Do a quick search online and you’ll find hundreds of reviews of Host Gator Website Hosting. But how many of these “reviewers” actually use Host Gator? And how many HostGator reviews are even remotely truthful?

I am a Host Gator customer and what I am about to tell you may surprise you. And here it is… I think Host Gator is a very AVERAGE web host! Don’t get me wrong, they do a good job at what they do… and they are priced fairly… but they are still average. You can do better… and you can do better without spending a lot more money.

Why? Because Host Gator is just another shared web host offering the same ordinary plans as everyone else. I’ll get to why I use them a bit later. Most people who are singing their praises are actually doing so because Host Gator pays one of the highest Affiliate Commissions in the Industry. So many bogus made up testimonials that are written by people who are only trying to plug a product.

So lets get to the reality of the matter. I’m not going to pound on Host Gator and tell you how bad they are… or sing their praises. I’m simply going to interject a little food for thought.

Here is a HostGator Testimonial from an Unhappy Customer

When you do it yourself it's very good but I have just spent ten days trying to get my sites (with them) transferred to a reseller account (also with them) but it's been, and still is, a nightmare. Passwords changed without consent, user names changed without consent, technical support who spell beautiful "beutyiful" spell Bangkok "bankok"and Thailand "tieland".I've spent hours...literally hours on their live chat trying to sort out this mess but they are proving to be hugely incapable of sorting out the smallest of issues.
Like I said, if you set up an account and go with the flow, but if you have any issues...good luck!

I read this and just laughed.

Now Here is a Typical Made Up Host Gator Testimonial

You can always rely on the best hosting without spending too much from your pocket. You can notice that the coupons and discounts are special for seasons and will have different plans and benefits.

And here is a Real HostGator Review with a Positive Experience

I have been using host gator for several months now switching over to them from godaddy as godaddy didn't allow some things i needed What sold me was when i asked live support i got an answer quick they answered all my questions about their services and were very helpful.

The Truth About HostGator Hosting Depends on the User Experience

And here is my user experience: Generous disk space and bandwidth, but don't buy into the “Unlimited”… it means nothing. You get anywhere close to using a large amount of resources and Host Gator will let you know about it. It’s just marketing hype… the typical user won’t use many resources. I hate this type of advertising because it’s misleading. Honest companies like Rochen Webhosting do not play games like this… they tell you the truth. But this kind of marketing seems to attract the “First Time Buyer”… so they do it. Even so you do get a fair amount of resources for the money.

Another deceptive industry practice… and Host Gator plays right along with is pricing. They advertise $4.95 per month. But it’s simply not the case unless you pay for 3 years in advance. The “true” cost is $8.95 per month. Compare this to the Honestly State price of Rochen Web Hosting which is $7.95 a month. But people like to get suckered in I suppose. We live in a world of deception where it’s okay for marketing campaigns to mislead people.

Host Gator customer service is okay. They generally do a pretty good job of getting back to you. I had an issue with their 25mb limit on uploads so I contacted tech support. They were prompt in responding but they offered no solution. Turns out the site I wanted to move was larger, and they didn’t help at all. So a good response, but a negative outcome.

You have to be very careful with Host Gator and error pages… if you don’t set them up properly your visitors will be redirected to Host Gator ads. I personally find this unethical and believe they should generate a user error like most other hosts… but it’s just one more way for them to make money. Most beginning webmasters know very little about error pages.

You have to really stay on top of your sites hosted with Hostgator… if for any reason someone reports your site as a violation, if someone tries to hack your site, etc. HostGator will simply shut your site down. And it’s in their TOS:

Failure to respond to email from our abuse department within 48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via trouble ticke /email and will have a response within 48 hours.

Sure HostGator must have rules to run their business. But I know people who have had their sites shut down and they were entirely innocent. They enforce a shoot now and ask questions later type of policy. This is in their best interest, but not in yours. It’s very easy to take the weekend off and then get back to work on Monday and not even realize your site has been shut down. Then waste a couple more days with their ticket system trying to get the issue resolved.

Here is another example of how your site may get shut down. Lets say you write a popular article. You post it online and it hits a service like DIGG… suddenly your page is skyrocketing to the Top! Good thing right? Maybe. Or it could trigger the 3% CPU usage spike and your site gets taken offline. Again one person can not hog all the resources on a shared host… it wouldn’t be fair. But we are not talking about constant CPU usage… we are talking about a “spike” in traffic. The better hosts realize this and will let the spike overrun temporarily, then contact you and suggest you upgrade plans. HostGator just shuts you down.

One problem I had with HostGator was they moved one of my sites from one server to the other and totally screwed up an WordPress installation. No backup, no recourse. Fortunately the site was not that important and I didn't have a lot invested in it at the time. That’s when I decided it was not worth continuing to host “important” sites with them.

I had another problem with Host Gator when they just chose to change all the passwords due to an in house problem with one of their own employees that put their subscribers at risk. So they just changed everyone’s passwords and told everyone to log back in and change them again. Not very comforting from a site security perspective.

But in Host Gators defense, they are just like most shared hosts. I’ve used about a dozen over the years and they are all pretty much the same… same marketing tactics, same run of the mill service.

If you want quality hosting your business can rely on I would suggest you look into a Host like Rochen… who uses state of the art equipment, offers reasonable honest plans, and when you look at what they offer dollar to dollar you realize who has the real value. Sure they may not have “unlimited” this or that… but how many people really use unlimited amounts of space? If you want to make money online you simply can not afford downtime or problems. And if you do encounter a problem you need a quick professional resolution to the problem.

So no shiny made up pretend 5 stars from me. I’d say HostGator is an okay host for first time webmasters, and people who do not need a lot of help, or get large spikes in web traffic. If you never spike the traffic and read the TOS you could be just fine using them. So should you use them? I’d say a maybe…

So why do I still use HostGator? Because I have a marketing strategy for my network of sites that involves NOT putting all my eggs in one basket. If something happens to one host – and invariably it will – all your sites do not go down at once! Remember Hurricane Katrina? Well as luck would have it I was using a Domain Registrar at the time based in New Orleans and the majority of my sites were down for the better part of a week. Since then I have diversified. I use Host Gator as one host for my less important projects.