Hostgator Review

I’m calling this my Hostgator review but that’s a bit misleading. This is definitely more like a story because everything I’m telling you actually happened to me and my blog. I’m hoping, through this story, I can prevent you from going the same route.

HostGator in my experience, is the best hosting company. I’ll explain more throughout this review (there goes that word again).

The Best Feature About Hostgator

The best overall feature of Hostgator is they use the CPanel interface which is an extremely easy-to-use interface. The reason it’s so easy is because there are lots of nice sized buttons broken down into every group that you’ll ever need to run your online business.

They have 12 sections dedicated to everything you’ll need. I’m not going to go into all of them because I don’t use all of them but the main are the:

• Hostgator Links – Get instant chat tech support and make changes to billing.
• Mail – Setup your emails (which you get an unlimited amount of)
• Files – If you’re like me, you’ll love this section because you can log right into your FTP and make necessary changes to your files.
• Domain – easily create subdomains, add new domains and create redirects
• Software/services – Where the magic goes down. Unlike other services (which I’ll talk about later), WordPress is INSTANTLY installed in less than 4 easy steps using Fantasico Deluxe.

The fact that Hostgator uses CPanel is a reason why every newbie reading this should be signing up to Hostgator; but before you do, please finish reading. I want you to understand my story.

Hostgator Customer Service is Very Good

I personally have no complaints at all about Hostgators customer service. There was only one time I called that they couldn’t solve my problem and I’ll explain that in a bit.

When you first call Hostgator’s customer support, you’re told by their answering service how many calls are ahead of you and how long before you’re call will be taken care of. 9 times out of 10, when I call, I’m within the first 5 and have never waited longer than 10 minutes. The average wait time for me is around 2 minutes.

Their customer service techs are amazing to. They talk with you on the phone while they fix your problems and every now and again you get one that will tell a few jokes. Basically you get the vibe that they’re real people and not there for a paycheck.

I don’t know their hiring system but whatever it is, they need to keep doing it. I’ve only had 2 times out of an uncountable number of calls where my issues weren’t resolved by the tech.

This usually leads to a ticket where you’ll have a more experienced tech look at your problem and communnicate with you when they find a solution.

One instance was because of  an issue with WordPress.

Not them; But here’s the basket kicker. He put me on hold and when he came back, he had found the instructions on WordPress for me to follow. Now if that isn’t customer service.

The one big reason why I believe their success rates as techs is so high is because most of the techs are bloggers and web designers themselves. I’ve worked with quite a few techs where we had pleasant conversations about our different ventures online while getting my site fixed.

I remember when I completely lost this ONE extremely important post that I had taken nearly 3 hours to write; the tech was on the phone with me for almost 2 hours going through my FTP and backups.

She ended up restoring my website some kind of way and I got my ONE important post back. I was overwhelmed with her customer service and we chatted it up about websites the whole time so it wasn’t a boring 2 hours at all.

Yea; a customer service rep that actually does what you do. She owned a blog and I’m almost certain she uses Hostgator. Bet she gets a nice discount too.

Why I decided to switch to Hostgator

I didn’t have anyone in my ear saying Hostgator was this great company. I was still a newbie and all I knew was GoDaddy. Not hard to recognize them when they have one of the most memorable Superbowl commercials of all time.

You better believe I thought about going to GoDaddy because they advertise that they’re Numero uno in website hosting. I didn’t know much at the time about internet marketing but I was under a reseller for GoDaddy and besides their customer service being garbage, GoDaddy’s interface is HORRIBLE!

Now I’m an expert on installing WordPress and building blogs and I’ve come to expect a certain level of satisfaction. I recently had to install WordPress for a friend and boy did I feel like I needed a college degree to get around in GoDaddy’s interface.

I couldn’t find the FTP to install her website and when I decided to just install WordPress and build her a site from scratch figuring that it would be easier. I ran into numorous road blocks.

GoDaddy has some type of application for installing WordPress that is not user friendly at all and I ended up shooting out a Tweet to vent my frustration. Maybe this will get them to rethink their interface.

In all I wasted about 2 hours just trying to install WordPress. Even after a successful installation, we found that there is a mistake because she has 2 sites with the exact same thing on them.

I’m an expert and for me to have that much trouble installing WordPress is why I can’t tell you enough how important it is for newbies to start off right with an interface they can navigate easily.

To get back to why I decided to switch; I was sick of the horrible customer service and not knowing how navigate the GoDaddy interface.

I also checked out HostGator’s site where they let you test-drive their C-Panel interface (remember to save 25% off your entire purchase, use coupon code: 25OFFNEWBLOG). I was instantly hooked.

