HostGator website builder review 2022: Is Gator website builder right for you?

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HostGator Website Builder, referred to as “Gator”, is a simple and easy-to-use website builder with drag and drop functionality. Gator is created with an intention to allow people with very minimal knowledge to create a website on their own, without the need to hire experts and pay a bunch of money for their services. Today we will do complete HostGator website builder review and see whether Gator website builder right for you or not.

Pros and Cons of Gator

Pros

Excellent editor

Easy to use

Free SSL certificate

Great social media integration

Cheap sign-up prices

Strong uptime

Well-designed interface

Attractive, modern site templates

Let you sell digital downloads

Great Usability and Customer Support

Variety of Layouts

Every Primary Feature on the Spot

Cons

Tiny app store

Not suitable for complex websites

No built-in email marketing

Limited ecommerce capability

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Ease Of Use

The new Gator is unlike any builder you have seen before. Simply answer a few questions and the intelligent builder leverages AI technology to spit out an awesome design tailored to your product or business! This option is called Express.

On the other hand, there is other option called Traditional where you will use drag and drop feature to create a detail website with more detail editing and designing control.

Once you sign up with Gator , choose Traditional or Express to create the website. Gator makes this super simple by categorizing all its templates into industries. There is also a search bar if you want a specific design.

After that, you enter the editor, which uses pure drag-and-drop. By this, you can drag anything onto your web pages from the side panel and position it exactly where you want it. It is very simple and smooth with strong uptime.

On top of that, Gator comes with a handy onboarding tutorial, which help you in every step while creating the website.

You can resize, change fonts, and switch colours of fonts effortlessly. The same applies for sorting out images, as well as embedding cool features like Contact Form, Google Map, Blog etc.

Gator is very user friendly and do not need computer skills which allows anyone to create their own website.

Smart design keeps Gator easy to use. Key functions are available in a click or two, and most of the complicated stuff is tucked away where it will not baffle newbies. Overall, it is a well-balanced editor which has plenty to offer both first timers and more demanding users.

Customizing Design

You need to customize the based on your requirements as most of them will not be perfect for your site. Gator (HostGator Website Builder) provides you the full control of customizing the look and layout of your pages. There are 2 main ways of customizing the design of a page: menu, or site preview. Both way of customizing is simple and easy to understand.

There are plenty of elements available in Gator, so many that I am unable to list all of them here. You can pick any element that you like, most markedly PayPal or Maps. You can easily integrate a map or payment button into your page.

You likely to have multiple sections in any page. Sections are like containers which can grip elements and have their own custom styles. Sections can be reshuffled in the page just by dragging the entire section rather than moving around all the elements one-by-one. You can also change the colour and font of both element and section easily.   

Blogging

Adding a blog to your Gator site, and managing it afterwards, is quick and easy. When you create a blog, you will be prompted to choose a template for it. There are all the usual text formatting commands, and ‘Add Element’ button allows insertion of images, videos, lines, headings, and paragraphs which are enough for proper blogging.

You will have loads of ways to customize about your post looks and behaves on the blog page. Like other website builder, you are capable to set a title, summary, and cover image. You will also be able to set tags to help users find related posts and pin a post to the top of the blog.

Unfortunately, there is no option to schedule a post. Blog comments are supported by the Facebook comments system only.

E-commerce

Gator is suitable for small ecommerce business and undeniably easy to use, and much cheaper. Both digital and physical products are supported by Gator store. You can make the digital download time-limited or set a maximum number of times a customer can download the same product from a single purchase. Gator accepts various formats such as Excel, Google Sheets, and CSV while importing a ready-made product catalogue, or else, you can input the data of the products manually.

You can put product description by entering one or more images, along with some formatted text and a price followed by product variants (size, colour) and categories (shoes, accessories). To appeal more customers, you can add discount on the store, as well as adding a weight allows the site to automatically calculate shipping rates.

There is a built-in calculation for shipping and tax. Known payment method like, PayPal can be integrated which enables to take the payment right away. Though PayPal also allow card payment, if needed, creating a Stripe account gets you card support, too. You will also get an option for Cash on delivery too.   

Features

HostGator website builder: Gator offers all the basic features you would expect from a website builder, along with a couple of nice bonuses.

The most notable features here are being able to:

• View save history and revert to an old version of your site.
• Connect social accounts for almost every notable social network.
• Collect payments through PayPal (set email address here).
• Setup redirects for any pages on your site.
• Connect Google Analytics if the built-in stats are not good enough.
• See your mailing list and form submissions.
• “Advanced” lets you set basic SEO meta tags for the site.
• 24/7/365 quality support.
• Auto Saving function.
• App Market.
• Email Functionality.
• Free SSL Certificate

Gator has all the basic configuration most small businesses need. Additionally, Gator has built-in functionality to collect email addresses and payment through PayPal, which means it is completely free here, but it would cost you if you would use different site builder.

Pricing

Gator offers three different pricing plans that you can sign up to for either a month, year, or two-year period. Naturally, the longer you commit to Gator, the more money you save each month.

Gator has three plan which are: Express Start, Express Site, and Express Store. All plan comes with ecommerce functionality. There’s unlimited pages, storage and bandwidth, a free domain name, a bundled SSL certificate, access to the Unsplashed image library, a responsive design and 24/7/365 support to keep your site running smoothly.

Gator currently does not have a free plan or trial. For this reason, we would suggest taking out a Starter plan for one month – if you like what you get, then you can commit to the two-year subscription for cheaper rates.

Conclusion: HostGator Website Builder

Overall, I was impressed with Gator . It has all the basic features a site builder needs, plus many more advanced ones. Nearly it provides you with the full control over how your pages look and the website builder is very easy to use, nothing complex there. It is very user-friendly site builder.

The integrated blog and web store are relatively basic, though, and are unlikely to satisfy demanding or experienced users, but could well be appealing to beginners.

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