HostGator Web Hosting

I’ve already recommended HostGator Web Hosting earlier in the article Ultimate Guide to Web Hosting, Review of Best Web Hosting Service Provider and its Coupon Code. Then what’s the need for another review? Well, that was my web hosting experience with StartLogic.com, PowWeb.com, and HostGator.com, not necessarily a review of HostGator. But today am going to give a full review of HostGator Web Hosting.

Today, when I checked HostGator’s shared hosting and reseller hosting to test a coupon code I was surprised to see that HostGator upgraded all their shared and reseller web hosting plans, added HUGE amounts of disk space and bandwidth to their hosting plans without any additional cost. Earlier HostGator didn’t gave any discounts if you pay the hosting bill in advance, their hosting fees remains the same no matter you pay for one month or for one year but now they are giving discounts for one year, two year and three year plans. And there is no setup fee at all even if you pay your hosting bills monthly. Also, HostGator now offers a full 45 (was 30) Day Money Back Guarantee.

HostGator offers cPanel based Linux Web Hosting Service. HostGator do offer 24/7/365 Live Chat, Email, and Telephone Support. Your web site will be hosted on a Dual Xeon server that can provide instant backups of your website. As a cPanel based web hosting service they supports Fantastico which has over 52 ready to install scripts.

The account setup with HostGator is really fast. You wont have to wait for hours or even days to get your setup email. HostGator setup all accounts with in 20 minutes. When I registered the Baby Plan for this blog I got my account setup email in just 3 minutes.

HostGator’s billing system is exceptional and as I said they now offers 45 Day Money Back Guarantee. You can cancel your account anytime by filling a cancellation form. No questions asked! Regarding payment methods HostGator accepts all major Credit Cards and they accept PayPal too.

HostGator Shared Web Hosting Review

HostGator offers three Shared cPanel Linux Web Hosting Plans namely Hatchling, Baby, and Swamp.

Hatchling Plan is HostGator’s cheapest plan and it offers 350 GB Disk Space and 3,000 GB Bandwidth. Before the upgrade of their web hosting plans it offered just 50 GB space and 200 GB bandwidth. Even now, I don’t recommend Hatchling Plan due to it’s limitations but if you think that it suits you then go for it. Hatchling Plan allows you to host only one Domain Name. It offers 99.5% Uptime Guarantee (and not 99.9% Uptime Guarantee) but it offers Unlimited Subdomains, Unlimited FTP Accounts, Unlimited POP3 Accounts and Unlimited MySQL Databases. HostGator recently upgraded the Hatchling Plan earlier it offered just 20 Subdomains, FTP Accounts, and POP3 Accounts. Now I see that its Unlimited.

The Hatchling Plan costs $8.95/mo. OR $6.95/mo. for one year plan OR $5.95/mo. for two year plan OR $4.95/mo. for a three year plan.

Baby Plan is HostGator’s most popular as well as best selling web hosting plan. It offers 600 GB Disk Space and 6,000 GB Bandwidth. Before the upgrade they offered just 100 GB web space and 1,000 GB bandwidth so now they are offering 500% more disk space and bandwidth at no additional cost.

Baby Plan allows you to host Unlimited Domain Names and offers 99.9% Uptime Guarantee. That’s not all it supports Unlimited sub-domains, Unlimited FTP accounts, Unlimited POP3 accounts, and Unlimited MySQL Databases.

The Baby Plan costs $9.95/mo. OR $8.95/mo. for two year plan OR $7.95/mo. for a three year plan.

Swamp Plan is the high end shared hosting plan of HostGator. It offers 1,000 GB Disk Space and UNLIMITED Bandwidth. The features of Swamp Plan is same as Baby Plan except that supports Anonymous FTP and Private SSL.

The Swamp Plan costs $14.95/mo. OR $13.95/mo. for two year plan OR $12.95/mo. for a three year plan.

Why HostGator Sucks

I’ve recommended HostGator by pointing out all it’s features and advantages. But no web hosting company is perfect in all terms. I have noticed that some HostGator users says "HostGator Sucks" only because of the following two reasons.

First of all HostGator don’t give a free domain name with their hosting plans even if you order a three year plan. But it’s a matter of just $1.99 or $4.95. Get a top level Domain Name from Yahoo! Domains for just $1.99/year or get a $4.95/year Domain Name from Netfirms which offers free domain privacy and reliable services.

