Why HostGator sucks - Review

[cjbay]

I've hosted with a few other hosts before, and I've compared the prices and hostgator has good pricing and I've never had problems with uptime, but if you are late on payment you basically get screwed if you continue to go through them after being late, just a heads up to anyone considering hostgator. I was late on payment the other day, so they suspended my account. You don't pay for the previous month's hosting with them, you pay in advance. So to use my website this month, I would have to pay them in advance, or they shut it off before it gets into this month's hosting. So I made payment, and a few days go by and my website was still turned off. They made at least $120 from my traffic this past weekend (they put up a parked page when they suspend you until you change your DNS). They told me that to turn it back on, they would charge me a late fee of $10. I asked the guy "why would you charge me $10 when I don't owe you anything, I'm paying for this month's service, I'm paying to have it turned back on, not to settle a debt or anything that I already owe?". He said that as long as I use the same email address, I would have to pay the late fee. So if I leave hostgator, then sign up for hostgator hosting again, with a different email address, I would avoid the "late fee". So basically hostgator already made over $120 off me this past weekend, and now they charged me a late fee for choosing to continue to go through them (I have to get my hosting activated again so I can get to all my files and move them to a new host). So just to let you know, hostgator is garbage. I've been hosting with hostmysite.com for about a year now with other websites of mine and although they are a little more expensive and you get less space etc., it's well worth the price because they haven't done anything sheisty like this with me yet.

 

[Tia Wood]

I've been with host gator for years. Never late but if I happen to be late I just let them know and everything is fine.

 

[blossomdomains]

No problem with HG. The Chat Support have been fine too.

And don't let people scare you with the "UN-INDEX" issue,
I never had any issue with the rankings of my sites with HG.
And if there were such issue, don't you think that it would be
the most-discussed thing among webmasters? And HG will be shut down
for sure

.

 

[HostWardJohn]

No problem with HG. The Chat Support have been fine too.

And don't let people scare you with the "UN-INDEX" issue,
I never had any issue with the rankings of my sites with HG.
And if there were such issue, don't you think that it would be
the most-discussed thing among webmasters? And HG will be shut down
for sure

.

Yea, I was in no way saying that HG is not a good host. It just seems like there are more bad stories about them than with any other host.

 

[cpios]

There are so many good as well as bad reviews of them and one doesn't know which are trustworthy.

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

I have been a HostGator customer for years, affiliate member for years, and host over 500 websites on Hostgator. Never a problem, never a complaint. I had a few questions non-hosting related about my websites, and the live help guys at Hostgator walked me through it. They are amazing. I don't know why anyone would say bad things about Hostgator.

 

[mjbenterprises]

Has anyone used Host Gator's sitebuider to create a site?

it seems user friendly, I might go with HG if this tool is any good...

 

[HostMantis]

No problem with HG. The Chat Support have been fine too.

And don't let people scare you with the "UN-INDEX" issue,
I never had any issue with the rankings of my sites with HG.
And if there were such issue, don't you think that it would be
the most-discussed thing among webmasters? And HG will be shut down
for sure

.

I agree. They would have tons of irate clients if they were blocking Googles bots and causing indexing issues.

 

[subjectone]

Host Gator does not support Magento, very bad treatment

1. HostGator changes wait_timeout to 20 on Feb. 1
2. Our Magento store starts failing for customers after checking out from paypal.
3. I spend a few hours trying to install fixes, and finally figure out that our wait_timeout is set to 20 seconds, way too low.
4. I call host gator and ask them to increase the setting, they do not tell me that they recently changed it, even though they sent an internal memo out about this, as we were informed later. THey told me that it can not be changed because we are on a shared hosting environment. But we could move to a VPS or dedicated server, which would raise our cost from about $100 a year to $2400 a year...
5. We call again and then are made aware that the change to the wait_timeout was recently made, and this is the cause of all our problems. They made this change and did not notify their customers.
6. So I have been calling them for 4 days, and then finally at 11:30AM a person says they will change the wait_timeout, and that there is a ticket and it is in line to get done, and it should only take a few hours, and they will let me know when it is done.
7. 12 hours later and no email, no change, so I call, and they basically keep telling me they are working on it. So I ask for a manager. I talk to the manager and he says that no one will be able to do anything till monday, because there are no level 3 techs till monday. And that the guy I spoke to at 11:30AM was mistaken. I asked if there was anyone on call that could make this 1 minute change, and he says he can't do that for me, but he apolpgizes, this call took about an hour. In total I spent probably around 8-10 hours on the phone and now nothing will happen till Monday.

