Hostgator: A Necessary Evil

mrcgiguy · #1 01-25-2007, 06:56 PM

I view Hostgator along the same lines as PayPal. My business has come to depend on them. And despite the aggravation, I don't have much of a choice but to stick with them. I've looked around...and at this point, I just haven't found any other dedicated server provider that would fit my needs and budget.

Hostgator offers fairly priced "managed" dedicated servers with enough bells and whistles to suck you in. However, they seem to leave the server management to level 1 support. Trying to get things figured out usually requires restating your problem several times until someone who actually knows something about server administration gets your question. Through all the tickets I've placed with support, I don't think I've ever got the same tech person consecutively. Why is that?

On top of that, tech support takes hours to get back to you. At one point I'd had my server down for almost an entire day before tech support did anything about it. I expect faster response time for my $220/mo. Is that unreasonable?

I've tried using the live web support. Everytime I do that, I'm told to email tech support. What's the point of having live web support if no one monitoring it is competent enought to answer questions?

There are a handful of decent tech's at Hostgator. I know it because my issues have, after time, fallen into their hands. However, it's quite annoying having to wait hours between support responses, only to get an incompetent blow-off answer for which I need to repost my issue so that the next, hopefully competent, tech can have a look.

For whatever Hostgator person that takes it upon themself to respond to my post here. Just have a look at these tickets for a perfect "case in point" example of what I've had to deal with:
NRV-61507
BOQ-78080

I had to restate my self 3 times before it got to the right tech person for the issue. The other two people told me there was something wrong on my end. Turned out it was an issue with the server.

Anyway, I'm not looking to bash Hostgator here, I'm sure they're great for the average web site. Just not mine.

mrcgiguy · #2 02-04-2007, 06:35 PM

Just wanted to provide a little follow-up here. To anyone that might have the same problem that I was having when I posted this message. My problem was that several of the accounts being hosted on my dedicated server were undergoing dictionary email attacks. This was causing an enourmous load on the server. I rarely saw a load less than 3. Often the server was frozen with loads up to 100+. Hostgator continously told me it was a problem caused by CGI scripts. I told them it appeared to be something with incoming emails, as I would see tons of EXIM processes everytime the load went through the roof. When I would turn exim off, the load would go down immediately. This is how incompetent their tech support is. Put 2 and 2 together and tell them it's 4 and they still will try and tell you it's 5.
Long story short, I fixed the problem myself by adding some ACL codes to the exim config file that were specifically created to stop dictionary attacks. Since implementing this fix the load has remained under 1 on avg. No more load spikes. All the CGI scripts on the server have continued to run with no problem (and no surprise).
Anyone experiencing huge load problem such as this...if Hostgator can't help you (which I'm sure they can't), drop me a message and I'll tell you how to fix the problem.

***GatorBrent*** · #3 02-07-2007, 09:46 AM

Both of the ticket numbers you provided are from 2005. This is back when the company was basically just me and I didn't have enough money to offer 24/7 in-house support so hostgator outsourced to a company that hasn't been with us in over a year. We're 100% in house now with over 80 us employees between our boca and tx offices.

Do you have a recent ticket number I can take a look at? Thanks!

mrcgiguy · #4 02-07-2007, 03:19 PM

oh most definitely. the one i just described, the dictionary attack, was from this month. except that unlike the earlier one i offered for example, after going back and forth and getting the same incorrect answer, your people never came back with the correct answer. i had to solve the problem on my own.
CRM-219347

you'll see how your "tech support" representatives continuously tell me it's the cgi scripts that are causing the load spikes. it was not. I even provided screen captures that clearly showed a top process list filled with exim processes and still they said it was the cgi scripts. they tried to convince me to upgrade the memory on the machine. i almost did it, as i had no other solution at hand. all that needed to be done was to add a simple ACL into the exim configuration and like magic all the thousands of emails that were coming at the server were no longer processed by it and no longer hogging all the resources...and just like that the server load is staying under 1 all the time now. even with the numorous cgi scripts still running.

i personally have NO IDEA how any knowledgable tech person could be totally oblivious to the FACT that there was something going on with the email on this server!! it's totally mindblowing to me. all they had to do was tail -f my exim_mainlog file and they'd see the butt loads of emails coming in with addresses like aejaogje@whatever.com & jaoobkepa@whatever.com. 10... 20... 100 at a time, every second until the load went up to 100+.

i've seen another poster mention recently that they thought your tech people didn't actually read the support tickets, but that they just skimmed them. 100% agreement here! your people don't seem to actually care about finding solutions. they seem to just offer a quick answer, figuring Joe Dummy on the other end will just nod in agreement.

mrcgiguy · #5 02-20-2007, 05:01 PM

I have finally found a suitable replacement for Hostgator. Of course, as timing would have it, I was just rebilled a couple of days ago. In yet another shinning example of their willingness to accomodate their customers, they can not provide a prorated return of my funds if I was to cancel now.

$6420.60 of my money Hostgator has collected. No problem with their billing department. Had to wait over 40 minutes the other day for a freaking reboot! But they're very quick to let me know they can't accomodate me with a partial refund.

$219 a few days ago, if I cancel now it's money down the drain. If I stay, how much will cost it my business in down time? Well, I made some changes to the server, added some new ACL's that will hopefully keep things running smoother. I'll see how it goes over the next few days, but I'm seriously considering biting the bullet and setting up my new server now. Needless to say, I will be DONE with Hostgator within the next few weeks.