After being online since about 1998, we've had more than our share of web hosts. Anyone that has their own website is probably familiar with all the horror stories with web hosting, and we too have had them--emails going unanswered, horrible support, unknowledgeable support staff (if one even exists), downtime & outages, etc. All these stressful things can be more than a burden, and even bad for one's health if you depend on your website as your business.
After putting up with the aforementioned negatives with each of our previous web hosts, and enduring it again for far too long with our last host, it was imperative that a move be made to a reliable web host with a 24/7 support staff. After a few weeks of careful research, and "testing" each potential host's support staff with pre-sales emails, we settled upon the multiple award-winning, BBB Certified, Inc. 500 fastest growing privately-owned companies of 2009, HostGator, and could not be more pleased. In fact, so pleased, this webpage was created in order to spread the word and hopefully put an end to others' web hosting horror stories, the stress therein, and to save from the stress and uncertainty of looking for a new host.
First off, although they have a ticket system for support, you DO NOT have to login to a website in order to email them, you can simply just send them an email to open the support ticket, and you can also simply reply to their email responses without having to login to anything. They answer emails in minutes, sometimes even 2-3 minutes! They also have 24/7 telephone and live chat support, but because the email support is so great and fast, we've never had to call them or use their live chat. Emails sent to them were never about info regarding any downtime or outage, they were questions about the operation of various parts of cPanel, to which they always had an answer and were able to help. They also have a online forum. It's definitely worth mentioning, and a huge plus; their support is all IN-HOUSE, there is no outsourcing to some other country! And, currently staffed by over 200 support staff employees and counting.
They have a special cPanel setup with some VERY useful proprietary plug-ins only found at HostGator. Among them are free website templates, and some incredibly detailed website visitor stats which one would ordinarily have to pay substantial monthly fees to have....
These stats give detailed day-to-day breakdowns of total pages visited, each page visited, and will show how visitors get to you by referrals from any search engine, or from any other webpage, and also show entry and exit pages. You can also see breakdowns of operating systems used, browsers used, country of origin, ISP/host origin, IP address, visits by search engine bots, keywords used to find you, HTTP codes which can useful for troubleshooting, and more, too many to list. Stats can be viewed by monthly, weekly, daily, even by the hour. (See the screenshot of the side panel for the full list). At the top of each page that is displayed after clicking any link in the side panel is a drop-down menu where any month can be selected.
Another area of interest and great use is your web server's stats. In this area you can view the server's CPU usage, memory usage, running processes, and server status (in screenshot). Most hosts keep these areas hidden so you can't see just how much of a load their over-burdened servers are under, nor see why your website may be too slow or down! Although all of HostGator's servers are constantly monitored 24/7, it's still nice to be able to look at these areas, know they are in the green, and know the exact data. A demo of their actual cPanel control panel can be found here (login: demo & demo).
A full list of details, features and pricing for example on their shared hosting packages can be found here (starting at only $4.95 monthly!). Note they also offer reseller and dedicated hosting packages, and also have ongoing 20% discount codes and 99.9% uptime guarantee. They may not be the absolute cheapest available, but ARE still considered cheap (read: inexpensive) by comparison to many others, and remember you get what you pay for. There's more:
Enviromentally Friendly Green Hosting
HostGator is also a green company, something VERY important to us, as we are as well:
"All of HostGator's shared and reseller servers are powered and cooled by wind power generated in our home state of Texas. All of our shared and reseller servers are now 130% wind powered! That's right, 130%! We're not just neutralizing our environmental impact, we're reversing it! HostGator has purchased certified Renewable Energy Credits representing 130% of the electricity used to both power and cool every last one of our shared and reseller servers! Just how big a dent in climate change does that make?
It's the equivalent of:
1. Removing 444 cars from the road for a year, or
2. Powering 321 homes with clean energy for a year, or
3. Saving 5,654 barrels of oil, or
4. Protecting 551 acres of forest for a year
Top-notch first-class and FAST support via email, phone, OR chat, and support WITHOUT outsourcing to India or some other overseas country, 99.9% uptime guarantee, a loaded cPanel with great proprietary plug-ins, a multiple award-winning company, and green, all for cheap prices.....you can't beat that! They will also even assist you in transferring your existing site over to them.
Please either bookmark this webpage for future reference so you can use the links to them or banners anywhere on this page, or please save and use this direct link when going to their website: http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=orpheus (to save link, right click and "Copy shortcut" or "Copy link location") and use it if you decide to go with them. Yes, we get some credit for referrals to them, so that's why it's important to use that exact link to access their site.
Now in case you're wondering: "Ooooohhhh, I get it, so that's why you recommend them", nothing could be further from the truth! If the things stated on this page were not the truth, all FACTS, no one would have bothered to go through the trouble of creating a dedicated webpage for this topic! We would have simply not created a webpage at all, because we certainly DO NOT WANT anyone complaining to us about how bad something may be that we recommended! We love spreading good news, and love to hearing positive things about anything we recommend, and we are also fully aware that recommending anything that may be negative could have a negative effect on OUR company! It is also worth mentioning that ALL of our previous hosts also had referral programs, and webpages were never created for them! Therefore you can read, and believe, everything you read on this webpage (or any of our other pages of course), with FULL confidence!
Below are a few more banners that show a little of what they offer, any can be clicked to go to their website. (Please note that at the time this page was created these below were recent banners. Packages may have changed since then, and prices may have even gone down).
HostGator is also a green company, something VERY important to us, as we are as well:
