Dissapointed

[amartins]

Hey guys!

Been with Hostgator since December as a reseller.

To start with things looked very good, one of my 1st and best experiences was on sign up.. I was placed on a server in Texas when I has assumed I would be hosted at NAC (in NJ). This may seem strange but response times make a difference my ISP (CPRM.NET) holds around 60-80% of the Internet market in my country and has peering with NAC.

I wasnt made aware there had been a change till I noticed slower response times.. and the dissapearance of Urchin.

Some time back (im sure its here in the forums) hostgator told us that urchin would only continue to be available on machines that already had it.. mine was one of them. The hosting packages I made up to resell had Urchin as a selling point.. not to mention the placement at NAC.

Hostgator must understand (especialy as far as resellers are concerned) that some sort of relationship must exist in terms of information exchange when changes like this are undertaken.

Anyways, as the subject says I find this quite dissapointing, especially considering my great impression of hostgator previous to this.

Antonio.

[GatorBrent]

We really didn't want to take the remaining boxes out of nac but we had no choice. The company we went through was pulling out which we discovered within the last month. We basically had two choices.

1. Wait for them to pull us out into their new DC they built. Which could have resulted in days of downtime.

2. Or pull out without any downtime as we did.


We had discussions with nac to purchase a rack direct with them, but the preparation needed for such a task probably would have exceeded the time frame we were on before the yank.


Plus 3/4th of our business was already in theplanet datacenter which impresses us more daily. We apreciate your business and are sorry for the change!

[jeffhope]

Hello all,

Just a few comments on Hostgator support/service. I've been with them as a reseller just over a year now.

Overall, I've been happy with the support, uptime, server, etc. Hostgator provides a lot of features for the money.

I'd say the biggest area for improvement is communication with their customers well in advance of taking any actions. Two cases in point:

1. The recent server move to Houston. I'm thrilled to be on the new, more powerful server, and I'm glad the move was made. I received the email notification to change the IPs of my private nameservers, and that was no problem, as the old ones were still functioning as well at that time.

What happened is that I and a client's hourly designer both made a bunch of changes earlier that day (Friday the 7th, before receiving the email) to some of my sites which of course were resolving to the old server. A couple of days later, when the sites were resolving to the new server, we noticed our changes weren't in place. It was very obvious the site copies had been made before Friday, before we knew anything at all about the move. The email didn't mention anything at all about when the copies were made, only that my sites had been moved (no date/time specified). We both had to make our changes again, and this cost me not only time, but also money, as I paid my client's designer to make the changes again. I didn't feel it was right for my client to have to do that.

2. Back in February, I added a client's site. After a few days, I received an email that support had suspended his account, & that he needed to get off Hostgator's servers. It turns out he was running a CGI that was consuming server resources and/or crashing the whole box. Support thought it was a spam program of some sort, and that's why they suspended the account.

Now I have no problem with Hostgator protecting their boxes. After all, some of my domains are here too, and the last thing I want is for their servers to crash. And of course spam is unacceptable under any conditions, so I can understand the tech's suspicion.

My problem is with a) the way this was handled, and b) the attitude from whoever I was corresponding with at Hostgator. For example, I told Hostgator that my client was in his 60's, barely knew how to install his own CGIs, much less spam anyone, and was living on a $900/month fixed disability income. The response was along the lines of "Don't let his age fool you. His income is all the more reason for him to spam". He also said, of the CGI this guy was running "Normal programs just aren't named like that". I happened to know exactly what my client was running, and knew it wasn't a spam program, but the tech had already made up his mind my client was a spammer, and was apparently not interested in my knowledge of it.

That said, I'll say again that I understand if a program is causing problems on a server, an ISP can't afford to let it run. I think a better course of action would have been for the tech to find the offending CGI, CHMOD it to 000, then send me an email to let me know what was going on. We could then have investigated from there, without shutting down my client's site, let alone suspending his account. Support, don't you think that would have been a much more reasonable, customer-friendly course of action? The tech was either following Hostgator policy or using his own discretion, and whichever it was needs to be revisited in my opinion.

