So I left HostGator. I bet anyone reading this might wonder why would someone who have been with them for more than half a decade just leave? I’ve been with HostGator since 2008 as a dedicated server hosting client. It wasn’t until January 2013 year that I had so much trouble on this server. Prior to 2013, I had very little downtime. I also had very good support where the tickets were answered between 4 minimum to no more than 24 hours. I even had interviewed the previous founder of HostGator, Brent Oxley. I used to be a huge HostGator fan.
I was paying $259 per month. I also paid to have memcache installed on my server. That means even with the fact that memcache was placed in 2012, I’ve spent over $18,000 on hosting. The $3000 spent last year was not good money spent. I had 3 months where someone on HostGator team after the EIG buyout did not properly install memcache. They took my money, put memcache on the server, but NEVER properly configured it!!! They had configured it on the server when it was in Texas, but didn’t do it to the one in Utah. Myself, my business partner, and many of my clients on the server lost traffic AND money. In fact, the total is more than $10,000 in losses from just me.
Just a note for those who are new to Blondish.net – My business is WordPress design and development. I stage my website proofs on my server so clients can see them. I’ve had clients who were understanding and patient. I’ve also had clients who didn’t give any slack at all.
This incident is documented in the HostGator support tickets back in 2013. I had hoped hosting would get better, but after August 2013, I was more than disappointed, I was infuriated.
On top of traffic and profit loss, I’ve been given cookie cutter responses throughout 2013 on 2 particular accounts that were pulling a lot of data issues. One of the sites, HostGator’s technicians were contradicting each other where one said to install a CDN (so I did aside from implementing the PerishablePress master list on blocking bots) and the other tech said that I needed to remove it. And then on top of it, HostGator told me to use WP Super Cache. I’ve been using W3 Total Cache on the server on my site and my other clients on the server, without incident, so I tossed that piece of garbage advice out the door.
Then, my business partner’s ongoing case, HostGator denied applying code to her site about blocking bots, including good ones, and sending them to a 503 error. She lost a LOT of traffic as she had found herself de-indexed! I have it documented in the ticket support that the techs DID indeed place this code, and I have copies and screenshots of this, as well as the damage this has done.
Screenshots to incident (images open in a new window): 1 2 3
Not only did this occur, but at one point (this was documented too in one of the screenshots linked above), but HostGator was presumptuous to lock down all WordPress installs over a brute force attack on 1 site, including the ones that already had Login lockdown or some other security in place that had 1 username and password, inconveniencing all hostees on the server and making me have to share the password. This should have only been applied to the affected account. This was a huge mistake and took a bit to get this fixed which didn’t allow people who aren’t code savy to be able to access their website.
HostGator cost my business partner thousands of dollars because of their mistake that was also linked with the incident in the previous 2 paragraphs. And this is just one of the incidences that had occurred. The ticket sat in the support for 3 days and had not been escalated as it was promised! Another the tickets for support time below.
And now that my business partner had help from a few people to get to the bottom of the real problem, her site took a while to be re-indexed because apparently the server didn’t have enough resources on the server. HostGator did to not want to claim their responsibility in the damage done, despite the fact that one of their technicians had done some things to my business partner’s site without anyone’s permission! Giving credits for hosting wasn’t going to work as this was a damage on a level that they need to give us the temporary resources to solve her problem.
I use to praise HostGator at WordCamps that I presented at… sometimes in front of 200 or more people! I’ve praised them in large groups online. I can’t even do that anymore. They WERE at one point, an excellent web host. I’ve also been shocked to find that on testing my server, its speed is not up to industry standards.
On April 16, 2014, HostGator had yet another network outage. In fact, it was the 6th major Network outage at HostGator since January 2013. I suffered 15 hours of straight downtime, plus 10 hours of uptime that had a lot of hiccups (small bursts of downtime.) I was paying oodles of money for hosting that is continually declining in service…
… so I stopped hosting with HostGator and moved to A2. The move was costly, but A2 Hosting was nice enough to offer me a good move in rate while HostGator just credited me a month with a canned response.
Wake up HostGator! Wake up EIG! You’re losing long time loyal customers that were making you money. Are you telling me you don’t want my business? I’m really upset. I know I’m not the only one.
Hi Nile,
You are right HostGator web hosting is not that much good. They don’t have that much affordable prices. And the main reason that I hate HostGator is the server down which happened few days ago. How can a reputed company’s server go down for such a long time. i-Page web hosting was the only one which was not facing downtown during that session. JustHost, BlueHost were also facing this problem. I was really pissed off when I tried to contact my web host but didn’t get any response for 2 days.
