Furious - site suspended with no notification

[computergenius]

I am absolutely furious - I have been on the web for about 10 years, and never had anything like this happen before...

One of my domains has been suspended, without any notification of why. The site has had no changes over the last 24 hours, but went off in the last 3 hours.

This is appallingly ignorant of hostgator - surely some notification would have been appropriate. Then at least I could figure out what they have done wrong...

[computergenius]

It's over an hour now since I emailed, as requested by support chat, to get details. Nothing. Still got the front page, with account has been suspended, contact the billing/support department. This domain doesn't pay hostgator, so it isn't a payment issue. And this domain hasn't done anything that it shouldn't have. And now I am being ignored...

[ginger]

I HAVE THE SAME ISSUE>

My main commercial site, that sees thousands of visitors, went down with the SAME message yesterday! Upon using chat support, they told me to send an email. BUT my site was down with this totally non-professional message being displayed for my clients!!

So I phoned and talked to "Brent"...my account was up to date, no bandwidth usage was over 25%....so what's the issue? "Send an email to support" he says. BUT my site was still down!

Turns out my site was down for about 6 hours!! And then they fix it, and send me an email..."It's fixed now." That's IT??? No explanation, no assurance it won't happen again, no CUSTOMER SERVICE. I email them asking for an explanation, they won't answer.

[computergenius]

About 7 or 8 hours after the domain was taken down, I have been told that spam was being sent. I have no idea how, I haven't been shown any spam. It's my domain, and I haven't been sending it. I don't have the usual spammable stuff on there, and without an example, I have no idea what has happened... Spamhaus do not have anything listed, that's usually the first place to look.

btw, that "this site has not paid" page is in
http://www.yourprimarydomain.com/suspended.page/
I changed mine today. I still don't get any mail, but it looks as though I have some control over what I am doing - even if I haven't!

[bonzihostin]

I hope my sites never get shut down like that! Truth be told you can always vote to move elsewhere but as well all know that involves some planning and plenty of time!

[computergenius]

Originally Posted by bonzihostin

I hope my sites never get shut down like that! Truth be told you can always vote to move elsewhere but as well all know that involves some planning and plenty of time!

You know what you have to do... use your browser every 30 minutes ago to check that your domains are still up.

12 hours after my domain was suspended, I have still not got any real information from them.

Can anyone recommend a good hosting company?

[Brian.NWF]

Just out of curiosity, and this is in no way meant to offend you, but on the ticket that you submitted, did it by any chance have an email contact for you of one of the sites that was suspended? Probably not, but that might be a cause of the no response.

~Brian

[computergenius]

Good point, but no, I got a reply from sales after about 6 hours, which said that they were passing it over to support. That was 4.5 hours ago, and I have got no reply since. I am using an email address which is not on the suspended domain.

[David]

Hi, just as a side note to an earlier comment, you could use something like www.siteuptime.com to monitor your domain. You can have it check every 30 minutes for free.

David

[C-Level]

Last week, a friend of mine who I recommended to HostGator also had his site shut down without warning. He occasionally sends out an announcement for his gallery to about 700 people using DadaMail. His home page was changed to a notice that the site was spamming. HostGator has his current email, but it was hours till he even found out what they had done, hours more till he had his site back.

He's just dropped HostGator and, presumably he has also dropped his opinion of my recommendations.

I am sympathetic to HostGator's apparent lack of resources, but I am entirely unsympathetic with their current method of dealing customers, which is to say nothing until forced to, and then say as little as possible....

[computergenius]

My site was eventually returned to me after about 12 hours. I have received the following "information" from support and sales (apparently depending on who I speak to):

1) "That domain was caught sending spam" (it wasn't, and requests for copies so that I can check headers have met with no response)
2) Some scripts have been compromised (see 1)
3) The autoresponders were causing a problem (no autoresponders are being used)
4) Too much email was being sent out (about 20 in total, most of them to hostgator asking them to reply to me)
5) I had too much email in my default mailbox (2400 emails over a month, spam to non-existent addresses, awaiting deletion - that's about 80 a day - come on!)
6) The email settings have been changed by hostgator, I must not change them or the problem will return (I asked what settings had been changed, and got...)
7) "We just made some internal changes so no worries" - NO WORRIES????


So - why was the domain down? I still have no idea.

Will it go down again for the same reason? ditto.

Will it happen to YOUR hosting? You guess...

Will I be staying with hostgator? You guess...


I cannot believe that so many people give Hostgator a good rating, because they have such a bad attitude with customers. Trying to get any information is like talking to a bunch of politicians. If we were just hobbyists, and were getting the domains for free, their attitude would be acceptable. But there are many people here trying to make a living, and it makes us look like we amateurs.
Hostgator, it's totally unacceptable.

btw, someone posted...
>you could use something like www.siteuptime.com to monitor your domain.

