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Reviews HostGator.com, L.L.C.

HostGator.com, L.L.C. Reviews (438)

Review: On [redacted] Host Gator send me an email that stated that domains for just $2.95 each - I click the link and proceed to the site. The site again lists the price as $2.95 with an *, but nowhere on the page is there a reference to the fine print or details. I click the transfer button and the price remained there. I then added the items to my shopping cart and the price changed to $7.95.I contact the company by phone and they said that I was mistaken and that they classified that this offer is only for new domain. I said it does not say that anywhere on the page and that there is no fine print or reference to the * next to the price. They said there is nothing that could be done. The supervisor went on to say how "yes - I can see how this is confusing, but the price is still 7.95 not 2.95"Desired Settlement: Offer the domain transfers for the price listed of $2.95.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

We've had a chance to evaluate this complaint and while we are always sorry to hear a customer feels mislead, in this case it appears a few bits of information were overlooked. To clarify, there are 2 options when dealing with domains :

1. Domain "registrations" in which an available domain is secured for a customer.

2. Domain "transfers" where a domain that has already been registered with another company is moved to our company.

In the complaint there is mention that the sale came to our customer's attention via e-mail, which was sent as follows :

=============================================

Gators!

HostGator has turned 11! Special thanks to those of you who have been with us for much of that time. To celebrate our anniversary we are offering 50% off new hosting accounts and $2.95 domains.

You can purchase up to 100 domains, so don’t be shy!

Current customers can add second, third...sixty fourth packages but remember your current account needs to stay active to maintain the promo pricing.

The sale ends [redacted] at 11:59 PM Central.

=============================================

As shown above, we do specify "You can purchase up to 100 domains" with no mention of transfers made.

Additionally, we have included a screenshot of the order page from the day of the sale. Please note that the visitors originally land on the registration page, rather than the transfers page. The banner at the top remains on the transfers page, clickable to switch back to the new registration page. The asterisk ( * ) next to the price of $2.95 is specified at the bottom of the page to clarify that this is the price of registrations *per year*. This specification was necessary since the price at the top of the page did not mention time-frames and we did not want to give the impression domain registrations are permanent, but rather renewed yearly.

"Register a new domain today!

.coms starting at $2.95/yr*"

This customer has been with us for over a year and we're definitely interested in keeping the partnership going so we'd be glad to meet the customer half way in price between the desired $2.95 and the actual price $7.95 on up to 10 domains at $5.45 per transfer. As the price for transfers had never been lowered, and our e-mail to the customer made no mention of transfers, we hope Mr. [redacted] finds this a reasonable resolution.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved. Please let me know how to reach out to you regarding the pricing you mentioned in your reply.

Regards,

Review: Short story -

On vacation in [redacted] Hostgator claimed I was using my site for storage and gave me 7 days of they threatened to delete the datat. I was not, all live files just a lot of them. Service in [redacted] is terrible so is Wifi. My non tech assistant tried to solve it. Although they knew I was gone they would give no extensions, they would not talk to my assistant, they claimed she needed a PIN I was never given, and she could not reply to their email.

I finally got online at [redacted] enough to ask an Internet group I belong to about this, learned although they advertise "Unlimited Disk Space" it is not true and they have done this to other people using more space. I also found out she needed to "chat" to get around their refusal to speak to her.

She sent a live screen print showing the files are live. They insisted on access to my private client area. basically calling me a liar. I make clients sign a non disclosure for my Trade Secret process - Hostgator refused. Cannot allow that, it would negate the Trade Secret.

I tweeted and told people, they finally gave me until the day after my [redacted] trial started which I had been working on for 6 years and right after returning from vacation. They also tried to solicit me for a much more expensive dedicated server (which I ended up buying, but elsewhere due to how they handled this.) I looked for and was hiring a new host company - I don't like companies who treat me like that. NO biggie, You think I take up too much space despite how you advertise it. I'll leave.

I chose a new company to go to, while I was also still in trial. Hostgator then sent me a notice I had HIPPA data which was a misunderstanding from my assistant (and reflected a new TOS they had just created then said I violated). They gave me now 48 hours to remove it. They were informed this was not the case by my assistant in chat, and that I was moving to a new host.

Finally I called. They had shut my account off, but my new host was moving it so I thought it was them. A supervisor [redacted] turned it back on, and assured me as long as the data was moving they would not shut it off. It was shut off anyway.

Instead, they DELETED all my 14 years of data [redacted] morning thereby putting me out of business. No backup. They Refused to restore it. They finally said they have my data bases, but refuse to give them to me unless "legal" approves it. I want them back. It happens a friend backed up my files while I was in [redacted] but apparently they store the data bases elsewhere.

I learned [redacted] the Supervisor failed to document our conversation. [redacted]. found I had called by my phone number, and verified I was on the phone for 39 minutes. They have a call recording. [redacted]. told me legal has to release my data bases but they have them. I need them to put my business back online.

I emailed "legal" as they said. Someone named [redacted] replied. He insisted I did not do a "written attestation" my HIPPA data was gone. I told him I had informed [redacted] it was Trade Secret data not HIPPA data. If my assistant said that she misunderstood (but near as I could tell they first discussed "HIPPA" data.) [redacted] did not indicate I had to do anything else. [redacted]. said my files would not have been deleted had [redacted] documented the ticket. [redacted] refuses to listen to this, refuses to release my data, and refuses to escalate the issue. Hostgator refuses to escalate on the phone.

I have repeatedly contacted "[redacted]" and "[redacted]" as they requested. The only person who replies is [redacted]. See above. He is a brick wall who does not care I am a [redacted] with 2 kids who is put out of business by their false advertising of Unlimited Disk Space, and their fraud and neglect.

So putting me out of business after 14 years is what they did. They have the data, they admitted it. I just can't get them to give it back.

I tweeted and told people, they finally gave me until the day after my [redacted] trial started. I looked for and was hiring a new company - I don't like companies who treat me like that. NO biggie, I'll leave.

