My Experience with Host Gator

Since being with host gator, I really cannot find fault with them, After having my website hosted with them for around 5 months. I had my website hacked through a very unsecure script which I had installed, I got straight on to live support and they responed very quickly with getting the tech guys involved, They managed to stop the hacker and even gave me his IP address, They even went as far as going through my cgi-bin files and various other files to delete any ones that was letting the hacker get into my website, because my website had been deleted and they had the latest back up of my website they had it reinstalled within around 2 hours, The speed at which they responed I really can not fault, I really was a pain in the butt with all the emails which I sent to them while all of this was going on, as I had paid ads on my website so needed the website back up quickly, they understood this completly, and they always responded in a polite and professional way. The only real very small down fall of hosting at Host Gator is sometimes the speed of the server can be a little slow, I have never had any downtime through hostgators fault, and I have never had any biling problems with them. For my small website the shared hosting is good value and the support which I have recieved from them in the past 5 months has been very good indeed.

Biggest Pro: support
Biggest Con: none

Host Gator Chomps The Competition!

The initial reason I chose to host my websites with Host Gator is simply due to the fact that you can host UNLIMITED domains for one low price. Not only that but they also offer one click wordpress installs, cpanel, and great statistic traffic software. Furthermore, I was actually late with my first payment but a couple of weeks and they still allowed my sites to stay up and running and I appreciate that from a hosting company. Their affiliate program is equally impressive and I’ve made some nice extra dough promoting them. Definitely worth your time!

Hostgator: Extremely Reliable

In the few months that I've had with Hostgator as my host, I've never been let them. If there were any indications of downtime, I haven't had any. This may be because the websites that I have aren't huge, nor are the resources that I take up. I pay about $10/month for hosting, and I have several websites so it's quite a deal. The customer service is responsive and you do get your questions answered. All in all, I would recommend Hostgator to friends and family.

Biggest Pro: Uptime, customer service, price for money

Hostgator - you get what you pay for

I started my forum with a free service and let's just say, "you get what you pay for." After lots of downtime and unplanned outages, I decided that the only way my site was going to prosper was to move to a new host. After doing some research, I settled on www.Hostgator.com.

While their prices and packages are reasonable, they are not the cheapest around. I've already been down that road and decided that features and more reliability are more important than price.

I have been with Hostgator for over 6 months and have had ZERO down time. Also, the site runs much faster, with no noticable slowdowns or load lag. When you are trying to get a new site off the ground, you don't need the added burden of having to explain to users about extended down-time. Do yourself a favor and start out with a reliable, reputable host in the first place. Hostgator is certainly one to consider.

Biggest Pro: ZERO downtime!
Biggest Con: Not the cheapest host around

Ah HostGator, helping me take over the world.

I had first fancied hostgator in 2005 by creating an account, but mistaking them for another company I was going for - and also making the wrong account. They held true to their 30 day guarantee and I got my cash back right then and there. A year and a few months later the site I had been working on had run its course and I needed a new project, for, you know, taking over the world. Thus I looked around, and remembered about hostgator, and apparently they remembered me still from my email. I popped on their tri monthly billing plan and since then have been building a webpage slowly. It handles phpbb2 (and bb3) just fine, it handles many different sites fine, and seldom does the server load ever get outrageous - in fact most the time my site is faster than others I go to.

There have only been two issues I have ever had with hostgator, one being about a month after I signed up with the server acting sluggish and having multiple server side application failures... which was fixed within an hour, and the other being a month later with the same thing from an upgrade - and in the end there hasn't been a hiccup since. They also have PHP5 support - which is great. Way back when I had another host they had a file system structure that was quite different than the normal (which hostgator has) where the main root folder held a subfolder for every domain and subdomain - listed as the full domain name. It was not a windows server, as I had asked the owner and apparently he'd done some of his own modifications to whatever he used, it made it so much easier to navigate around instead of having one root folder with a billion other folders for other domains and subdomains. Thats the only thing I dislike about HG - and thats mainly because my memory is lacking... yours would be too if you were attempting a total world takeover.

Basically I'd give HG a 9.9/10 - and an 11/10 if they ever changed the way their file system works. Or maybe I just don't know something everyone else knows...

Biggest Pro: Server handles everything fine - not an overused and abused box.
Biggest Con: File organization, on the main account folders can get confusing.

degradation of technical support

I have used Hostgator as my primary host service for over 3 years, currently hosting over 35 domains with them. For several years I was very pleased with their service, however, over the past 3 to 6 months it seems that their technical support has degraded substantially. I have had numerous simple issues take days to resolve or take several days and still not be resolved.

Unfortunately, I am now having to look for another host service to migrate my domains to because reliable technical support is critical to me.

Host Gator - Good Host

So far my experience at HostGator is great. Their prices are reasonable and it is fairly simple to sign up and pay. I was also pleased with the amount of space and bandwidth they give you. My account was set up in no time and so for I have had NO problems with this host. I have heard bad things in the past about this host, but so far I am very satisfied and will continue to do business with them. For only 9.99 I am getting a substantial amount of space and bandwidth and I am allowed to park 1000 sites there.

