Product O.K. - Support and Service Terrible

[scott]

When you join with Hostgator, you are left in the dark.

The small amount of information you get on signup is not enough, you will have to trawl these forums for answers because the staff just keep sending you to the signup page - without really reading your questions at all.

After finally getting semi-setup I started to transfer my clients to the Hostgator servers, after transferring about a third (10 or so) one of my clients gets her account suspended by Hostgator admin, and they don't tell me or my client. They just suspend it saying it was crashing their server. This client had been on the server about 3 months.

I'm not going to get into the details on this because it will turn into a slinging match, Hostgator have their reasons for suspending which I don't really disagree with (but they know their servers better than me) but what I am really dissapointed with the way they have handled the matter. I waited nearly 24 hours just for an initial response from the admin as to what was happening. They say they always notify on suspensions but this time they definately didn't

Aside from that, little niggly errors all over the place annoyed me the most. Every week I was dealing with minor issues that just sprout up all over the place. Hostgator "fix" them, but they shouldn't have been an issue in the first place really, everything works well for a while but then something goes wrong, they could almost guarantee it.

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In conclusion, a pretty average host, below average support, and if you want to run a business properly I would recommend you keep looking for a more reliable partner. Hostgator had good reviews and not too many complaints when I was looking for a host. I hope anybody who reads this takes it as a serious review and not just a pissed off customer having a rant.

In their credit they do pay out on their uptime guarantee, I did receive a refund from them when my site was down for over 8 hours. Their support team are quick enough to return an email, though it has to have some usefull content in it to be worth much.

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Stay tuned for any updates, including whether or not Hostgator can convince me to stay with them, or if they want to.

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UPDATE - OCTOBER 2004

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I can't post replies in this thread anymore, nor can I start a new one. It seems all I can do is edit my post, I have sent Hostgator messages asking them to re-enable me to post here but have heard nothing.

I have now canceled my hostgator account, the reason I gave hostgator was that:
"I can not trust Hostgator to provide a reliable service to me or my customers."

I have since found, since my last post, that neither me or my client was at fault, and as I suspected, the problem was at hostgator's end...


So, Hostgator LIED to me, and even when they found what had happened they decided to ignore, rather than apologise, this is not a company that I can do business with.


The problem, as it seems, was actually that my client had a full mailbox (HUGE) and when she tried to access it using Webmail (Hostgator's Webmail) it crashed the server.
Hostgator disabled her account, claiming all sorts of excuses and that she must have a PHP script overloading the server.
I find it funny that they couldn't tell it was there own scripts in the first place.

One staff member told me NO, it certainly wouldn't be webmail, another said yes, then suddenly said no again - finally, after my client was activated again (On Probation, according to hostgator) I finally get the truth when I ask for her mailbox to be emptied.
They said "Don't use webmail until we have emptied it, or it will crash the server (what happened last time)"

Well, well, well...

I replied immediately to the support person thanking them for finally telling the truth, moved my hosting elsewhere and canceled my account. Hostgator never replied to my email after I thanked them for their honesty, it must have been too much to swallow their pride.

If anybody currently looking for a web host (for professional reseller hosting) reads this, I think I am well within my rights to recommend www.httpme.com
I have found their service and support amazing, fast, and very well priced.

If you want sub-standard reseller hosting, sign up here, but don't expect too much.

If your user didn't crash the server they woudln't have been suspended. If we allowed them to crash the server you would be posting in here we are a bad host with tons of downtime.

What problems have you had that needed to be fixed? I have no idea what errors you had but it's almost always user error and we just fix it for them.

[scott]

Please note my update above.

Here is the email from Brent confirming my suspicions that it was not my customers fault - but indeed a problem at Hostgator's end with a full mailbox.

That big of mail box will use php when checked with some of the webmails and can crash the server. (why the account was suspended) Go change the default email to fail ASAP and never take that off.

Thank you for allowing me to work with you!

Sincerely,
Brent

Hostgator have unfortunately lost a customer because they are not an honest company, and that's what counts these days for me.

[GatorBrent]

Your user crashing our server is not a hostgator problem. That is a problem with your user. What counts is we keep our servers up and running. If your client is going to crash our server we aren't going to let them plain and simple.


You can't get any more honest than that.

This particular case looks like it was either mailbombings, your client was spamming, and or he had a HUGE mailbox checking from one of the webmails. If i remember correctly it was mail bombing.