Thanks for reminding me that HosGator is not a good choice.
~Ravi
Yes you are 100% right Ravi Chahar i agreed with you.
I think the pricing is more than affordable. However, if it’s filled with constant downtime, then it’s not worth it.
Hi Nile,
I’ve been with HG quite a while now too and have never experienced the problems that we have had lately. Interesting post. I did not realize all of this was going on.
Thanks for the information. Monna
Shared is different. I still think they have some accounts placed elsewhere that are lucky not to be part of the downtime suffering that a lot of people had to deal with…. lol. I’m glad you haven’t had any problems and hope you don’t.
I have been with Hostgator shared hosting for years with no problems and trusted them to the extent that I have not been looking at any downtime alert emails. I am now going to monitor much more carefully.
I have so many sites hosted with them that include databases the thought of needing to migrate them all to another host is a worry.
I was like that for a long time as a dedicated client as I trusted them. It’s much different hosting with more resources to use then reseller, VPS or shared.
Hostgator had few major hickups in the last 2 years. I have to admit that I have experienced that. Additionally support became pretty bad and replies on tickets are very slow right now. I still keep one dedicated server with them, but I moved my major business to another web hosting company. Overally, I doubt that any top host can match their price and services though.
The issue is that HostGator’s prices now make sense. They don’t allow for more diskspace to be added and don’t allow for a lot of things. And if you pay for them to install things that takes 5 minutes of time… they’ll take your $40 and not even bother to configure what they installed.
The customer support of hostgator is not good, I have used them and now I have switched to another hosting. It’s good to give a review about these companies. Thanks Nile.
I feel the same about the support… mostly about the fact that I’ve had to wait 30 minutes for Live Chat. I’ve had to wait too long.
Hey Nile,
I just started using Hostgator and if I would have any trouble with them I would move. You are right that they are losing money by doing this to loyal customers like you.
Hi Anurag! If you still have problems, I offer hosting as low at $40 per year on my dedicated server. This means you get more resources at your disposal than a shared account, but all the benefits of A2.
Stinks to hear you had to leave after being with them for so long. I was thinking of switching to Hostgator but after reading this post I think Im going to reconsider. Thanks Nile
Thanks for letting us know about this, Nile, and how it came about. It’s pretty serious when your whole livelihood is affected by someone else’s mistake, and when YOU have to clean up the mess. I’m glad you and Kim have found a satisfactory solution, and hope things will go smoothly for you with the new hosting company.
This has been a long time project of mine. I never thought I’d ever run a small time hosting biz, but HostGator made it extremely hard to in the last year.
The move did not do you that much good I suppose. Your site load time is very slow:
http://gtmetrix.com/reports/blondish.net/b22OQK9a
My 2 cents
Towfiq I.
I haven’t begun to even start optimizing my site, so that’s better than I thought it would be.
That is insane Nile! Glad you were able to get it all sorted out. I too left HostGator as I couldn’t wait any longer. I have too many other irons in the fire to have to worry about HG all the time. So off I went! Couldn’t be happier now.
Good luck with the new hosting – I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews about A2!
It’s been years since I’ve had HostGator, but I usually recommended them due to the ease of account set up and price. Now, I’m recommending my current host (RFE Hosting) because HostGator seems to have gotten fairly unreliable.
I moved to A2 as a dedicated server client so I could still run my small time web hosting. I just couldn’t confidently take on new clients until I moved.
Hi Nile,
Such pathetic customer care service certainly going to make more damage to HostGator in coming time unless they learn from their mistake, and improve their services.
Do not trust hostgator. There server is not 99.99% online. When i complained so many times for 500 error page they say it something wrong in coding but there is nothing wrong with it.
Hi Nile
This definitely caught my attention as I’ve been with HostGator for around 10 years.
I have seen more downtime just recently and that’s on shared hosting.
I’ve also had times where my website has been so slow I can barely do anything with it.
Sure, I can expect that sometimes with shared hosting but not as much as I’ve seen recently.
I’ve always been a little nervous of moving hosts just because I don’t know the process but I’m certainly going to start looking around for an alternative I think.
Thanks for the heads up!
I saw another blog post recently about how EIG owns a ton of hosting companies, including PowWeb, the one I am at and growing increasingly frustrated with. PowWeb is the same crappy customer service at times. Used to be quite good many years ago but seems to have gone down hill. I was holding for ‘live’ chat a good twenty minutes recently and there were long intervals between the Support’s ‘live’ responces during our conversation. Also, tickets get answered slowly and by weak English typing foreigners, although telephonically everyone is American.
