HostGator good for newbie

[Alexandre]

Hello,

I use HostGator since a few months, and I was very happy with a few websites here.

But today I got my account suspended because of too many inodes.

So I learned today there is a limit of 50.000 inodes (files and directory + emails...) per account ( Who read all the T.O.S before buying?). This is a very small number for a professional use as I was using more than 2.000.000 . But I was using "only" 64Go disc space.

For example: a few email accounts generate more than 6.000 inodes on my hostgator account.

So, this hosting is very great for amateurs or newbies, but if you are a professional like I am, unlimited websites is a joke:

Put 10 joomla websites (more than 1500 files) + 10 email accounts with some spam on them, and you will probably get suspended without any kind of warning. The professional limit without using emails, is around 20 joomla websites if they do not use cache and medias.

There is also no inodes counter on the Cpanel, so you would have no idea or have to count manually the inodes on the server=insane...

So today I lose around 100$ with websites hosted here, the good thing is the support: Very fast and smart email support. I deleted cache systems, and the activated my account a few minutes after.

I have around 75 websites, I will continue to host here some basic websites for SEO purpose (IP class C with google), but I will have to move somewhere else the very big websites I have with more than 89.000 webpages indexed by google.

So my review is HostGator is very Good but very expensive for newbies, but you will have a smart support. Hostgator is so bad for real professionals or very big websites.

N.B.: The support says the servers cannot handle so many files without slowing down, I guess it is not a true reason for a Linux server. I have a very cheap dedicated linux server in France with more than 18.000.000 "Inodes", and processor is only at 30% usage max, with all services and lot of databases , 80.000 daily visitors, and more than 400.000 daily hits. My 2.000.000 inodes at HostGator was small in comparison, and 50.000 inodes limit is really too small for a "big" website.

If reseller account got the same Inodes limits: Do not think you could handle more than 20 customers with CMS or blog engines and 10 emails account per customer.

Sorry for my bad english.

My very best and friendly regards,

Alexandre

[GatorDaveC]

Hi Alexandre,
Having 2 million inodes is too much for a shared hosting environment. It hurts the partitions, and doing any file system checks with excessive amounts of inodes can take hours.

The 50,000 inode limit in our terms of service will keep our servers stable in the long run.

You may use and abuse a dedicated server all you want, but its just too much of a risk having millions of files on single accounts. I am betting most people will agree with that too.

[GatorPatrick]

I'd just like to respond to the statement that we are poor for professionals.

I think it's very important that your hosting package be well in line with your hosting needs. If you're looking to host a few blogs that will be used mainly for recreation then a 10 or 20 dollar shared plan is probably sufficient for you.

But if you're looking to professionally host sites that will be using 10 blogs or more with sufficient traffic and content size, then your hosting package should scale accordingly and you should be looking at a dedicated server.

That said, I am thankful you feel our support is knowledgeable and professional, as we strive to put forth that image with our clients. I hope we can retain you on one of our Dedicated servers as it seems to me your site could probably flourish in a Dedicated environment.