A friend’s experience with GoDaddy and why he switched to HostGator

I have a friend that does the exact same thing I do and he has nothing but bad things to say about them.

He’s always telling me how their customer service is horrible because they don’t seem to know what their doing.

They put him on hold to go ask someone else what to do and after running throughout the whole company, they come back without an answer.

The worst of all though, is him having to pay a guy to find out why his site is shut down and then finding out that WordPress wasn’t installed right.

Do you know who installs WordPress?

Your hosting company does. Is that bad? You bet it is. After finding this out, he decided to switch his sites and services over to run on HostGator.

**UPDATE** Right after finishing this post, I was on Twitter and happened to see GoDaddy bragging about their Superbowl commercials. Look what some customers had to say. I had to retweet them. Plus GoDaddy supported SOPA and PIPA aka the “Death of the Internet”.

HostGator now sells domain names!

Hostgator finally figured out that having your own domain registrar is good for business. You can now buy your domain names and hosting in the same place which is a huge plus for newbies.

Website Builder for those that are technically challenged

Hostgator has a service called Easy Sitebuilder that will allow you to build a website in just a few minutes. While I strongly suggest going straight to Fantasico Deluxe and installing WordPress, I can’t force you to.

If you’re more interested in building a website rather than a blog, you can build a site in minutes without knowing all the HTML, CSS and PHP coding.

99.9% up time

No matter what your business online, your site must stay running. I told you earlier that there was only one time when I had a problem with my site that was out of my control.

Being that I and most bloggers, use shared hosting, we on rare occasions run into problems. Apparently someone who I share servers with was pulling a lot of server space which caused my sites to run very slow.

I called Hostgator a few times just to see what was going on and they assured me that they were on it and would have the situation fixed in a timely manner. I think this problem lasted no more than 3 hours.

While this is the worse experience I’ve had with Hostgator, it’s not that bad. My site was still running and this only happened once in the 2 years I’ve been with them. After they fixed it, everything went back to normal.

Point of this is to show you that Hostgator is up and running always. You’ll never have to worry about your site shutting down and if it just so happens that it does, their customer service will be in touch with you letting you know just what’s going on.

Making the switch to Hostgator is easy

When I decided to switch to Hostgator, they made it almost effortless. The only work on my part was getting my then hosting company (reseller for GoDaddy) to open up my account and allow for a hosting transfer.

Hostgator even warned me not to alert them that I was making a switch because they’ve heard of “certain companies” putting some type of lock on accounts where they couldn’t complete the switch.

Hostgator techs handle everything for free when you decide to switch and they’ll keep you updated on when they finish.

Getting started

As I mentioned above, Fantasico Deluxe makes installing WordPress extremely easy which is why I recommend Hostgator to all newbies.

It’s also a good practice to setup emails for your domain names which is a very simple 3 step process.

What I don’t like about Hostgator

To tell you the truth, there is nothing I can think of on why I don’t like Hostgator. I wish they would do more television advertising like GoDaddy so more people would be warmed up to their service.

On the affiliate side, I wish Hostgator would pay reoccurring monthly commissions. That would be sweet. I’m going to contact them on Twitter about it and see what they have to say about it.

Summary of my Hostgator review

The intentions of creating a blog is to make money (hence the name of the site), so your blog being down for even a minute is like cutting your hours at work.

Of course we make a heck of a lot more money but still, its not good for business. I use and recommend Hostgator because they are very reliable and have excellent customer service.

Having someone to handle the many stresses that can come with running an online business is important. As you read above, I started off wrong and luckily was able to make a move in the right direction.

I wrote this Hostgator review as a means for newbies and even some seasoned online business owners to see what I went through to get where I am in hopes that they will not take the same route.

Pricing

Hostgator has 3 plans with multiple pricing options based on how you want to save. You can save up to 50% per month if you decide to pay for multiple years of hosting.

I pay $9.97 a month for unlimited everything. I can have 100 sites if I want to. I don’t suggest it but it’s  possible.

• Hatchling – 1 domain with unlimited bandwidth: Standard price: $7.16 per month
• Baby – Unlimited domains and bandwidth: Standard price: $7.96 per month
• Business – Unlimited domains, bandwidth, private SSL & IP and free Toll-free number: Standard price: $11.96 per month

I hope you found this review helpful in making a decision of who you will trust the most important part of your online business with.

I want to hear what you have to say:

Have you ever used GoDaddy?

Do you use them now?

What are your experiences in the past with hosting?

Are you happy with your hosting provider?

Thanks for reading. I wish you much internet success

When you decide to use Hostgator, use my exclusive coupon code to get 25% off your total at checkout. That coupon code is: 25OFFNEWBLOG

IBlog4Dollars endorses HostGator