About an A- so far!

[EarlyOut]

Well, I've been with Hostgator for about nine months now, a normal gestation period for someone on the Baby Croc Plan, so it's time for a review.

How have things been so far? Mostly excellent, especially when you consider that I'm paying less than the cost of a couple of lattés for each month's worth of hosting. Compared to what I shell out for cable, Internet, cell phone, etc., it's really peanuts.

I'm not aware of having any downtime. I don't check my sites regularly, but my email client would complain if it couldn't connect, so that serves as a pretty good test of whether the server is up or not. When I have checked my sites, I don't think I've ever gotten a "not found" error. I did notice one little burst of 404s on one site, indicating a hiccup of some sort, but they stopped as quickly as they had started, so I have no idea what triggered them.

My sites seem to come up very quickly. My pages are static HTML + Javascript, but they're loaded with images, so page loading time would be a problem on a slow, poorly-connected host.

My server never seems to be overloaded. The disk is less than one-third full. On my last host, the disk space was always somewhere between 95% and 99% full, resulting in a lot of account moves, which slowed everything down. Whenever I take a look at the CPU usage, it's down in the safe zone, and usually the server isn't even breathing hard (like less than "2" on an 8-CPU machine).

The few times I've needed support, they've been very good, though perhaps not extremely speedy. The tickets I've put in have not been for emergency problems in the first place, so a next-day answer has been good enough. And for $8 a month, I don't expect instantaneous attention to every little glitch, 365x24x7. The support provided by HG employees in these forums is really outstanding, a far cry from what you usually run into (oh, could I tell you stories about my last host...).

The only little complaints? None of them particularly serious, but:

First, I had some trouble transferring my domain registrations to HG. The automated system kept telling me that the EPP code was invalid. It wasn't, and once I contacted sales, someone intervened manually, and got the transfer processed. It took a couple of days, in total, but that didn't matter since the nameservers were pointed correctly. Transferring the domain registration itself was certainly not time-critical.

Second, I was having some trouble uploading large zip files. The problem eventually proved to be much closer to home (I finally noticed that my cable modem was actually rebooting itself in the middle of a large upload - a new cable modem seems to have cured the problem). But when support checked my server, just to see if it was something on the HG end, they discovered that there was a mild attack on the server underway, which they proceeded to block. It left me wondering if that attack would ever have been detected if I hadn't asked support to take a look in the first place.

Finally, I'm not happy with the way HG handles misdirected requests for secure pages on a domain that has no SSL installed. I find my domain name plastered on a page of advertising. At the very least, the page that eventually comes up should not show my domain name anywhere on it (not even on the browser tab). At best, a non-advertising error page should come up, indicating the nature of the problem. There's a whole thread about this unsavory practice in these forums, so I won't beat it to death again here. But even that isn't a huge issue - it takes a determined visitor to bypass all the warnings a browser throws up if you try to go to https://example.com instead of http://example.com. Both Firefox and IE make it fairly difficult to get past the dire warnings!

So, would I recommend Hostgator? Yes, definitely, without reservations. In fact, I just chalked up an affiliate commission when my nephew signed up!

[GatorJoshL]

EarlyOut,

We thank you for your very in depth review, it is not everyday that we get such a thorough review. We do appreciate you as a customer and an active member of this forum. As I have previously talked to you about via PM, if you need anything please feel free to let me know personally.

Again thank you for this review EarlyOut,

[EarlyOut]

Originally Posted by EarlyOut

Finally, I'm not happy with the way HG handles misdirected requests for secure pages on a domain that has no SSL installed. I find my domain name plastered on a page of advertising.

An update: I'm happy to report that this is now been corrected. A misdirected https: request now leads to a nice, generic Hostgator 404 page, a big improvement.

[EarlyOut]

Originally Posted by EarlyOut

Whenever I take a look at the CPU usage, it's down in the safe zone, and usually the server isn't even breathing hard (like less than "2" on an 8-CPU machine).

Alas, all good things must come to an end, it seems. My server has now apparently acquired a resource hog. The CPU usage is routinely hitting double digits, and site response is being noticeably affected.

That A- grade is falling pretty rapidly.

[GatorJacob]

Hi Jeff,

I apologize for the inconveniences and the frustrations. I've taken action against a CPU abuser on your server a few minutes ago.

The load was around 8 on your server, however now it's dropping into the 2 - 3's.

Can you check and see if this has helped your load time?

[EarlyOut]

Oh, yes! Big improvement in the page loads, more like what I had gotten used to (I was getting really spoiled, it's been so good for so long). Many thanks!