Hostgator has been my favorite host since the beginning of my internet marketing career. I signed up with this company in 2007 and although I didn’t use them exclusively, they always remained my main and most reliable host.
Then came the EIG. Endurance International Group is one of the world’s largest hosting companies and they own many hosts such as: FatCow, Bluehost, iPage, HostMonster. They run a total of sixty two (62) hosting companies. In the end of October 2012 EIG acquired Hostgator for $225 Million. No one knew what to expect from this deal but everyone hoped Hostgator wouldn’t become a bad host. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened. Customers started seeing minor and major down time. Support was often unreachable as well.
Here are a few examples of major issues that are listed on Wikipedia:
– August 2, 2013 Major Network Blackout
A major network issue at the data center in Provo, Utah,[36] affected customers of Bluehost, HostMonster and JustHost, and took down many of the dedicated servers owned by HostGator customers…
– December 31, 2013 Multiple Server Blackout
A multiple server outage at data center in Provo, Utah affected HostGator‘s website, phone services, and customers.
April 16-17, 2014 Networking Blackout
– A networking issue affected some server clusters at the data center in Provo, Utah, affecting VPS, Dedicated and Shared server customers of iPage, Hostgator, Justhost, Hostmonster, and Bluehost…
May 19, 2014 Networking Blackout
– At approximately 1:30 AM PST, a network issue affected connectivity for many customers of EIG-owned hosting providers with servers located in the Provo, UT, datacenter. Service was not fully restored until over eight hours later, at approximately 9:30 AM PST.
Of course there were a bunch of smaller down times in between and you can find that information on most hosting-related forums and many internet marketing websites.
Besides incredibly bad down time the service itself went down the drain. At some point all my websites hosted on HG started loading slowly. I don’t mean it would take 10 seconds instead of 5, it would take up to 2 minutes! I have tried this from different computers, IP addresses and asked friends to access the sites from their homes. In some cases the sites wouldn’t load at all. I wasted a lot of time trying to reach the Hostgator support and finally when I got a hold of someone I was told that my sites aren’t built properly hence the slow loading time. Yeah, right. I haven’t touched ANY of my sites for at least a week and all of the sudden they stop loading.
I moved some smaller sites to SiteRubix since I have an account with them. Everything loaded really fast. Sometimes the sites on Hostgator would load normally, on some days they would take a minute or more, Hostgator always denied it was their fault. They blamed my sites: everything from CSS code, wrong WP installation, images being too big (50 KB images is way tooooo huge for Hostgator).
If you’ve been following my blog you probably know that I only recommend products I use and like using. I have been Hostgator’s affiliate since I started using them and I always proudly displayed their banner on the sidebar of this blog. Well, no more. I took the banner off and I will try to remove other links that recommend Hostgator. Unfortunately after 7 years I have to stop promoting a service which doesn’t live up to their promises and our expectations.
At this point I am searching for a new hosting provider, where I would be able to move all of my sites. I might move everything to SiteRubix because I like them but I’ll keep on looking for a good host. I would make sure to stay away from everything that’s owned by EIG.
In early November I finally moved everything to a new hosting provider. Of course I wrote a blog post about it. Pay attention to the final thoughts in that post as Hostgator tried to screw me over $120 while I was trying to cancel my account. Once again, I am very happy I have finally left this company.
Do you have any suggestions?
Alex
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Hey Alex,
Yeah, I have already been through the Hostgator headache years and years ago. It really is sad how a company that was so solid and dependable sold out to EIG and they just completely changed everything that was perfect.
Excuses are nothing new for Hostgator since the EIG take over. They did it Joast and many other popular webmasters and developers.
My experience with them has been horrible, too. Basically, they kept lying to me and making up excuses. I finally got fed up with them and I migrated my site to a VPS server with InMotion Hosting.
Hostgator did screw me out of 2,900 worth of affiliate sales too shortly after the EIG takeover. I tested a number of them out with friends and Hostgator lied to me and told me that the customer cancelled their account. I cut all ties with them 3 years ago. I have monitored other webmasters that use them and they also report problem after problem.
Something seriously needs to change with Hostgator!
Garen although I am not surprised with the bad experience you had with them (especially when they play the blame game). However, I am surprised to hear they cheated you out of your earned commissions, that is simply horrible!
I think I tried inMotion long time ago but I didn't like something about them (or found a cheaper option?) I really can't remember anymore. How are they treating you so far?
Bro, I hear you about the new Hostgator. Tried to access your site yesterday and couldn't connect. I tried another guy's site from WA and couldn't connect either so I think he was also on HG. I've seen people complain on forums about them but I couldn't really say for sure since I don't host any of my sites there anymore. I have a client using Hostgator and I might try to get them moved.
I host with Bluehost which is under the same EIG umbrella (so this isn't a recommendation at all). I've experienced some downtime but I still think they're a great host as their service seems very optimized for hosting Wordpress sites. My last experience using their chat was very good. The clincher here though is the occasional downtime and them being under EIG. I'm going to stick with them a bit.
Site Rubix is good but unfortunately they don't have cPanel which makes me feel less in control of my sites. If I decide to move from Bluehost, I need to have cPanel or something similar.
Jay, lack of cPanel is the main reason why I don't host all of my sites on SiteRubix as well. I am so used to cPanel - I would never trade it for anything else.
It seems like I have found a few highly recommended hosting provider who charge similar fees as HG and BlueHost, so I might try them out soon.
That's great Alex. Looking forward to your reviews and recommendations after you've tried them.
Finally I moved away from HG :) But even that was a drag...
Hi Alex,
thanks for the warning :) I'm currently also using Hostgator, but so far no problems - but after reading your post I'll be monitoring it more closely.
Hey, there. I sure hope you are hosting on a different server (that doesn't go down all the time) however, I am sure that if you monitor your sites closely you might see issues :(