My experience so far... [update] from good to bad to good!

[emartin]

I have spent the last 6 months searching for a new host and have been very happy with my choice to switch to HostGator. I previously was hosting all of my domains on my own server at home because I could not find a host that offered the amount of resources I required (domains, databases, disk space, and bandwidth) for a price I could afford.

I stumbled upon HostGator a few weeks ago and after extensive research, decided that they had the resources and right prices, but I was still nervous about the type of support I would receive. Despite being somewhat of a pain to the support staff, they have been extremely responsive and helpful.

I think that customer support is often times more important that the product itself and from my experience, the type of support you receive can usually tell you a lot about the people you are doing business with. I have been impressed with the responsiveness and patience that the HostGator staff has displayed with me during the process of getting all of my domains setup and configured and I believe that they truly understand the importance of customer service.

I highly recommend HostGator and if anyone wants to contact me regarding my experiences with them, please feel free.

Thanks,
Eric

[angeleyz]

I was one of those support people you talked with and I'm thrilled that you've been pleased with both our support AND service. I hope you will continue having good experiences.

[emartin]

Up until about a week ago, I would have strongly recommended Hostgator...but as of today, I'm not so sure. I am a reseller for them and in the last week, my sites have been off and on, database connections failing, file systems reaching 100%, and they have been messing with server configurations without notice.

They disabled suexec on their web servers without warning, which has caused numerous issues with the scripts on all of my sites and many others. Sure all of their customers could go through and manually chmod each and every file that was created by a script (can't do a recursive because they don't allow shell), but that is ridiculous.

I have spent the last 4 days going round and round with their tech support. I get one tech who re-enables suexec, only to have someone disable it hours later. I am told that there is a security issue, but only some people say that and others just turn it right back on. There is a gross lack of communication within the support staff.

They are sometimes responsive to IM and the forum, and every time I send a support email on this issue, I get a new tech who wants me to explain everything from the beginning...along with a "Well, your scripts have to be set to 755 to work"... duh!

I am normally a pretty patient guy. I have 3 years experience working in a datacenter for an enterprise web hosting company, as well as a few years experience managing my own servers. I am at my wits end and am now looking into a dedicated solution...

Well, I guess I will end my rant now. I just feel really helpless and frustrated that things had to go this way...and I am still waiting for a resolution on the suexec issue.

Eric

[emartin]

This issue has finally been resolved! It may have been a frustrating experience for me, but I want to mention that the owner emailed me with an appology and a full explination of what the problem was.

Hostgator could have easily just let me be frustrated, but Brent's email just goes to show that Hostgator really does care about it's customers...

Thanks,
Eric