I have read so many reviews on HostGator, and most of the people that create the reviews say it is a good host. The people that reply also seem to enjoy them as well. After reading the reviews I came across a thread that stated there was absolutely NO such thing as unlimited. This makes a lot of sense now that I come to think about it, but when I went to Web Hosting Services, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Servers by HostGator, I noticed they are offering unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, etc for the shared hosting packages. Most of the threads I read that have negative reviews on a host are either usually the ones offering unlimited components, or they just flat out suck.
Anyways what I’m asking is to please get some personal opinions or advice on what I should do, should I try HostGator, or should I try to find someone else based on that observation? I’m in a bit of a “pickle” at the moment.
If you have the average little personal site with a few scripts and a bit of traffic, then any shared host will do. HostGator will be fine. You don’t need unlimited anything, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t actually offer unlimited resources.
Most of the threads I read that have negative reviews on a host are either usually the ones offering unlimited components, or they just flat out suck.
From personal experience, most of the big hosts offering unlimited packages do suck (poor uptime, overloaded servers etc.), but there are exceptions, and Hostgator is among them. Best of luck!
All shared hosts (including hostgator) will limit your memory and cpu usage leading to major headaches if your site becomes popular. Hostgator does seem better at not overselling servers, but your memory and cpu are still finite.
BUMP!
I got it to work it just wouldn’t let me log in for some reason. My site is LIGHTNING speed fast and I absolutely LOVE the support there. Definitely going to stay here for a while; it looks like a positive road ahead of me.
I’ve used them for 4 years or 5. can’t remember. Was very pleased until 2 weeks ago when my visitors complained the sites doesn’t load or is too laggy. There have been DAILY downtimes for minutes in a row, that doesn’t really look like the excellent uptime they promote and what I’m actually accustomed to. I’ll have to see in these weeks if the situation improves, if not, I’ll have to find something else. The support has been excellent though and overall I’ve been pleased with their services.
Do you know what type of failure you’re experiencing?
If a single server out of the hundreds they run for shared hosting is overloaded and httpd is dropping connections because it’s reaching MaxClients, or something like that, it’s a little unfair to paint the whole host as being down.
Is their site up when yours is down? Can you ping/tracert your server? Are all pages laggy or just those that use a database? Does an Alertra spot check show it down everywhere or just regionally?
Do you contact HostGator each time there’s a problem? Automated monitoring tools aren’t going to catch every brief event on every server and every switch/router. They have to be aware of an ongoing problem if you hope them to fix it.
When you’re already with one of the biggest hosts in the world, moving around every time there’s a problem only wastes your time. The next company is running the same operation and is subject to the same types of operational issues.
Hosting providers that state that one aspect of their hosting is unlimited will always have limits in other areas that will restrict usage.
All the hosts that I have looked into that offer unlimited space have a file count limit and restrict what the files are for (so that the files must be part of a web site and you can’t use the space for backing up your computer).
As most files associated with a web site will be relatively small this will result in most accounts not taking up much space on the server despite the space being unlimited simply because of what most sites contain. The sort of site that would take up the most space would be one offering movies for download where individual files could be several gigabytes each.
The other thing to remember with the bigger hosting providers is that they will have thousands of separate servers and so if one server has problems it will impact on a very small percentage of the sites they host. Even if one server is down completely well over 99.9% of sites they host will still be available and unaffected so only those whose sites are on the problem server would have anything to complain about.
The support has been excellent though and overall I’ve been pleased with their services.
Submit a ticket and keep on providing information (preferably use something like pingdom.com, they have a free account) and prove that downtime is occurring, as your visitors have said. Insist on having the ticket assigned to a level 3 tech.
I have been using HostGator for 4 years, and have over 30 clients with them as well. I’ve always been really happy.
You don’t really need unlimited disk space, and if you do because you’re YouTube or Google, you shouldn’t be on shared hosting anyways, and probably need a data centre of your own.
I had a reseller account with hostgator and I can tell you’re that they’re arguably the best. I left them because I needed a reseller account that allowed overselling. Apart from that they’re in a league of their own. Plus they have one of the best support system.
beware of hostgator. You may see signs of them hiring but can cost you greatly in life. It may seem like a career but in reality you loose more. They will hire you to only dismiss you. This company is racist and do not care about their employees. All I remember in training is a printer printing out results to only evict you out of the company. They also teach you to lie to their customers telling you that they are currently looking or researching this issue, but in reality the agent is talking to his/her higher-up coworkers in order for them to solve issue. So technically speaking the user will never ever get to speak with anyone higher-up, but to only be lied to. I only know this due to working with hostgator. Good luck to everyone.
Other than that I think it is really a good host. 