In the early days of web hosting, leasing a server or buying a web hosting package in the UK cost an arm and a leg. In contrast, leasing a server, buying a reseller web hosting or just hosting a website in the US, for a UK webmaster, cost a fraction of what you pay to a UK hosting company for a similar service. To make hosting in the US even better, £1 exchanged for $2 back then, so, buying your web hosting services in US was a fantastic way to get much more for your web hosting budget.
Thousands of UK webmasters and even companies, were exploiting the huge saving hosting in the US had over hosting in the UK by having their sites and servers hosting on US data centres. I had a few servers and some reseller web hosting package with several US hosting companies including EV1.net and Hostgator back then.
When UK web hosting companies finally got their act together and started offering reasonably priced web hosting, domain name registration and server leasing and hosting services, I move my servers to UK data centres, but left a few reseller hosting packages. One of my favourite US hosting company then was Hostgator, I left two reseller web hosting packages with them. They USED to offer fantastic technical support and great customer services at a very competitive price.
The New Hostgator Move The Goal Post & Blame The Customer
I bought my first reseller web hosting package from Hostgator in 2007, can’t quite remember when I bought a second one, perhaps couple of years after buying the first package. Their service was really good, so good that I have recommended at least ten or more people to buy web hosting from them.
All good things must come to an end as the saying goes. With Hostgator, the good service I enjoyed from them for almost 7 years came to and end in late 2013 when they suddenly move the goals by rewriting their TOS and suddenly telling me that my sites are violating their TOS.
They did not do it in a straightforward way like that, it was done sneakily. First, I was sent a rather promising looking email which informed me that they are moving my reseller hosting to a faster server, a copy of the message is posted below:
Your account is being migrated onto brand new, more powerful hardware which will include the latest versions of cPanel and CentOS.
We plan to facilitate this as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Ensuring your total satisfaction with this maintenance is our primary objective. We will keep you updated via e-mail throughout the migration process. The migration process itself will result in an exact copy of your account being moved to new hardware, and will ensure that the freshest possible, up-to-the-minute data is retained.
The upgrade was carried out, all was supposed to have gone well, as far as I am concerned that is the end of that, I was expecting to see a better performance from the sites hosted on the server, instead of seeing improved performance, I started getting email from Hostgator saying something to this effect:
Ticket: NCA-26292400 – TOS/MYSQL : perana
Hello,
This message is to advise you of a block placed on your database. The database associated with the script in “/home/naijamat/public_html” was found to be consuming an inordinate amount of mysql connections, to the point of degrading overall system performance. While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system’s resources in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case.Resolving this situation may be as simple as modifying the code to to use mysql_connect instead of mysql_pconnect, closing connections sooner, adding additional indexes to your database, optimizing the queries used, or something equally easy. If not, it may simply be a matter of moving this database to dedicated services, as it may have outgrown a shared environment.
The email above sound sensible enough but when you contact Hostgator support, you get no where. I found out that ALL the sites in my reseller account with MySQL was blocked by Hostgator, and my inbox was filled with clocked notification from Hostgator. I thought the upgrade was to make websites that I have hosted on their server
Hostgator Moving Reseller Hosting Goal Post
Well, I was extremely surprised how a web hosting company that had provided me with 7 years of problem free hosting and a fantastic support become a rather useless company over night. Firstly, I moved all my sites off their platform and then did some research online.
RIP Reliable Hostgator
While researching what might have caused a once fantastic web hosting company like Hostgator to become a useless shadow of what it once was online, I came across an article which explained the reason. The Hostgator I sign up with all those years ago is dead, there is a new company trading with the name but with a completely different ethos. The new company trading as Hostgator is actually a company called Endurance International Group (EIG). You can read more about the story of Hostgator metamorphosis to EIG here: digitalfaq.com/editorials/websites-blogs/hostgator-alternatives-eig-pt1.htm . The page also provide you link to alternative web hosting companies should you have been shafted by EIG like I was.