HostGatorReviews 13,391

Clicked on the sign-up button of windows hosting - Enterprise Plan only to be serve a linux hosting - business plan. Waited over 12 minutes for a support staff meant to have turned up within 5 minutes. Website took long to open while signing up.

Nonetheless, I believe in giving a service provider benefit of doubt. Went ahead to enroll for the windows hosting package - Enterprise Plan. Hope the service meets my expectation.

Notably, my refund hasn't processed through but I'm optimistic it will process through for these bank sharks to cut their share further.

Hostgator has been one of the best experiences ever, and I'm not only talking about the service by itself as a hosting provider (and yeap, it rocks, it's one of the best if not the best one), but also their customer experience, the response time, knowledge of people working behind scenes helping you, it's just AMAZING! Thanks, Hostgator! (I've bought 3 different plans my first one for only 1 domain and the rest for customers sharing multiple websites in the same host plan).

I've used Hostgator for many years on and off. It's been just okay the whole time. I've left them a couple of years ago and opted for other platforms to see what works.

Problem 1: I've experienced a few times where my site could not be accessed. So "downtime".

Problem 2: The worst thing about Hostgator is customer support. They make you jump through SO MANY hoops to chat with someone. It's ridiculous. It should be as easy as filling out a support ticket but it's not. You have to sign in to a separate site from your control panel and account to get to billing. And they ask so many questions and then list a bunch of articles that they expect you to read through before getting help. I only ever need to contact them if I can't find help IN the help articles!

Why make it such a difficult task to get help from an actual person? Sorry but Hostgator has the worst access to support of any site I can think of. I can think of sites that are probably larger that make it far easier to send off an email or fill out a support ticket.

I don't think I will ever use Hostgator again.

They lure you in with the promise of their basic plan and it's functionality, but what they don't make obvious is that they are limited by their usage of plug ins and software to programs that make you pay for full functionality and mislead you with free trials that CHARGE YOUR CARD.

On top of that they make you feel safe with a 30 day refund but if you look within the fine print: "If your plan includes a free domain name and you cancel within 1 year, our standard fee of $17.99 for the domain name (and any
Applicable taxes) (the "Domain Name Fee") will be deducted from your refund." While at the same time they keep the domain name.

So yes. In a word: trap.

HostGator is a prime of example of what happens when a business tries to cut as many corners as possible with their web hosting. Since its inception, it seems it has been a standard procedure to store client passwords in plain text which is certainly not a great security practice (and was even known as a bad security practice in the early 2000s). They are often overselling their platform and thus are putting their clients in a bad position where there are not enough resources to serve all of their customers.

Their support is notoriously slow and agents often misunderstand what the client is asking, requiring multiple people to get involved when the issue is resolved by a single agent on competing services.

Would not recommend them at all even if you're in need of a cheap option.

Bought a WP theme for its design and quality.

I hadn't known or read that Max Execution Time setting must be at least 300, whereas my HostGator cloud plan was set to just 30. And HG support said as per their policy on my plan, it is not possible increase it. I contacted more than 3 different support team members in HostGator and all of them said the same. Then I had submitted a hosting plan cancellation with HG.

Still I contacted my WP theme seller's support and requested to help the situation. Without even seconds delay, their team went out of their way and logged into my cPanel and WP admin (with my permission) and fixed the issue. Within 30 mins.

Why HostGator support could not do that is a BIG question when they are trying to depict an image as highly customer focused company. However my WP theme seller company saved one of HG's cancellations:)

Remember, whether HostGator is good at supporting their customers or not, they know how to interrupt our YouTube movie to say "Nothing makes us happy more than helping our customers"