Advantages and Disadvantages of HostGator Website Builder

Want to buy Gator Website Builder?
In What's the Best Hosting, we tried the website builder offered by the well-known hosting company HostGator.
In this Gator review, we'll walk you through the advantages and disadvantages of Gator that we encountered while testing the service in detail so that you know if Gator Website Builder is right for you or not!

HostGator is one of the most prominent companies in the world of Web Hosting, with a reputation for fast servers, attractive prices, and high-quality service. So we decided to give their website builder, Gator, a try.

What should you know about Website Builders?

There are a myriad of considerations to keep in mind when choosing the right website builder to create your website, which can have a positive or negative impact on how your site works, how it is built, and how easy it is to manage.

Ultimately, the website builder you use to design your site can make your job easier or more complicated, but it also affects your online presence, your brand's ability to grow and spread, and even improves or decreases sales.

Similar to shopping for furniture for your home or office, for example, there is no one-size-fits-all website builder; choosing the right website builder depends on your needs and goals for the website.

So before you start comparing website builders such as Gator.com, WordPress.com, and others, you should first determine the look and feel you want your website to have, the goals you want to achieve by creating the website, and the features you want to provide.

Do you want to create a blog on your website? A messaging form? Branding pages? Online store? Booking system? etc.

Once you know exactly what you're after, it's easy to choose the right tool to create your website, whether it's Gator or something else.

Let's dive into the details of Gator and what it does and, more importantly, what it doesn't do.

What is Gator?

"Gator" or "Gator" or "Gator" Gator.com is a website builder or website builder, which is developed by HostGator hosting, which is famous in the website hosting and domain reservation market, so the company is able, after the launch of the Gator tool, to provide hosting services, servers, domain name reservation, and website creation service that will be hosted on the hosting services in one integrated package.

Unlike some other website builders that require you to purchase, install, and manage different components and elements to build your website, such as WordPress, Gator is a hosted service that provides you with everything you need to build and develop your website in a comprehensive service package.

Instead of building your home from scratch, you leave the infrastructure, plumbing, and other essentials to the owner, while you have the freedom to buy furniture, decorate, and more.

You have to make a trade-off between control and convenience, between being able to control every detail or giving it up in favor of a more comfortable, easy, and painless service. Your site may run flawlessly and smoothly with Gator, but your choice of this tool ultimately depends on your experience and the nature of your needs, which may not make it the right tool for your website design.

In terms of competitors, Gator is in many ways similar to other website builders such as Squarespace, WordPress.com, Weebly, and GoCentral from GoDaddy. But from our point of view on what is the best hosting, what sets Gator apart is the focus on the core mission of providing an easy and fast website builder.

Gator provides you with all the tools and services you need to launch your website in just a few minutes without complicating things for you and getting you into a whirlwind of settings and options that can be complicated, especially for beginners.

It is therefore natural that Gator is an attractive option for novice website owners who don't have much experience in web design or coding, or don't have the time to build and manage their own websites.

However, this will come at the cost of giving up advanced features that professional webmasters may need!

Gator Features

After the What's the Best Hosting team has been testing the Gator website builder for a long time and testing its performance and capabilities, we were able to familiarize ourselves with its features. In this section of our Gator review, we'll walk you through the many advantages you'll find if you use Gator to create your website.

Gator is easy and fast

One of the great things about Gator is how easy and fast it is to build and launch your website. With most website building tools, there's a point where you're left wondering what to do next, but that's not the case with Gator.

In fact, Gator makes building websites as easy and fast as possible. In just a few steps, you can select the appropriate Gator package, choose your website domain, which you'll get for free because you're a site visitor to what is the best hosting.

After answering a few questions about your site, uploading your logo image, or designing your site for free via Gator and making edits if you want, Gator will create your site and then you can publish it online with the click of a button for everyone to visit.

To make things even easier, Gator provides detailed training on the tool's many customization options and even sends you email tutorials on how to build websites.

Full-service website creation service

Unlike many other website builders, Gator is a truly all-inclusive tool. From domain reservation and hosting, to RSS feeds and social media integration, Gator provides everything you need to build and launch your website.

In other words, there is no need to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or any other coding languages, no need to use complex applications or plugins, no troubleshooting or technical support, and the tool also includes tracking and analysis.

This means less time spent on technical details in favor of more focus on content, marketing, design, and more. In addition, Gator is directly connected to one of the largest and most reputable hosting providers, allowing you to benefit from excellent support services, unlimited storage, self-hosting options, and more.

Building websites step by step

When it comes to web design, the great thing about website builders like Gator is that they require no special expertise or skills. Instead of dealing with complex HTML or CSS code, all you have to do is use the drag-and-drop feature to build your site from scratch. It's that simple!

Despite Gator's many customization options, it's still easy to use, thanks to a drag-and-drop feature that allows anyone - with little to no experience - to build their entire website and customize the templates to their liking.

Instead of displaying an endless number of options at once, Gator not only offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, but it's also easy on the eyes. Instead of displaying an endless number of options at once, the tool gradually presents options as you progress further into the design process. While the tool may seem simple at first, it opens up more customization options the further you go.