I chose one, also in trial. They then sent me a notice I had HIPPA data which was a misunderstanding from my assistant (and a new TOS). They gave me now 48 hours to remove it. They were informed this was not the case in chat, and I called. They had shut my account off, but my new host was moving it so I thought it was them. A supervisor [redacted] turned it back on, and assured me as long as the data was moving they would not shut it off. It was.

Instead, they DELETED all my data [redacted] morning. No backup. Refused to restore it. They finally said they have my data bases, but refuse to give them to me. I want them back. It happens a friend backed up my files while I was in [redacted] but apparently they store the data bases elsewhere.

The truth is, they have done this to others who they think are taking up too much disk space. I find this unacceptable. Don't advertise "Unlimited Disk Space" then look for excuses to tell your customers they are breaking the rules if you think they take up too much space. Further, once your data hits 145GB it is not backed up. This is not disclosed in advertising. This is false advertising.

So putting me out of business after 14 years is what they did. They have the data, they admitted it. I just can't get them to give it back.Desired Settlement: 1) I want my data bases IMMEDIATELY so I can give them to my new host. Hostgator already admitted they have them. Give them back.

2) Refund my past year's worth of service. You have wasted much more of my time and cost my business thousands already in the past week I have been out of business, not to mention damaging the goodwill of my business.

3) Change your advertising policy to tell the truth. You are not unlimited disk space so stop saying that.

4) I want an apology and a way for customers to escalate when they are hitting a brick wall with someone such as [redacted].

Business

Response:

Greetings,First, we fully understand your frustration with the loss of your data and webfiles and the lack of backup copies. By way of background, we provide our services pursuant to the terms of a written online contract called our Terms of Service, located at http://www.hostgator.com/tos (“TOS”). You agreed to these TOS when you signed up for HostGator services. As is clearly stated in the TOS, customers “agree to take full responsibility for all files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator’s servers.” Unfortunately, in this case, you did not maintain such backups and upon the termination of your account, none were available. As is common industry practice with web hosts, we backup our servers for short periods for redundancy in the event of a server problem or outage; however we do not maintain complete or longer term backups of customer web files and other data. Therefore, we did not have and could not provide you with backup files following termination of your account. While it is extremely unfortunate that you did not maintain backup copies and that they are not otherwise available, it is important to note that under the TOS, it is your responsibility, not HostGator’s, to backup and keep extra copies of your data and webfiles. As is standard practice in our industry, the TOS further provide that upon termination of an account, the account data is removed from our servers. In addition, the TOS prohibit use of our services for HIPAA protected data, for which our services were not designed. When we were advised by your assistant that you were storing HIPAA protected data on our servers, we notified you to remove such data immediately, and you failed to do so. When we became aware that you needed additional time, we extended the time period for you to comply with the TOS. However, during this time you still did not remove the data or notify us that you did not believe such data was HIPAA protected. We take compliance with law and HIPAA seriously. After substantial notice and opportunity your account was terminated for breach of our TOS, and pursuant to our TOS, your webfiles and other data were removed from our servers following termination of your account. Best Regards, [redacted]Director of Customer Service ?Hostgator.com?

Review: Have been using HostGator for several years. Ever since a recent takeover I have had nothing but problems with server reliability and performance. HostGator has an uptime guarantee that they are not even coming close to anymore and everytime I call to complain they feed me the same excuses just to get me off the phone and clear the call. I have our corporate site as well as sandboxes for projects under development hosted here and I cannot keep affording to have them go down constantly.Desired Settlement: If HG cannot adhere to their uptime guarantee they need to offer exits and refunds for users who are on prolonged payment plans, I cannot continue to wait until the end of this billing cycle to switch.

Business

Response:

Greetings,

My sincerest apologies for the delay in response here through the ODR system. I noticed this earlier today when I went to check on another complaint, though will definitely get this addressed with you now that I’m aware.

Looking at your ticket history and billing account I see that you actually experienced a Terms of Service violation around a week ago with your shared hosting account. This suggests in all likely hood that to some extent the problems recently on the server may have been compounded by your own accounts usage. While it’s difficult to say for certain given the account didn’t breach the necessary resource thresholds till about a week ago when it was limited temporarily, all the same it may be worth looking into optimizing your own site’s code which not only will improve performance, but stability within the server environment itself.

With that addressed, I want to also make it clear that I understand the recent outages this year in Provo have also affected your site which I’m sorry to see. What I mentioned above is definitely in no way an effort to redirect blame elsewhere as I do want to also make sure the server is kept online and the 99.9% uptime guarantee met, which it has not some months this year. To that end, though we haven’t seen any major issues within Provo since Hostgator took greater control and involvement over the facility under the Endurance umbrella around two months ago, if you’d still like to migrate to another facility I’d be happy to offer the migration as a courtesy to you for the troubles.

Our other datacenter facility is actually in Houston with CyrusOne. This datacenter was built out by Hostgator’s team and not the Provo Endurance team, which though I don’t want to knock them, has provided us greater stability so far over the course of it’s existence. I can’t promise that issues won’t arise given it is such a new facility still, though historically as these data centers get older they do become more and more stable. Given the complete lack of issues we’ve seen compared to Provo, in that regard I think you’ll find it more reliable over the long term. If this would be agreeable please let me know and we’ll get the migration scheduled and under way.

Then finally the last option I can provide would be to just refund you the pro-rated portion of what’s left in your plan if you’re simply fed up and looking at other hosts. I’d hate to see that happen, though give the troubles wouldn’t blame you either. I’ll leave the decision with you, though if you have any questions prior to making a final determination please email me directly at [redacted] I’d love to work with you and make sure any concerns get addressed if you do stick it out with us and accept the migration, but would be happy to arrange the refund too.

Look forward to hopefully resolving this with you!

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: The service has gone downhill VERY sharply over the past couple weeks. It started when I received notification from them that I was being moved to a "new and upgraded server". After the move, the site went from barely tolerable speeds to absolutely abysmal. 45-90 second page load times for hours upon hours every day.It took days of going back and forth with support, who continually blamed my site as the problem, until they finally realized it was not my site, but "other sites hogging resources"They said mechanisms were put in place on the other sites to stop the issue, but the site is still painfully slow for huge portions of the day.To top it off, today, my ENTIRE SITE was lost, after they allowed one of their hard drives to fill up. My entire site, over 80GB of data was gone, instantly.Desired Settlement: I would like their service issues to be fixed. I am paid through [redacted], and it would be a waste of money to move to a new host early, while having months left at hostgator already paid.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thanks for bringing this case to our attention.

