HostGator

Often, when a web designer or web developer needs a new web host, they will begin searching the web for web hosting reviews. Too often, the "review" sites are thinly veiled affiliate marketing sites.

How do you know if the review site you're looking at is legitimate? I may not have the perfect answer for you, but I have one item that is a dead giveaway for me.

If the "review" is newer than 2012 and has anything positive to say about any EIG brand host, I dismiss the entire site. What's EIG brand? That's Endurance International Group. They buy up other hosting companies and keep running them under the old name.

That brings me to HostGator. HostGator used to be a great host. They hired Linux admins that knew what they were doing and their systems ran right most of the time. This isn't to say there were never any problems. I had to deal with failing hard drives on a couple of occasions, and those weren't handled the best, but for the most part, they did a good job and were responsive to customer requests.

Then it happened.

8/2/2013
I had a rude introduction to EIG when their Provo, UT data-center had a catastrophic failure taking out not just HostGator customers, but BlueHost, JustHost, HostMonster and perhaps many others. This became big news in the hosting industry. Millions of websites were down because one datacenter failed. I didn't even realize our server had been moved out of Dallas.

That downtime lasted an entire day, and repeated itself about 3 months later, on 12/31 and then again on 4/16/2014.

The downtime is bad enough. What's worse is their response times. Let me skip ahead a little.

I started my own company to host and maintain a few website. When I say "host" I mean I wanted to re-sell the hosting to my maintenance customers. My new preferred host, LiquidWeb didn't offer the kind of reseller hosting I wanted, so I grudgingly went with HG.

The first few month of using them this time around I'd give a rating of about a C+. There was nothing blatantly horrible, but they were a little slow responding to a few tickets. Then, I had a ticket literally sit for a month and 3 days. I lost a customer over it. I am now hosting with SkyToaster. I haven't had enough experience to tell you if I recommend them, but I'll say this: I can communicate with them and it takes minutes or hours, not days, weeks or months.

Would I recommend HostGator? Absolutely NOT. And, you should avoid anyone who does.