On the left side of the tool, you can see eight large icons that symbolize Pages, Elements, Design, Sections, Store, Blog, Manage, and Stats. Once you click on any of them, the tool displays a list of sub-options.

For example, when you click on the Elements icon, you will see a number of sub-options such as Files, Maps, Navigation, Text, Social, Videos, Buttons, and PayPal, and each of these options also has a number of sub-options.

Gator allows you to drag and drop any element anywhere you want on the page, and you can also click on the plus sign + to add a new section containing any combination of items you want.

In addition to customizing elements, Gator also allows you to customize the overall design of the site, either from the Design option in the panel on the right, or by simply clicking on any part of the page you wish to customize.

Once you do that, the tool will open up a huge selection of color schemes, backgrounds, and other attractive elements such as animated text, Parallax backgrounds, and more.

If you find yourself overusing the customization options, you can always go back to the default template options, and you can also use the Undo button when you make a mistake, which is a great feature, especially since it's not available in all site-building tools.

Ability to customize Gator templates

When you use Gator to create your website, you'll have to choose a template to start designing your site, but the good news is that Gator offers hundreds of different templates to choose from.

While many of the templates look great even without modification, the tool also allows you to customize and modify the templates using drag-and-drop.

For maximum design control you can certainly create a website on HostGator hosting using other website building tools and software such as WordPress, Drupal, and others, but why would you do that?

Most people turn to Gator to create websites because of the large number of customizable templates it offers, allowing you to customize colors, change fonts, add and remove sections, and much more. All without having to learn any complicated features or use expensive plugins.

Gator comes with several additional features

Speaking of features, you may have noticed the abundance of them in Gator, but the folks behind the tool have not only provided all the basic features you might need, but have also added a number of special features.

One of the most notable features is the ability to:

• Link your site to your popular social media accounts.
• Link to Google Analytics to get advanced analytics for your visitors.
• Receive payments via PayPal.
• Create page redirects.
• View your site's edit history and revert back to older versions of your site.
• View responses to your surveys and mailing list.
• Add meta tags to improve SEO visibility through Gator's advanced options.

In short, Gator offers enough configuration options to meet the needs of any hobbyist or small business, and adds a number of other premium options, such as accepting PayPal payments and collecting email addresses. While Gator offers these features for free, other website builders require the use of separate tools, which usually comes with additional costs and complexities to consider.

Moreover, it includes all service packages offered by Gator, regardless of their price:

Domain Name Registration

A domain name is the address of your website, for example hostingdean.comGator and HostGator eliminates the need to buy the domain elsewhere, as HostGator offers a free domain to readers of What's the Best Hosting, thus saving you time and money.

Mobile-responsive website design

Nowadays, people are increasingly using mobile phones to browse the Internet, so it is necessary to design websites in a mobile-friendly way that automatically adapts to small phone screens, or what is known as Responsive Design.

Gator eliminates the need to design a customized mobile template, saving you time and money.

Unlimited HostGator hosting

As with other hosting services offered by HostGator, which is mostly Unlimited Web Hosting with the exception of VPS and full Web servers, Gator comes with unlimited hosting for the websites created with it and customers get unlimited file storage and bandwidth.

This means that there is no limit to the number of visitors your website can receive or the amount of content it can handle, making Gator an ideal choice for sites with large photo albums or high traffic.

Free SSL certificate from Gator

SSL is a protocol that secures the connection of visitors to your website by encrypting the data sent through it, and its presence increases the security of your site and improves the site's ranking in search results, as Google pays attention to this point and displays a warning that sites that do not use this protocol are not safe.

Gator offers an SSL certificate to visitors of a website that is the best hosting for free, and when you have this certificate, a padlock icon will appear next to your website address in the browser bar, which reflects the security of your website to visitors, on the other hand, the absence of this icon may discourage visitors from visiting or staying on your website because they feel that their data is not safe and private.

Gator Websites Integration with Social Media

The tool allows you to embed content from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into your website, while social media buttons, photo albums, and live feeds help optimize your online presence by connecting your various channels and platforms.

Website statistics and analytics

Website analytics allows you to view key statistics and track key information, such as the number of visitors and how long they stay on each page. Knowing this information will help you discover which pages are performing better than others and make the necessary adjustments to optimize your traffic, length of stay, and ultimately increase your conversion rate.

Gator Online Store

If you think that Gator is only suitable for simple websites such as corporate and personal websites, you are sadly misinformed. Gator also offers a customized eCommerce package that allows you to sell products, process payments, and track all your data through a powerful suite of analytics services.

Although there are many sites that offer online store creation services, Gator is still an excellent choice, as it allows you to create an easy-to-use online store whether you are selling digital products or physical goods.

The tool also allows you to import your product listings using Excel, CSV, or Google Spreadsheets, but if you have few products, you can still enter them manually.

