Why I switched to Hostgator

I’ve had virtual servers for about as long as they’ve been around. I remember being excited about a $99 virtual server back in the day. After a series of moves, I ended up on GoDaddy a few years back.

Mostly it was convenience. The price was better than I was paying, and I had 50+ domains registered there. I was migrating all my domains to GoDaddy, their domain management was great, and their prices pretty darn good.

Then one day I had issues with my email. Nothing worked. My Qmail daemon was crashing. Calling support was less than useless. If I hadn’t called at least I would have saved the 20 minutes. They knew NOTHING about their virtual servers.

That’s ok, I’m a techie. Nose to the grindstone and all that, and a couple of days later (arrgh!) I had email again.

Then I found out that my server level was no longer being supported. Admittedly my version of Redhat was getting a little long in the tooth. So I used the PLESK control panel to back up all my websites, since everything would get wiped. I updated to the latest OS, and went to install my sites again. Oops. Turns out that the new version of PLESK they had installed with the new Linux version, couldn’t understand the old saves. That’s right. The restore was NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE.

That’s ok, I’m a real weenie. Research, investigate, and learn how to do the manual extractions and uploads. A week later, they’re all back up. A lot of repetition there.

A few weeks ago I was helping a friend setup their domain and webhosting. I asked around and did a little online research and narrowed my choices for their hosting down to three. Startlogic, HostMonster, and Hostgator. While investigating the three, I made a decision.

Time to move off of GoDaddy, and move to Hostgator.

1. I was tired of PLESK. Everyone in my community uses cPanel
2. I needed unlimited domains, or at least 100+
3. I wanted SSL/SSH.
4. I was desperate for decent support - Hostgator appears to be among the best.
5. I needed excellent backup/restore service
6. I needed excellent transfer service
7. Cheap would be good
8. “Green” is nice (doing my part for the environment)

I still use GoDaddy for all my domain registration and management. They have successfully helped me pickup domains after they expired, and their managment tools are top rate. The recent bonuses of free ‘private’ registration with many of the domain purchases is a great bonus.

But for my domain hosting, I’ve picked up the cheaper, more powerful, and better supported HostGator.

If you’re interested in moving to a better web host - you could do a lot worse than HostGator. I’m not sure you could do a whole lot better. And when the ball drops, and things go bad, one of the best support teams in the business is good to have on your side.

If you’re interested… Here’s their link again.

HostGator - Better Hosting, Better Support

By the way, they have a couple of specials going right now - I’m not sure for how long. Enter promo code “FREETRIAL” to get the first month for $.01. If you’re going to prepay for several months, use promo code “GREEN” which gets you 20% off.