I don't think that this would work, since there was a page visible for the software to respond to - it just wasn't *my* page. I suspect that it would have reported ok. But that isn't the point. It didn't go down by accident, they suspended it. And they didn't bother telling me.

[joechavez]

I exact same situation occurred with me. Send me an e-mail and I will give you info on another hosting company...

[LandonCowling]

Im sure this is with reasoning, in situations like so simply calling Host Gator can resolve the issue with in minutes in most cases

[o0CAPPI0o]

I had the same problem they suspended my site and account i could'nt access my site,my cpanel or ftp and after a day or two they got my site back up and told me something on my site which they could not pinpoint was using alot of the servers resources one thing they said it could be was my shoutbox so i have had to remove it................... how much cpu does a freakin html showbox take up its not like my site is a stampede of inpatient regulars trying to get there shouts in i must of had about 6 shouts that day

[computergenius]

Originally Posted by LandonCowling

Im sure this is with reasoning, in situations like so simply calling Host Gator can resolve the issue with in minutes in most cases

You added a smiley, so I assume that this is a sarcastic smile, with a hint of "wouldn't it be nice if it were true?".

I am still living on a knife edge. I control two reseller accounts here, and I haven't had time to move them away yet. And since then, I have taken on two dedicated servers for clients, and you can guess where they are not.

[LandonCowling]

A smiley shows that someone is being nice about the post, no one is trying to be sarcastic. Though seariously, if this has not been resolved give Host Gator a call to resolve the issue. This would be better post twith in an actual support forum rather than a web hosting discussion forum where you may be better assisted.

[computergenius]

Originally Posted by LandonCowling

A smiley shows that someone is being nice about the post, no one is trying to be sarcastic.

I think the word I should have used was sardonic... I wasn't meaning in any way to be offensive to yourself.

Originally Posted by LandonCowling

Though seariously, if this has not been resolved give Host Gator a call to resolve the issue. This would be better post twith in an actual support forum rather than a web hosting discussion forum where you may be better assisted.

In fact, I got replies back via the forum (from other members) hours before Hostgator bothered to reply.

Define "resolved". After about 12 hours, the site came back on line.

As to why they took it offline, I was given a different explanation in each email, none of which appeared to be the real reason.

As to whether they will do it again, I obviously have no idea, because I don't know why they did it the first time.

As to why they never told me that it was being taken offline, I was never told that, either. And that is what really makes me nervous.

And that is what should make you nervous as well.

[tcwm]

you know, i have read a lot of these site suspended stories, mine being one. and every single time it is the clients fault, when in all reality its hostgators fault. the pats on the head and the condescending responses from fellow hosters is of no help whatsoever, let alone the defensive attitude of HG Staff.
hostgator needs to manage their servers better. bottom line.

[o0CAPPI0o]

i dont have a reseller acoount like alot of you other Hostgator clients and my site is'nt incredabley busy and i know alot of people that have shoutboxs and other scripts n stuff that is a hell of alot more cpu intensive or in Hostgators own words "resource draining".... have i missed something in the make up of a Js-Shoutbox is there some Memory draining processor throttling engine inside that with say 20 posts on it in one day is enough to have my site suspended for? i want to activate the shoutbox again because my site members enjoy it so they can chat to eachother in realtime but im afraid that as soon as i enable the shoutbox i could have my site suspended or evenremoved altogether.... its so wrong when i first came to hostgator it was like a spring brease i was so glad to find them but over the last say 6 months i presume due to "REAL" Spammers and Hackers it has scared the hostgator team into a frenzy and instead of turning on the people who are/maybe doing the damage they turn on thier own customers which in turn theyre setting up there own hangmans noose, if it keeps up they'll get a bad rep like my old hosts and no one will go near then not even LandonCowling man that person either enjoys the aramatic scent of his/her Hosts *** or he/she is somehow kidding themselves that they will be rewarded for theyre undying loyalty well lets see how loud you scream when they suspend your site LandonCowling. ohh and btw i even have folders on my server beneath my public_html folder that i cannt access/modify or delete still after about a month they are sitting there and there could be anything in them but i'll never know because Hostgator have cut off my permissions to thise folders. and i pay for this service *yeesh*

[britbob]

Curious, do these shoutboxes push the server too hard or something? Reason I ask ~ I was thinking of installing one on my invision board, but if it causes problems then I`ll give it a wide berth!

[hotdog]

Just curious, any of you guy/gals that have had accounts suspended use AWSTATS ?

[computergenius]

I don't use that particular package, although I do check my logs (not as often as I should)

My logs reported nothing out of the ordinary - apart from a blank spot...