HostGator Review
HostGator (HostGator.com) has become one of the better known web hosts in the industry by being themselves. Though nothing they do is completely spectacular or unbelievable, they do what they should do. That is, HostGator actually answers their phones, replies to their emails, responds to live chat requests, doesn’t rip you off, and provides quality hosting. It’s actually quite sad that most hosts can’t seem to get these things right, but it’s great for HostGator as they’ve banked on it and it’s translated into success.
At first glance, HostGator is not too impressive. They have a fairly generic web site, a logo with a fairly lame slogan – “we eat up the competition” (the alligator in the logo is eating the “H”) (sorry HostGator), ordinary copy on their text, an apparent lack of updates on their site, a pretty standard ModernBill setup, cPanel, and basically everything an average web host has.
However, that’s the beauty of HostGator. They don’t have too many bells and whistles, marketing ploys, or anything of the sort. What you see is what you get and it’s that simple. HostGator’s terms of service is pretty standard, as is their order process. Marketing isn’t shoved down your throat at every page and billing is simple. The order process takes about 5 minutes and HostGator accepts both credit cards and PayPal (which is always nice), as well as debit cards.
HostGator Support
I found it interesting how HostGator accepts quite a few forms of payments, so I contact them, and be a little, different. I requested a live chat, and it went like this I was George, pretending to be someone whose English wasn’t the best.
Chat Information Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
Chat Information Welcome to HostGator! You are now chatting with ‘Bueford’
Bueford: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
George: Hi Bueford!
George: Hi Bueford!
George: I have a question regarding your order process – the process at which you order.
George: Would you be willing to assist me with answering these questions regarding the ordering process at HostGator.com?
Chat Information Please wait while I transfer the chat to ‘Kafel’.
Chat Information Welcome to HostGator! You are now chatting with ‘Kafel’
George: Hello?
Kafel: sure, go ahead
George: Why was I transferred from Bueford?
George: Never the matter. My question is this.
Kafel: he is tied up with another chat and didn’t want to keep you holding
George: Oh, very well then! tell Bueford I appreciate his kindness.
George: My question is this. I live in another country and I am unable to pay with a credit card or with PayPal, as my country does not support PayPal.
Kafel: I will do
George: Do I have the ability to “DHL 5-7 Day International Express” HostGator.com a check for the amount of the total of my order?
Kafel: One moment please…
George: That is fine. I will wait one moment. You’re welcome.
George: Excuse my English, please. English is not the principal language of the country that I live in.
Kafel: yes, you could send a bank check to us and once we receive it we will apply it to your account
Kafel: You could call me on the phone if you’d like
Kafel: and by the way your English is excellent
George: That is okay, Kafel. I do not have a telephone that calls international numbers.
George: That sounds very good, Kaefel! Thank you very much for your help in assistance with helping and assisting me with your order process at HostGator.com.
George: I will be honored and excited to be hosted by such a company as HostGator.com.
Kafel: Oh ok.. I thought you were calling from within the US
Kafel: Thanks for your kind word. Looking forward to assisting you in the future
George: Have a wonderful day, Kafel! Many wishes to you and your family!
They handled the somewhat different situation quite well and answered the question (which was not a standard process, apparently). It’s nice to see companies that don’t always go by the book and offer to help you, without you having to constantly request their help. I later spoke to Kafel as Douglas and told him who I was and that he did a very good job in handling the situation.
HostGator’s phone support was just as good, and when I asked the three standard questions (Do you support mod_rewrite, mod_security, and are your servers Windows or Linux (Linux)) they were answered promptly. I sent those three questions, along with “Do you support PHP5 and Ruby on Rails?” at 5:44 PM on a Monday, and got a response about 10 minutes later that said:
“We support PHP4.4 We support mod_rewrite Our servers on Linux this on our shared server but if you take dedicated server then we installed php5 and mod_security on your server.”
It wasn’t worded too well, but it did answer most of the questions (Ruby on Rails was completely ignored).