We've since had a chance to review the concerns raised in the complaint, and have found that we have previously been in touch with [redacted] through a large amount of correspondence via e-mail. To summarize, the complaint raises concerns on two separate issues - the site loading slowly and missing content.

On the first issue of slow speeds, we were able to work with the customer on a handful of optimizations to the site which helped to increase performance with lower load times. After the optimizations, the customer reported additional trouble with slow speeds. At that point we were able to determine that around the time of this specific slow speed report, another user on the server was abusing the available resources, which adds considerable strain to the server. As this customer is using our shared hosting services, load spikes such as this can occur from time to time as every customer on the server uses the same available resources (CPU, RAM, etc).

We have a monitoring staff in place to catch abuses and suspend the offending user, however sometimes the abuse will not trigger our automatic notifications/suspensions, depending on how the requests to the server are being made. Following the suspension of the user, we have not seen further spikes of this sort. While communicating this to the customer, we also offered to review his internet connection's path to the server, known as a traceroute. Often times issues within the connecting path can cause delays or timeouts, which can contribute to slow load times.

We had not heard back from the customer following the last mentioned response, but following his complaint to the Revdex.com he informed us that he continued to experience trouble. 2 hours after the complaint, the customer responded back with the traceroute we had previously requested. This traceroute showed no indication of the type of delays reported (30-45 seconds). The following is a copy of the traceroute between the network and the IP address in front of the customer's specific router :

The following tool can also be used to confirm the site is reachable globally at load times significantly under the 30-45 seconds reported :

Since we have been unable to replicate the reported slow speeds, find any issue on the server, or confirm any issues with the customer's connection, we provided further optimization recommendations and also corrected a mismatch in the DNS settings which can sometimes cause trouble with connections. Following these changes and recommendations on the 7th, roughly 5 hours after the Revdex.com complaint, we have not heard back on the matter.

We did however hear back from the customer with the report claiming that our staff had removed or lost content. We had our security department investigate the claim and were unable to find any evidence of such action. That being said, during our review we did find that an IP address outside of our company's network had accessed the account and removed multiple files. After informing the customer of our findings he seemed to have settled that the issue was indeed relating to a move on our part, but did not provide any evidence of this.

Although we've worked with the customer on both concerns, if the matter is still not resolved to his satisfaction, we would be more than happy to provide a full refund of his most recent payment - $89.70 for 6 months, which would be up on [redacted]. In the customer's complaint he seems to be under the impression that we do not provide refunds on payments made in advance, however we do provide pro-rated refunds when such cancellations are requested. If the customer would prefer to continue working with us on either of these two concerns, we are certainly glad to do so.

Please let us know how the customer wishes to proceed and we'll be more than happy to oblige.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Yes there was two issues, one of which was resolved, the other is still TBD.

The resolved issue is the missing content, however it is concerning that through your investigation you were not able to determine what your own server team did.

On the morning of [redacted], my site was working as expected, albeit slow, per the other issue. I was able to browse the site. About an hour later, I went to the site, and received a 404 not found message on the forum homepage. Using bookmarked links I have for the site, I recived 404's on every single page I loaded. I proceeded to log into cPanel and go to my file manager, to see why pages such as forum.php would throw a 404. To my surprise, my public_html directory was 100% empty. There was not a file in it.

I then put in Ticket [redacted]. I waited for a bit for a response, but then noticed that my email account, also hosted through the server, was also not working. I logged back into cPanel, and this is when I saw that EVERYTHING on the site was gone. Not only the files, but my two databases, the email account, all sub domains, everything.

I then called hostgator support and spoke to Toree R. After going back and forth with her server admins, Toree finally stated that the reason the site was gone, was because the hard drive, specifically /dev/sdc1 (/home2) on my server, gator4104, had filled up to the point that it crashed and went offline. When it went down, all of my files, the database, subdomains, everything went with it. She stated the server admin team was working at recovering the drive and would then have to transfer all my files to a new HDD, in order to get the site back. They did this, and I was moved to /dev/sde1 (/home4).

Later on, after the site was back up, and my email started working again, I received a reply to the case, as you stated in your Revdex.com response, about the external IP address removing 96 files. That was my IP address, and through common maintenance on the site, I had removed 96 files, and then replaced them with updated versions. This is completely irrelevant, when compared with the hundreds of thousands of files that were lost when the hard drive went offline. It is very alarming to me that your various teams are unable to communicate well enough to have an understanding when major events like this take place. Even your investigation after this Revdex.com complaint has not turned up what occurred.

Anyways, as stated, this issue is resolved. It is very unfortuanate it had to happen, especially with the other major issue, and its very alarming hearing this disconnect between your customer service and server teams, but at least this issue is resolved. I would like to mention, that home2, has shot up from 74% to 90% in the past week, and the new HDD that I am on (/dev/sde1, /home4) has shot up frmo 70% to 87%. Both drives show a warning symbol in the Server Status page in cPanel. At the rate that these drives are filling up, they will both suffer the same issue again in about a week and a half. I hope something can be proactively done about this as now that you are aware of the coming issue, having it happen again would be completely unacceptable.

Now, onto the 2nd issue, the slow site. This is the issue that mainly prompted the Revdex.com complaint, and the one that causes the most frustration. The responses from Customer Support are some of the most frustrating parts of the issue. Rather than admitting there is a problem at first, the finger is ALWAYS pointed at my site first, in various ways. My site is NOT the issue, in any way, and every time a response like this is given, it delays fixing the problem exponentially, as the CS team writes off the issue as being my site. I will cover some of the response given by the CS team now, which all delayed getting this issue fixed.