I decided to just try and move our online store to a different company, one that will really support Magento.
SO A WORD OF ADVICE, DO NOT USE HOSTGATOR IF YOU WANT TO USE MAGENTO.
IN FACT I WOULD SAY TO STEER CLEAR OF THEM BASED ON OUR TREATMENT.

This is coming from a programmer of 13 years who has dealt with many Hosting companies.

 

[DU]

SO A WORD OF ADVICE, DO NOT USE HOSTGATOR IF YOU WANT TO USE MAGENTO.
IN FACT I WOULD SAY TO STEER CLEAR OF THEM BASED ON OUR TREATMENT.

Better advice. If you want to run a store and you have real customers and you're afraid of potential impacts to them: PAY FOR THE APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF SERVICE.

MAGENTO says:

Memory_limit no less than 256Mb (preferably 512)

Hostgator Shared MAX is 256 and this is MORE than a lot of shared hosting.

Get a VPS or DEDICATED like they suggest if you want more control - if you don't? stfu and good luck trying find something better that's cheaper. Or you could go to a Magento Hosting company that is recommended on their site.

I personally have no time for people that join forums just to slate a company (especially when it appears that being a cheap a$$ is part of the problem)
+ ...

 

[subjectone]

The fact is...

Default user, you seem pretty angry, maybe you should talk to someone about that. The way your talking it sounds like you work for them.
First off, read THEIR magento page (http://www.hostgator.com/apps/magento-hosting.shtml), they advertise that magento works on their basic plan, in your face.
Second, we don't mind paying more for a VPS or dedicated server, in fact we are doing that now, but definitely not with host gator.

The problem with host gator is the poor customer service, that is why we are leaving them, and don't recommend using them for hosting. Whenever a company gets too big, the customer service goes down the drain. Think of cell phone customer service, that is what you get with host gator.

And by the way the whole problem was their fault, they admitted to that, it caused checkout problems for 5 days for us, and I spent hours on the phone trying to get it resolved, and all we got was sorry but we can't do anything till Monday... Using the shared hosting worked fine for us till they made a change. You can read their email below. ( I removed the host gator employee's name for privacy)

Hello,

I apologize for the issues you have been seeing; this was due to a recent change on our shared/reseller servers that slow down php scripts that our monitoring team would normally disable. Normally, scripts that cause high load are fully disabled until they're corrected by the end user. With this new change, scripts are made to sleep for a small amount of time if their owner has been consuming a large amount of system resources in the past hour. We did disable this change this morning.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best regards,

**********
Level III Linux Systems Administrator
HostGator.com LLC
http://support.hostgator.com

 

[DU]

"HostGator's business plan is recommend for Magento"

It's shared but still not basic. I think someone who joins a forum for the sole purpose of yelling at a hosting company is more angry than me.

You're welcome.

Good luck with your next provider.
I'm sure you opted for a good VPS option.

 

[Kermos]

This review is from 2009. A lot of things changed since then.

 

[tosho]

i have paid them (hostgator) for new account, ... the answer :
"""" There is a problem with your billing account. Please contact [email protected] to get this resolved.""""
I know for sure that i am not in any black-list ot something ...i have never done anithing wrong in my life.
They have made me send them all my prudentials ... all kind of personal information, bank account screenshots and whatnot ... and still - no answer.
People, do not go there. Avoid hostgator... something is really wrong with this company.

---------- Post added at 11:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 PM ----------

i have paid them (hostgator) for new account, ... the answer :
"""" There is a problem with your billing account. Please contact [email protected] to get this resolved.""""
I know for sure that i am not in any black-list ot something ...i have never done anithing wrong in my life.
They have made me send them all my prudentials ... all kind of personal information, bank account screenshots and whatnot ... and still - no answer.
People, do not go there. Avoid hostgator... something is really wrong with this company.

 

[carob]

(what HG said)
I apologize for the issues you have been seeing; this was due to a recent change on our shared/reseller servers that slow down php scripts that our monitoring team would normally disable. Normally, scripts that cause high load are fully disabled until they're corrected by the end user. With this new change, scripts are made to sleep for a small amount of time if their owner has been consuming a large amount of system resources in the past hour. We did disable this change this morning.

That is true, before they might just automatically shut off a whole shared hosting account due to high load and the owner might not notice straightaway, so I can see why they might try doing things differently. Because before the whole account just stayed turned off until the owner contacted them and satisfied them it would not overload the server in future.

