Our Thoughts on HostGator

HostGator Bio

HostGator opened its doors back in 2002, joining the ranks of the hardy businesses that opened post-internet bubble. Since then they have grown to host more than 400,000 websites across their web servers and continue to provide day and night support for its customers via their 24/7 800 number.

Server Hardware

The web servers at HostGator run on a server grade processor called Xeon. These CPU's are specially designed for heavy workloads and handling many tasks at once. HostGator computer run not one, but two of these processors per server, helping to keep sites nice and speedy, even if you happen to suffer a Digg effect (being listed on the homepage of Digg.com).

Support

Probably the best thing about HostGator is the quick response time at any time of the day. Their 800 number is up and running 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If you need to get help fast, this is the only way to go. For those who would rather communicate online, there are options to email, chat online, fax, or use their online help desk.

For those of you who would like to DIY (do it yourself), HostGator has logged the most frequent questions (e.g. How do I set up my email?) into a knowledgebase that is very easy to navigate. They have also created several helpful flash movie tutorials that will guide you through the basic maintenance tasks of running a website.

Reliability

Besides running solid hardware on their webservers, HostGator goes to the next level by guaranteeing 99.9% uptime for your website. If it drops below this number they will issue a full month of free hosting. It's important to note that the cheapest account at HostGator only has 99.5% uptime guarantee, but all other packages are 99.9%. It's for this reason that we recommend you do not sign up for anything less than a "Baby Gator" hosting package.

Data Center

Those expensive web server processors and support won't do any good if they lose power. Which is why all four of HostGator's data centers are equipped 1.5 MegaWatt or greater generators that will kick in if there are any rolling blackouts or downed power lines. The data centers are also equipped with huge AC units to keep the servers cool and running healthy.

The network that HostGator operates on is fully meshed and redundant, which means your site will always be accessible, even if one of the backbone providers has problems. HostGator used not 1, but 10 different backbone providers to create this redundant network.

Value for your Money

The only downside to HostGator is that they do not provide as much bandwidth and disk space as some of their competitors. Currenly, HostGator providers over 1,000 GB of bandwidth, which is around 10,000,000 page views for a site with an average page size of 100 kilobytes. Some other companies are offering up to 3,500 GB of bandwidth, but it's probably not going to be a problem to you if you can serve 10,000,000 page views versus 30,000,000 page views!

User Reviews of HostGator

40sixty's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Dec. 22nd, 2008

After hearing a lot of good things about host gator the past year or so, and also knowing the owner is really active here, I decided to sign up with them.

I signed up with them on Black Friday, so I got an awesome deal .
Anyways, on to the review. I am on the Baby plan (Unlimited everything ).

Speed:
My webpages (wordpress) loads pretty quick, however I have not transferred any of my 'big' sites yet. Also, I noticed that while I was downloading a 10Megabyte file from my site, the speed never got over 600kilobytes/sec. (My internet is capable of downloading 1.0 megabyte per second).
So, speed is not all that great, but it's definitly far from being slow.

Stability:
Website is up everytime I check 'em. I am currently not using an uptime monitoring program.

Support:
IMO, this is were they shine. I expected them to respond 5-10 hours after a ticket is submitted, but I was r...

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jollymons's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Dec. 17th, 2008

Hola again WHT folks...another review here for one of my many hosts I have used in the past (I am writing a review for each). This time I am talking hostgator.com

I started up with hostgator in early 2007 (feb?) and was with them up until august this year. I had a easy setup and was pleased with the speed I had everything running. At that time I needed to wget a large file (like 14 gigs) from my old dedicated host layeredtech. I requested ssh access and wget which I had enabled in a hour or 2. I moved the large file in a few hours and was very pleased at the backbone speed of that transfer. They have a ticketing system which is very standard in the marketplace today and worked well. I really am partial to whmcs over modernbill recently, a few years ago I would never have said that! And of course Cpanel rocks over plesk (that pest). Anyrate on with the review!

So I had some oddball perms that I could not change which I had to open up a ticket for, ya hate ...

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Charles of 5DPI's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Aug. 18th, 2008

As a web design company, it is important for us to manage the hosting accounts and domains for our clients. My best decision was to sign up with HostGator.

Servicing my clients has been a breeze, and in the the past 10 months I have had 4-5 major technical issues. Each were resolved immediately.

The last issue I had was with a site for a Public Relations company who was handling their own email blasts. As a full service company, we handle all website related issues our selves: The outgoing server was being ruined with their Comcast service. I was with Comcast customer service (via the phone) for roughly 3 hours and I went up through each technical tier till I got to the "Local Managing Network and IP Supervisor"; nothing was resolved.