HostGator offers some other services such as web design, merchant services, domain registration, SSL certificates (which at $75 each, are overpriced), and script installation. They outline all of their upgrades quite clearly in the Addons section of the Support Center, which is always nice.
The actual HostGator control panel is cPanel. There is absolutely nothing that I can tell that is different than any other standard installation of cPanel. It has the standard mail and database features. Speed was good. Everything worked fine and installation of the scripts I tried worked just fine.
Pros: Good support, easy to contact, competitive pricing, plenty of features with cPanel, straight forward
Cons: Not too many free addons or extra features, no Web 2.0 technology support
Bottomline: HostGator is a solid hosting company that provides excellent support and competitive pricing without too many frills or marketing ploys.
Rating: 
–Thanks to Douglas Hanna for this review!
December 13th, 2007
I have been with HostGator since 17 January 2007. They have been one of the most reliable web hosting companies I have ever hosted with.
December 26th, 2007
Looking forward to get an host at hostgator.
January 24th, 2008
[...] Hostgator (review) and DreamHost (review) are among two of the most popular shared web hosting companies. [...]
January 30th, 2008
I have not used hostgator but really reading reviews suggests that it is a great host provider. How easy is it to set up and can we buy domains from other providers and then change DNS to hostgator.
January 31st, 2008
[...] HostGator is a top notch host. They provide quality support and have a good reputation as a quality hosting [...]
February 3rd, 2008
Worst support team ever on the planet. Monkeys could assist you better that those idiots. Stay away from them total ripoff.
February 12th, 2008
[...] HostGator (review) is a cPanel shared, reseller, and dedicated host based in Houston [...]
February 18th, 2008
[...] web hosts. If you’re in this difficult position and especially if you are considering HostGator, don’t flip a coin. Check out some host vs host [...]
February 21st, 2008
All I have to say is this: HOSTNINE SUCKS!!!
Really. They did server upgrades one day and wiped out several of my blog’s MySQL database. Without a word of apology, they blamed it on hackers. How bloody convenient!
When I was with HostGator, all I had to tolerate was a bit of downtime. But never technical errors as severe as getting my entire blog wiped out.
HOSTNINE sucks! Heed my warning.
March 4th, 2008
well..I am sure the chat operator is able to monitor these information from you:
1) website you link from;
2) country you are location;
3) browser’s version;
4) history chat;
:)
March 10th, 2008
HostGator is good for php, and seems to have reasonable support. I wouldn’t recommend them for Ruby on Rails, however, as they only support fcgi (meaning you have to use cgi, which means you app restarts with each request which makes it pretty slow).
Other than that all right.
March 14th, 2008
Hostgator Sales sucks !! Looking to become a customer, I called in after being optimistic even after reading a lot of negative reviews on Hostgator. The guy on line was chatting with someone else on his computer and did not care 2 hoots about me wanting to be their customer !! He even said you can hang up and did not care that I was a potential new customer. The guys name was harold.
So I did hang up.
Hostgator – NEVER again.
14 Mar 2008
March 19th, 2008
horrible, terrible, stupid, worst in response, cannot host site without changing NS, so if you want to host site with Just MX or A record, they are not a choice for you. they are horrible. and no good. support didnt respond back for 5 days [on 5 days we had to remind them to send email].
very bad host, dont even think to host here.
if any one wants reference i can give you.
April 9th, 2008
I’ve been with them for the past 3 years, and I’ve never had any problems. I’ve contacted support twice, and each time they came back promptly. They’re cheap, and they upgrade your existing account with the new goodies they offer (more bandwith, storage space, RoR, ssh access…)
You can complain all you want about not being able to do certain things (and believe me, they allow a lot more than most other hosts), but you got to keep in mind they only charge 5$ a month for an enormous amount of bandwith, storage and features.
If your site’s too big for hostgator, then you’re certainly better off on dedicated (virtual or metal), or with a scaling app host (google’s app engine or amazon’s ec2/s3 for example.)
To reiterate: dirt-cheap, rock-solid, feature-rich.