Second, HostGator doesn’t offer any Free Marketing Credits (PPC Credits) of their own. Again, I’ve a solution for that I’ll tell you How to Get Over $1,000 in Free Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Credits from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Others.

HostGator Web Hosting Discounts & Coupon Code

HostGator have only one coupon code as of now which gives you a discount of a flat $9.94.

Try HostGator Web Hosting Risk FREE for One Month!

Want to Try HostGator BABY Plan for FREE? Simply follow the link below to signup and enter the HostGator coupon code "JURY" without the quotes, that gives you a discount of $9.94. And you pay just 1 Cent for your first month of hosting with HostGator. And, if you are not satisfied then you can cancel your account and can ask for a refund of that 1 Cent too.

Sign Up for HostGator Web Hosting

View Web searching and browsing from a new perspective-3D. The free SpaceTime Beta 0.9 simplifies surfing by organizing items in a spatial way, as you would in the real world. Web pages appear as large thumbnails, one behind the next, in a visual stack that recedes into the distance. Pages browsed by URL go into a browsed-image stack. Search stacks show thumbnails of the results listing followed by the pages it cites. Every search produces another stack. Stack float on an invisible plane. Within a stack, you can quickly move back and forth using your mouse’s scroll button. You’ll also find navigation tools in a band below the stack area. Keyboard cursor arrows let you “fly” through the 3D environment or move stacks. Double-clicking on a thumbnail maximizes it into a browsable window.

With certain sites, the application can display search in its interface rather then as normal 2D Web pages. Currently this capability works with major search engines and a number of RSS feeds. SpaceTime’s eBay search integration is the most impressive. The software isn’t a full-blown browser, though, and it requires a pretty powerful Windows XP or Windows Vista PC (Mac and Linux versions are in progress), but it’s definitely worth checking out.

Although Google launched this service back in April, 2007 most ‘Googlers’ are unaware of the service. So if you are one among them then its time to try this service.

What is Google Web History?

It’s more likely that you cant find a web site again which you saw online in the past. Google Web History is a service from Google (GOOG) which stores the information about the web pages which you have visited in the past. But you have to use Google Toolbar to enjoy the full potential of the service.

You can use the service even if you don’t have a Google Toolbar on your PC, but the features will be limited then. If you don’t have the toolbar then Google stores only your past searches and not the webpage itself.

And, if you have a Google Toolbar on your PC and you are Signed In then Google stores all your searches and even stores the whole web page which you visited and make them searchable. Sounds good? That’s not all Google stores all the pages which you visited using your browser with a Toolbar installed.

 

Google Web History also provides interesting information about your activity on the web, such as the most frequently visited website, your top searches, interesting items, monthly search activity,  daily search activity, hourly search activity, e.t.c. It keeps a history of which sponsored ads, images, news, videos, products, books, maps you have clicked on. Another cool feature of this service is that it shows the Total Google Searches you have done and also the number of page visits for each day.

Is it safe to use Web History?

Yes, Google respects your privacy. Your ‘Web History’ is safe as others cant access those information unless you share your Google Account’s username and password. Read Google Web History Privacy FAQ to learn how Google handles your data.

Is it possible to remove items from your Web History?

Yes, Just click “Remove items” and you can either remove only those items which you don’t want or remove the entire history.

Is it possible to access your Web History from any Computer?

Yes, just go to http://www.google.com/history and sign in to your Google Account and by this way you can access your Web History from any computer.

Source: Google Web History

From My Web Hosting Experience

I have recommended HostGator web hosting in my last article The Most Reliable Web Hosting Companies on the Internet. But I didn’t tell you the reason why I recommend HostGator.

When I registered this domain name minterest.com I hosted the domain in my own reseller web hosting then it was a finance blog and last month I have redesigned  the website and made it a blog portal that covers all categories. I redesigned the website early august and I selected PowWeb as my web hosting provider.

Experience with PowWeb Web Hosting

After I sign up with PowWeb I was dissatisfied because their support is not so good and takes too much time for a response. Also their control panel is not cPanel based and moreover their Live Chat Support team is always busy, you hardly get a Live Chat support representative’s attention in 15 minutes (from my experience). If you need support by email then you have to login to the control panel and then write the mail from there and that also takes unusually longer time. As I use Google AdSense to monetize my blog I want to use AdLogger to track the clicks but I was unable to install that sucessfuly in PowWeb server the reason is unknow any way it failed. So I began to think about changing the host but then I didn’t have any idea about how to transfer my WordPress blog to another host. So I stick to PowWeb itself.