As you stated in your response, your team was able to work with me on optimizaitions to the site to increase performance and lower load times. This is not entirely accurrate. As a system/exchange administrator myself, and having hosted sites for years, I am already well versed in optimizing sites. Before any of these issues arose, EXTENSIVE optimzations have been done to my site. Almost the entire site goes through CloudFront's CDN. All images have been combined into CSS Sprites. I have GZIP/DEFLATE, I have caching, I have expires headers, and I have minified HTML, CSS, & Javascripts. I have keep alive, I have reduced the overall HTTP requests and DOM elements as much as possible on a vBulletin site and I have no redirects or bad requests. When there is no server trouble, the site is fast, very fast. These optimization recommended by your team, while appreciated, have all been done years ago and are completely irrelevant to the issue.

Another response that I get ALL THE TIME from the CS team is that they simply do not see the problem. They state they looked in the logs and see no indication of slowness or high CPU activity. They then ask, as you pointed out, for traceroutes from my location, trying to point again at me or my site being the issue.

The traceroutes and logs are COMPLETELY irrelevant here, as is the CPU activity, and I will now describe why.

When these issues are happening, the CPU Load Averages are never spiking. They stay anywhere from 0.01 to 0.20. This would indicate that the CPU is NOT the issue here. It does not mean that there is NO ISSUE, because clearly there is, as I will describe below.

To prove that the tracerouts are irrelevant, please refer to the screen shots linked in ticket [redacted]. A traceroute from my location would serve to show if the issue relies with me or my route to the server. This is not the case.

When the issues are occurring, I log into my site via SSH, and run TOP. This allows me to monitor requests to the server in realtime. I then test by clicking a link on the site. Instantaneously, I see the correspdoning process for the link I clicked show in Top. I can tell it is the link I clicked based of the script that is running. This indicates that my requests are getting to the server instantaneously, ruling out network issues between me and the HG data center. When there are no site issues and I watch top, my pages load quickly, and the processes in top complete almost as fast as they appeared. When there are issues, the processes hang in top for 35-55 seconds. Eventually the page starts loading and the process completes. When this happens, since the CPU is not spiking, it would be a safe bet that something else is the problem. Perhaps Disk I/O is the problem here? Just a suggestion, as this is a VERY common cause of sluggishness in servers, as any server admin knows.

Furthermore, my staff (moderators) on the site, consists of 11 members from throughout the world. We are all together on a phone chat through the app "What App Messenger" where we can all communicate in real time, outside of the site.

When these issues occurr, I send out a message in the chat asking for others to confirm the issue is present for them. In all cases, they can all confirm the issue is present. These staff members are located in:

Wisconsin, USA

Pennsylvania, USA

Texas, USA

Canada

United Kingdom

Germany

Netherlands

Poland

Bosnia

Bangladesh

Australia.

As you can see, the staff are located all accross the world, and ALL of them expirience the extreme load times when the issue is occurring.

Futhermore, using site speed testing tools from [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], & [redacted], I can confirm the issue from all over the globe. These sites allow me to choose the location to test from, and include various locations in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, Australia, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In all instances when the site speed issues are occurring, I run tests from dozens of locations accross the world, and always see the issue of at least 30-55 second load times. The screen shots in the aforementioned ticket will confirm this.

Another response I get from CS commonly is that high activity on my site can be the problem, or that I am maxing out my MySQL queries. This is also NOT TRUE AT ALL. I have seen the site lightning fast with 10 members of the site online, and seen it lightning fast with 1000 members online. I have seen the site painfully slow (30-55 second load times) with 10 members onilne, and with 1000 members online. There is no correlation to the amount of activity currently on my site, to the slowness issues that have been seen. I have never once seen my running queries above 12-15.

After explaining all of this to the CS team in detail, finally they escalated the case, and admitted that someone else on the server was abusing resources. They stated measures were taken to fix it. Within 30-45 minutes of the CS team saying that, the site was back to the painfully slow load times, and stayed that way for hours. I then went to the CS team again, and ONCE AGAIN I was given a reply about "my site being the problem, and the logs showing nothing, but here are some optimizations you can do to your site to speed things up, oh and please provide us a traceroute from your location"

THIS is why I stopped replying to your customer service team. After already having the case escalated, and proving that it is things external to my site causing the issue, we go back to square one with the finger pointed at me again. Again, the extreme disconnect between your internal teams rears its ugly head.

It is replies like that, after already proving it is not my site, nor any lack of optimizations that ultimately prompted this Revdex.com complaint. It is absolutely inexcuseable that customers must suffer with unbearable sites for weeks, with a customer service team that refuses to delve deep into the problem. They point the finger at the person complaining and move on.

One last thing I would like to point out, is that ALL of these issues started after the site was moved to a new server in mid September. I am not sure what prompted this server move, more than likely it was HG being bought out, but all the problems started after this move. On the HG forums, there are countless topics from people reporting the same move, around the same time, with extreme site slowness issues occurring afterwards.

Now I have this issue as TBD, because I am not confident it has been resolved. I will say that within a day or so of the Revdex.com complaint being lodged, the site did expierience a sharp decline in the amount of time per day with these long load times. It is unfortunate that it took a Revdex.com complaint to finally get some action, but at least there appears to have been some. I also want to keep the complaint open/TBD because of the impending HDD fill up that is coming.

I hope this complaint is taken seriously, and my reply is read in its entirely. I appreciate the offer for a full refund, however I do not beleive a refund for a 6 month payment, is morally correct to accept with only 1½ months left on the contract. I will continue to work with HG on these issues, as it is a huge pain to move a site as large as mine. If, however, problems continue, I will have little choice.

