HostGator

Add date:2006-09-04 Hits:31

I thought I'd post this mini-review to help others. I just finished a week of hosting two domains with HG.

Performance (server response times) - great

Uptime - great (as far as I can tell)

Support:
1. Telephone support - always available 24x7. Almost always able to answer the questions I put to them and help resolve issues regarding cpanel tools. No help at all with respect to figuring out why FrontPage extensions weren't working on my domains, but that's probably because sys admins have to resolve most such problems.
2. Trouble ticket support -
a. On two issues that I used the ticket system for (one for domain transfer from old hosting service and one for help getting mail servers to work properly) I got very prompt help.
b. On one issue it took them three days and many, many ticket posts to get FrontPage extensions working on my domains. Although they will deny it, there were several times when the support ticket responses were "why don't you use FTP and abandon FrontPage?" I don't know whether three days to solve FrontPage problems is typical for HostGator support, but since HG's owner vigorously defended their performance in solving this problem I guess that three days to solve that problem meets their standards.

Price - reasonable: not a bargain, but not unfair

Overall, I'm moderately satisfied, meaning that I would still consider other offers but I would probably be hesitant to move.
- If you know what you're doing (at least a little bit) and you are assertive in advocating to get your problems resolved, then HG is a reasonable choice.
- If you rely upon FrontPage extensions to work properly in order to have HG host your site, I recommend that you immediately test whether or not you can even connect via FrontPage right after your account is set up, and if you can't even connect then think carefully about whether to spend more time on moving your domain there, or else consider not using FrontPage any more for maintaining and "publishing" your site.

- Tim