There are three kinds of hosting companies – small, big & huge. Small companies host hundreds of domains. Big companies host thousands of domains and huge companies host over lakhs of domains. HostGator fails in third type, it hosts more than18lakh domains! I had heard a lot about Hostgator so decided to try it.
Aspects I would cover…
- Company Bio
- Pre-sales Questions
- Sign-Up & Migration Experience
- Review of Service & Support
- Pricing
- Conclusion & Rating
Company Bio
HostGator is a provider of shared, dedicated and reseller web hosting services focused on the consumer and small business markets.It was established in 2003 by Brent Oxley, since then its growing leaps and bounds. The company uses ThePlanet Datacenter for hosting its servers, which is one of the reputed DC in US.
Pre-sales Questions
Before going to sign-up for any hosting service, I always ask questions. The main objective of pre-sales question is to ensure that the particular service suits me and to check the response time. I opened a sales ticket which contained 10 questions asking various things. i received answer to all my questions in about 15-20mins. Then i sent a few more question this time acting dumb, so to test their patience and how much do they care about their customers. I received answers to all my doubts in grammatically correct English. even after they, the customer rep asked if i had any more doubts i could use live chat option to get instant help. Happy with responses of sales staff , So i decided to sign-up.
Sign-Up & Migration Experience
Sign-Up process is just like any other host. Entered few details and paid via paypal. instantly got E-mail from Hostgator giving Account details. To my surprise the Server IP, Username & passwords field very empty!. This time for help, I went to live chat. explained my problem and got missing details within 5 minutes. One more problem I faced was whatever content i upload on site didn’t show up on domain which was ordered along with hosting. I went to live-chat for help, it turn out my domain wasn’t even registered! operator said it would take 12-24hrs as domains are registered manually after fraud check. this wasn’t told to be before and i wasn’t happy. Then, i sent a ticket for data migration from old server and went to sleep.
Review of Service & Support
This is where HostGator scores most, its customer service is just awesome. After my domain was registered and site was live, I opened lots of support tickets at different time slots over a period of 30 days. the average response time was about 20minutes which is the best I have experienced so far. the service which I was on was Intel Xeon 2.2ghz with 4GB ram, the average load on server was less than 1% at all times. for testing, i moved a existing forum so i could test how they handle heavy traffic sites. just after two hours i got a mail from HG saying my site is taking lot of resources and i should move it to dedicated. to my surprise they didn’t suspend the site completely. Good, as most shared host would simply suspend your site or maybe your whole account. One more thing is that, if you aren’t happy with support response you can email owner of company, Brent. He would make sure you get all the V.I.P treatment. I even tested their money back guarantee by asking for refund, they quickly refunded my money within two days.
Pricing
Their Baby plan which has Unlimited Diskspace and Bandwidth costsunder $10 per month. Further Discounts can availed if you pay in advance. however the discount coupon can only be applied on first order and without discount the prices seem to be little on a higher side, I guess this awesome support costs
Hatchling Plan
* $8.95 (monthly)
* $83.40 (12 months @ $6.95)
* $142.80 (24 months @ $5.95)
* $178.20 (36 months @ $4.95)
Baby Plan
* $9.95 (monthly)
* $214.80 (24 months @ $8.95)
* $282.20 (36 months @ $7.95)
The best thing about their pricing is, the have coupons which enable you to get hosting at $0.01(1 cent) for first month,so that you can try them risk free.
Conclusion & Ratings
HostGator is one of the best company to host your site. however hostgator is more suited to small business and people with multiple websites, as it tuns out to be cheap. however if you have a single website i won’t advice you to go far HG as its little costly.
Pros: fast Support,24/7 Live chat
Cons: Big company so you won’t get customized solution you could get at small companies
Ratings
* Pre-sales Questions: 5/5
* Sign-Up & Migration Experience: 3/5
* Review of Service & support: 5/5
* Pricing: 4/5
* Overall: 4.5/5
Tip: Try Hostgator’s baby plan risk free for 1cent for first month with coupon “BloggerToWP”
Link: HostGator-Sign Up
[Editor Note: This post is by guest blogger Gaurish Sharma. He blogs at Gaurish Sharma Live about technology.
If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]
4 Comments
Great review Gaurish. I like the way you have given the review for host gator hosting.
Ya Hostgator is best host for bloggers… but domain name reg Price 🙁
Thanks for Appreciation.
Next time I would try do better than this
Honestly Gaurish, Writing a review post along with pros and cons is great work according to me.
With such articles you can do great in affiliate marketing.