Arvixe vs Hostgator vs Winhost
Comaprison among arvixe and winhost and hostgator for windows hosting plan features, price, server performance and support service. The purpose is to select the best hosting plan for different requirements. It's probably hard to find another company who can provide such advanced windows hosting solutions, especially when you need support for both windows & linux technologies. This article provides side by side comparison and guidance in choosing the right plan.
Brief introduction of 3 hosts
Arvixe: A leading hosting provider since 2003. Arvixe provides support for both windows and linux with all up to date technologies on advanced server platform. Arvixe provides multiple class hosting solutions to meet your different needs from small to large size business websites. Being one of fortune 500 companies, arvixe is serving more than half million clients.
Hostgator: Absolutely the leader of hosting industry for their technology and huge business. Unlike most other companies, they're rule maker and be able to have everything under control. Hostgator is mostly leading in linux hosting service, their standard cpanel plans are followed by lots of coming competitors. In 2011, their people started to offer windows hosting solutions with standard plesk configuration.
Winhost: A solid hosting company focus on windows server solutions. They provide advanced and affordable enterprise class hosting plans. They also programmed their own asp.net hosting control panel to keep everything under management. Till present, the winhost server plans are fully compatible with .net and php technologies
Price comparison
All the three hosts provide competitive price for hosting plans. To have a quick view about their price details, the following table list is specially designed with up to date rates.
| Provider | Plans | Price | Notes |
| Arivxe | Personal class | $2.8/mo(linux) $3.5/mo(windows) | Need to apply the most promotional coupon "Clue30" |
| Business class | $15.4/mo(linux) $18.9/mo(windows) | ||
| Hostgator | Personal plan | 2.97/mo(linux) $3.57/mo(windows) | Using coupon code "review25off" |
| Enterprise plan | $7.77/mo(linux) $10.77/mo(windows) | ||
| Winhost | Winhost basic | $3.95/mo | |
| Winhost Max | $7.95/mo |
Please be noted you need to sign up 2 years service in order to claim the most promotional offer, the price may vary based your selected contract periods.
Hosting features
All the three hosts offer rich feature plans, but please keep in mind you get what you pay. Their lowest price has some kind restrictions on crucial features such as the number of sql server database, supported websites etc. Here's table view of main hosting features
| Provider | Arvixe | Hostgator | Winhost |
| Support domains | 6~unlimited | 1~5 | 1~unlimited |
| SQL/Mysql | Unlimited | Unlimited | 1~unlimited |
| Space/Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | 3GB~Unlimited |
| Free domain | Yes | No | No |
| Latest .NET/PHP | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Sitebuilder | Rvsitebuilder(linux) | Plesk sitebuilder | No |
| Control panel | cPanel/Websitepanel | cPanel/Plesk | Inhouse panel |
All the he three companies have their own advantages based their price and offer. For example hostgator is still reputable for their linux service but windows has been no updates since 2012, their platform is still on windows server 2008. Winhost is dedicated for windows server and Arvixe has been balanced well between both platforms.
Server Specs & Network uptime
Arivxe:
- DELL brand new server production
- 15k RPM SCSI drives in raid 10
- SSD raid arrays
- Minimum of 92 gigabytes of ram, up to 256 gigabytes
- Latest Intel Xeon E5620 processors
Above is standard configuration for all arvixe servers(shared/VPS), all servers are supported by softlayer data centers in Chicago, New Jersey and Dallas. They also have Amsterdam datacenter service configured for Europe clients, Singapore data center is being prepared and will be officially launched in 2014 Q2.
Hostgator:
- 32 Core AMD Opteron™ Processor 6376
- 64GB / 32GB RAM
- 4 Raid 1s
- SSD MySQL
This is hostgator shared server configuration, all servers run on CentOS 6.4 Enterprise Linux x86 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Server connection speed is constant 100 mbps. Hostgator provides various server setups for different hosting service. endurance is now migrating all them to Utah datacenters for central management. Endurance group manages multiple world class DCs and multiple reputable hosting brands being served there.
Winhost:
- DELL Dual Quad Core Servers
- 32 GB RAM
- RAID 10 Disk Array
- Windows server 2008 & 2012
Winhost colo at a Teir 1 datacenter near office for easy and efficient management. They does not specify the datacenter name but this implies they rely on single data center service, no serious problem till present though.
Customer support
They all announced 24*7*365 support but there's some difference. Arvixe and hostgator provide support via Live chat, Toll free calls, ticket and email system. There're also multiple channels for different support requests. However, that doesn't mean arvixe and hostgator are the same, hostgator support is now mainly powered by endurance and endurance purchased outsourced support(mainly from India). We're not sure what's the percentage for their outsourced rate but that's absolutely not professionl for such reputable company. Arvixe support is completely managed by their own and their staff is all over the country.
Winhost is mainly supported by email/ticket and almost no live channel available. It's not good for sales and urgent problem fix. Regardless such concern, they're actually doing good service and no serious complaint on the web. That's how they can get such rapid growth. Probably they will add more support in near future.
Conclusion
All the three are good web hosts for either price value or support. But based their difference and advantages you should select wisely. For example, winhost is your best choice if you want to make full use of windows programming skills. Hostgator is primary choice if you need leading linux solutions. Arvixe stands between the two but comes with more features like free domain, better price and support. Especially when you're looking for affordable and reliable hosting service, there's no better choice than arvixe.