April 16th, 2008
After reading this review of HostGator, I might go ahead and sign up. I hate the host I’m currently with, which is Globat. They really suck but I won’t get into the details. For the past few days I’ve been desperately looking for a new host, I’ll try this one out because I’ve heard more positive comments than negative.
April 19th, 2008
i’m looking for a hosting provider that can give big hosting size in server and bandwith. but what rikin said is make me worried, we cannot change NS? because some of my domains are registered on another domain provider. does any one have detailed features for hostgator, espescially for domain management. thanks
April 20th, 2008
I just joined them last month. Still no problem until now. I never need to contact support yet. Their features is so so, you get what you paid. Cpanel version still 10, so i recommend NOT to use it’s Fantastico for instant installation. My current concern is the same as you guys, we cannot change NS.
April 20th, 2008
Rikin, Mario, and RS,
I asked about changing “A” records last year on the HostGator Forums and was told that you can create an “A” record pointing to your account IP, assuming of course, that you control your own DNS. I have never tried doing this on HostGator but cannot imagine why they would not allow it.
RS, I just checked with someone who has a HostGator Reseller account and the cPanel version is 11.18.3.
April 28th, 2008
Hostgator Service is lousy. I applied for hosting and paid by credit card. After four days I was still not hosted and I asked a refund. It will now take them a week or more to refund me although they recieved the money immediately. They can do with better staff that can do the job.
May 6th, 2008
[...] HostGator has been one of the few hosts to receive a perfect rating of 5/5 stars in our review of their shared hosting service [...]
June 19th, 2008
Hi,
I am hosted on hostgator with domain name vid3xx.com. The service of hostgator is prefect with 100% uptime. Previously I was hosted on yfchost.com; its a free host. The host was ok but there was a downtime like 5 to 10 hours in 30 days and sometimes it affected me very badly. I am with hostgator and I am happy with them. Hostgator has 100% support and uptime.
August 27th, 2008
I’ve been with Hostgator for about 5 years total – I’ve had an overall great experience.
I’ve been hosted on the same server for the last 4 years, have possibly had 5 trouble tickets due to server/network problems over that time and support is generally at least adequate (usually good to great), but it’s evened out substantially since they’ve updated their ticket system.
I don’t assume that Hosgator will work for everybody, but I’ve been running 15+ websites using a reseller account for years without any major problems, and support tickets usually get responded to within a couple of hours, if not sooner.
Well worth the money, in my opinion.
September 10th, 2008
I am using hostgator now.. I want to say i don’t have any problem until now and it is 100% uptime
September 11th, 2008
There is not date for this thread, not date for answers. When a page reviews a service, the date is absolutely required. Maybe the thread is 10 years old and the service has changed to be better or worst…
September 11th, 2008
a reviewer,
I checked and this review was written circa January 2006. I think it’s important to have the date appear too so I added the comment date code. When we uploaded all reviews and content from static pages to the new CMS, we didn’t input the original dates because of the time it would have taken. That said, I think you can get a general sense of when the review was written by the reviewer’s question to HostGator Support: “Do you support PHP5 and Ruby on Rails?”
September 29th, 2008
I have been using hostgator for 3 months now and have not recieved any complaints with their services. The support team has been good helping me out whenever I had a problem. Although I never used the phone to contact, the sales and support executive on the chat through internet were replying my queries. And I quite like their ticketing system. Its great
October 5th, 2008
I’m using Hostgator for a month now and found their services absolutely amazing. Not in terms of extra features (they don’t give free advertisement credits too) but in terms of support (support is really great), service, speed, all the basic things you want from a hosting company.
October 6th, 2008
I’ve been with hostgator for about 5 months now and they are pretty great actually. There are a few times where the live chat wasn’t so fast, but at the same time they did manage to answer my questions.
There are some issues I may have had which was resolved immediately. I’ve never had any serious issues..
I’m not really worried about losing my sites because they are all backed up regularly -.-” Which should be the first instinct of anyone who runs a busy website.
October 21st, 2008
A few days ago I contacted Hostgator support for a general enquiry.
I received a support’s email reply within 10 minutes. My enquiry proceeded into a communication involving several emails. All of these support emails came within 1 hour.
