First off, I withdraw every recommendation to Hostgator if I ever gave you one. If you register with them, you’re definitely on your own. I haven’t been able to come up with any post for about 5 days now because the “Gator” decided to give my butt a deep bite. 
It’s not a cool animal to play with, trust me. They claim they eat up competition but don’t be fooled, they may decide to give you a bite too like they did to me after a year of being a loyal customer and even recommending them to people.
I expect to get negative comments on this blog post because when you’re hosting with Hostgator and everything seems to be going smoothly, you would believe your dealing with the best host in the world and you would go to any length trying to defend them. Don’t take it personal, I was once like you but believe me, Hostgator sucks!
If you read this story on about the guy who lost about 60 websites because Hostgator suspended all his accounts over a flimsy excuse, you definitely won’t believe it because it sounds like a lie. If you’ve not gone through something similar, it’s always hard to believe such horror stories. You can read the guy’s full story on webhostingtalk. It’s then you’ll get to understand that Hostgator is just another overselling host that doesn’t give a crap about you or your business. All they do is “eat up competition” with their stupid publicity and make money.
I received a message on Friday morning and someone was asking me if I was working on my site or something. I told him I wasn’t doing anything and checked my blog and forum to see my account had been suspended. Did I say suspended? No, my account was cancelled! What did I do wrong? This must be about CPU usage, I told myself now knowing it was a lot more serious. I contacted support on live chat and was made to understand my account was cancelled. I asked what was wrong and the dude told me my account account was cancelled because I signed up from an blacklisted IP address. I tried explaining that my ISP uses shared IP address for all it’s customers and millions of people may be using the same IP address but all that fell on deaf ears. I then told them to let me have access to cPanel so I could move my stuff and the dude opened a ticket for me. I also asked for the unused credit in my billing account I got this about 5 hours later:
Hello,
Due to the circumstances leading to this account’s suspension, we will not be able to provide any refund. Unfortunately we will be unable to disclose any information in regards to this.
Please contact us if you have any further questions.
What the heck! The suspension was mindless and rather dumb. What do you expect me to do? I’ve been hosting with them for almost a year now, how come you’re just telling me this? My payment history has always been clean, never done anything shady, always referred people to you!
Fine! I’m not asking for a refund of what I paid for webhosting, all I’m asking for is the unused credit in my billing account and my website data! I kept that the money there for renewal but I was told I wouldn’t be getting any refund. I had about $136 dollars there. For over 24 hours, I got no reply, it was like the ticket system was no longer working.
Hostgator parked my sites, displayed their ads and made money off the traffic I worked so hard for and they refused to reply my ticket for almost two days. You can even check my post on their forum here. Up till now, I received no reply on that post. Let me make something clear, Hostgator support is cool when you have little problems like file permission problems, .htaccess edits and other little things but when you have a real serious problem, it’s only then you’ll know that Hostagator supports sucks balls.
For almost three good days, Hostgator made money off my websites and refused to reply my tickets. They denied me my money and refused to let me move to another webhost. All the guys on live chat kept escalating my ticket but nothing nothing happened. This started on Friday but it was not until Sunday when I was lucky to talk to one agent named Karen M. that I got the first sensible reply. I made it clear I didn’t want my ticket referred to an administrator or escalated anymore and that Hostgator is rather being fraudulent, she told me to wait and contacted her Supervisor directly. It was then I got an apology for the delay and got the link to my full cPanel. I got my $136 on Monday.
A friend too had his account suspended because he was accused of trying to bypass their verification process. Yet, another one also got suspended without any reason. They only emailed him stating at the condition surrounding the cancellation could not be discussed.
If you believe Hostagtor is that great, wait till you have a real serious problem, it’s only then you’ll know that the support sucks like hell. You will be ignored and won’t have your ticket replied for hours. Mine took days! Hostgator sucks and I won’t recommend it to anyone. I was a loyal customer but I only realized that they don’t give a damn about customer welfare after a year of being with them.
I’m very sure you’ve read negative reviews about them on the internet and you might think people only made those stories up. They are all real but you won’t believe such things till it happens to you. Are you still hosting with them? Be careful, the Gator bites! I was a victim of its poisonous sharp teeth. They don’t give a crap about you, your site or your business and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been with them.
About Don Caprio
Twitter: ghanacrunch
says:
Seconded by me! You really guys need to pay a listening ear to this post.
