I will be running Joomla and have already purchased the HG reseller for 24.95 a month...

Siteground seems to have a lot of things catered to my needs as well and the price is crazy. I will be the 1000th noob asking this question. I know you get what you pay for but the search of the forum didn't give me any hard evidence.

What would I get for paying $20 more a month by going with Hostgator right now? I'm just starting and that extra $200 would be nice to use in marketing this first year as cash/time is at a premium and I don't want to waste time upgrading later if I know Siteground is not worth it

just googled some diff keywords and one thing I'll indicate for posterity is it looks like siteground looks for everything up front (not a good thing) and that they do not offer free whm.

I also have my own private name servers which is a nice touch.

I haven't even heard of Siteground but visiting their site leads me to believe they are overselling big time. Did a google search and a search on these forums and didn't find much that was good.

Just do some looking on what are considered good hosts and check out those prices. That will give you an idea of what good solid honest hosting costs. Then ask yourself what you get for the extra $20/mo.

just googled some diff keywords and one thing I'll indicate for posterity is it looks like siteground looks for everything up front (not a good thing) and that they do not offer free whm.

I also have my own private name servers which is a nice touch.

If you are already with HG and are happy with their service, IMHO I think the extra money is well worth satisfaction.

You are comparing a $4.95 web hosting account and $24.95 reseller account.

With hostgator you have have unlimited number of accounts under your reseller account, where with SiteGround you have to pay more for each account under your reseller account.

Ali's right. You're comparing two very different business propositions/models. Also worth considering, is the ease of changing providers, should the need arise (hopefully never). You can easily move out of HG (plenty of providers with compatible offers/systems), but can you just as easily move from Siteground?

just as an update, i did decide to go with hostgator, and they have earned the extra money and then some. I'm very pleased with their service and the number of things they have implemented to make it easy for "the rest of us"

If you're satisified with HG and have not experienced any service problems, then I would highly suggest to stay where you are. Saving $20 a month is not worth the risk of poor technical support and frequent downtime.