Then the worse happened, last week it was a terrible week for me, I deleted my WordPress database accidentally from my web host and that deleted all my blog posts, categories and I didn’t have any back up of WordPress. I contacted the Live Chat Support at PowWeb but they didn’t have any backup of my site or database even though I contacted them in 15 minutes after deletion happened.

Anyway now I have to republish my blog from scratch so I decided to change my Web Hosting Provider and I choose StartLogic as my new hosting service provider and then I changed the Name Server of my domain to that of StartLogic’s, even before I filled their Sign Up form. I did like that because I thought by the time I receive my Account Setup Information from StartLogic the domain name would propagate to StartLogic’s server so that I can start the work early.

Experience with StartLogic Web Hosting

So I signed up with StartLogic and contacted their support team via Chat and Email telling them to setup my account at the earliest but again the worse happened. Their database had a problem at that time and their support team told me that it will be resolved in two hours time. I became crazy! And I waited for a couple of hours, nothing happened and at last I decided to change the hosting again and planned about switching to HostGator Web Hosting. So I filled up the signup form and got their confirmation letter and in 3 minutes I got my account setup mail from HostGator. Yes, in 3 minutes! But the DNS has changed and it is now pointing to StartLogic I waited for some three hours and checked my domain http://ww.minterest.com but it was still poiting to StartLogic but when I checked just http://minterest.com it was pointing to HostGator so I began the work immediately by installing WordPress on my new host. Luckily I had only 42 posts in my blog and I used Windows Live Writer to publish the blog so I had 39 posts in my Laptop and then I collected the rest 3 entries from Google’s Cache. Thanks to Google Search as I got the categories, posts and the latest design from Google’s Cache as Google used to index my site every two days.Google’s Cache was important as the posts in my Laptop were outdated as I used to edit the posts online too. And at last after 12 hours of continuous work I collected all the data and uploaded my site to HostGator and my site became fully functional in less than 12 hours.

Experience with HostGator Web Hosting

I know HostGator for a long time and it’s my favorite hosting company. I believe HostGator is the world’s best web hosting company. And, I choose PowWeb and StartLogic at first because of their discounted price. When I signed up with PowWeb it was just $5.77/mo. but now its $7.77/mo. and for StartLogic it is $5.95/mo and earlier it was $6.95/mo. These prices applies when you pay opt for annual payment. HostGator too have a $6.95/mo. plan called Hatchling but that offers 99.5% uptime and not 99.9%. Again, in that plan only one domain is allowed to host. Moreover the Hatchling plan allows only limited Sub Domains, FTP Accounts and POP3 Email Accounts. In terms of storage and bandwidth it offers 50 GB Disk Space and 200 GB Bandwidth.

HostGator’s most valuable web hosting plan is their Baby plan which  offers 100 GB Disk Space and 1000 GB Bandwidth and it costs $9.95/mo. But is that really worth??? Let’s see!

I recommend HostGator’s Baby Hosting plan as it allows Unlimited Domain Names to host on a single account with out any setup fee. StartLogic charges a onetime $10/domain as setup fee if you want to host additional domain names and PowWeb too charges $25 for each additional domain name. These setup fees are not the domain registration fees and that is additional.

Other unique features of HostGator are that they allow Unlimited Sub Domains, Unlimited FTP Accounts, Unlimited MySQL  Databases, and Unlimited POP3 Accounts and they are cPanel based Web Hosting and offers Fantastico Deluxe Scripts which PowWeb and StartLogic lacks.

Now the most important feature of a web hosting company is their Support and Uptime. HostGator’s support is awesome. They offers 24 hours support via Telephone, Chat and Email. Most other web hosting companies offers support via email only during their day time. Support via email is the most important as if you have any tech related problem then the live chat team cant help you they will ask you to contact the tech team via email. HostGator’s offers email support 24 hours a day and you get fast response from them. They are really so fast that they answer your questions more quickly than other web hosts live chat team as they are always busy. Yes, HostGator also have Live Chat support and that also rocks I hardly wait for than 5 minutes to get a response from them when I wait for than 20 minutes to get the attention of an executive from other hosts.

HostGator offers 99.9% uptime they are so confident that if your site experience any downtime then they will refund your money and you can host for free.

