Comments on: Hostgator = FAIL

By: scotty

scotty — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:21:04 +0000

Take caution with HG dedicated servers. I've been overpaying for a HG dedicated for about 4 months, here is how it happened… Originally I signed up for the biggest server they offered for $375 a month. Months later they apparently upgraded there service plans with new improved hardware. Then I noticed the hardware my server has is being sold for $279 a month on there site now, and the one I'm paying for ($375 a month) is much better. So I put in a ticket to see if they could adjust my price to match the hardware I currently have ($279). There response stated that I must cancel my current server and order a new one, as well as move my data. Here is the problem, I don't need different hardware, I don't want to have to move my sites to the same exact setup, in my eyes that is a waste of time. So rather then simply adjusting my price to match the hardware I have they give me a bunch of hoops to jump through. Also, I was previously a customer of ThePlanet (who HG resells) and when I noticed price changes they were able to adjust it without question or hoops to jump through. Needless to say I am in the process of moving, but to a different, better host.

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:09:08 +0000

Well, I stuck with them for my dedicated server and they moved all of my files and databases and everything so I had to do very little. They've kind of made up for their shortcomings but it's still frustrating when they take your site down due to CPU limitations.

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:09:08 +0000

By: scrapur

scrapur — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:17:13 +0000

I am Looking to purchase Hostgator Dedicated server ,Will you recommend me to Purchase that , Today i face same problem wht you faced 5 month agao with hostgator. I face this problem after installing 301 redirect plugin

By: littlebee88

littlebee88 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:51:26 +0000

I am having the same problem with my site running Joomla! on HG, the suspended my account because they thought that the “script” index.php is taking up too much memory. All URLs are dynamically generated from index.php, so most pages have index.php in the url, these are all different pages running not the same one, and index.php is not just a script that is running, it is my main page? I got the same response as you Chris, “check your email”. Who knows how long the site has been down for, maybe as much as several days.

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:30:57 +0000

Well, Doug, I was going to e-mail you, but now something seems to be wrong with my HG webmail acct on this domain as well. I tried to hit “Send” in the e-mail and got “Message not sent. Server replied: Authentication failed, 535 Incorrect authentication data”. Is this something related to the other day's incident?

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:25:23 +0000

OK, Doug. I will e-mail it to you. I'll update the comments here in a few days once we find out what happened. I certainly hope this isn't just 'lip service'. Let's see what we can get done.

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:30:57 +0000

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:25:23 +0000

OK, Doug. I will e-mail it to you. I'll update the comments here in a few days once we find out what happened. I certainly hope this isn't just 'lip service'. Let's see what we can get done.

By: GatorDoug

GatorDoug — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:44:04 +0000

Hi Chris,

I agree completely.

Our standard operating procedure is to call customers as well as email them. If you did not receive a call, please send me a quick email with the ticket ID we sent to you and I'll check into why you didn't get on and take action. Sometimes employee error is to blame and that's obviously unacceptable, especially in situations like these.

Jeremy, if you could send me an email as well, that'd be terrific. My email is letusknow {at} hostgator.com. That'll go right to me and I'll look into what happened.

Thanks,

Douglas
Customer Service Manager
HostGator.com, LLC

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:06:13 +0000

It sounds like they really need to revamp their standard operating procedure when these sorts of things happen. You can't just have your site yanked down for hours at a time.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:35:44 +0000

I experienced the same thing a week ago on one of my sites. It received a LOT of visitors in about 30 minutes, and the first thing that Hostgator did was disabling all of my site! I didn't have access to any of them. Than 10 minutes later, they stopped blocking my sites, and blocked only the blog that received tons of visitors. It took about 2 hours to talk to them on the chat and get access to my blog, and disable plugins, activate wp super cache etc. I was really pissed off.

By: Hostgator = FAIL | Blippitt | Tech News | Affiliate Marketing | Hostgator

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:20:32 +0000

By: chrismonty

chrismonty — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:14:31 +0000

An e-mail? Saying, "Hey, by the way, your site is down"? What if we had been out for the afternoon? Or out of town? Our site could have been down for hours, or days. In fact, we wasted an hour researching the problem before we knew that your guys had e-mailed us.

How about a proactive phone call? "Hey, you're way over your CPU usage. Please install this plugin or we will take your site down in 2 hours."

I appreciate the comment and the explanation, but something a little more proactive is needed in the future.

By: GatorDoug

GatorDoug — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:02:55 +0000

Hi Chris,

Thank you for promoting HostGator in the past -- we appreciate it.

The reason we disabled your blog immediately is because it was causing a disproportionate load on the server and affecting server performance. These types of situations require immediate action or other customers on the server will start to encounter problems and error messages.

Another thing we try to do is only disable the script causing the problem instead of suspending the entire site. With a site that is only a blog, that may not make a big difference, but for sites that feature a blog, an online store, etc., us only disabling the script in question is typically helpful.

I apologize that the situation wasn't communicated to you better, but hopefully my explanation helps you understand the reasoning behind our actions. If you have any questions or concerns in the future, please don't hesitate to contact me personally.

Douglas
Customer Service Manager
HostGator.com, LLC