HostGator: My Experience

[zipperz]

Why do some of the ravingly positive reviews about HostGator in this thread sound a little off? Not grammatically incorrect per se but all sound like they are coming from a similar group of people with similar ESL experiences.

This is another reason hostgator annoys me every host gator thread on the Internet has somebody with poor English and small post count raving about how great they are.

I think either host gator hires paid posters from 3rd world countries or it is one of their poor affiliates hoping it will bring them another few bucks to their affiliate site.

[wiseguy_75]

Another unhappy Hostgator customer... lol

But we have to admit here... for every one unhappy HostGator customer... there are thousands of very Happy and Satisfied customers preaching about their good experience.

If your not happy with HOstGator, go Blue Host...

[SweetGamez]

I'm still with hostgator..have been for a long long time...recently just got on the homepage of another large social bookmark, held up just fine, like 45k uniques in 36 hrs

[benwaldeck]

Cheap is Cheap for a reason.
Here's why.....

I was managing a Web Design Company in Melbourne Australia. We transferred all of our sites from our Australian host to Hostgator Dedicated Server. Most of our sites were database-driven with CMS's. After a few months, all of our sites went down.

We rang support and had a tough time getting answers as to the problem.

After what seemed like 25 calls to America. Without calls back and constantly talking to people that had finished shifts and passed from (assumingly) 1 person that didn't want to deal with it to another.

Finally, someone gave us the bad news. They said that our servers were accidently erased, including the databases. Someone had erased our server mistaking serial numbers.

Hostgator recovered some of the databases, but I had to pay for my team to stay awake for 36 hours to rebuild everything AS well as deal with screaming clients whos business also suffered.

I learned the HARD way.
You get what you pay for. Remember, Cheap is Cheap for a reason, Cheap cost you a lot more eventually and Cheap can ruin you.

My opinion on Hostgator? Stay away from them.
Automatic Backups? yeh, right...

[zipperz]

for every one unhappy HostGator customer... there are thousands of very Happy and Satisfied customers preaching about their good experience.

Or thousands of usernames, paid posts and affiliate posts.

[Handsome]

Hostgator work well for me.. i just love their online support, they reply as fast as they can.

Basically i want to say hostgator server nvver sleep and ur web always up

so thanks www.hostgator.com

[tinonetic]

This is another reason hostgator annoys me every host gator thread on the Internet has somebody with poor English and small post count raving about how great they are.

I think either host gator hires paid posters from 3rd world countries or it is one of their poor affiliates hoping it will bring them another few bucks to their affiliate site.

with all due respect poor English and being from a third world country has nothing to do with how hostgator is as a web host.

[dklynn]

tino,

In defense of zip, I believe he was commenting about his suspicions about the validity of the claims being made, not so much on HostGator as a web host. At least that's what I have to hope (else I would have to put on the Moderator hat and use a BIG hammer).

Living in NZ, I've hosted guests from many countries and tell each one that their English is far better than my (fill-in the blank - their language). As this forum is English, it does put non-native speakers at a disadvantage but most do quite well.

Differences of opinion are what make the world go around so let's keep our discussions to the quality of the host, please.

Regards,

DK

[canassassin]

I have been using hostgator for a while. Occasionally it will get slow for a few minutes but normally its great. Their customer service is absolutely top notch. Any questions you have, they can answer.

4.5/5

[wre2wre]

It is very fast but unsecure

[ldcdc]

It is very fast but unsecure

The vast majority of security issues in a hosting environment stem from customers not keeping the software of their blogs/forums etc. up to date, and there's little a host can do about that. Luckily the damage is usually limited to that customer's account.

I know of no recurring, unattended security issue at Hostgator. Care to share more about your experience with them?

[JonathanKF]

From personal experience, HostGator's shared hosting is of the best in that class. Their support response is always reasonably quick and no noticeable downtime. Obviously it would be unrealistic to compare their regular hosting packages, with exponentially more expensive packages elsewhere, such as VPS, but that's to be expected. One thing I will say though, is that I've not had such good experience with them using their dedicated plans, esp. with upgrading / migrating servers...