That was amazing, and better than the usually very good support response I’ve had with them in the 2 years using them. I find it pretty funny that a few people have 1 bad experience with 1 support member and then whine and rant that the whole organization is flawed.
I’ll bet that these ‘complainers’ are probably at fault in not communicating their problem decently with ‘support’ and this is probably due to a typical poor communication they have contacting any other support too.
October 31st, 2008
I love hostgator!!
November 1st, 2008
I like hostgator! :)
November 12th, 2008
I’m a complainer, but only of late and, trust me, I communicate the problems I’m having in a clear, concise way.
The problem comes with the tech acting like they know what they’re doing and then proving they don’t by taking the customer around & around in circles until they either get dizzy and leave or get mad and blow up.
I use to love everything about HostGator and I still love their product. Unfortunately their tech support has become so hit and miss that I dread having to enter the system anymore.
November 19th, 2008
I had horrible luck with their affiliate program. We weren’t credited with a single referral because of their ‘last cookie’ policy. We sent several clients to them via their affil program and all the clients promptly signed up and sent us back ftp info so we could begin transferring their sites.
Not one credited sale. Stay away from this affiliate program… we sure will be.
November 26th, 2008
wow
now i will try hostgator
December 1st, 2008
I have been with HostGator for 4 hours and I have been blessed to have. They are by hare the most amazing companies out there. They now have Ruby on Rails support! :D Also, their new cPanel is amazing and gives you some well need features and data right there on the main page you can’t get with other hosts! I would recommend HostGator to anybody. Although their Dedicated servers are over priced, their shared hosting accounts are fast and they are setup within 20 minutes! They are dirt cheap too! If they only had Virtual Private Servers (VPS)….
December 31st, 2008
i have been with HostGator for 2 hours and i have had 100% uptime. I have had no problems for 2 hours and I would highly recommend to anyone to use them, as i have had no problems nor my customers for 2 hours. i have no customers but if i did they too would have no problems for the last 2 hours.
use them. do it now. i love you hostgator.
February 13th, 2009
So far, so good.
My only concern is the low prices. Can they add enough bandwidth and servers fast enough to keep up with the demand?
Unlimited space and bandwidth for less than $10. Seems too good to be true.
March 2nd, 2009
I have had many technical issues that support techs could not fix. I have been disconnected too many times to count and the only time I have ever been satisfied is when I threatened to cancel my account. I would strongly urge people to not use this hosting site!
March 4th, 2009
I have a dedicated server with Host Gator for about 2 weeks now. No problems whatsoever, speed is good, their support seems good so far and the price is fair.
I would recommend them.
March 28th, 2009
Hi Douglas!
Do you use mod_rewrite and .htaccess to cloak your affiliate links?
I am having a hard time figuring out how to hide my affiliate links and I would like to know how you did it?
Can you point me to a “How-To” or a tutorial or anything you used to make yours work?
Thanks!
Billie G.
March 28th, 2009
Hi Billie, I am trying to get a handle on this too and here is what I have found so far that has been helpful:
http://www.reaper-x.com/2007/09/08/hiding-affiliate-links-using-htaccess/
April 21st, 2009
I really love HostGator but their price is a little high for me. Now i am using Godaddy.
April 24th, 2009
I had no problems with HostGator until recently. I had a dedicated elite server for my sites and they offered me a deal for more bandwidth. They gave me an extra TB of bandwidth for $100/mo. My total was $379/mo.
Recently, my sites have grown and HostGator tells me they can’t honor their deal anymore as their bandwidth bill has gone up. Not only did they take the extra bandwidth away, they charged me $0.50/GB over 2.5 TB! I was under the planned 3.5 TB THEY AGREED UPON and they took back the deal. Keep in mind, I’ve had that deal for over a year.
They ended up stealing $250 from me. I cancelled immediately and found a host that won’t screw me over. Don’t trust these guys, they steal from loyal customers. I was with them for a couple years and they pulled this crap? TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE!
