No, HostGator is far to be perfect

[kigoobe]

Well, about a month and half ago when I was deciding whom I will approach as my first dedicated server provider, I had two options.

1. Rackspace - to pay 500 dollars a month, and get the best machine and service
2. The Planet - get a good server at a reasonable rate and then hire some professional server management company

However, after some googling, and after visiting a few forums, it appeared to me that HostGator may be a good alternative as I can get a "fully managed" server from there for as low as 174 $ a month.

Now I was paying 16$ a month for a copule of shared servers (powweb and dreamhost) and though was very happy with them (almost never had any problem) I thought moving to a dedicated server might be a good idea since I can afford that now, as it will be MUCH BETTER in terms of speed and QUALITY of service.

Alas, I didn't know at that time that my problem was just starting. I was somewhat going to be penalized for moving to Host Gator and getting ready to pay for that big sum (174$ in lieu of 16$).

Nothing went as per my acceptations, as I was hoping that a 'fully managed' dedicated server shouldn't give me more headache then a 'shared' one. Since then I have spent weeks to solve different issues, which I was not having in my previous shared servers. I had to move from forum to forum, and thanks to Serra, a noble heart in HG's forum, and his useful information rich postings, + other nice guys who helped me in the forum, that after about a month, and after spending endless hours setting up my server properly, my server was getting ready to run properly.

But here we go. The latest nail in the coffin - I had a problem with my phpmyadmin, apparently it was not configured (and hence functioning) properly (well, like a lot of other stuffs), so I sent a request to them on the 21st to solve this. I got a reply on the 23rd confirming that now things are fixed. But you know guys what it was basically? They fixed the problem, but on the way, deleted / destroyed about 15 days of activities from my database. Imagine, that was one of my most valuable customers, and all of a sudden, about 2 weeks of entries were gone.

It is the 5th day today that I am waiting for my backups to be sent, and I don't know how long more I will have to wait more to get my lost data back.

In a nutshell If you are coming to Host Gator thinking that what they tell a managed server is totally managed and preconfigured, hold on, it's far to be a totally preconfigured one. A lot of things you will have to do by yourself and will need about a month to check, install and verify everything.

When you send them a request, be careful, they may delete important data from your database as some of the Host Gator staffs are not enough professional. So, do whatever you can do before sending them a support request to protect / save your data before asking them foe some help, that involves database manipulation.

Also, a dedicated sever, atleast in HostGator, is not really better compared to a shared server in companies like Dreamhost. You have less headache, and you get almost same features or even better in shared hosting, unless you are planning to resell.

Not all is bad However, not all is bad here. The support stuffs, well, most of them, are pretty good and helpful. They do what you ask them to do though there is no guarantee when it will be done (like I am waiting for 5 days here for such an important issue). Well, let's say that the delay is caused by lack of enough manpower as they have too many support requests to handle. Most of the time, they take around 48 hours to solve an issue.

PS. I will post here once my this problem of data loss is solved, just to let new comers know how long they may take to get back a data that they have destroyed childishly.

[kigoobe]

another day is passing and it seems that at times they don't even care how important a matter is ...

[GatorBrent]

What was your ticket number on this issue? I'd like to take a look. Thanks!

[GatorBrent]

Moving to support no ticket number provided...

[kigoobe]

Well, after a few days with HostGator, I would tell that what happened earlier might be an accident, and I indeed got very tensed and quite angry on HostGator support when I lost some very important data and no clear reply was given even after several days of repeated support requests.

Now that some days have passed since that time, I understand that the data loss was an accident, and they didn't give me any clear reply as because they were not having one for me. That's not professionalism of course, but since then, I approached HostGator support for various other issues, and they were quite helpful to resolve those issues .

So apart from that incident, and apart from few others when they were a bit late to reply, I am more or less happy with the HG support now, as in most other cases, I got good support and faster reply from them.

So while I do condemn those HG staffs who showed some unprofessionalism, I also thank to all those who are quite helpful and fast to reply. And thanks again to them for helping me out on various occassions when I indeed needed their help.