Nine Months

[Thomas]

Getting started: I studied every page and followed every link on the HostGator site. Then I did it all again. When I signed up I followed their instructions to the letter. My account was set up quickly. Sales people were friendly. Everything went just the way they said it would. Absolutely no surprises or disappointments.

Broken stats: Shortly after signup I noticed that my stats were not refreshing. HostGator was not able to fix this problem. However by writing a clear and polite request to support, my stats were manually refreshed each time I asked, without delay and without question. Even if I asked every day for every account! Many weeks later the "configure statistics software" link was added to WHM. Enabling my accounts here solved the problem.

The Unthinkable: About six months into my trouble-free service, things started spiralling rapidly downward. My particular server was failing in every imaginable way. HostGator's handling of the situation was equally disastrous. Excuses made, fingers pointed, tempers flaring... As our web sites went down in flames, everyone's true colors began to surface. What eventually surfaced at HostGator was a humble apology, admission of error, and a sincere offer to make good. I took them up on the offer and I'm glad I did. Hostgator has clearly made it top priority to insure such an event does not happen again. And reports are now posted whenever any server work is being done behind the scenes. At his worst moment, this company's owner showed that he is human, he has a name, a conscience, and a spine. I wish I could say that about my ISP, phone company, cable TV, previous host, .....

Present Day: If it weren't for this forum I would think HG has been perfect ever since. Clearly they are not. But overall this board has quieted way way down. Problems are at the lowest I've seen and responses are more forthcoming than ever. And over the past three months my service has been absolutely flawless.


Summary-

Billing: The "Modernbill" system is a beast, but it can be tamed. There is a learning curve just like Cpanel, WHM, etc. By taking the time (and providing an ISP email address) I have avoided any nasty billing surprises. HG has always provided clear helpful answers to my billing questions.

Support: A polite and well thought-out email to the appropriate department (support, sales, billing) always brings fast, courteous, expert help. Chat/IM/Phone should be reserved for absolute baseline questions. I have to believe that the live offshore tech support is not expensive. Otherwise a single full-time Linux guru or a crack Ops manager would be much better investments.

Add On Services: My requests to add SSL's & dedicated IP's have been handled VERY quickly and professionally.

Uptime: Excellent! Until recently the occasional re-boot was no more frequent than any other host. Now it's even better!

Community: This forum is the product of a couple thousand experts, novices, newbies, lost souls, and of course a few mouthy punks. I have been rescued here. No help desk could ever contain this wealth of knowledge combined with the friendly, helpful attitudes.

Disclosure: Everything you want to know about Hostgator is right here for all to see. Negative comments are not deleted. Problems are not covered up. I have never seen this kind of transparency anywhere!

I am very happy to be here-

[alykhan]

I've been having the same problem with stats, they just don't update unless I manually do it. I've emailed support who have updated them manually. I just noticed a menu option in WHM called"Schedule Statistics Log Times". When i click on the link nothing happens any one get this link to work?

Btw is there something that support needs to turn on to keep my stats rnning daily? Also is the bandwidth usage and stats generation linked? I noticed that I'm only using 1/10 of my bandwidth since the stats stopped updating.

[britbob]

What an excellent and well worded summary of your experiences. Thanks for posting that