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!
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.
HostGator provides excellent web hosting, sensibly priced. But why take my word for it? Head over to my website and pick up a coupon code to give you one month of hosting on their Baby Croc account for 1 cent, or use the coupon to get $9.94 off any other plan. Absolutely no strings attached!
Looking forward to get an host at hostgator.
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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.
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Worst support team ever on the planet. Monkeys could assist you better that those idiots. Stay away from them total ripoff.
Nick = Shill
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+shill
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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.
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;
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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