April 28th, 2009
I’m with Verio right now, and they have not been able to resolve my emails getting blocked by sbcglobal and simpatico.ca after two weeks of complaining. I had the same issue with AOL last year and after a week of messages to tech support, the problem finally got resolved, but not this time. There must be 1000s of hosting companies now and I finally narrowed it down to 5 candidates. Hostgator seems too good to be true with “unlimited” bandwith.
So how has your email experience been using Hostgator’s SMTP server. Do your emails get through?
April 28th, 2009
Bob, we have a HostGator account where I work and I don’t recall ever having any problems with email delivery, although we don’t use that feature intensely. I have had experienced email deliver problems with other accounts. My problems are usually due to the host or even the ISP blacklisting an IP address due to someone on the server/network spamming.
April 28th, 2009
I think Hostgator does something different with their outgoing mail server to make it more reliable (better deliverability), but I can’t remember what it is that I read. Something like they switch up the IPs or something — I can’t remember.
I don’t send a lot of emails, but on one of my sites (using Hostgator), I probably send out 300+ emails/week — hotmail.com, live.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, and even a few AOLs — I’ve only had one issue in the last few years, and it appears as though it was a temporary fluke. I don’t think I have any @rr.com or @sbcglobal.net that I regularly send to right now, though.
Hostgator’s great, but I’ve been on the same server for years… I have a reseller account, so I can’t vouch for the individual packages… but it’s a good company, overall. Use one of their coupons & get the first month for a penny, or some other coupon — they’re out there, or maybe at the top of the page.
I think that throwing the ‘unlimited’ badge on their package really cheapens what they’re offering, and makes it look suspect — If I hadn’t used them before, and I read ‘unlimited’ on the package, I would be skeptical, too.
April 29th, 2009
I’ve never seen so many technically misguided responses anywhere. To everyone, HostGator is great. I’ve been with them for a year and a half. You can’t go wrong. Plain and simple.
May 6th, 2009
I am a web developer and have several sites hosted with HostGator. Host Gator does a great job.
The server response time and uptime is great. I like pingdom for an uptime monitor, this service lets me know when the site is having problems before my clients do. Enough about pingdom and back to HostGator.
I build my sites in Joomla and hostgator does a good job with this. Here is a review of joomla and hostgator.http://www.joomlahostingreviews.com/joomla-hosting/host-gator-review.html
Hope this helps!
May 24th, 2009
We’ve been with them for over 2years now. Haven’t had any serious problems with them. On occasions, we would get an email from them without any content in the email. But other than that, its been good.
June 9th, 2009
Yup! Hostgator is very good. I tried various hosting companies, and I think HostGator is very good!
June 20th, 2009
Looking forward to trying it out!
June 24th, 2009
1. servers are horrible.
2. support is even more horrible.
3. they made a mistake and they apologized about it after i demanded apology 5 times.
4. Support persons just ignore every message of clients and respond standard copy paste messages.
Just horrible no other word for it
Nik
July 1st, 2009
Nik, can you give us more details, especially as regards your remarks about the servers? What specifically makes them “horrible?”
July 9th, 2009
The reviews are positive enough for me to investgate further. Thank you all.
But Nik, you must be kidding. You demanded an apology over a hosting mistake, It must have been very serious. Otherwise thats very soft of you sir.
July 13th, 2009
i have not subscribed to HostGators hosting yet. However, i have tried using their online chat support. The customer service name Courtney Jo has been extremely professional and helpful in assisting me and answering my questions. i will go ahead to use their services.
September 3rd, 2009
After 4 years of misery with Hostica, I turned to Hostgator out of desperation. Assuming that Hostica was reflective of low-cost hosts in general, I would have been satisfied with even minimal improvements. Well, Hostgator turned my low expectations on end. These folks are pros who treat even the smallest account holder responsibly and respectfully. The techs, in particular, are bright, polite, and supportive. I’ve just begun my 4th year with Hostgator. They’re a five-star team all the way.