Mildly disatisfying

I had spent quite a while drifting from host to host before deciding to give in to the temptation of using a bigger and somewhat better known host. I think everyone has heard of Host Gator before and that was the first host that popped into my head. I setup an account and as soon as my nameservers had updated I began playing with the Control Panel and such... Just to see what (if anything) was new. My package uses CPanel X which is pretty much the norm for most web hosts. With that you can expect such liberties as 3 click script installation, advanced website statstics, phpmyadmin access and so much more. At first I was happy to pay the few dollars extra to what I was used to but that feeling soon faded as I began to notice a significant drop in the loading times of my website. I decided to weather the storm and see if the guys at Host Gator would fix it, and they did. That is, for a week or so before I noticed the drop in speed again. This time I was working on my website - and half way through my website went down. I was shocked. I spent the rest of the evening, the entire next day and the morning after constantly refreshing my browser hoping that I would see my website load up. And eventually it did. Since then I haven't had any trouble whatsoever and I think the problem with the speed was due to the fact that i'm using their shared hosting package, which is fine for some websites... But as I found, it's not fine for mine.

Nothing but problems getting signed up.

I recently tried signing up for hosting with Hostgator. I submitted my order, and the next page showed:

Your order has been received by our billing system and has been approved.

It went on to give me an Authorization Code and Transaction ID for my credit card processing.

A couple of minutes later I received a call from Hostgator saying that I needed to verify some information before they would give me an account. Since they called and their name didn't show up on caller ID, I was reluctant to give out personal information over the phone. They told me I could handle it by answering an e-mail. I checked my e-mail, and to verify this is what they wanted:

"respond to this ticket with a scanned copy of a Photo ID such as as a passport, or drivers license. Also please include a scanned copy of the credit card that was used in purchase, if you purchased a hosting account with a credit card"

So, they screwed up my order, and now they wanted pictures of my DL and CC. There was no way I was going to send them that information, so I called them again.

I was told that my order had been flagged because My IP address showed to be located 150 miles from my billing address, which is odd since I was ordering the service from a computer AT my billing address. I also learned that they had canceled the first order, after charging my credit card. They then created a new order that I was supposed to pay for. So, my debit card had already been charged once, and they wanted to charge it again. Most people know that when your debit card has been charged, the money is taken out immediately, and if the charge is voided, the money gets credited back in a few days. I was already out $119.40, and they wanted that amount again.

I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was transfered to a person who said his name was Fred. He wouldn't give me a last name, employee number, extension, or anything that could be used to identify him, even though they though it was perfectly OK for them to require personal information from me, including my driver's license number. We spoke for some time, and I asked him to send me an e-mail saying that my first order was canceled and that I would be receiving a refund for the charge. He said he would be happy to do that. I also explained that I wasn't comfortable paying for the second order until I made sure the money from the first order was put back into my bank account. He said he understood, and that the second invoice would stay on file for 10 days, after which it would be deleted if not paid. He also told me that I could call and ask for him anytime, and he would be glad to help me.

I never received the e-mail he promised me, and I woke up the next day to find that they had charged my debit card for the second order without my authorization. So, I called and asked to speak to Fred. I was told that I needed to explain everything to the first person I talked to, before they could transfer me to Fred. So, I went through the whole story, and after some time, I was transfered to him.

I told him that the second charge was posted to my debit card without my authorization, and I asked why. He said "Oh, I forgot to mention that if your credit card number is on file, and you have an open invoice, it will automatically be batched out the next day", even though this was in direct contradiction to what he had told me the day before. So, not only was I lied to about the e-mail he was going to send me, I was also lied to about the the invoice being kept open for 10 days.

At this point, I asked that my account be closed and my money refunded. He told me I would have to fill out a form and that he would take care of it. I filled out the form and submitted it. He asked that I hold for a couple of minutes while he took care of it. He then came back on the phone and said that the account has been closed, and the credit card purchases had been voided. He said that since the credit card purchases showed as pending in their system, that voiding them would stop me from being charged, and that no refund would be issued, even though my bank shows that I was charged twice from their company.

At this point, I have no idea whether I will get my money back. I can only wait and hope.

I would advise anyone interested in using this company not to do so, and if you must, make sure you don't give them a credit card, which they believe gives them free reign to charge whatever they feel like charging, whenever they feel like charging it.

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: Everything

Overall A Good Service

I have been with many hosts over the past 4 years or so and have found that there is one host I always live by and that is HostGator, they provide around the clock support 24/7 and always solve any issues I may be having.

You get an amazing amount of bandwidth and disk space for the money you pay which is great value for money.

My only small complaint is that there are quite a few restrictions which do not apply to all users such as not being able to run scripts like top sites.

I think I would suggest HostGator to anyone starting out or even for those who take web building more seriously.

Biggest Pro: Plenty of bandwidth and disk space
Biggest Con: Slightly too many restrictions for some users