Not until 6 days ago, I can confirm that Don Caprio (the writer of this article and owner of this blog) was an staunch Apostle of Hostgator that was willing to give his left arm to support hostgator to the last letter, as well as recommend them to anyone with ears that they are the best in the world.
For a strong HG flag-bearer to turn from sweet to sour, overnight, with his word then I think you should BELIEVE and recognize that all indeed is not well.
He has told you what you need to know, but if you wanna go “this bitter dude doesn’t know what he is talking about”, I’d like to hear ur story when it changes….you know where to find me when it does.
With that said, thank God, doncaprio.com is back online!
Message of the day: THE GATOR WILL ONLY ALWAYS DO WHAT IT IS CREATED TO DO…BITE!!!! Run for yourlife!
ugo dosh recently posted..Accra High Court Acquits Amina The “YutongB us Rape” Claimant
You certainly did something wrong because I am with hostgator since they started their company – I have more than 100 accounts on my reseller account – these guys are RELENTLESS to help!!! And believe me I can be a real pain. So your diatribe is certainly hiding a big fact as to why hostgator would act like that with you.
You’re right if, and only if, signing up from a shared Nigerian IP address and being a loyal customer with a clean account history can be termed as wrong.
Of course I don’t know your history and I don’t mean to be rude. I know I tested several hosting company before I started mine as a reseller with hostgator – BELIEVE me – the others were horrible for the support. That’s my major point with them. The support is absolutely phenomenal and again – I can be pissed and a pain. They always followed up on a case. Always.
Twitter: Okaztle
says:
This was so bad, before i was thinking moving over to them buh complete depressed about them now. Gator sucks, its a bad animal though.
Twitter: Questechie
says:
HostGator is an over-hyped stalker, that relies on heavy pennywise promotions and untenable discounts to fool webmasters, while in the longrun you lose everything. They’ll even park your domain and make some doe out of your frustration. They suck big time!
Twitter: Globalwalyy
says:
why is it that all this powerful company are becoming so rude, i cant just imagine how you will feel, its not new to me as i have read alot about them.. Can you tell us the Hosting You are using now??
Twitter: edi4all
says:
too bad for hostgator. Generally, i had never felt comfortable doing biz with people too far away due to the risk of loosing too much. All same thank heavens U are back
From your twitter timeline, now i can read your nice articles again…thanks Don…
Thank God u’ve moved on..so what host are u using right now.?
I have always had my reservations about Hostgator, i have read some nasty reviews about their service in a lot of webmasters forum…was of double mind, till it happened to the Don. i strongly think anybody still pitching tent with them will only have himself / herself to blame….HOSTGATOR SUCKS!
Twitter: divyanshojha
says:
i don’t know what to say…you advised me their service two weeks back, and now you faced trouble yourself. i open your site daily and thought it was just a downtime that you are facing. But from you facebook account i got to know the prob. Hard luck mate, But an eye opener for me to never go for hostgator and get justhost instead
That’s right! I was giving you reasons why you should use them a couple of weeks back not knowing I would be the same one to speak against them now. Things happen and we learn everyday
Twitter: healthable1
says:
Hmmm this is very bad of them. Let me removed their banners and the rest
I checked your site yesterday and found the Hotgator ad. I thought you had some issues with your domain. I don’t think there aren’t any reliable hosting companies. So far my Bluehost is good. But I always read about people complaining that they just suspend the account and same like Hostgator no explanations given.
These companies likes to hot websites with no traffic and once you seriously getting some traffic and start using the bandwidth, they will hate your website. They are happy with sites with no traffic.
Sunish Sebastian recently posted..Carnival Liberty: Silver and Golden Olympian Dining Room
You’re very right, Sunish. I intially wanted to go with Bluehost at the beginning but they weren’t accepting paypal payments back then.
Twitter: ghanatoghana
says:
Bluehost is not good they jsut suspended my accounts which webhost is best now
So this is what could have happened to me if i had joined gator! chei!
Twitter: xlimderek
says:
I’m Glad you pulled through and showed them who’s boss
Kudos
P.s As at the time of this post your commentluv not working
Thanks, Derek, Commentluv is still working. perhaps your connection isn’t strong enough and your RSS couldn’t be retrieved before you clicked the submit button.
Sir then what host are you using now
I’m using Arvixe at present.
I haven’t used Hostgator before but thanks for the heads up. Am also using Arvixe and so far no problem.
GSMSavvy recently posted..Samsung Galaxy S3 body built quality
This is nothing new with hostgator. Its their bad customer service that never deals with customers properly
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Why many webhosting provider often suspend their customer accounts?