Business

Response:

Review: I am using dedicated server from Hostgator. Since yesterday, they are doing a server migration and didn't even give early notification. They sent the notification to me in less than 6 hours before what happen. I have chatted with the Live Support. All they do is only to explain and could not give me a definite answer when the process completed. Until now, after more than 12 hours, the server is still down and we can't do our works and this has tarnished our reputation and also losses.I request settlement from Hostgator for the loses caused due to unprofessional conduct.Desired Settlement: I need them to compensate me 2 months of subscription fee. And also promise to give me more than 24 hours notice when they plan to do the technical stuffs if there is in future. And also commit that they give me alternative plan which would not distrupt my business when they carry whatsever technical stuffs.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

I'm sorry that we'll ultimately not agree on the fact that it's your responsibility as the account owner to keep track of updates that may be pending, however it's clear you don't wish to take any responsibility in the matter. Though we'll not agree on that point, it is in fact your responsibility to keep track of those. You continue to insist we're not meeting the appropriate service level, however that's simply not the case in that you've lapsed on your own responsibilities. I'm sorry if you were unaware of the updates prior to the reboot being recommended, though given the server was down, I'd like to ask what else you expected to have been suggested to resolve the downtime? With few options, the recommendation was both appropriate, but more importantly we're unable to assume liability for damages you speculate may have occurred through use of our service or support which was in fact your initial request, even though you're now arguing that's not the case. This is outlined in our Terms of Service in Section 16) Disclaimer. http://www.hostgator.com/tos#16

16.) Disclaimer

HostGator shall not be responsible for any damages your business may

suffer. HostGator makes no warranties

of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. HostGator

disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular

purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays,

no deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions

caused by HostGator and its employees.

You also mention that compensation isn't your goal, however that's simply not supported in your responses or the complaint as you clearly requested the following in your initial complaint against us.

I

want assurance of proper notification which you have promised

previously in the ID of [redacted] which you have not been fullfilling.And

to compensate me my launching cost.

Review: I got hosting services from HostGator.comWe have interruption in a pick business hours few times a week. We contacted [redacted] for this issue and they really do not care about. I asked for refund and they haven't even addressed that issue.Desired Settlement: Refund

Business

Response:

Review: I ordered 1 month web package for my [redacted] in college, DID NOT select auto renew or auto bill. The have been billing me unauthorized every month since and different amounts !Desired Settlement: CREDIT back every charge since after the 91) authorized charge in [redacted], CR [redacted] etcc

NEVER CHARGE MY ACCOUNT AGAIN

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

We certainly appreciate the chance to address this concern but we were sorry to hear the hosting account will no longer be needed. We've since had a chance to review this situation in detail and would be glad to provide further detail on the charges and time line of the account with us. Before proceeding we'd like to confirm that the account and domain name have now been canceled and now further invoices will be generated.

In regards to the report that there have been charges in different amounts each month, we see that in [redacted] of this year, both a domain name as well as a hosting package were purchased. The cost for the domain name was $[redacted] and the introductory price for the hosting package at 20% off was $[redacted]. After the first month, the cost of the hosting package returned to the full price of $[redacted] which was paid in [redacted]

Moving on to the request for a refund of all charges since [redacted], after review of the recent call, we were sorry to hear that a Revdex.com complaint was threatened prior to [redacted] allowing our agent a chance to even locate the account and prior to our staff having a chance to respond to the support ticket requesting cancellation and a refund. From the call we also understand that this account was setup for [redacted]'s [redacted] and there was an understanding between the two that the account was only to remain active for one month. Unfortunately we did not receive any requests to cancel the account until roughly 1 hour before this complaint, so the account did remain active and we've confirmed traffic continued to be received to the website in question.

We are of course sorry to hear that this was not intended, however our terms of service do clearly state that the accounts will remain active and will automatically renew using the card initially used to setup the account :

============================================

11. Billing and Payment Information

B. Autorenewal.

Unless otherwise provided, you agree that until and unless you notify HostGator of your desire to cancel the Services, you will be billed on an automatically recurring basis to prevent any disruption to your Services, using your credit card or other billing information on file with us.

============================================

Considering the full month of the most recent payment was not used, its certainly not a problem to go ahead and refund the charge from the first of this month but unfortunately we will be unable to provide a refund for the previous months considering the site did remain online and we did not receive a request to cancel the service till two days ago. At this time a refund totaling $[redacted] has been provided back to the card used and we see that these refunds typically take anywhere from a day or two, up to a week.

Thanks once more for the chance to address this complaint and please let us know if we can offer any further clarification on this situation.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID 10227824, and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.

The CS person said she was sending a request and was non-comittal on refunding my money. In that conversation I told her I was filing online with Revdex.com, so my complaint should come as no surprise.

I did try to cancel that account and Hostgators cancellation page is set up to actually prevent people from cancelling. You fill out the document and when you hit submit it cycles right back to a incomplete form and says not transmitted. I did this repeatedly.

Furthermore, nowhere did I agree to auto renew. I never allow auto renew for this very reason. Sites like Hostgator rely on people to give up from exhaustion trying to cancel or hold on the customer service line, by design to exploit people out of their money! Basically robbing them!

[redacted] need to be refunded to me. [redacted] X3

Regards,

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Thank you for your response and while the disregard for our Terms of Service and your own responsibilities is unfortunate to see still having provided an explain. Ultimately though it's not worth the time to argue with you over such a small amount of money.

I'm going to have this refunded for you promptly today as requested, though I would encourage you in the future to ensure you actually read and understand a service's Terms prior to agreeing to them and signing up. The frustration and trouble in it's entirety could have been avoided had you done your due diligence initially prior to joining our service and agreeing to the Terms blindly.

We'll provide you an update via email once the refund is processed later today, though I look forward to resolving this with you once and for all regardless of where fault [redacted] lie in the end. We do stand behind our service and product, so if this refund helps prove that point to you, it's likely a win-win to both parties in the end.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Hostgator.com

