support – the web host does not provide 24/7 live chat or telephone technical support! On the other hand, Hostgator hosting comes with 24/7 technical support via live chat, telephone, and forum. More over, Hostgator support is done by inhouse staffs, who are more knowledgeable (to the company operations) and responsive.

My conclusion on Hostgator vs Lunarpages

My user experience with Hostgator and Lunarpages

I spent years hosting websites on both Hostgator and Lunarpages. In overall I’m happy with both of their services – especially in term of server reliability. Both web hosts deliver respectable server uptime and fast hosting services. I need little help from the support department thus the lack of 24/7 live chat support in Lunarpages wasn’t bothering me much. Anyhow, it’s worth pointing out that it takes days for Lunarpages to response on my request; while for Hostgator it’s just matter of minutes.

However, I was pretty disappointed with Lunarpages recently as they changed their pricing structures without informing us (as customers) properly. While you might think Lunarpages seems like a good budget hosting choice, the reality is far away from that. The Lunarpages widely-promoted $4.95/mo hosting deal is only available if you are willing to take up the 60 months hosting plan (which is absolutely ridiculous!).

Who should you go with – Hostgator or Lunarpages?

Short answer, Hostgator. You’ll get better hosting features and customer supports in similar or lower price (depends on your hosting plan).

Visit Hostgator online: http://www.hostgator.com
Visit Lunarpages online: http://www.lunarpages.com