Twitter: jerrywhyte
says:
hostgator sucks especially with their fake CPU usage stuff. I am gonna move to Bluehost soon
I guess it’s the same with all these hosting companies. I’m now on Arvixe but every now and then, they keep alerting me that I’m running a high number of MySQL processes.
Twitter: ghanatoghana
says:
Dont bluehost is not good either they suspended my account i wanted to move to hostgator but i guess same problem everywhere.
Twitter: randgdesign
says:
I’ve been with hostgator for almost 10 years now and I’ve found them to be a perfect host. Your situation sounds terrible and I think this is an issue with all large hosts – you’re just another customer ID!
I personally have never had an issue with Hostgator and they have been by far the best host I’ve ever used – best system, good price and excellent support.
However, I have experienced similar problems with other hosts in the past (namely Webfusion). I’d been with Webfusion for a couple of years and had 20 site with them without issue. Then suddenly one day the majority of my domains mysteriously transferred and the sites went down. After battling with support for 2 weeks I finally got the site back up and running but nearly lost my customers!
So, I don’t think HostGator is a bad host (just the opposite). I think these big hosts can often see customers and just another account ID and when they make a mistake don’t realise the huge impact it can have on a small business. If something happens to my host account, I loose my customers…I don’t get paid… and I can’t pay the mortgage!
Hi
I’m going through the exact same thing. I’ve been on their “live chat twice for about two hours and got jerked around. the first time after an hour they just disconnected me. The second time they started asking questions about sites that weren’t even mine. Then he asked if I wanted to sign up for hosting.
Ever since I canceled my account my webpages that were hosted w/ them all have account terminated and they have them locked in. DO NOT USED HOSTGATOR I REPEAT DO NOT USE HOSTGATOR!!!!
Unless you want to get screwed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have tried a lot of different web hosting companies. I have tried bluehost, gigabytes, 1and1, netfirms, network solutions and now I am with hostgator. I have not had any issues yet with hostgator but of all the firms network solutions was the best, but they are all poor. I have one domain with liquid web and they seem very good but they are more expensive than most.
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Really hostgator sucks and it cheats customers,below is chat transcript that shows the real truth of hostgator..
Question: server usage
(11:11:40am)System:Customer has entered chat and is waiting for an agent.
(11:12:02am)Austin C.:Welcome to HostGator LiveChat, my name is Austin. What can I help you with today?
(11:12:08am)System:Thank you for verifying your billing account
(11:12:27am)deepu:we are hosting with hostgator
(11:12:45am)deepu:last 24 hours it is showing that our usage is 5%
(11:13:05am)deepu:our website didnt get even 20 visits a day
(11:13:16am)deepu:how could process go upto 6%
(11:13:32am)deepu:without our website being opened
(11:13:57am)deepu:is it overall usage including other customers…?
(11:14:31am)Austin C.:Yes, the usage would be for any bandwidth, that would include emails and any sites in the account.
(11:15:04am)deepu:i dont use any emails
(11:15:10am)deepu:please tell clearly
(11:16:46am)Austin C.:You should be able to see the bandwidth usage in the AwStats or the Webalizer in the Logs section of your cPanel.
(11:17:18am)deepu:i am talking about cpu usage not bandwidth
(11:17:56am)deepu:i have seen cpu usage going upto 5%,but my website is being not opened….how this can happen
(11:18:14am)Austin C.:Are you referring to your Baby Plan?
(11:18:33am)deepu:yes
(11:19:15am)Austin C.:Okay then, that would be because you are on a Shared server, so you are sharing that server with other people. The other people have their own cPAnels completely separated from yours.
(11:20:01am)deepu:so others cpu usage is also added to mine…?
(11:21:30am)Austin C.:Yes, you share all of the Hardware on the server.
(11:22:14am)deepu:please tell me first cpu usage that is showing is only mine or overall usage with other users..?
(11:23:12am)Austin C.:That is the entire server there, so it shows the server that is serving all users.
(11:24:43am)deepu:ok now my question is ,there is 25% cpu limit …if at any point of time others are using 20% then how i can use 10% of cpu..
(11:25:00am)deepu:is it not cheating us..?
(11:26:14am)Austin C.:No, that limit is only in regards to your own usage, only you, and if there is not something very wrong with your sites, then you will never hit that.
(11:27:02am)deepu:i mean fully my account will be not able to use upto 25% including other users process
(11:27:21am)deepu:then what is use of putting 25% limit
(11:27:49am)Austin C.:That is showing the entire server, you do not have a way of only seeing your own processing power you are taking up at the moment.