Review: First or foremost, Hostgator is the worst hosting website company anybody can ever deal with. Their customer service department should win the award of the year for worst service. on 04-24-2014, I received an email from them stating that my credit card has been processed/charged ($119.40 USD) and has been approved. I was very shocked knowing that I never called and even received any notice email from them. I call them company immediately and request an explanation, I was told that the payment was done automatically. Since the agent I was speaking with was not able to assist me, he transferred me to a supervisor name ([redacted] after talking with the supervisor for almost 30 minutes to no success, I requested to speak with someone higher then him and he told me that I was talking to the highest level of escalation and that the call could not be escalated, He told that he was the supervisor and the manager at the same time. I couldn't not believe it, I was shocked to find out that an American based company will treat me in such manner. I then, told [redacted] that I was going to send a complaint letter to his CEO at [redacted] and file a complaint letter to Revdex.com against Hostgator and he did not even care to escalate my issue. All I asked was a 7 days notice email or a phone call if you guys decided to renew my account and charged my credit card. Because of the way I was treated by Hostgator, I will dedicate my time and energy to use the power of Social Media to help destroy the company. I will start a campaign using the power of social media urging everyone who have been mistreated by the company (hostgator) to get together and file a class action lawsuit in order to teach them the value of each and every customer.Desired Settlement: For the time and energy I wasted with your company, not to mention that I am unable to pay my bill, I'am requesting a full refund of 119.40 back to my credit card immediately and compensation for accessing my credit card without my approval, if not I will file a class action lawsuit against them.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Review: Hostgator recently "upgraded" our server over the past weekend. Since Friday our server which contains over 600 cpanels has been down consistently since Friday night.. It is now Tuesday afternoon. Everytime we call in we are on hold for a minimum of 1 hour, only to be told they will look into it. Once the site goes back up it is up for a max of 1 hour before going down again. We did not have this issue before hostgator decided to "upgrade" our server. Now we are receiving tickets from hostgator all of a sudden stating our server is receiving all types of errors, when this was not issue before the upgrade.We have talked to literally 20 reps or more including supervisors and system admin. Not one person is able to resolve the issue we are having, and every time the server goes down, we have to start back from square 1.Desired Settlement: Full Refund of the past 1 month service for all 3 servers for the inconvenience, we would like the server to stay up, along with a formal written apology.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

As you’re likely already aware I’ve actually also just responded to your concerns via our support ticket system in [redacted], however I did want to follow up here directly as well. Having reviewed the server migrations that took place I do certainly agree that a few steps in the process could be improved.

As such I’ve worked with our CTO yesterday and today to make some positive changes with the migration process, which should hopefully prevent future confusion for other customers involved. Reviewing your situation while it does not appear the downtime was as significant as stated within the complaint having started, in an effort to resolve this given the confusion that resulted via our support earlier this week I’d be happy to consider compensation towards 4 days of downtime.

It appears you’ve requested a month’s compensation towards three servers, one of which was actually not involved with the downtime totaling $662. While we don’t offer the same 99.9% uptime agreement that’s offered with our shared services towards your dedicated servers, we do guarantee each dedicated environment with a pro-rated network uptime guarantee meaning if there isn’t connectivity we’ll credit the server on a pro-rated basis for the downtime.

For the two servers involved the credit comes to just under $90 which I realize is likely not appropriate in this situation. That said I’d be happy to offer you a half month’s credit towards each server totaling $332. That’s several times the amount our guarantee offers in a case like this, though if that’s agreeable if you’d please confirm either in a reply here or through ticket [redacted] I’ll have the credit applied for you promptly.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

http://support.hostgator.com/

HostGator.com | 1.866.96.GATOR (42867)

Follow us at: @HGSupport @Hostgator

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

[Provide details of why you are not satisfied with this resolution.]

Regards,

Complaint Detail

Review: I have been in contact with hostgator repeatedly regarding a ticket that has been open since [redacted]. I have sent them many messages and they have assured me that they would fix the issue. The issue is I was buying a website name and I was charged 4 times for one name. The problem with the site is that when you pick the name and hit add to cart, you cannot see the whole name to check and make sure you have not made a typo until after you hit submit. Then when you get to the next page, to check before you proceed, the payment has already gone through from you adding it to the cart. So when I noticed the mistake, I started again and it kept charging me for each name added to cart. This is not right and I asked for a refund since I only bought one name. They only refunded two and when I asked about the third, they tried to blame my bank for taking so long. Then after 5 weeks they finally looked into it and realized that it was their fault and they said they would issue this within 3 - 5 days and it has been 4 more weeks since then. I have contacted them on numerous occasions both in a live chat session as well as an open ticket. They lie to me and tell me they are going to have it fixed every single day and every single day it is not fixed. In the open ticket, they ignore me like they cannot see the ticket at all.Desired Settlement: I would like resolution please. I would like the refund issued and also their website fixed so this does not happen to other people. Having myself charged 4 times instead of one, allowed other payments to bounce that was supposed to come out of the money on my credit card.

Business

Response:

Review: I have subscribe the baby plan hosting service from this company. However, there is a security incident recently and my account is impacted. Hostgator.com have put all my sites hosted on this account to offline and request me to pay a fee to do a scan and remove the malicious file. I have taken the action to remove the domain and the files where it was detected but this seems not enough for them. Now I am requested to pay the fee else my sites will not be able to go online. There is no choice for me but to pay the fee. This is extortion.Desired Settlement: Request for a method which does not require a fee or an alternative which I can take action. But firstly, please grant my sites to go online first.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss the recent invoice on this account.

We're always glad to discuss charges on an account and would be happy to

go over the security and payment concerns raised here. First and

foremost, in regards to the complaint that we have extorted payment,

please note that we never keep a customer's site hostage as we are

always willing to provide a copy of a customer's content for hosting

elsewhere. We will provide a copy of the content even if we are forced

to temporarily suspend a site on our server and even when that

suspension is due to failure to comply with our terms of service, as was

the case here.

To provide a bit of background - on this particular account over the

last 6 years, we have seen a significant number of compromises outside

what is typical for or customers, however we were originally contacted

this month on the 2nd of May at which point we performed a clean of the

malware which had been uploaded to the account. At that point we were

upfront in that if we continued to see this type of activity on the

account, we would have to assess the amount of work required to

determine if a charge was warranted. During this conversation via e-mail

we also provide direct recommendations on how to prevent compromises

moving forward.

Unfortunately after investigation this time, we have found that our

recommendation to keep very secure passwords was not followed, and a

password that could have been easily determined by hackers was guessed,

and then used to upload malware. Please note that when malware is

uploaded to our servers, this can cause damage to the reputation of our

IP addresses. This in turn means that other customers on the same server

can become greatly effected and can become unable to send/receive e-mail

due to known malware on those servers.

