HostGator vs IX Web Hosting

This hostgator and ixwebhosting comparison is generated through our real user experience and point of editorial reviews. In order to provide unique and unbiased comparison, we signed up hosting accounts independantly and do testing by ourselves. This includes account performance, ease of use, suppport and technology of the company.

As we know, the both hosting companies have long history and serve a big amount global clients. They even have very similar hosting plans and offers thus it always let us hard to choose between. Either service has its own spotlight thus it's hard to tell directly which is better. However, you should get more clear idea after reading this article.

Briefly introduction of hostgator

Born in classmate bedroom, even its founder oxley did not expect their current leadership of the industry. With 10 years fast growing up, hostgator is now serving multi million clients from each corner of the world. Hostgator provides multiple hosting plans vary from shared to dedicated servers with both linux and windows technologies support. Till present, hostgator is still recognized the industry standard for server features and customer support regardless its ownership change.

Ixwebhosting Bio

One of the oldest web host providers since 1999, ix web hosting is division of Ecommerce Inc who manages their own data centers in Columbus Ohio. For very a long time, the company is most popular for its super affordable service and rich offer on dedicated ip address. From windwos server 2003 times, ix web hosting is standard choice by many .net developers. The company currently provides shared, VPS and cloud hosting solutions and web development service.

Price Comparison – Hostgator wins

By comparing their most popular plans "baby plan" and "unlimited pro", hostgator wins on price. Here's the price structure for different contract periods

3 years – $6.36/mo
2 years – $7.16/mo
1 year – $7.96/mo
6 months – $7.96/mo
Monthly – $7.96/mo

At the meanwhile, you have opportunity to get up to 25% discount using our special hostgator coupon "review25off" for any length contract. Also, if you just want to try out for the first month, you just need to pay 1 cent! Just out our hostgator coupon page for detailed explanation.

With ixwebhosting service, their promotional price $7.95/mo is also only available for 3 years upfront registration and vary a lot for different length contracts as showing below

36 months price – $7.95/mo
24 months price -$7.95/mo
12 months price – $8.95/mo
3 months price – $11.95/mo + $30 setup
1 month price – $16.95/mo + $30 setup

As we see, their monthly option simply prohibits anybody to register. People have no choice other than yearly service. Ixwebhosting also provides a promotional code "SCENE" for 15% discount but it's definitely not better than hostgator offers.

Server performance – Hostgator wins

Hostgator configured standard DELL server production with standard CentOS & cpanel control panel. Their windows servers are also standard windows server 2008 R2 with plesk support. Everything from hostgator represents standard since from their very begin. Although hostgator does not have their own data center space, it's the biggest customer of Theplanet even after merged to softlayer group. Because of this, the hostgator tech team has full access to datacenter configuration just like their own space.

Hostgator server uptime is unbeatable 99.7% from online monitoring reports and connectivity is 279ms in average. Such leading records are simply besed their N+1 data center configuration and advanced server setup. All HG servers are based Intel i7 with minimum 32GB RAM. Server system is fully optimized by betterlinux optimizer with up to date security updates.

There's no detailed description of IX servers. We only know they're debian linux and windows server 2003 for windows hosting service. We have personally hosted 3 small sites on their server and partially satisfied for the performance. When I say partial, because we're glad about the great offers but we can't bear with frequent warnings from google webmaster account for site not responding. Their server average connectivity is 345ms from the last 3 months continous monitoring.

Hosting feature comparison – Hostgator wins

There's no much difference on description. The real difference is about the offer quality. For example, all hostgator services are created on up to date hardware and software installation with well optimization. Ix is some kind outdated when comparing to most leading providers. Their windows server is still on old 2003 system which is not supported by microsoft now. Because of such limitation, ix company has configured most backward services to serve their clients. I can't say everybody prefer to the newest one but it's absolutely not good sign for a reputable hosting provider because they promise to offer the most competitive packages to people.

What really nice as mentioned by people is their up to 15 free dedicated IP addresses. The real importance is probably in old times when google assigns higher weight to dedicated ip websites. But for now, such advantage does not exist anymore because google treats all sites the same no matter if its hosted on shared or dedicated ip.

Ease of Use – Both win

I bet nobody would find a problem in using hostgator based their standalized configuration. You just need to be familiar with cpanel or plesk in order to use their service. Because most linux services are cpanel based, there're many stuff in common. Means we can always search the web easily for cpanel related issues/documentation.

IX is very unique comparing to most providers, their h-sphere control panel is probably the most simple one. But if you look down upon it because of its simplity, you're completely wrong. H-sphere is very powerful control panel solution. Especially when you're migrating from other hosting service, you can easily do "wget" to download backup directly from old server space. There're multiple options to support different transition protocols. Just in earlier 2013, the ix tech team released their new client management panel for easy and professional management over customer accounts.

Conclusion

Hostgator wins comparison to ix web hosting for most essential features. If you're looking for affordable hosting service and considering they two, we highly recommend hostgator for higher quality, especially when you need support for asp.net technologies.