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angussf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-11
Tucson, AZ

angussf

Premium Member

[help] Anyone care to share feedback on hostgator?

We need to move to a higher-quality host than the shared hosting we're using now, and I've heard Good Things about hostgator. Anyone care to share their experiences there?
Sentinel
Premium Member
join:2001-02-07
Florida

Sentinel

Premium Member

Well I have been with them for years and years for one of my websites and I have never had a problem t all what so ever.

That said my site is small and personal and receives relatively little traffic. I also use it for a HOA website I administer. Again, no problems with that one either.

I cannot say how they would be for a commercial venture.

TomR_in_MI
Premium Member
join:2002-12-19
SE MI

TomR_in_MI to angussf

Premium Member

to angussf
It was just about four years ago when I first started developing websites. My first web host was Surpass, I prepaid for a year’s worth of hosting. Huge mistake. Lots of downtime and very little intelligence detectable from Surpass support. Before the year was up I had to move my money-generating sites to a more reliable host.

I moved to Hostgator. I have only noticed one period of downtime in the last three and a half years and it was very short. I have twice called Hostgator’s toll free support number. Both times the problem was resolved while I talked to intelligent people.

I have thousands of visitors a day and use about 5 gigs of bandwidth a day, with a spike to over 3 times that activity for a few days, and wondered when I would need to move to something bigger than the baby plan. So last time I called support I asked. They assured me that I was fine and that they would contact me about needing to move to a bigger package when it was necessary.

I am a tough customer and Hostgator has surpassed my expectations.

Tom

Defiance
Computer Elite
Premium Member
join:2002-09-11
Minocqua, WI
Hitron EN2251
Ubiquiti AmpliFi Alien

Defiance to angussf

Premium Member

to angussf
I used to use them but had issues with them. The server I was on was overloaded a lot. They are generally decent but they do have issues. Plus also keep note that nothing is "unlimited" as they advertise. They restrict you to inodes. Which defeats the advertisement of unlimited.

stray
join:2000-01-16
Warren, NJ

stray to angussf

Member

to angussf
I've got a bunch of small PHP based sites all under a single Baby Croc plan. Probably serve up a few thousand pages a day. Been quite reliable, at least for the year I've now been using them. By comparison, I have some client accounts at 1and1, and 1and1's reliability and features are markedly inferior.

You should probably define what you mean by "higher-quality host." What aspects of your current hosting are you looking to improve? What kind of load are you putting on your current shared server? As Defiance82 stated, nothing is unlimited. Be realistic about how much you can load up a shared server and know that your mileage will vary from moment to moment as other customers on the same server do their thing.
hottboiinnc4
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

hottboiinnc4 to angussf

Member

to angussf
stay away from hostpapa.com lots of downtime. no tech support- its all message board based- when THEY feel like replying or dealing with the issue. used them for email too (until i moved to Google Apps) and the email servers were ALWAYS black-listed- by Hotmail/MSN, Yahoo! hit them at one point; etc. They didn't care what their customers did as long as they got their $$$$ then they charged me $35 for a domain that was free that i registered with them. I paid it to keep it and got the hel* away when i could after my year with them. Never looked back

GreenGeeks is a good host though; very friendly and ALWAYS answered the phone when I've called to ask questions when comparing them to others.
MTB
join:2007-06-29
Newport Beach, CA

MTB to angussf

Member

to angussf
I am looking for a host too.

The biggest problem here is that the popular hosts are really good at marketing and may not really provide what you are looking for. The big companies seem to have multiple layers of support billing and whatever that you have to deal with. In my opinion this type of management is not cool for a small business that purchases a service to allow them to do what they do best by freeing up more time.

I also wonder if they are all owned by the same company since they all seem to play the same tune. Literally you will hear the same music on hold with just about every host.

I agree that we need a quality rating of some sort. Obviously dedicated is the best and shared would be the most cost effective but least desirable so yes we need some definition associated with the shared servers. I think this definition should come from the hosts and not defined by the user that is exploring the capitulates or a service. Picking the most popular host is just like saying that McDonalds has the best burger.

So yeah, how do we rate shared servers. I picked justhost over hostgator, but am having problems just getting them to answer a simple file format situation and the fact that the unlimited ftp is really not ftp. Some people suggested pair or rochenhost I think that they are on the right track bu I was hoping for a few more options along this line and really wanted a US based company. Another gentleman posted madgenius.com responded to a post and I will look at that too. Somewhere on this forum there is a smaller company that really does a good job we just have to find them and try since you really do not know how good anybody is untill you have a situation....or not

howardfine
join:2002-08-09
Saint Louis, MO

howardfine to angussf

Member

to angussf
Been with them for seven years hosting multiple clients. I had issues that were my fault back when I started but they were my fault. Tickets answered promptly. Always got someone from support on the phone right away.

After seven years, I can't comment on support now because I've never used them since starting up. Never been called that they were down. So I guess that could be called a good thing. I would not hesitate to use them and, in fact, we are setting up a large client right now with the intention of using HostGator.

ViviTheMage
vivi
Premium Member
join:2002-10-28
Minneapolis, MN

ViviTheMage to angussf

Premium Member

to angussf
I have not read through all of the posts, but as with most of the large companies, it depends which server you get on .

Could be old/full/slow... or fast/empty/new.
MTB
join:2007-06-29
Newport Beach, CA

MTB

Member

How many people do you have on your servers?
How many servers per port?
How fast is the port?
Priority settings?

Unless we get this information we do not know what we are getting on a shared host.

houkouonchi
join:2002-07-22
Ontario, CA

houkouonchi to MTB

Member

to MTB
said by MTB:

I am looking for a host too.

The biggest problem here is that the popular hosts are really good at marketing and may not really provide what you are looking for. The big companies seem to have multiple layers of support billing and whatever that you have to deal with. In my opinion this type of management is not cool for a small business that purchases a service to allow them to do what they do best by freeing up more time.

I work for DreamHost. I think its quite a good company IMHO. There is only one support team that basically handles everything from sales/billing to technical stuff. The only real separation between support (other than the managers/leads and regular support) is there are typically a smaller sub-set of people who handle both regular support and dedicated/VPS support where as some support only handle regular shared support.

If you need a high bandwidth dedicated server DH is a pretty good option right now. I know of nothing cheaper that offers unlimited/unmeetered bandwidth on a 1gbit port (yes the $99 dedicated server is on gigabit).

The only servers at this point that are still on 100m would be the $119 (dual core server grade) one which is at an older data center and those will be gone soon. Honestly the prices we have for dedicated are good even for 100m unmeetered.

howardfine
join:2002-08-09
Saint Louis, MO

howardfine

Member

He's not asking about your company which makes you off topic but, since that's apparently allowed, I know a number of well known developers who despise DreamHost and would never go back.