Again, overall I'm happy with Hostgator, & intend to remain. In fact, I just joined the affiliate program & have their logos on some of my sites. I'd like to see them bring their before-the-fact communications with customers up to the same level as the rest of their service.

Jeff Hope

[sonic]

Originally Posted by jeffhope

I'd say the biggest area for improvement is communication with their customers well in advance of taking any actions.

I wholeheartedly agree with you Jeff.

Sonic,
Reseller on escape

[JamesP]

I would like to see Host Gator's reply to Jeff's post.

I am considering going with Host Gator for my client's websites. So far, I love everything about Host Gator, but am slightly disappointed at what happened in Jeff's circumstance. This is why I want to see what Host Gator have to say about it, to help me make the decision on whether I will chose Host Gator or another host.

Regarding communication with customers, I was taken aback by their e-mails. Not very personal at all, they just answer what they have to answer then finish with "Thanks for your business! Sincerely, hostgator.com" each time. While this is ok, it is a bit non-customer focussed. I think I can pass up that though.

[NetKontent]

Yep, I too made some updates to my site the very day that Hostgator was switching me to a new server. They kept me out of the loop and I kept scratching my head trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

What continually amazes me is how internet companies in general (all the ISPs, domain registrars and hosting providers I've ever used) have a tendency to disregard one of the most powerful communication technologies ever devised: E-mail. That's all it takes...ONE E-MAIL! Just a little bit of advance notice can save us AND Hostgator's support staff a whole lotta headaches (and $$$)! :roll:

Paul

[JamesP]

Are the Host Gator admins going to reply?

I think I'm starting to lose faith in this service I was about to grab up instantly. I'm glad I've waited and researched things first.

[GatorBrent]

We've responded to this many times in the forum. Everyone was notified weeks in advance before the servers went offline that sites were moved from.

We couldn't have warned about all problems simply because if we knew what problems would be problems we would of fixed them before they ever became problems. We couldn't have given the exact date everyone was moved over as nobody knew. Many servers took days to copy all the data over.

We really did the best we could in this move, and the emails we sent out we had to keep brief to get the major points across.

Our welcome email is one sentence long. Saying
"Please read www.hostgator.com/gettingstarted.html for all the information needed to manage your account." over 50% of people who join don't even bother to click the link they automatically call or email in asking what to do.


If you do an email explaining to much most people tend to not read any of it, or you have that many more key words for spam filters to block. We tried making the email sent out as spam filter friendly as possible yet the forum is filled with users complaining they didn't get it.

Not to mention this move had to be kept a secret from the people we were leaving. They probably woudln't have done anything, but it's just not a good idea to say to a company "hey were one of your biggest customers and we are leaving, keep treating our boxes like gold"

Good companies will do bad things when they lose business, we felt it was better to keep this under wraps since we had no idea what move problems would occur, the time of the move, and the fact that nothing could have been done.

There were 3 major problems from the move.

1. a lot of resellers failed to read our name server ip update email.
2. many couple day old files before the move weren't transferred over. (was still on old server so not lost)
3. spam filters blocked a ton of the emails we sent out.


Once again we are sorry for any problems, lack of notifcation, The only reason we did this move into a more expensive datacenter was to avoid what we feel is going to be a night mare when the old DC does there own server migration.

another thing to note...

Over 20% of the emails we sent out to addresses on file bounced back. We actually went through all of the bounce back owner's websites looking for the email address they had listed on their site, updated their records with us, and resent to their working email so they would receive it.

I have a gut feeling most of those upset about not being notified sooner never notified their customers. Anyone want to give some honest feed back on this question?

We'll never be perfect, but that doesn't mean we are going to stop trying.

[NetKontent]

Sorry, but I never received any e-mail notification... and my e-mail account is working just fine.

Paul

[amartins]

I'd just like to confirm that, I got no email too thats why I was going crazy updating things on the old FTP (I had it configured to access the IP at NAC) and not being able to figure out how come the updates werent showing LOL.