Generally found them 90% ok, every once in a while someone in support does not know the full score, but if you try again with someone else in support it is often ok the second time. And you can rate the responses you get.

Sooner or later every host has problems, but consider these as a percentage of their activity. Hostgator could have lots of complaints because they are big, but still have a low percentage of complaints relative to other hosts. I don't know, and I don't work for them and I'm not an affiliate.

 

[tosho]

i am not a criminal and i do not want to be treated like one !
Applying for account in hostgator means to be treated like kriminal by default !
It is not a hosting company anymore ... it is more like a police - station.

 

[PuneetJvw]

I am with hostgator and i always make late payments (very bad habit).

They will send me an emailing me to pay.

Then they email me again after few days and if still i dont pay they will send me a last warning saying if i dont pay by xyz date my account will be suspended.

 

[Artwm]

I've hosted with a few other hosts before, and I've compared the prices and hostgator has good pricing and I've never had problems with uptime, but if you are late on payment you basically get screwed if you continue to go through them after being late, just a heads up to anyone considering hostgator. I was late on payment the other day, so they suspended my account. You don't pay for the previous month's hosting with them, you pay in advance. So to use my website this month, I would have to pay them in advance, or they shut it off before it gets into this month's hosting. So I made payment, and a few days go by and my website was still turned off. They made at least $120 from my traffic this past weekend (they put up a parked page when they suspend you until you change your DNS). They told me that to turn it back on, they would charge me a late fee of $10. I asked the guy "why would you charge me $10 when I don't owe you anything, I'm paying for this month's service, I'm paying to have it turned back on, not to settle a debt or anything that I already owe?". He said that as long as I use the same email address, I would have to pay the late fee. So if I leave hostgator, then sign up for hostgator hosting again, with a different email address, I would avoid the "late fee". So basically hostgator already made over $120 off me this past weekend, and now they charged me a late fee for choosing to continue to go through them (I have to get my hosting activated again so I can get to all my files and move them to a new host). So just to let you know, hostgator is garbage. I've been hosting with hostmysite.com for about a year now with other websites of mine and although they are a little more expensive and you get less space etc., it's well worth the price because they haven't done anything sheisty like this with me yet.

I really don't see this as a problem. Pay on time and you'll be fine.

 

[katdan]

Hostgator is great for beginners, but for experienced webmasters it is a joke.

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

Again, i've never had a problem with hostgator and for those that say the customer service is bad.. What?! I've used live help 20-30 times and my issue is always resolved within minutes with little to no wait time. Just pay your bill on time and you wont have a problem.

 

[Sabre]

I used Hostgator a while back - never again! Their customer service was truly awful - just about capable of fixing the most basic issues in a timely matter - for anything more complex.. forget it!

Service was poor, product was poor, all in all a terrible experience.

 

[-EM-]

What kind of complex issue?
If it is a coding issue (your script/site has errors), you should know, you are buying hosting service not programming service

 

[Sabre]

What kind of complex issue?
If it is a coding issue (your script/site has errors), you should know, you are buying hosting service not programming service

I hire programmers to program. I mean issues more complex than 'you haven't resolved your DNS yet' type issues. So, issues with server load, server outage etc.

 

[Qtip]

I actually like HostGator. I've never paid my bill late so I admit I haven't had my account suspended but I know a lot of hosts will suspend your account for late payment... not just HG.

 

[slipondajimmy]

Never had any serious issues with hostgator. All of my sites are currently hosted with them and indexed with goggle just fine

 

[Domagon]

In my view, Magento is a bit of a scam for small-time stores...

Magento seems to be purposely excessively complicated (thousands of files, and a DB layout that will drive one bonkers) to steer people over to their enterprise software / paying consultants to make adjustments that are a cinch in many other shopping cart programs, which tend to be more suitable for small-time stores (ie. several hundred items and say a few hundred K or so in annual revenue), such as Zen Cart.

And secondly, Magento is extremely resource intensive - great way for shared webhosting companies to push the upsell (not saying Hostgator specifically is, but some hosters presumably are), to VPS which is practically a prerequisite for running Magento reliably.

From my experience, and that of some others I've assisted, Hostgator services are fantastic for what one pays, and works as advertised.

And as for script / cpu limits, Hostgator enforces them, but with seemingly more leeway / advanced support notices than many that will simply cut the service off and/or send a crazy high bill ... Hostgator, at least in my experience, does not do that - they provide excellent services at affordable prices.

Ron