Hostgator Review : Almost 1 year review

By web hosting on Sep 28, 2007 in Reviews

Host unlimited blogs, websites for $4.95 only with this web host

Hostgator is our recommended web hosting provider.

This is a hostgator review posted by ufopsi.com on 26 September 2007

Since there is a wave of reviews at the moment, here is mine.

I joined on November 28, 2006 because my second host, Fasthosts Ltd, just got worse and worse. To give you an idea, it took many attempts to download a db backup from phpBB. Plenty of troubles, pages hardly loading, support kind but unhelpful.

So I searched on WHT and firstly I went to live chat for pre sales questions. Staff was very kind, friendly and honest. Transparency, that’s what FH missed. The decision was made within days. DNS updated very quickly (one day or so).

I got my welcome e-mail and I was ready to upload my site. Now, I was new to cPanel, as FH had its own way. Honestly, the icons feel quite oldie and not always ideal, but that’s not HG’s fault.

I didn’t know how to create a new database, transfer and connect via CocoaMySQL/Navicat. I opened a ticked and the staff was very kind (my ISP changed IP faster than pikatchu’s lightning, that was a problem).

Uptime is perfect. Servers are fast. I had noticed 2 short downtimes by chance (few seconds) plus a few download speed issues (solved alone, no idea why).
Other than that, my few tickets regarded just “how tos” or “when” than “server is down”, “feature broken” or “database lost”. I’ve always been kind and support team always been helpful. Maybe replies could come a little faster.

I appreciate how support is given to everybody, how staff understands your issues and especially the fact that HG does not hide problems, even if you are not the customer who gives most money.

About the adverts: Brent has kindly explained his position and I respect it. I think it could have been implemented in a more stylish way, such as a title like “HostGator’s exclusive offers” (not so huge icons for templates + ads, Ping!, etc.).

HG has spent resources aimed at offering customers more: a web mail, affiliates, billing. There could be a page listing all of them (an area in support where you can update your billing details, jump to affiliates, submit tickets).

I wish HG will never spoil everything by overcharging servers with thousands of accounts and all. Because they are my best host ever.