Should we request that notification again? What I mean is apart from the change did it make reference to anything else?

[ReGigi]

Not only did I not get the notice in advance - apparently it was sent out a couple of hours before the fix, but that did me no good as I was not in the office - but they mangled my move.

And I do mean mangled. And then argued with me when I told them repeatedly that they didn't have the latest version of the files. I had to do the work myself when I finally got the bonehead to give me the original IP address.

Now they are screwing up the machine of the people I referred to them as a host. They have not been notified of changes to the server, they have not had responses to tickets opened, and they have not had their complaints addressed. This is making me look like an idiot for recommending them.

It had been working well up until the move.

:/

[Buckshot]

Customers were emailed the same time the migration was done. That email was the warning email since the old servers are still online allowing for everyone to download anything that wasn't moved, and giving us a chance to fix any problems as a result of the move. There was no pre email sent out only the email when it was done which was the warning email.


Sending out an email earlier as a pre warning to our warning wouldn't have done much good. Reason being there's no way to know how long the server copy would take, and we couldn't warn about any problems since there's no way to plan for them. The problem weren't there before the move only after when customers alerted us to any issues.

Fantastico autoinstaller is broken, they were copied over in the move but for w/e reason aren't working. We will have them fixed today.

Which is it?Hostgator states that we all were warned weeks in advance of the move but hostgator also says in another post on the forum that "sending out an email earlier as a pre warning to our warning wouldn't have done much good".

Apperantly the warning email was the one have server migration.

Thats been my beef the whole time as I was getting different things told to me: warning was sent out, warning wasn't sent out.


But since I complain about it, Hostgator has labled me ANTI=HOSTGATOR.....What good is the forum if we can't share our experiences.

I also had did a site back-up and ftp'ed to my local hard drive to burn to CDR. Well it had 11 infected files on it. I emailed hostgator and was emailed back that there was no way it came off the server and it was on my end. Anyhow, I tried to warn people about that and the thread was locked and hostgator said there is no way possible. Since they wouldn't look into it, I was left to figure it out myself. I needed to know what infected files were in cpanel. So I loaded up a spare computer with a clean hardrive and downloaded the back-up file. Ran a anti-virus program on it and found 6 infected files in the new back-up.

Since I had to figure it out on my own, I called a up a computer whiz employed with a local internet company here in town.

Somehow emails were not being perm. deleted out. Even know it showed no emailes they were somehow still inm y directory. It was infected files in the mail program in cpanel. Once we deleted the remaining files out by hand that shouldn've been deleted out the right way. It came back clean on a new back-up.

Now I had asked support gator what could be causing the infected files. Instead of saying it might be some un-deleted email causing it or help in figuring it out, I was told that there was no way it could be on the sever and that it was on my end. in a way it was on y end as it was infected email files in cpanel. But yet it was on the sever as well.

Because I was posting of my bad experience with hostgator, i was labled anti-hostgator because all my post were negative.

The thread on my warning about infected files in cpanel back-up was blocked. He stated I was totally wrong and there was no way it could happen. Well folks it did happen and can happen and has been proved!!

This may be my last post on the forum as I have been warned anymore negative post and I will be banned from the board.

I have been happy with HostGator Service on my accounts. Because, there were a few problems that happened that I didn't like, and posted about it, is no reason to be labled a the way I was. Should I not be able to voice my opinion?

[ReGigi]

Apparently, they made another change to the server where my clients are today, without notifying them, and several hours later, they have yet to address this.

At noon they sent out a "we are looking at this" notice, and no word since.

The problem has been temporarily patched via htaccess files, but if I was NOT familiar with administration and directives, their sites would still be down.


I would also not recommend they start threatening to ban me for being "negative" (wouldn't the better fix be to fix the customer service problems which seem to be growing lately?) since the Internet is a mighty big place with lots of forums. Wouldn't you rather have people let you know what the issues are in a place where you can address them?

