Hostgator Needs Merchant Services (Please Read)

[jjinks]

I have been a dedicated Hostgator customer for over 5 years with 3+ accounts and have seen them grow from under 1 million domains to over 5 million now.

The thing is that their support has not only remain unchanged due to this amount of growth, it's actually getting better and remain my top support team in every category (IMHO).

I am begging you to compete with PayPal and other merchant service nightmares with your same "Hostgator" standards.

I believe that you could have 5-10% of all online transactions within 3 years.
Just offer the same percentages with better support and better integration and you would have a hard time keeping up with the amount of people sick of all the other merchant services.

I have personally used 7 over the years running over $400,000 through and still don't have anything good to say about ANY of them except that "I am just glad that It works" buts it's hardly a shining endorsement.

Do you know that PayPal doesn't have 24 hour support through the phone OR email? I was simply amazed that I am just forced to deal with whomever is the lesser of the evils and just want a company to step up and my vote is Hostgator.

If you feel the same way, please join in and let them know.
They are an excellent "American" company that WILL listen and I just know that there are tens of thousands of people who feel exactly like me right now.
Sign me up for any kind of feedback or discussion panel and I will participate in anything you want.

Have a great weekend and just want things to change eventually.

[marbas]

I agree with you, if we want to develop in anything, we have to grasp and do changes. Changes that would benefit everyone. I think it is high time for hostgator to reevaluate its service to its costumers.

[Max_Thrust]

I am 100% with you. I just did a site that sells things and doing one now, and had nothing but problems with PayPal, old code, sandbox never working, I will never recommend them to anyone. A couple of others i have used before with local based apps are no longer around, they were bought out by some bigger companies =(.

I ended up talking my customers into Google Checkout which is not bad at all. The only thing i do not like is that if the buyer does not have a Google account they must create one. Since these are small companies, paying for a gateway service is way too much, and is more than what the really need.

Google Checkout is only slightly higher that PayPal's rates.

But would be great if Gator had this service and make it a one-stop shop, even if they charged a bit per month for the service. I think it would also be the first hosting service that would offer Merchant Service + Hosting.

[JimNorton]

The fact that no other hosting company provides merchant services should tell you something.....

[Max_Thrust]

Well it tells me a couple of things, the upside tells me there is a great hosting niche out there in a competitive hosting business, the downside tells me that it must be a real PITA to deal with.

But if i was new to host shopping for web hosting and i wanted to sell items, and seen I can have both hosting and selling from one place i would signup with that host. as you know it is a lot of homework finding a clearing house for cards, need to find one that can be affordable to almost a micro-business that does not have a steady monthly sales record, finding a place that is compatible with the sites code and custom carts, one that has a sandbox (many do not) and most important great support people like Gator.

Maybe Gator should turn us on to their billing site, wonder who they use?

Dave