Like Sue said above, the though of transferring 17 sites elsewhere seems horrific. I can imagine PowWeb somehow screwing that up.
But A2 eh? I should look into them I suppose. Do you have/ get a referral?
Hey Nile, I headed on over here from Kim’s blog. Man, I knew from her post that she was having issues, and therefore he move, but I had no idea it was as bad as you stated.
I sure hope they wake up to themselves. Not only will they lose customers, they’re going to find it a lot harder to get new one.
Unfortunately I have two blogs with them, but on a shared hosting. So far no dramas but I will be keeping an eye on them from now on. Once they come up for renewal I’ll seriously think of moving those blogs over to another host.
Hi Nile. I am sorry you have had problems with HostGator, and I hope you help them get a clue. I haven’t had any problems with them, but I’m just a Baby and don’t do any rehosting. I’ve heard more complaints about them lately and hope they are just experiencing growing pains. I’ve had great service and hope to stay with them.
All the best,
Leslie
Nile,
Yeah, I cut my losses with Hostgator about 2 years ago. Ever since EIG bought them out their service when down the crapper. Downtime is and slow speed is just the half of it! I have been warning people on Twitter and tbwhs.com about their crappy service for years.
Their customer support actually told me “not our problem” 2 years ago which was the straw that broke the camels back. Honestly, I think they just cut and paste their pre made responses now. I believe their support is now all overseas.
Feel free to drop by and share your story about them too on my hosting review site if you would like too. Been getting a lot of upset people sharing their woes about them. One guy on Twitter even wants to sue them!
Garen
SO, Which is best hosting company for wordpress..?
Hi Nile, I’m not sure how long I’ve been with Hostgator because I don’t have access to the email I used when I first started with shared hosting. In July 2008, they told me I needed to upgrade to a dedicated server because my ad tracking site was crashing the shared server so I started paying $174.00/month. In Jan 2011 I had to upgrade again so the cost went up to $219.00/month. If I’ve done the math correctly, I’ve paid a total of $14,199 for a Hostgator dedicated server since the middle of 2008, not including the shared service before that.
Overall, I haven’t had a lot of problems with Hostgator. My server went down a couple of weeks ago for over an entire day but they did credit my account for an entire month. I have a problem with the cost though. I’m looking at other options, including Namecheap. Namecheap looks great but I have all of my domains hosted there so I’m reluctant to give anyone that much control. Leslie Samuel had some great things to say about WPEngine and since all of my sites are WordPress, I’m looking into them as well.
Hi Brian! Do you really need a dedicated server? How many websites are you packing? It’s a possibility you’ve been told wrong as well. I had a hosting company before I moved to HostGator try to tell me that I needed a 2nd dedicated server or VPS…. and it was a load of horse shit… lol.
A lot of people riding on share accounts, especially as WordPress users, have a lot they can try before it really can be said that they need more resources. The problem is that when a host says that someone needs to upgrade to a reseller or VPS, they forget to add that the person isn’t going to get more data resources to perform more processes that they truly need.
Hi Nile, my humble site was also hosted with hostgator up to this date (but I am thinking of migrating to other webhosting company). It was sad to hear that you we’re also affected by that April 2014 outage. I hope hostgator will soon troubleshoot the real problem and regain their good reputation.
Oh boy do I know where you are coming from here! I took out hosting with BlueHost at the beginning of January and from then until the end of March I had received SIX attacks where they had managed to get in and insert malicious code which spread to pretty much every site I had on my account (I can’t afford to host each site on its own account), BlueHost refused to help me solve the problem and eventually I was lucky enough to speak to someone on a forum who recommended iTheme Security which has so far helped keep the attacker(s) at bay.
Then we have had a lot of downtime and I have witnessed BlueHost support DENY there was a problem despite hundreds of people tweeting them saying their sites were down, which one got one reply and that was “we can still access your site, there is no downtime”
I don’t know how they became one of the most popular hosts with terrible service like that. I’m going back to HeartInternet, was with then 10 years and only had two periods of downtime and as soon as anything suspicious happens on my account they lock it down and then contact me and help me sort any problems step by step.
Wow, never thought that bluehost has that terrible service.
Hello Nile,
Just saw the post at Kim, well sorry for all the Hostgator troubles shits happens sometimes
I have seen some bad review about HostGator after it was acquired by EIG. But this is something worse and never expected this from HostGator. But recently they have improved a lot.
I’m having problems with hostgator too, they’ve been best I am thinking of migrating to other webhosting company also.