[GatorBrent]

"Now they are screwing up the machine of the people I referred to them as a host. They have not been notified of changes to the server, they have not had responses to tickets opened, and they have not had their complaints addressed. This is making me look like an idiot for recommending them. "

Regigi we answer all tickets and help everyone. If they aren't getting a response it's because their email doesn't work or they never submitted it. Ask them for their ticket number. If they don't have a ticket number which is automatically given out we didn't get their ticket.

http://www.hostgator.com/forum/viewt...f0e2c94410e2c5

This is why buckshot was warned. We told him it was impossible for the server to have a virus he then goes on to post that our server is infected / hacked and that all clients beware rather then work with us on his issue.
Saying our boxes are hacked is worst then saying we are going out of business. So yeh we warned him for false info. Not to mention he's been posting we don't provide phone support which is wrong, and his non stop postings that we never emailed anyone out which hes demonstrating again above. You got your email thus if we didn't email you wouldn't have got it.

We have no problem when the truth is posted, but we aren't going to stand for lies to be posted repeatedly with it's only purpose to start riots.

The problem with forums is people run to it when they have the slightest problem usually before even contacting us. So yeh there's going to be a ton of complaints here since we are practically the only host in existence who believes in freedom of speech. Post something bad in a competitors review forum and guess what it's more then likely going to be deleted or moved.
We could have emailed out about the move more then a few hours before it took place, but wouldn't have done any good as far as complaints here on the forum go. Almost all of the complaints are coming from people saying they didn't get the email. We could of emailed out every hour for an entire year. That wouldn't have changed them still not getting it due to spam filters, incorrect emails on file, and non working email addresses.

Please help your referral in contacting us as we don't want them being upset over something that can easily be resolved if were aware of it.

[Buckshot]

I run a anti-virus program everyday due the amount of email my site receives. Last night I backed up my site and ftp the zip file into a local folder on my hard drive to burn to CDR.

While running my anti-virus program today, I noticed the backed-up zip file was showing infected files. So I went to my other computer and ran the anti-virus program to the backed up zip file alone, and both computers running the anti-virus program picked up 11 infected files in the back-up zip file.

I know my computers were clean cause I run the anti-virus on them daily.

I emailed Host Gator to inform them that my backed up zip file was infected. That there is infected files on the server.

Here is their responce:

> There is very less chance of virus on the server as our servers are linux machines and they don't get infect as there windows conterparts. The file may have got infected during the network transfer from the server to your machine.
>
> Please feel free to write in if you have any questions. We are more than happy to hear from you.
>
> Warm Regards,
> Support Staff.

My warning to anybody that is backing up their files in zip format to run a anti-virus program on the backed up zip file, as you may have some infected files in there.


Knowing that my CPU's are checked daily for virus's and have been clean until I FTP the backed up zip, shows me that it did not come from my side.

What is the problem in warning folks that this can happen.

Brent as you will see from my above post in this thread, I and someone else discovered the problem. It was an infected mail file that was stuck in a folder.

There is nothing wrong with this as it will be a warning for folks who have this happen.

BTW, I had to find out what was causing it as you were so headstrong that it was on my CPU end.

And wehen I say non-phone support, it must be me personally, but anytime I have called phone support this year no matter the size of the problem, I am told to open a support ticket.

I have been happy with your company except for few minor details.

I didn't like being told I was sent a warning email, then being told that warning email wasn;'t sent . I did receieve the email after migration.

My first post in this thread was to show 2 different things said about the warning emails. One said one was sent , another said one wasn;'t sent.

We told him it was impossible for the server to have a virus he then goes on to post that our server is infected / hacked and that all clients beware rather then work with us on his issue.

I think that maybe you need to re-read my post Brent. I never said that the server was hacked. I didn't work with you? The only support you gave was the reply, I posted.

My question was to support, was how was there infected files on the sever? If i do a back-up of my site and find infected files in it, and email asking where they come from, I would be looking for a get the problem solved answer , rather than what was replied back.

