Every business that maintains a website is faced with the challenge of finding reliable website hosting at an affordable price. There are so many competitors in the hosting industry and so many different options that sorting it all out can be overwhelming. Sometimes the most helpful information is to find out how a host’s customers feel about the service. Vandelay Website Design uses HostGator, so we thought some of our readers and visitors might like to know our opinion of HostGator’s service.
HostGator has a number of features that led us to choose them over all of the other companies out there. Each hosting company will have its own unique features and its own strengths and weaknesses. No hosting company will be the right fit for all types of customers. The best approach is to have a list of features that you want from your web host and try to find one that matches your needs.
It’s likely that many of the features offered will not apply to your situation. Stay focused on what’s relevant and make sure your decision is based on your particular situation.
Some of the features that make HostGator stand out from the crowd are:
Low Price - There are several different plans to choose from based on your needs. All options are very competitively prices. While there are other hosting companies that offer slightly cheaper services, HostGator’s service and features make the price almost unbeatable.
Host Unlimited Domains - For as low as $9.99 per month you can host an unlimited number of domains. This can be a great cost-saving feature that opens up new opportunities to market your business.
Disk Space - The file size of your website will determine how much disk space you need. Each of HostGator’s plans provides a generous amount of disk space that beats almost any competitor.
Bandwidth - The amount of bandwidth needed is determined by how many visitors you have and what they are downloading. Audio and video take up a large amount of bandwidth. HostGator’s plans also provide more bandwidth than most companies.
24-Hour Customer Service - One of the benefits of using a larger web hosting company like Host Gator is the hours of customer service. Some smaller hosting companies only provide support during standard business hours, which can be frustrating if you need help at any other time. HostGator provides customer service by phone, email and online chat.
No Contract - Some hosting companies will require customers to commit to a one-year contract, which means if there service is not satisfactory you will either have to wait until the end of your contract or pay an early termination fee. With HostGator you are free to leave at any time.
30 Day Money Back Guarantee - If you sign up for HostGator’s service and you are not satisfied, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.
Fantastico - HostGator uses Fantistico to offer its customers with easy installations of blogs (including WordPress), forums and discussion boards, e-commerce, mailing lists, wikis and more.
These are just a few of the features that HostGator offers. For a complete list visit HostGator.com.
If you are interested in using HostGator’s services, please visit HostGator.com
UPDATE: This site is no longer hosted with Host Gator. We still recommend them to many of our clients and they have a great product unless you expect high traffic volume.
32 comments from readers
1 How to Successfully Switch Your WordPress Theme Without Throwing Your Computer Through the Window << Vandelay Website Design Sep 5, 2007 at 10:25 pm
[…] To set up the test blog, I created a separate folder and installed a new WordPress blog. If your web hosting company provides a simple WordPress installation, this process only takes a few minutes. […]
2 Solutions for E-commerce Sep 16, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I use HostGator for some of my websites and I’m really happy with them for more than one year. They have good uptime, good speed for hosted websites (and for mysql) and good support. Reccomend!
3 Vandelay Design Sep 17, 2007 at 9:08 pm
It’s good to hear that you are also satisfied. Thanks for letting us know.
4 Karthik Oct 4, 2007 at 4:04 am
There have been issues raised off and on that HostGator is overselling, but I guess that’s an issue raised with almost all web hosts! They do offer *very* competitive prices IMHO.
5 hosting.geanie Oct 4, 2007 at 9:39 am
What also I can add to your list is that they are using Cpanel which is in my opinion the bast hosting manager available in the hosting sphere, and with a lot of feed back/support resources
6 Web Hosting Buzz Oct 29, 2007 at 11:02 pm
cPanel/WHM is a brilliant system to control your hosting account, most (if not all) top hosting providers uses this system for their hosting operations because it’s easy to setup reseller services as well as easy for end users.
7 Estero Nov 6, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Recently my website was down for 72 hours, because the hosting service had some time of electrical issue. Periodically, thereafter, there has been sporadic downtime as well.
One of the items you did not mention in your article about gatorhost was if the service has some redundancy, if their servers go down.
I sure hope I was clear on my comment.
8 Vandelay Design Nov 6, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Estero,
I actually just switched hosting companies. The process was just completed so recently that I haven’t even canceled the Host Gator account yet. I was very happy with Host Gator until my site went down after a post got dugg and the effort to get my site back up was disappointing. I had survived 2 diggs before with no problems, but for some reason this time it was a problem.
9 Estero Nov 7, 2007 at 9:26 am
I hate switching hosting companies - sorry you had to switch. Did you ever find out what the issue was that caused the site to go down?