(11:28:20am)deepu:then how you can put 25% limit in your TOS
(11:29:17am)deepu:i am thinking that 25% limit is for individual account
(11:29:30am)deepu:but i got real truth now
(11:30:13am)deepu:ok bye
(11:31:15am)Austin C.:The 25% is for individual accounts, there is just not a way to see the individual account’s processor time from the control panel, unfortunately.
(11:31:40am)deepu:then why are you adding others process to individual account
thinking of hosting with them in a couple of months..but kinda feeling discouraged
I was merely fixing up my user names, reuploading a few files via FTP and I get suspended. Then I was restoring database but was using backup – I get suspended again!! I’m a week old with Hostgator and already having SUSPENSION NIGHTMARES!
Though they have good support, its SCARY to have a host who’d do that unjustifiably – I am MOVING OUT!! I need to VENT THIS OUT!!! grrr!
Twitter: benpettit
says:
Any one who is serious about having quality web-hosting should have a VPS. The TOS on VPS’s are completely different. You definitely want to be able to have root access to your server too. Otherwise your just another cPanel in a sea of websites. And when you have one website (sharing IP’s even worse) that gets hacked or is running a some malicious server side script then you’ll have website slow downs, email issues and the like.
Twitter: wpbunk
says:
I can see you are using Arvixe hosting now.But can you please tell me which one is better Arvixe or Bluehost?I will be buying hosting next week.Any help will be appreciated.
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Recommending a web host is something I’ve always tried to avoid since all web hosts have their flaws, even those considered the best. Arvixe is okay, the support is good to say the least but I’ve never used Bluehost so I wouldn’t know. Still, it’s not a recommendation because I don’t wanna take the blame in case something goes wrong… but they’re ok.
Twitter: princeerafe
says:
don caprio please can you share with me the webhosting you are using now because i want to move my blog from blogger to wordpress.org please replies will be appreciated
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I’m presently with Arvixe.
Twitter: princeerafe
says:
do arvixe offer free advertising adword credit for bloggers and i would be needing help with moving my blog without loosing my traffic or anything and a well organized theme for my blog i sent you an email i would want your help and support because i was told that wordpress is the best and i would want my blog to be the best because i want to talk it as a business
Hostgator is shit. Their chat support is bad, it takes 20 minutes for representative to get to you, and they sucks anyway. Their affiliate program sucks, I sent them over 4000 unique visitors and have only 2 sales, but they did not pay me for them anyway. And now they are charging me over $9/month for baby plan(I pay every 6 months). I am moving from them.
I just want to edit, that hosting is good and my websites work fine, but those other issues really upsets me.
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You’re right. I was once a Super-Fan of HostGator and now after 2 years of being a loyal customer, they have suspended my account right after I put my business website on it. They said, it was CPU consumption, I have super cache and various other tweaking mechanism installed on my wordpress and it hardly takes up 2m. All of a sudden, their support stopped.
I am not sure if I will get a refund but, I will attempt or I will give them a life time free publicity (the negative one)
For CPU consumption, I’m pretty sure they’ll give you a second chance with tips on how to optimize your site.
Twitter: babywebmaster
says:
I am only thinking out loud here. I think that your account was suspended because of the country ip. Lots of businesses online in the USA will not cater to IP addresses in Nigeria. They could have a perfect payment record until the company decides to stop change their policy.
Around the same time your account was suspended Hostgator was sold to EIG.
Hostgator loss their good customer experience when they left the building.
Pls I need to know of any good webhosting service that doesn’t require upload of identification such as drivers license e.t.c during the verification process of the account
Twitter: Blogging_tricks
says:
That’s bad! I thought Hostgator is the best hosting provider but now it seems I was wrong.
Abdur Rakib recently posted..How to Attract the Readers to Read Your Other Blog Posts
Yeah I recommended people to hostgator for years until they screwed me over as well because my site got a lot of traffic. If you are one that gets a lot of traffic, they’ll shut you down and make up excuses. It’s like an insurance policy, people who actually use it get shut down or denied,
HostGator support was great, but now they reply with canned responses and don’t even read your emails, which sounds like what your faced.
Eventually as they get bigger, their service will drop
So as I read the comments here about people who accuse you of something wrong – I’d like to say to them that beware for their turn is coming soon,
Also beware that if you cancel with them, keep a copy. If their system screws up, they’ll just bill you for years to come even if you are no longer using them (had a friend who went through that)