Again, as I close this, HostGator is a great host. As with any business, there will be hiccups, and disagreements. If I didn't think much of your company, I wouldn't give you great reviews on the web hosting talk forums.

IEven though I have had problems lately, I still plan to stay aboard HostGator.

[ReGigi]

Originally Posted by Gator_Support

Regigi we answer all tickets and help everyone. If they aren't getting a response it's because their email doesn't work or they never submitted it. Ask them for their ticket number. If they don't have a ticket number which is automatically given out we didn't get their ticket.

I just mentioned the response to said client, and he'll answer for himself. (You'll be able to verify because we share a gateway, so will appear as one IP address.)

[nate_s_]

We happen to be the referral she's talking about.

Interestingly enough, on ticket #[HGSupport #MOV-50198-464], which is the one she's referring to (and indeed ticket #[HGSupport #CHX-35186-418]), I had to solve the problem myself. The most recent one was a PHP configuration directive which was changed without notifying us. I asked the support specifically for three things:

I would still like to know why it changed, why we weren't notified, and whether you can change that directive back to the way it was yesterday.

They responded:

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for writing in.

We are extremely sorry for the delay and for any inconvience which has been caused. We have disabled the option "magic_quotes_runtime". Now everything is working fine. Kindly check the same from your end..

Please feel free to write in if you have any questions. We are more than happy to hear from you.

Warm Regards,
Support Staff.

Notice that my questions regarding how it broke and why we weren't notified were not answered. So, I respond, trying to be friendly:

The problem is solved on my end.

However, I'm still curious to know how the problem happened and why we weren't notified - was PHP upgraded or something?

Thanks for the help.

Nathan.

It's now almost 9pm - that email was sent just before 10am EST and I have gotten no response.

You can check http://forum.hostgator.com/viewtopic.php?t=848 to see my post on the forum detailing this issue. Notice that I still haven't gotten a response there either.:-P

I'm not trying to be too *****y, because Hostgator has been fairly good compared to our last solutions, but they definitely seem to be falling down lately when it comes to notifying people of changes in advance, and also in friendly, timely support from someone who a) is not in India, b) knows what's going on, and c) has power to fix things. It may be that they're understaffed, or just overworked - I don't know.

Overall, the experience has been fairly good [our servers are still up and running, always a good thing!], just could be better in those areas.

[ReGigi]

(Bad enough we IM each other rather than just yell across the room, but now we are carrying on conversations through a forum - but then, that's how I pointed him to HostGator in the first place. Heh.)

I have to agree that things were really great up until really recently. I used to be able to get someone via IM who actually knew something - but not so lately. Now they seem to sit there for the sole function of making people feel better by having a live person there, but all they ever do is say "email support."

And I have to say that the new datacentre isn't nearly as reliable as the old one - my connection to the box is spotty - it has been down for short periods quite regularly lately. And if the IM tech support people (wherever the hell they are) keep track of these things, they can tell you that I notice pretty much immediately. Yesterday it was while I was pointing a client to a demo of something we were working on for them.

:/

[amartins]

Hiya,

We could have emailed out about the move more then a few hours before it took place, (...) We could of emailed out every hour for an entire year. That wouldn't have changed them still not getting it due to spam filters, incorrect emails on file, and non working email addresses.

By no means did I mean the original post to get the whole snowball going or even be associated with buckshot's strange claims but as regards the datacenter move warning mail (which is now in itself a dead issue):

I have no idea from where it was mailed out and if it went to just the main reseller domain or also to the other domains on the resellers account. One thing I am sure of is that my mail in your records is correct, up to date and the few filters I have are not blocking hostgator... not to mention that I can contact support and get responses from them without any problems.

Maybe you could set up some sort of real network status page.... notifications of any planned downtime etc.

[GatorBrent]

http://forum.hostgator.com/viewtopic.php?t=712 Was posted before we started the move. I Suggest everyone subscribe to the network status section. As we do post anything major in there.


I'm locking this thread as it's digressed from the original starters purpose.