September 12th, 2009
I don’t like Hostgator. I have bad experience with
October 5th, 2009
I’ve been looking into various hosting packages on the net for the past few days. I am currently with HostPapa and find their service less than adequate in terms of up-time. The problem with finding reviews about hosting services is that they tend to be biased because they earn affiliate revenues from the hosting services they are reviewing.
October 5th, 2009
That is indeed the trouble and the reason we only allow independant reviewers who don’t gain from affiliate revenue. Hope you find the host that’s best for you.
http://www.clickfire.com/how-web-host-reviews-work-at-clickfire/
October 19th, 2009
My experience with Hostgator was through a company i worked for who hosted with them, and it has been rather good. That doesn’t mean their service never had glitches, but they did get them resolved. We were on semi-dedicated servers at the time, and the high prestige site with over 5,000 a day, was very responsive.
October 22nd, 2009
I have been with HostGator for over two years now – have never seen my site down, have received quick, friendly, helpful, and non-patronizing assistance for even the most noobish of questions. Love CPanel, appreciate the timely reminders to renew service, and have no complaints.
November 16th, 2009
I signed up with Host Gator because of the cost being so low. Ends up you get what you pay for. Their biggest problem is having emails marked as spam that are sent out due to the ridiculous amounts of spam that gets sent from their servers. On multiple occasions I’ve searched their IP’s for blacklist records and to no surprise there they were.
Incompetent customer support, billing system out of whack, constant issues….do yourself a favor and don’t sign up.
December 7th, 2009
Using the hosting services of Hostgator for more than 2 years, and extremely satisfied with their uptime and support response when ever face some technical problem.
In fast recommend it to other to for better better hosting service offered
December 14th, 2009
Hostgator.com is one of the worst website hosting services that I’ve run into. Problems abound and one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. You talk to one person who promises that you can do this and the the other person pulls you account and says you can’t—the bad thing is the don’t tell you that you have an issue–you have to wait for you customers to call and say “we really want to place that order–built we can’t get to your website” no explanations no excuses just the loss of thousands in sales right before Christmas. Thanks John —www.501c3technologies.com
December 14th, 2009
John, what was the problem that you experienced with HostGator? Mind sharing?
January 25th, 2010
The best hosting provider that I tried, Hostgator is an oversell of hostings with quality service, which is uncommon in such firms.
HostGator Something remarkable is that, even though they oversell their servers, I can-at least in my case, as compared with any normal hosting.
Low price, good perfomance and excellent technical support.
January 27th, 2010
I’ve been having trouble with Hostgator’s SMTP Server, does anyone know if it’s blacklisted?
March 9th, 2010
thanks for the review and for all the people who have entered their experiences… will try out in a few days
hope everything goes well.
March 10th, 2010
I suggests people don’t host at hostgator, this is a fraud.
i have experienced where i have duplicated paypal subscription for amount of $277 and i asked them to refund back my money, but they wont do that, they insist to keep it to pay for following months.
their stupid excuses was because of how paypal handles it and can’t be refund back, what stupid excuse they are. you can just refund back thru paypal.
so keep away from this hosting. they claim to be cheap, but there are lot more cheap hosting on outside with better quality.
April 2nd, 2010
I was just wondering. Doesn’t it bother some people that they limit you on the amount of files you can upload? I think it was 500,000 files, and when you reached 100,000 they no longer back it up. I reached a little over 10% in the first week, just by installing a few Fantastico scripts, does it bother anyone else besides me that once you reach your file limit, you can no longer upload anymore?
I know everyone starts small, but sooner or later they grow, and this is somewhat worrisome to me as I get closer to the maximum.
April 11th, 2010
While customer service may be good and willing to take your money, wait for your site to start getting hacked and then be wiped off completely.
My site has been hacked 4 times in 1 month and each time they tried to put a blame on me. I spent hundreds of $$ to update and secure everything.
2 weeks later my site is totally gone, data base cpanel, admin everything.
The most ridiculous responses fro the live chat which make no sense at all and yet no one there seems to know what went wrong.