Once a compromise is found, we not only have to spend large amounts

of time to clean up the customer's account, but this also means that

additional work is needed to support the other customers effected by the

hurt IP reputation. Due to these reasons and the repeated compromises on

the account within a 6 month period, we let the customer know that if

they wished us to clean up the account again, less than 2 weeks after

the last compromise, that a $75 fee would be required. Although this

particular Revdex.com complaint is asking that that fee is removed, we had

received direct e-mail communication stating they had authorized the

fee, which we can provide proof of if needed : "I agree that the $75

Account Cleanup fee per-incident is to be charged to my hosting account."

In consideration for Mr. [redacted] long time use of our services, I have

now waived the $75 fee as a one time courtesy, however moving forward we

will be unable to continue waiving fees when our recommendations are not

fully followed. Also in the dispute it was requested that we reactivate

the sites, however this was completed three days ago after the $75.00 charge

was agreed to.

At this time the sites are online and the fee has been waived however if

we can provide any further clarification on the charge or why it is

necessary, please let us know.

Review: We joined Hostgator to post a website using their services. We have been unable to make this happen because Hostgator keeps requesting a response from an email address that does not belong to us [redacted] I have sent numerous emails explaining that I cannot respond from [redacted] because it does not belong to me. Requests to make this happen using additional information or another email account have been completely ignored. It is quite obvious they don't even read the emails I send them explaining the situation. They simply send another email requesting information from [redacted]Working with them seems impossible and yet I still am being charged fees for no service and my website sits dormant.Desired Settlement: I would like my money back that I have paid then over the past 4 months. This is a classic example of a company that does not care enough to do something very simple outside of their standard procedure.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

We're always sorry to hear about frustrating experiences from our customers but unfortunately there seem to be some a few details not acknowledged in this complaint. To discuss this more directly, I've attempted to reach Mr. [redacted] twice via phone and twice via e-mail but regrettably have not received any response back.

After review of the claim, I've found that this issue is in reference to a domain name transfer. First and foremost it is necessary to state that although we do offer domain transfers, we do not require a customer to transfer their domain to us in order to host their website with us. A customer must simply point their domain to us using the DNS information we provide. In this case, Mr. [redacted] has stated that he cannot access "[redacted]" which is currently the registrant contact set for the domain "[redacted] which can be confirmed at the following link : [redacted]

The required procedure for domain transfers is that the registrant contact for a domain name must respond back to an e-mail confirming that they have requested a domain name transfer. Mr. [redacted] has unfortunately never replied back to that e-mail, as he states he does not have access to the address. While that is unfortunate, Mr. [redacted] is the only one who has the ability to change the registrant contact, which must be done through his current domain registrar, Network Solutions, not HostGator. Had we received word that the e-mail address was not accessible we would have advised that this detail needed to be updated at Network Solutions, but I have thus far found no e-mails where this was mentioned to our staff.

We would be glad to work to re-initiate the domain transfer or provide a refund of the amount paid for the domain transfer ($7.95), however we will not be providing a refund of payments made over the last 4 months of service due to the use of a registrant e-mail address that is set at, and needs to be updated through, a company not associated with HostGator. Additionally, the service continued to be usable since as I initially mentioned, we do not require the domain name to be transferred to us in order to use the products Mr. [redacted] has purchased.

We appreciate the chance to address this complaint and will be watching for any update.

Review: I have asked them to close my account. Instead HostGator has sent me 11 notices saying they will respond as soon as possible. How difficult can it be to close an account. Why do you continue to give them high ratings when the company cannot perform this simple task?Desired Settlement: I want them to close the blasted account immediately!!!!

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Review: Host Gator Ticket: [redacted]. Since [redacted] at least two of my sites have been hacked and redirected to XXX [redacted] sites. Contacted Hostgator through email, livechat and phone. They said the issue would be resolved in 8 days. After recontacting through live chat and email I was told that they are scanning for malware and they do not know when it will be done. They also said it is highly unlikely that they will refund my host fee even though services are not being provided and my clients have refused to pay me since their services are not being delivered.

Contacted again by email on [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted]. No reply at all. Tried live chat and phone also. The wait time is over 1/2 hour and no definite answers.Desired Settlement: I would like a full refund for the past months hosting of $[redacted] because my clients have stopped paying me.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. I’ll be happy to assist you with the situation, and would like to apologize for any frustration our security team’s turn around may have caused, however at the same point after a review of your contacts and ticket history, it doesn’t appear you ever contacted [redacted] so we could assist you with resolving this prior to filing a Revdex.com complaint. The Revdex.com complaint process asks that you do this, and while unfortunate this didn’t occur, which likely would have led to a more prompt resolution, I’m happy to review and address this with you.Looking over the security ticket I see that you reported compromises on the morning of [redacted], then a second site compromised the following day on [redacted]. Finally around midnight of that night, certainly before 1am on [redacted] our security team completed their scan of the accounts and provided you an explanation regarding the matter. I’m not sure if their response wasn’t received by you given you then responded 7 days later asking why it wasn’t resolved, however I’m happy to include their email at the end of my response as reference.As you’ll note from their email to you, the sites were compromised as a result of you not keeping [redacted] installations current and up-to-date. This is a huge security concern, and something that you really need to pay close attention to, as I can assure you this can and will be repeated if and when the server is outdated and vulnerable again in the future. Though this may not be something you realized you needed to be lending attention towards, hopefully through our communications we can ensure your responsibilities are clear and not overlooked in the future. Should further compromises occur, as noted in the ticket response we may indeed need to charge you an admin fee to clean the accounts, given the situation is entirely avoidable.Moving forward please just keep an eye on your software and this shouldn’t repeat itself, but in regards to the compensation you’ve requested I want to make it clear it’s not our responsibility to compensate you towards losses experienced when your customers refuse to pay you through something that resulted due to your own lack of action. This was entirely avoidable with regular site maintenance, and is your responsibility given it’s software you placed on the server. Having said that, I do want to be as fair as possible with you and have gone ahead and credited your account for a month of service. We unfortunately did not refund while compensating for troubles, but the credit is available and will automatically apply itself when next month’s invoice drafts in the system.As for your ticket and request to scan the other hosted accounts within, I did also ensure that a security supervisor is aware and working to escalate that for you through a senior admin. I don’t believe the previous admin on [redacted] noticed that request which I apologize for, but it should be in good hands now and receive a response very shortly. Should you have any other questions or concerns regarding this please let me know.Best Regards,[redacted]Director of Customer ServiceHostgator.com

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.