Unfortunately, Gator doesn't offer much space in terms of the number of products that can be displayed, and the product descriptions are a bit limited, but this shouldn't be an issue for simple stores.

To design your online store, you can start by dragging and dropping the images you want, and then enter the text and prices. After that, you can specify the different variations of the product, such as size, color, etc. You can also organize the products into categories, such as jeans, shirts, etc. to make the shopping experience easier.

Gator also allows you to create discounts, which is a great feature that undoubtedly helps in attracting customers, not to mention the ability to calculate shipping costs based on the weight of the product. Thus, there's almost nothing this tool can't do.

However, it must be admitted that Gator is nowhere near as good as specialized e-commerce tools like WooCommerce and Shopify, but it is certainly much cheaper, easier to use, and suitable for simple e-commerce stores.

In fact, with Gator, you can manually add 10 products in less than 10 minutes. With features like calculating taxes and shipping costs, PayPal integration, card support, and cash on delivery options, it's a great option for simple online stores.

Reports and analytics for your site and visitors

The statistics and analytics in Gator are truly amazing, from the dashboard you can see the total number of visits, page views, bounce rate, and number of unique visits to your website in the last 30 days.

On the full visits page, you can see more statistics, such as the average time visitors spend on the site, as well as a map of visitors' geographic locations.

In addition, you can see the performance of each page of the site, learn additional details about visitors such as the browsers and devices they use, their languages, and discover whether they are returning visitors or first-time visitors.

Gator also differentiates between desktop and mobile traffic to your website, giving you valuable insights that you can use in your paid campaigns to drive more traffic.

Although the reports provided by Gator may be sufficient for many users, they are not sufficient for all users, and in case you are looking for more analytics and statistics, we recommend that you use the free Google Analytics service and link it to your site that you created using Gator, which will give you a huge amount of analytics and statistics about your site and who visits it.

Help and support at HostGator

HostGator is known for its friendly and helpful support team, so it's no surprise that Gator offers 24/7 access to support, whether through phone, live chat, or emails.

In addition to support options, Gator also offers an easy-to-use Help Center with explanations on how to use Gator and resolving common issues you may encounter while using the tool.

Despite the quality and multichannel support, keep in mind that HostGator is a large hosting provider with hundreds of thousands of customers, which keeps their support team busy, so you may have to wait a bit before getting a response from them.

However, this is not the case with Arab users in our experience of what is the best hosting. Since we are located in a geographical area far from the United States and our working hours differ from the working hours of the vast majority of the customers of global hosting companies, you will not suffer a long wait in most cases because you will contact them during off-peak hours.

Gator allows you to get priority support by subscribing to the higher Gator plans, which come with priority access to tech support and other benefits. Although you may have to pay more money to upgrade to that plan, you won't have to waste time waiting and you'll get more benefits than with the lower Gator plan.

You may never need support thanks to Gator's user-friendly interface and ergonomic design, but if you do, support is available around the clock through a variety of means.

Gator Disadvantages

You must have noticed the many advantages that Gator has, but no program or tool is without flaws, and one of the web hosting myths that we explained earlier is that there are hosts without flaws, unfortunately this does not exist, as all hosts have at least one weakness.

In this section of the Gator review, we'll share with you some of the negatives that the What's the Best Hosting team discovered while using Gator.

Gator's pricing structure

Believe it or not, Gator's pricing is both an advantage and a disadvantage. By way of illustration, Gator's prices are very competitive, but a bit confusing.

For example, the tool offers a 50% discount for What's the Best Hosting readers, which is undoubtedly a great offer, but it's only valid during the payment period. So if you choose the two-year "eCommerce" package, the offer will only last for two years, after which the price will increase again.

However, this is more of a constant in the web services market where first-time purchase prices are discounted and renewals are at normal prices, something you will find in many popular web hosts such as Bluehost, HostGator, Hostinger, FastComet, and others. It's also found in Gator's competing website builders as well.

This is just one example of the many add-ons that may confuse you at checkout, but fortunately, the checkout and subscription process is still relatively simple and seamless.

Gator Web Builder Review Summary

Like all tools used to create websites, Gator also has a number of pros and cons. While it boasts ease of use and quality support, it lacks the customizability of more advanced tools like WordPress. Compared to those tools, Gator has fewer templates and advanced options.

On the other hand, Gator is more affordable and easier to use than most other website building tools, making it an ideal choice for those looking for an effective tool at a reasonable price, but don't need advanced marketing features, additional templates, etc.

In other words, Gator represents simplicity at its best. It may seem primitive in some aspects, but the drag-and-drop feature makes it extremely easy to use, and you can have your website up and running in no time at all.

All in all, Gator is a great solution for those with limited experience in website design and creation who are looking for a simplified solution to create their own website.

Still undecided? Why not try Gator yourself?

Click on this link and try Gator for 30 days and if you don't like the service, get your money back and within minutes of signing up and using it, you'll know if Gator is right for you or not.

.Do you have a question about Gator, HostGator, or about website builders and web hosting?
The Best Hosting team will be happy to answer your questions and concerns in the comments below!