HostGator - Houston, Texas

ATX Austin

WARNING OF DECEPTIVE PRACTICES AND FRAUD
This company offered Unlimited Domains And Unlimited Space Package For $54+/- every three months, (After Special Prices)
Now after having over 200 domains, Hostgator nearly DOUBLE THE PRICE, Place A Limit of 50G, And only 50 Domains. SEE BBB Customers Complaints. REPORT TO FEDERAL TRADE COMISSION. Furthermore, Now They Want The Bill To Be Paid Through CHAT, Report To IRS For Potential Evasion.
Hostgator Hooks You Up With Cheap Price And False Advertising And Online Scams. Once You Have Spend To Much Time, They Will Scam YOU. : INCREASE THE PRICE, REDUCE THE SPEED, REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF SPACE, REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF DOMAINS. CUSTOMERS, BEWARE.

Carolyn C.

I have been with HostGator since 2010 and the last few years have been an absolute nightmare, but with numerous active sites, linked emails, and a busy small business, I didn't have the time to move. I figured it was better to just roll with the punches.
My mistake.
Stay away from this company. Get out if you can. Just save yourself.
Highlights of life with Hostgator:
1. The support people lie all the time that they have fixed things that they never fixed, and then when you call them back, another support person will identify an entirely different problem, and they now will fix that problem because it was the real problem. Anything to get that good grade on the survey.
2. Your site will be so slow. Load time speed is plummeting.
3. Many times you call to fix one thing, something unrelated breaks. For example, one time when I needed to get my security credentials on one site, every image disappeared.
4. Another time when I needed to have the domain verified for a large newsletter list, not only was that improperly done but the next day my site was full of malware, which they promptly tried to sell me ridiculously expensive fixes for.
5. Another time my domain email showed up on a data leak right after a phone call.
These sorts of things have been happening SO often lately, I realized I was scared to call them about anything because something random always broke on one of my sites afterwards. I have come to suspect that some support people hate the company so much that they go out of their way to mess with your sites. And I'm not a jerk to them--I'm really nice, actually, having worked in the service industry myself.
6. Recently I called about a suspicious charge and the HostGator person gave me the number for Dreamhost, which is also owned by EIG along with GoDaddy, etc. Are these support people pranking each other across departments?
7. For extra nightmares, I had a really old domain still connected to GoDaddy, and there was a whole night of fun being on the line with support people from Hostgator and GoDaddy with them acting like each other didn't know what they were doing, like war of the support staffs.
People need to know that ginormous company called EIG bought them along with other giant hosts, and you need to run far, far away from them. That is my advice. Get out if you can.
Needless to say, I'm switching hosts, and getting out has been its own nightmare and it's not over. I still don't trust my sites will survive the process, and I wouldn't be shocked if I lost a URL once things get unlocked as a precursor to moving. You can't trust Hostgator. They are worse than inept; they are actively malicious.
Why then, you ask, are there all these good reviews here? Because when you give enough good grades to the support people, they send you a link begging for a review. I gave some good grades to a few people, mostly because I didn't know they were lying, and then two who genuinely tried their best--pity grades--and I got this link. DO NOT BE FOOLED by the good reviews here. Hostgator is the devil, and so are all other hosts owned by this megacorp EIG.

Todd Denen

WORST EXPERIENCE EVER! After 14 years with Hostgator, my website was shut down without any notice or warning! It's now been 7 days without a resolution.

On 8.22.24, my home page said, "500 Error. Internal Server Error." When I called Hostgator for an update on when it would be fixed, they told me I was way over my CPU usage and sent tips to fix it.

So I asked several Hostgator Reps to please make my site LIVE again while I fix the problem and they said No! Since my WP site was shut down, I was also unable to access my WP admin page.

With my site shut down, I then talked to Chase at Hostgator and he said upgrading my plan to the Pro plan would fix the CPU issue.

That took 3 days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) to move files to a different server and did NOT fix the problem. Plus, each time I ask to talk to a Supervisor, I'm put on hold for 20-3 minutes or told they are not available.

And of course, the Customer Survey at the end of the call is NOT provided. I finally tracked down a number in the U.S. to call and now I'm again waiting for a Supervisor to call me back.

Maciej Skrydalewicz

I have the VPS Snoopy 4000. I upgraded to Snoopy 8000. Their team supposed to migrate all my websites to new server. They started from changing DNS. Websites DOWN.... I travel to their HQ... no access to the building. I will look for another hosting company

Jeff Barbiaux

For over 13 years Godaddy had no problem parking my 4 domains for me and keeping them safe, after 1 year after transfering to Hostgator I am now down 2 .coms and Zero explanations given I asked for and though i had auto renew on all 4 so appearently they cant even be trusted to park a domain name. Not Trustworthy

Hitman Advertising

I've used HostGator for 20 years. In the meantime, I have also used at least 10 other hosting companies on hundreds of different websites. The last couple of years, HostGator has completely gone astray and turned into an awful company. I don't recommend them whatsoever. Their support is awful! My email went down and it took them A WEEK TO FIX IT! Support responses are slow and their prices have doubled!

Bryan sparks

Horrible hosting company now!

We were with them since 2007.

They cancelled our reseller package and made us upgrade to VPS. But our site wouldn’t work on VPS so they told us we had to upgrade to a dedicated server!

Absolutely horrible customer service. I asked for the issue to be escalated and the agent said “it already was”

Host Gator should rebrand to HostClowns because that’s what they act like!

sudo fsck –a

END OF LIFE
Service, price, and value are a 3 at best. The reason for 1 star is due to all reseller accounts ONLY use out dated MySQL (5.7.23-23) which reached END OF LIFE in October 2023.

END OF LIFE, which means it will no longer be supported and will NOT receive security patches or bug fixes anymore!

As if that was not bad enough... We talking reseller accounts. Who is going to want to pay for hosting that will not support the lastest versions of Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal to name just a few.

I reached out to support, all they could tell me was they were using MySQL (5.7.23). and that if I wanted a different version I would have to upgrade to a self managed VPS.

Ok, first off, I picked a managed reseller account because I do not want to manage hosting servers any longer. Second, 5.7.23 is END OF LIFE!

I waited and waited, expecting that a commercial hostong provider would get with the times. I mean, this is simple logic. its been close to a year now and they are STILL using 5.7.23.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, I did find a new provider that does not force customers to use vulnerable software.

TO HOSTGATOR:
- MySQL 5.7 reached its end of life in October 2023.

- MySQL 5.7 will no longer receive security patches or bug fixes.

- MySQL 5.7.23 and earlier versions have known vulnerabilities, including CVE-2018-3155, which allows low privileged attackers to compromise MySQL Server.

- It IS recommended that all customers using MySQL 5.7 upgrade to MySQL 8 ASAP!