After all account setup is really fast with HostGator I signed up with them on Sep 20, 2007 1:11 PM IST and I got the account information mail at Sep 20, 2007 1:14 PM. Yes! that’s in 3 minutes I got my account setup mail even though it was midnight in U.S.

Finally, HostGator’s billing is smart as they provide unconditional money back guarantee for 30 days. No questions asked! All you need to do is to fill their cancellation form. Don’t have a credit card? HostGator accepts PayPal too! Also, HostGator Web Hosting Provider have a fixed rate for its baby plan. No matter you pay monthly or annually it’s $9.95/mo. always. YES! You can pay the hosting fee monthly (not for the $6.95/mo. Hatchling. HostGator doesn’t charge any setup fee for any of their hosting and offers you the option to pay the hosting bills monthly when others charge setup fee of US$ 10-100 when you pay your bills monthly.

The only complaint I have is that HostGator don’t give a FREE Domain with their hosting plans even if you pay them annually. Otherwise it’s the perfect web hosting company. But that doesn’t matter as you can get a Domain Name for just $1.99 from Yahoo! Domains and all you need to do is to change the name server of that domain to the one that of HostGator. It’s that simple!

HostGator Web Hosting Discounts & Coupon Code

HostGator have only one coupon code as of now which gives you a discount of a flat $9.94.

Try HostGator Web Hosting FREE for One Month!

Do you want to try HostGator BABY Plan for FREE? Simply follow the link below and enter the coupon code “JURY” without quotes that gives you a discount of $9.94. And you pay just 1 Cent for your first month of hosting. If you are not satisfied then you can cancel before one month and can ask for a refund of that 1 Cent too.

So, What Exactly Are You Waiting For? Sign Up HostGator!!!

Today I came across the website Netcraft.com. Which lists the most reliable web hosting companies in the world. It sorts the list according to the number of failed requests and connection time. It means they sorted the list according to their uptime, number of failures and reliability.

I’m really a bit surprised to see that list because I didn’t see the names of some web hosting companies which I assumed as the world’s best web hosting provider.

I thought these were the top five web hosting companies:

1. Yahoo
2. Network Solutions
3. GoDaddy
4. iPowerWeb
5. HostGator

When I browsed the list, surprisingly a company called INetU has topped the chat and is ranked number one and a company called New York Internet is the second. These two companies are not new to the list they topped the charts several times. Now, the third one is new to that list it’s Acens.

Top 10 Web Hosting Companies by Netcraft:

1. INetU Inc.
2. New York Internet
3. Acens
4. Easynet
5. iPowerWeb
6. GoDaddy
7. DataPipe
8. Netcetera
9. WebFusion
10. SwishMail

Want to see the full list of the best hosting providers? Then Visit Netcraft’s best Web Hosting providers list for the month of August 2007 here!

As you probably know there are many web hosting review sites on the internet and if you visit their websites then you may notice that none of the above web hosts other than GoDaddy and iPowerWeb are in their top web hosting companies list.

I used Google to search the term “Web Hosting” and the first result was Web Hosting Blue Book which reviews the Top 10 Web Hosting Companies. Then I Google search for the keyword “Web Hosting Review” and I clicked the first sponsored link for that keyword which directed me to The Hosting Chart.

Now, Which are the Top 10 Web Hosting Companies according to these two web sites.  Let’s see!

Top 10 Web Hosting Companies by Web Hosting Blue Book:

1. Host Monster
2. StartLogic
3. IX Web Hosting
4. InMotion Hosting
5. BlueHost
6. Globat
7. Lunarpages
8. Yahoo! Web Hosting
9. HostGator
10. GoDaddy

Top 10 Web Hosting Companies by The Hosting Chart:

1. IX Web Hosting
2. Host Excellence
3. Dot5Hosting
4. Vista Pages
5. BlueHost
6. AN Hosting
7. Lunarpages
8. 1 and 1 Hosting
9. iPowerWeb
10. Host Monster

Top 10 Web Hosting Companies from Google Search Results:

1. Site Ground
2. Yahoo! Web Hosting
3. 2MHost
4. Network Solutions
5. FortuneCity
6. iPowerWeb
7. UK Web Hosting
8. Bravenet
9. Bizhostnet
10. HostGator

So I guess you noted that the Top Web Hosting Companies by Netcraft is not listed in Google Search Results, Web Hosting Blue Book, and The Hosting Chart. Now which web hosting service should you choose from the above?

I really recommend HostGator. Wanna Know WHY? Click Here!