My take on Hostgator

[fabianv]

*-edit: Noticed I wrote about some issues with my webserver that should be put in another forum.. left it purely as review material.

Hey everyone,

I think it is time to give my opinion what I think of hostgator.

I have used only 2 or 3 webhosts before Hostgator and am not a coder genius so I dont know how much my opinion really matters in this.

I've always been pretty baffled about how websites really (as in an intimate understanding) work before I started at Hostgator.. and that was about a year ago.

I come from South Africa and had big plans to start a community website for South Africans to discuss digital art.. so around October 2005 I registered at a local company. Man.. price wise they were probably 500% or more expensive - you cant really blame them since South Africa is run by a very evil monopoly in telecommunications called Telkom - read about them online if you want to .. its shocking!

I think my 1 year startup fee for a package 3 times crapper than the Baby Croc (Like 300megs and 2 gigs datacap) was 2700 ZAR !! which is like

383.387 USD!!

Back then I was very uneducated about the web and thought it was important to have hosting in the country you live in.. so that people can access it faster. Ironically that money was my first 3 months of salary that I've ever earned doing a crappy job.

Now you could probably guess that when I saw Hostgator it seemed like a total scam.. an unbelievably WACKY one at that.. I am so glad I was wrong.

So.. I was very careful with the package I got and started off with a Swamp Croc.. which I then upgraded to a reseller account because I wanted more than 2 dns addresses linking to 1 site which then lead me to wanting shell access for something else so I scouted for dedicated servers.

By the time I was investigating dedicated I had learned a bit more about what there is to offer and questioned the crap out of Hostgator live support. They were really friendly and had no problem telling me that they host most of their servers at ThePlanet.

So I.. being all protective over my cash thought I'd register at Theplanet themselves because it SEEMED cheaper. Only realising that Hostgator is the biggest bargain I've ever seen. And I'll tell you why

- They have Redhat Enterprise , CPANEL and WHM running free of charge on the servers which would have cost a whole lot of money if I had to rent/buy an empty server from Theplanet

- The service here is INSANELY good in terms of quick valid responses from the Live support and Forums

- Loading times match that of the servers here at home (well almost.. its like a few milliseconds slower)

- People are very friendly

- HG refunded me about $180 dollars or so worth since the time period that I migrated from shared to dedicated was very short .. I think thats really cool of them.



I LOVE HOSTGATOR! You guys have given me the best internet hosting experience ever! I'm actually slowly starting to do some business with my dedicated server but its still really slow.

I highly recommend Hostgator! Nomatter at which host you are server problem always arise and hosts have to deal with noobs like me. But thanks to their support I've been able to learn a lot in the process and its made webdeveloping a fun thing.

I'm sure hostgator wouldnt mind helping me its just some form of communication trouble with the ticketing system


Thumbs up for HG!

Its maybe important to note that in a years time my total invoices at Hostgator adds up to $1,200 to date and I have to say its the best money I've ever spent.. which feels weird since I've always been extra careful with money.



I see web as a massive investment and hostgator being the tool to invest with!

[fabianv]

---------------

[fabianv]

-------------------------