Consulted with a number of designers and coders and all agreed that hostgator server is far from being secure. In the mean time i am losing customers, reputation, money while whoever tried to sort out what is going on
April 19th, 2010
Can’t cancel the service. The only way to stop them from charging you is to block them from your card
April 25th, 2010
@Aaron i think the 250,000 inodes limit is just recommended, it is an unlimited plan!
And as for the backup, i believe you should always take a weekly backup of your own files anyway! :)
May 4th, 2010
I spent hours researching hosting companies and didn’t feel any clearer than when I started. I ultimately decided on Hostgator because I like that you could have unlimited domains and most reviews said they had good service. I did a live chat with them and a phone call within minutes of signing up, and boy were those reviewers right… excellent, speedy service. It’s nice to know there is someone available to speak with you via live chat at any instance. Glad I went with Hostgator.
May 5th, 2010
I use hostgator form my carpet cleaning websites. It’s awesome. There was a hiccup for about 30 minutes, but I called the support and they kept me on the phone until it was resolved. I am very impressed.
The 250,000 inode limit means that if you go over that limit they don’t do the courtesy backup every Sunday, but you can still do a manual backup yourself.
June 2nd, 2010
I’ll be purchasing a hostgator account within the next month. Before anyone actually purchases their hosting with hostgator I would highly recommend looking online for a coupon code. I found this one earlier to day “dinosaur775″ it’s supposed to save you $9.94!
Good Luck
June 8th, 2010
I like the way hostgator operators handle people, they are patient. “Big up” to you guys
June 13th, 2010
I have had excellent experience so far with hostgator.
Whenever I was in trouble, they were understanding and fast.
June 20th, 2010
I had an issue for two months (that I know of) with Comodo SSL certificates which Hostgator installed. The issue pertained to incorrect warning/error messages which were being generated by visitors browser.
Hostgator Support gave me generic responses and did not investigate the problem adequately. It took a series of tickets and a supporting email from Comodo to convince Hostgator support that there was a problem, as they were constantly denying there was a problem with their installation of the Comodo certificates. Finally they reinstalled the Comodo SSL certificates and the problem disappeared.
I asked Hostgator support if they were going to compensate me for the two lost months which were paid for. They are now refusing, blaming Comodo for the problem instead of their own botched up installation. I didn’t even ask Hostgator for the extra $2 per month for static ip required for SSLs wich was lost.
June 20th, 2010
In the interest of fairness I am updating my last post. Hostgator has finally come to the party by revoking the old certificate and installing a new one so that I benefit from the full twelve month subscription. A simple credit for the two lost months would have sufficed.
This was never solely an issue about economic loss, as minor as it may have been in relation to the two lost months of certificate, or as major it may have been regarding lost visitors and potential sales. Rather,this was a matter of principle.
Whilst mistakes do happen, if if I hadn’t had reason to form the view that my request for support wasn’t being treated seriously, I would have been of a different attitude. Anyway, kudos to Hostgator for doing the right thing in the end.
July 2nd, 2010
I used to work at Hostgator. The problem is the employees are so overworked they don’t have enough time to care. You are expected to have 3-4 chats going at once as well as taking a phone call at the same time and NO ONE can do it so you hang up on people, keep people waiting, etc. Now the service itself is good so as long as you never need to call or chat it’s fine. The email support is good. I use them myself for 5 websites and have been happy with the service but if I ever need to call or chat I will be dreading it.
I used to work at Hostgator. The problem is the employees are so overworked they don’t have enough time to care. You are expected to have 3-4 chats going at once as well as taking a phone call at the same time and NO ONE can do it so you hang up on people, keep people waiting, etc. Now the service itself is good so as long as you never need to call or chat it’s fine. The email support is good. I use them myself for 5 websites and have been happy with the service but if I ever need to call or chat I will be dreading it.
July 2nd, 2010
hostgator kind of bad lately.
i’ve been with them for 5 years no problems, but in the past 6 months my site was shut down 3 times- for days, and without informing me. All 3 times found accidentally. I have a research consulting business and i don’t hack html daily – only occasionally do i log in, and i get maybe 1 customer every 2 weeks, but getting customers is entirely dependent on links to the site. Lost a bunch of potential clients who could not open the site or could not reach me suddenly..
