I’ve been with HostGator for the better part of this year, after my last webhost went batty and had constant server crashes (on a shared hosting account that’s not good: all my sites went down at once). Since joining HostGator, though, I’ve had no trouble.
Since it is going to be “Cyber Monday” tomorrow, I wanted to invite you to join with HostGator and get a whopping 50% off their hosting packages (yeah I said “whopping”):
The 50% Off Discount Will Only Be Seen on Cyber Monday and It’s Automatic – You’ll See the New Page
If you don’t see the obvious page – then you missed it – but I have a backup HostGator coupon for 25% off if you read below…
The sale only runs on Monday. Starts at 12 Midnight thru 11:59 pm, Central Standard Time 11/28/2011
If you Miss the HostGator Sale
That happens to the best of us – if you missed out, use this coupon code and get 25% off your order:
My coupon discount code is “TheAverageGenius” and automatically will be added to your clipboard if you use that coupon.
My HostGator Review
They rock. The end.
OK, seriously they do. I have a “reseller” package (their cheapest one, I have a small network still). The reason I chose a reseller is that I want IP diversity. Not all my websites are on the same IP.
I’ve also never had another network wide outage like I have in the past. That’s huge for me.
The reason I want IP diversity is that mainly I don’t want people to find my websites all on one server. A simple “WhoIs” lookup will tell you all the sites on an IP address, so with diversification I can mask my other websites from competitors.
But the other cool thing is the stability: this costs me about $29 a month currently, and it’s a small price to pay (I pay every 6 months, will renew for a year when it comes due).
I used to be on a shared hosting setup at some other place I don’t want to name, I don’t like to trash businesses if they don’t deserve it – I think I just got a bad server.
Honestly I think the entire universe was on that one server, but that’s speculative…Problems I had with my old host were dealing with their “support” desk: that wasn’t happening at all. They spoke terrible English (no offense) but it’s not something you want when you’re having a technical issue and can’t communicate with the person that’s supposed to rescue you.
Nice blog, so informative, thanks for information…Um…didn’t you try to spam my blog last week?
Something like that. Mind you half my family doesn’t speak English – my mom’s from the Philippines – but it gets old when you need help fast (just sayin’).
Their Customer Service ROCKS
You might have heard otherwise – sometimes you get a lemon (a newbie tech or someone having a bad day) – but 90% of the time I get the best customer service at HostGator.
They elevate your issue if they can’t help, and their server admins are really there to help.
So recently I had a MAJOR issue with plugins doing funny things…mainly I thought I was hacked.
The problem was my .htaccess file kept rewriting itself and I have 301 redirects, and the .htaccess file when you’re running the W3 Total Cache plugin is massive.
It’s needed for the MaxCDN page accelerator/CDN I’m using, but that’s for another post – basically I’d be editing a post and I wouldn’t be able to update, or it would just hang there for an eternity (like a whole minute!) < lame joke…
Then I’d get a 500 Internal Server Error every now and then…it was maddening and lost me a lot of productivity.
Well HostGator kept saying, “Check your plugins…”
Only trouble is I’m lazy and I run more plugins than RadioShack. I didn’t want to do it – but turns out they were right.
I was running older plugins that weren’t compatible with WordPress 3.2.1:
- Efficient Related Posts v 0.3.8 (Replaced with YARPP)
- Evermore v 2.3 (Couldn’t get Auto More Tag to work, but my theme Flexsqueeze already has this built-in!)
- Most Popular Posts (Replaced with WP-Popular Posts Tool)
I ran through all my plugins to see if they were showing “compatible with WP 3.2.1″ in the WP directory, if they were then I kept them. Those that didn’t show recent updates and compatibility I got rid of (above)…
Since then: everything’s peachy, and yes it was HostGator server admins that told me about it (like 20 times since I’m stubborn and lazy).
No Problems With HostGator BUT…
I have heard some problems with other hosts, with “CPU throttling” and other weird issues…I’ve never had those problems with HG. All my problems have been self-created like plugins or whatever.
So why look for other hosts? I’ll be sticking with HG for quite some time, if I need to upgrade then I’ll upgrade with them.
If you missed the coupon for Cyber Monday, use mine instead for 25% off:
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I have hostgator myself. I never checked into the reseller package my because the one I’m on has unlimited websites. But that’s very nice to know about being able to put your websites on different IP addresses. One question though, I purchase my domains with namecheap and I get the WHOIS guard. Won’t that protect my information?
Hi, Amy – yeah I was on that plan with another host, the shared hosting – you can have a ton of sites on a reseller, too – I don’t think there’s a limit, honestly.
But to answer your WhoIs question – no, it doesn’t block your IP address. I buy my domains at NameCheap as well or Internet.bs – they’re cheap – anyway, free WhoIs privacy protection is only for your personal information (name/phone/email) and not your IP address.
BTW it’s the IP address of your website’s server, not your personal computer.
James,
I second your opinion about Hostgator. I too have used them for this year and have had a great experience thus far.
Additionally, I build websites for small businesses and am seriously considering becoming a reseller also.
Mark
Oh, if I was doing client work I’d make a reseller a must. That way you can manage their account, monitor bandwidth or generally provide support if or when needed.
HostGator gives your clients support – but just saying: if you needed to help, you could.
And for $25 or so a month (or today for $12 a month) you could make that money back in spades, charge what you want for hosting and white-label their CPanels to reflect your brand.
It’s what it was designed for, I just use it for IP diversification and stability.
Nice of you to let us know of the huge discount. I’d have taken it if i didn’t have some problems with Hostgator in the past. We’re not friends anymore, but if i read any more positive reviews like this one i might just give it another try when my plan expires in a couple of months.
I used to be with HostGator about a year or two back, and will admit that the service I received was wonderful but came at a price. 50% off is a great special, but I’m quite happy with my current host and wold not consider them even in the future. I know friends who are interested in making use of HostGator so I’ll tell them about it.
Thanks for keeping us informed. :)
So who are you with now?
Everyone knows that hostGator is really good for Linux hosting but is it good for windows hosting?
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I wouldn’t know, really – I’ve never used or needed Windows hosting. I know they offer it.
James,
I don’t think you’re getting IP diversity with a Hostgator reseller account, you’re just getting the same IP for all your sites. Which is certainly an improvement over shared hosting with sites you have no control over but not a unique IP for each site.
If you want C class IP diversity through Hostgator I’m pretty sure you have to go through their company seohosting dot com.
You do get IP diversity, just not C-Class IP diversity, it’s D-class:
AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD
For SEO hosting they differentiate the C-class, some companies the A-class for more money.
It’s basically a better kind of shared hosting since other sites besides mine are on my server, but that’s OK with me since the servers seem more stable, or it could just be my perception.
Thanks for sharing this informative post related to my Favorite hosting service provider, I’m a client of Hostgator and I’m totally satisfied from his service.
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