[ReadingBuddy]

Been with HostGator for quite some time. I haven't encountered any special slowness yet, so I'm generally pleased with what they offer.

[mikka23]

I used to go with small hosting companies but they were unreliable and frustratingly slow. Since moving to hostgator's shared hosting I haven't encountered any problems. There prices are slightly more than smaller companies however.

[playcow.com]

i m using Godaddy and Hostgator, but hostgator is more expensive than Godady. you have to pay $15 for domain and no free advertising credit. i think GoDaddy is better and realible than Hostgator. Anyway hostgator is my second choice

[YourOwnWeb]

I have a Baby shared and an Aluminum reseller plan. Fortunately, over the 2 years I've had to contact customer service, problems have been few and far between.

My only two major concerns:
1. Communication. Other web hosts (such as pair Networks) are very proactive in notifying customers of outages, maintenance windows, upgrades, etc. Not so with Hostgator. There are days it feels like pulling teeth to get information out of them.
2. Problem ownership. Each time I have an issue, the issue is passed between techs like a game of hot-potato. Even my request something for as simple as getting a CSR for an SSL certificate went through 3 people before I actually received it.

If Hostgator would work on correcting those two problems, life would be much simpler for their customers.

[ldcdc]

you have to pay $15 for domain and no free advertising credit.

The advertising credit may be a net disadvantage, though you can use such a voucher only once (as far as I know), and many already have.

Second, you can, and it's arguably safer, to get the domains from a different company, not from your host. This also makes it much easier to get great hosting, and good domain registering service, both at an optimum cost.

[mkoenig]

I have a Baby shared and an Aluminum reseller plan. Fortunately, over the 2 years I've had to contact customer service, problems have been few and far between.

My only two major concerns:
1. Communication. Other web hosts (such as pair Networks) are very proactive in notifying customers of outages, maintenance windows, upgrades, etc. Not so with Hostgator. There are days it feels like pulling teeth to get information out of them.
2. Problem ownership. Each time I have an issue, the issue is passed between techs like a game of hot-potato. Even my request something for as simple as getting a CSR for an SSL certificate went through 3 people before I actually received it.

If Hostgator would work on correcting those two problems, life would be much simpler for their customers.

I agree 100% with #2 they toss you like a hot potato and every time you talk to someone you start back at the beginning again.

I had 2 dedicated accounts with them (about $500 a month) and they still treated me the same way. I was so peed of. I would move but its more just more work on my half. I was getting 500 Internal Server randomly after they upgraded a server to an elite account. I lost hundreds of dollars and thousands of customers. I got 50 different answers and finally i told them that if they didn't know what to do to get someone else to fix it else i was moving host. That must be the only thing they care about because after that i've had no such errors.

I defense of hostgator lunarpage is the same way. Someone needs to create a help desk software that manages request better. The system is FLAWED. But when you are hosting millions of web pages... its kinda hard to keep up with users.

[nhynes57]

Hostgator is good if you have small sites that do not use much resources. I had one of my sites shut down with no warning because it god a surge of traffic from a promotion I was doing. If you have a lot of traffic use a VPS of dedicted server.

[mkoenig]

Hostgator is good if you have small sites that do not use much resources. I had one of my sites shut down with no warning because it god a surge of traffic from a promotion I was doing. If you have a lot of traffic use a VPS of dedicted server.

They don't offer VPS as well.

[weblover50]

Loading is fast.I am using hostgator for my own site and if you want to read the review you can read in my signature.

[mkoenig]

All in all they are my favorite however i've recently had some bad luck with them

[netrider7880]

Thanks for the information and would try next time.

[Arson]

I have heard that hostgator is simply a reseller of ThePlanet hosting. Is this true?

[ldcdc]

I have heard that hostgator is simply a reseller of ThePlanet hosting. Is this true?

ThePlanet doesn't provide shared hosting, so even on that reason alone it can't be true.

HostGator is a ThePlanet reseller as much as any other host that rents servers from ThePlanet (or any other data center) is.