Customer service each time tried to blame me, and most annoyingly, every back and forth email went to a different rep who, maddeningly, expressed the dame lame guesses as what i could have done wrong. Which was beside the point anyway – one of the times my domain name had expired without any warning, the other time was a billing error, and the other time was my fault (credit card info invalid). regardless: one would think that when the site goes down one should get an email saying so. Apparently not. not worth the hassle i was told in essence (discarding all the convoluted language).
is that normal?
July 3rd, 2010
I’ve been with HostGator for about 3 months now and no problems so far. Hope it continues that way.
July 10th, 2010
I have godaddy and would like to change cause their control panel is very confusing. I like the cpanel, it is very visual making it a lot easier to use. Great review.
July 10th, 2010
hostgator kind of bad lately. i’ve been with them for 5 years no problems, but in the past 6 months my site was shut down 3 times- for days, and without informing me. All 3 times found accidentally. I have a research consulting business and i don’t hack html daily – only occasionally do i log in, and i get maybe 1 customer every 2 weeks, but getting customers is entirely dependent on links to the site. Lost a bunch of potential clients who could not open the site or could not reach me suddenly.. Customer service each time tried to blame me, and most annoyingly, every back and forth email went to a different rep who, maddeningly, expressed the dame lame guesses as what i could have done wrong. Which was beside the point anyway – one of the times my domain name had expired without any warning, the other time was a billing error, and the other time was my fault (credit card info invalid). regardless: one would think that when the site goes down one should get an email saying so. Apparently not. not worth the hassle i was told in essence (discarding all the convoluted language). is that normal?
July 10th, 2010
I’ve had shared hosts take my sites down themselves and not notify me. I feel sure notification is not in the terms of service and I doubt that many cheap web hosting companies would have the wherewithal to send one, but it sure would be nice.
July 20th, 2010
I’ve been with HostGator for over 3 years.. And yeah they like every other hosting site have had burps, and various ghosts in the machine on “Rare” occasions.
But the service, and performance is way beyond what I expected after having been subjected to Yahoo hosting.
I highly recommend them to everyone that asks.
As for the affiliate program, I too have been disappointed that friends who sign up under my affiliate account get hosted but I never saw diddly in terms of commission.
Other than that, you can’t find better hosting for less.
July 21st, 2010
i am using iXhosting but recently hosted my new domain on HostGator and found is very good .
August 19th, 2010
Maybe I’m missing the point, but I thought this site went out of its way to ensure unbiased reviews. If that’s the case, why is this review written and performed by the HostGator Customer Service Manager, Douglas Hanna?
August 19th, 2010
Halt, I was waiting for someone to ask that question. The review was written by Douglas before he went to work for HostGator. It’s listed in his bio but I’m glad you asked so I can clarify it here. From the bio here: http://www.clickfire.com/author/douglas/
Thanks for noticing and speaking up.
August 19th, 2010
Thanks for clearing it up Emory! Also, thanks for such a helpful site that provides good guidance on a very fuzzy topic!
August 19th, 2010
You’re welcome, Halt and I agree, the topic is a “fuzzy” one.
August 20th, 2010
They may be a good host, but their support is rubbish.
I try to report a site which violates many copyrights and they keep phishing me for more details on it, even though i have provided all the details and evidence including permission and autograph from the creators of the original content, they still hold me up on this ( been a week ).
Secondly a couple of months ago a site their abused me e-mail adress to spam people ( it was a normal forum, so how could i ever know they’d use my e-mail to spam all kinds of people )
After sending atleast 20 copies including e-mail headers notifying that the e-mail clearly came from that site, even then they still complained about needing more “proof”.
I contacted Yahoo after that response and they took care of the fact an e-mail using the yahoo domain was used for spamming, they didn’t even took action at the first response of that……
All by all, Hostgator may keep it’s servers up and running but legal notices it’s worse than a swedish hosting the police couldn’t even care about.
August 22nd, 2010
i think i must take an account here, what you guys think?