Review of hostgator service after one month (vagabondo.net)

[oblomov]

Hello to everybody,

I decided to write this review as I think it can be useful to other persons trying to decide whether or not to use to hostgator.com services for their websites.
I know one month is definitely not enough to judge a service but I feel I can already say something and I promise to give some more feedback in the future in case.

First of all some words about me, sorry but I think it's also useful to understand better my level of competence (supposed, at least ) and expectations. I've been working in the IT field since 1997 covering many kinds of jobs starting from simple end-user helpdesk to sysadmin, web developing and now mainly working as network consultant administering and designing IP networks of differents sizes and complexities.
I'm used to unixes operating systems and I'm a "command-line addicted"

I had to choose an hosting service for a "hobby" non commercial website I've been running together with some friends since 1998 (http://www.vagabondo.net/) and also some other sites related to my profession and commercial activities.

I got to hostgator (reseller plan) after having tried with bad results another service (don't know if I can cite the name...).


Here the real review:

- Prices and plans are good, maybe there could be a lower entry level reseller plan. Connectivity and server reliability has been good so far (yes I know, just one month...).

- Pre sales questions I couldn't find an answer in the forums or in the FAQs where answered quite promptly and satisfactorily by support contacted by mail or instant messaging.

- Signing up was really easy and straightforward, I had full control on the panels before 48 hours from putting my cc numbers in the form

- During the creation of some new sites there have been some problems: some due to little server misconfiguration, some due to me not reading throughly the FAQ in all cases replies from the support where quick, supportive and kind. All misconfigurations where fixed, all questions where answered.

- In particular I've had some problems installing and testing a mail pipe and a groupware application (also because of lack of shell access, see below), in that case I think I've made some probably unusual requests to support in order to have log entries regarding this and other things: they've been very kind and helpful and provided wheter what I requested or equivalent workarounds.

- During the transfer of the old site hostgator support was still very supportive recovering the site's mailing list archive for me (unfortunately CPanel recovery is not able to do that).

Bad points (not really...):

- you don't have ssh shell access. This could obivously be also a good point as it is good for server security. By the way it actually is also a negative point for 2 reasons

1) some people just work better and quicker with a shell
2) some scripts can be better and quicker debugged with
shell access (think about cron scripts or mail pipes...)

- cpanel gives you many opportunities but it has sometime an awkward logic/behaviour, at least for someone used to have a different kind of control over the server.

- I used to consider instant messaging support a very atractive service but I realized that they are often "away" and though IM is given mainly "first level" support (that is not always what one is looking for).


Summary:

- Support is very good, they probably have a 2 level support which sometimes makes you wait a little more if your question/request is "complicated" but is definitely good because it filters "stupid" questions for the second level (and yes, I made some stupid questions too...) and in fact reply times are quite low usually.

- Also they seem to always actually read and take seriously your question/request. This might seems obvious but it's not: I moved away from my previous service provider just for this reason. Unfortunately some people are too conceited (and probably not too competent) to even consider someone else can say something meaningful.

- The answers I received also proved to me they have real control and good understanding of how the servers work (yes... don't ever give this for granted too, especially with this WHM/CPanel tools around... )

Finally: I STRONGLY SUGGEST you to consider hostgator as your hosting service provide and would like to thank hostgator team for the service and support given until now (I would especially like to thanks gatorangela21).

Hope the service will remain at this level for the future.

Bye

Martino

[GatorBrent]

chat support is 24/7 now.

You have to message the away one which will respond with an away message telling you who to message that is online.

Great review , probably the most helpful one I've seen in a long time. Thanks!