10 Vandelay Design Nov 7, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Yeah, it is a huge pain switching hosts. I was pretty worried about changing the WordPress database to the new host, but it wasn’t too bad. The site went down because the traffic from Digg to my site crashed their server. I understand that happens, but they didn’t really care about helping me to get the site up and running, even though I was willing to pay a lot more. It’s a shame, because I had a good experience with them before, but that can’t happen.
11 Estero Nov 8, 2007 at 8:25 am
Guess the silver lining was you got a lot of traffic from digg - that is good, but having the site down is not good.
When I moved a blog from one hosting service to another hosting service, I did not realize the pic’s would not transfer. Did you run into this issue?
12 Vandelay Design Nov 10, 2007 at 9:56 am
Estero,
No, I didn’t have problems with pictures. I keep all images in a file outside of WordPress and everything transfered fine.
13 Estero Nov 10, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I should have thought about having them outside of Wordpress - but I will now do that. Thanks.
14 Ethan Christ Nov 18, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Want to know what HostGator did for me? Shut my site down, told me I needed to upgrade to a dedicated server because I had too much traffic, and now they won’t let me login to my account so that I can cancel. Do NOT sign-up for HostGator. Keep in mind that my site only gets 150-200 visits per day, but yet they tell me I need a dedicated server.
15 Value Content delivery network Nov 19, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Hey folks. Used to host myself at Hostgator, but it was hard to meet Digg traffic bursts. Do you also outsource static content delivery to Content Delivery Networks?
16 Vandelay Design Nov 19, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Ethan,
That’s weird that they would tell you to get a dedicated server for 150-200 visits per day. I don’t know if you read the comments before yours or not, but I no longer use Host Gator. I had good experiences until 1 day and that was enough for me to leave.
Value,
That’s the problem I had, Digg. I survived 2 diggs with no problems but the third time I had big problems.
17 Zero Nov 24, 2007 at 5:24 pm
I haven’t used Hostgator but the information here was very informative.
18 David Butler Feb 12, 2008 at 11:18 am
I like Hostgator because they have Fantastico scripts, which make it easy for a tech idiot like me to use a blogging platform like Wordpress.
19 Martin Feb 25, 2008 at 3:16 am
Thanks for the information on hostgator.
Kind regards,
Martin
20 Web Hosting Reviews Mar 12, 2008 at 11:54 am
I like the interaction in this post. This would give me an idea how to handle Hostgator just in case one of my posts will encounter a digg-effect.
21 Shivanand Sharma Mar 25, 2008 at 8:33 am
he he. I read the article/review and stuff and signed up for hostgator baby plan. Then I come back and read these comments and see that you are happier with godaddy.
I’m a firefox extension author and face these digg-effects when I release my extension updates.
Can you please update the post with a one liner in the begining that this may be outdated or that people have reported issues and please see the comments before signing up.
I know its my fault. But I still have 45 days money-back gurantee. But I’ve not seen any business returning over the money ever. I have to find a way out of this
22 Web Hosting Review Mar 28, 2008 at 5:15 am
Customer Service of Hostgator is really nice, in terms of the quality of support, I don’t think Godaddy can be better than Hostgator, this is my experience.
23 aaa May 3, 2008 at 1:15 pm
thank you, check my url, http://vista.variousforum.com
hostgator is th best
24 Rebate hosting Jun 9, 2008 at 8:56 am
Some says Hostgator is the best, and some says Lunarpages is the best. But 1 thing for sure that they are BETTER than Godaddy!
25 Roofer Bikes Jun 15, 2008 at 4:29 am
I keep all images too in a file outside of WordPress and everything transfered fine.
26 web hosting Jun 17, 2008 at 5:32 am
Well, its been a year and I hope that there has been lots of changes as well. We would like to see new updates too.
Thanks
Chris
27 Barb Jun 19, 2008 at 8:19 pm
We left hg 6 months ago because of lack of support. The truth is this if you have a site that is getting decent traffic you might as well get a dedicated server. We got one from Server Intellect and are very happy. Just knowing that no one else website can take us down because of resources is life saver. Plus as a developer we like to use the newest beta software so we don’t have to hear the host say “sorry we cant install that because it will effect our other clients”.
28 totonet Jun 30, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Full descriptive information, give a general idea about this hosting provider. Check this other chinese hosting provider http://www.totoidc.com
29 Web Hosting Reviews Aug 25, 2008 at 5:45 pm
HostGator to me is one of the top notch services, out there I give HostGator, a 9 out of 10 for hosting services.
30 qcwsjoa tpsaf Sep 14, 2008 at 5:22 pm
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31 Kristy Oct 1, 2008 at 12:02 am
I just signed up 3 days ago for a reseller account.. I may have should did more research but I have had no problems and the BEST SUPPORT TECH ever! I think for now I will stay just where I am!
32 Kristy Oct 1, 2008 at 6:34 am
Let me add one more thing as well… I get over 4000 unique hits a day and have had no problem.