I requested help from HostGator, simply to prove to Comcast that HostGator was not the problem but Hostgator did one better. I got a friendly email from Richard F., Network Security Admin...

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donbiz's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Aug. 1st, 2008

I'm been with HostGator for about 2 years now and I love their service! Its really easy to get in contact with HostGator staff either by Phone, Live Chat, or Ticket they always resolve whatever issue i'm having in a timely manner. I also like calling HostGator and not talking with someone in India who has no knowledge of what I'm trying to get help with and doesn't even know much about that company, I get that enough when I call Dell lol. Anyways, I just wanted to let everyone know that if you are looking for Shared, Reseller, or Dedicated web hosting then choose HostGator.com .

dave-dave's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Mar. 26th, 2008

I just want to share a review I have with hostgator - on one of their "oversold" hosting plans.
Before anyone asks me for proof that I really host with them:
http://hyperwebnetwork.com/yesihostwithhostgator.html
---------------

Hosting
Hosting has been great. They have cPanel and loads are very good.
Server Load 2.15 (2 cpus)
No problems, everything loads fast and smoothly. I have 34353.53/614400 MB storage with them and no problems. Its all photos for a photo album online (Gallery2) and a backup of cpanel.

Support
I had a couple small issues. No downtime though. 100% for 6 months. The server load got up to about 20-25, but it was resolved within 2 hours. It just happened once though. Support was quick. I have a 5 minute hold when calling, but I called earlier and got connected right away. Emails are responded too really fast - within 2 hours, usually about 30 minutes.

Upti...

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dprundle's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Jan. 24th, 2008

Hostgator.com is a profitable business. I just recently moved a small forum community of mine from bluehost to hostgator because I had been so happy with hostgator in the past and my bluehost was up for renewal.

This forum is a small vbulletin forum with approximately 1,250 unique visitors per day. Today my /forums/ directory was made inaccessible via FTP or HTTP.

The /forums/ directory was shut down because I was violating HostGators policy of sending more than 200 emails per hour. Anyone who run's a vbulletin site knows you have to keep email contact with your users via newsletters, etc. Also, users who use vbulletin realize that many people choose to have email updates when a thread they are subscribed to is updated. 200 emails per hour, ludacris!

So here is a quote from the email I received:
Quote: If your actions were unintentional, the content of your messages are found not to be spam&#...

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MandyJosiFan's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Dec. 3rd, 2007

One month has passed - time for a little review.

Summary: I am still quite satisfied with their Shared Hosting package (Baby Croc).

There are short outages from time to time (one or two per week, sometimes more) but usually not more than a few minutes. Overall availability measured by www.myservermonitor.com was at 99.71% in November.

Last Saturday, there was a longer outage (up, down, up, down, up, down) for about 2.5 hours. I contacted the support (for the first time) and they responded quickly that just in this moment my site was up again (which was true). There was another short outage 1 hour later but no more since then.

From what I was used to with shinjiru.com, I can live with this, though I hope they will not happen more often, but at least I now know that their support replied quickly (though they did not come up with a reason for the outages).

Overall perfom...

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Duskrider's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Nov. 12th, 2007

Hey All, great forum you got here.

Since I lurked for awhile and used this forum to make my decision on a new host, I thought I would return the favor by writing up a review of HostGator.com, my old host. This is something like an 'exit interview' and, while it won't be glowing, it's not really bad at all.

Just for the record, I decided to move to KnownHost and get a VPS, and so far things have gone really well. They've been very prompt with all tickets, moved my accounts without a single hitch, and have just been a pleasure to work with, so Kudos to them.

Since I've moved I don't have a domain name to point to at HostGator, though I can give a url for verification purposes if requested. I'm new so I can't put up the URL.
It's pretty broken, but the static stuff works. Broken because of the move, not through any fault of HostGator's.

So, on to the exit...

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MandyJosiFan's Review - From: www.webhostingtalk.com Nov. 10th, 2007

After terminating my contract with shinjiru.com, I started to look for a new shared hosting service. I first came across BlueHost.com but after finding some (more) negative reviews and having to pay one year in advance, I did not go for them.

Instead I stumbled upon hostgator.com and besides the fact that their BabyCroc offer (600 GB space / 6000 GB bandwidth) smells very much like overselling, I did not find many (almost none) negative reviews. I could pay with PayPal, I found a coupon which left me to pay 0,01$ for the first month and I could pay monthly. Also they had a customer forum where the staff members answer to solve problems, so I decided to give them a try.

To summarize: So far I haven't been disappointed.

I got my access data very quickly and I had all the features in cPanel that I wanted to have. Except for the SSH access. Maybe somebody here can answer, why you have to send over an ID for getting SSH shell acc...

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