1. This is the second time I have had a major issue with Host Gator's inadequate customer service. In [redacted], I was about to contact the Revdex.com and file a complaint against "Billing Administrator" [redacted], discontinue my services with Host Gator, and stop referring them to all my clients.

Review: I am wrongfully being prevented from managing DNS on my domain by someone at HostGator. I am being forced to submit all change requests such as add TXT records CNAMES or change MX records via email and wait a day for them to be implemented which is causing problems, errors, and delaying my use of the domain. I have been prevented from using the "Use Managed DNS" link on my account since purchase of this domain in [redacted] and after several complaints about this as of this morning someone completely deleted access to the page in the billing system where this link resides and where I used to be able to view information on my domain (such as [redacted].). Everyone I have talked to on Hostgators support desk says I should have access manage DNS myself and that they know for a fact other customers similar to me can access this. Yesterday the help desk rep did internal inquiry and said he was told to tell me this feature is "still under development". Today a help desk rep did not believe me when I told him access to manage DNS was being blocked (and that the access to the page with the link was completely blocked) and so I let him login to my account to see for himself. He stated that it was wrong for me to be blocked, and that he knows for a fact that others are not blocked.The launchpad.com website states that with purchase of a domain we get ability to manage DNS ourselves:DNS Management:Manage your DNS records website location email sub-domains aliases FTP and more.The Hostgator website states that with purchase of a domain you get: Easy to Use Domain Management Panel.Desired Settlement: Give me access to manage DNS for my domain

Business

Response:

Review: HostGator offers web/email hosting services with "99.9% uptime guarantee" (as advertised on homepage of hostgator.com). This equates to 45 minutes of downtime per month. Our sites and email, including several sites we manage for clients, have been down for two days (36+ hours and still ongoing) due to a failed upgrade by hostgator. Numerous calls to support and attempting to escalate have failed to produce action regarding the sites (our business is dead in the water due to this), and they refuse to move us to working servers (the sites are reasonably small). This complaint to Revdex.com is to get HostGator to change the false claim of 99.9% uptime. They either do not have a plan in place (or they refuse to implement it) for when failure occurs. The plan could be as simple as as moving sites to a functioning server when the 99.9% uptime is not being met. Therefore, making the 99.9% uptime claim is fraudulent. This has impacted our business and affected numerous sites besides ours and our clients. The 99.9% uptime claim has been broken several times in the past as well.Desired Settlement: HostGator's unrealistic claim of 99.9% uptime should be changed or removed.

Alternatively, proven action toward meeting this goal (ie: having a plan to move affected sites during a failure scenario, or some other plan that would help meet the 45 min downtime per month goal) would also be reasonable.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the 99.9% uptime guarantee and your troubles last week. Though it’s certainly true a planned OS update to reseller servers caused service disruptions for many reseller customers, the notion that we’re not honoring our guarantee is simply not correct. We do in fact maintain such uptime on most all of our shared/reseller servers month after month, and though I believe you may be assuming 99.9% uptime guaranteed means our servers have a redundant backup/failover, that’s simply not the case, nor is that how we advertise the guarantee.

For clarification sake I’ve included Section 15. Uptime Guarantee from our Terms of Service [redacted]

“15.Uptime Guarantee. ?If your shared or reseller server has a physical downtime that falls short of the 99.9% uptime guarantee, you may receive one (1) month of credit on your account. This uptime guarantee does not apply to planned maintenance. Approval of any credit is at the sole discretion of HostGator and may be dependent upon the justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor's network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system and the Apache Web Server which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services. To request a credit, please visit [redacted] to create a support ticket to our Billing department with justification. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared and reseller solutions. Dedicated servers are covered by a network guarantee in which the credit is prorated for the amount of time the server is down which is not related to our uptime guarantee.”

As promised by this agreement, I see our staff provided the credit to you in ticket #[redacted]. Due to these we may simply need to agree to disagree on the fact that we do stand behind the agreement, nor that it’s in any way fraudulent. Had we neglected to provide the guaranteed credit that would be an entirely different situation, though we have and always will stand behind our service in this fashion. With that all clarified, I do also understand that the outage likely put your business on hold last week and want to do what we can to hopefully gesture our interest in righting the relations.

At this time I’ve applied an additional two months of credit toward your hosting account. If you have any further questions or concerns with the credit itself, please let us know via your previously opened customer service ticket #[redacted]. We do absolutely appreciate your business and want to make right on this as we move forward, so while we may not agree on the guarantee or it’s use itself, please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Best Regards,

Director of Customer Service

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.

HostGator's response confirms that their advertising is misleading.

from the top [redacted] definition of guarantee:

"1. guarantee: a formal promise or assurance (typically in writing) that certain conditions will be fulfilled, especially that a product will be repaired or replaced if not of a specified quality and durability."

HostGator support repeatedly (for over 48 hours, well longer than 45minute downtime in the guarantee) stated "I have no information", "We have no ETA on a fix", and in addition also refused to move our accounts to a functioning server, claiming that the uptime was a money-back guarantee only (by refusing to move our sites/clients, [redacted] has rejected the force of the guarantee involving repair or replacement of the defective (ie: >45 min downtime) product).

HostGator requires that users read 15 sections into the terms to find out that they are using a non-standard definition of guarantee.

This complaint would be resolved if any of the following were done:

- change the uptime phrase to "99.9% uptime moneyback guarantee" (or similar) to make it clear this guarantee applies not to uptime but to the refund

- create a plan to enforce the guarantee (such as a defined set of steps that HostGator takes when uptime degrades to 99.8%, 99.5%, 99.0%, 97.0%, etc) - this would show that HostGator actually considers it a guarantee, instead of the "we can't do anything at this time" responses that support consistently provided during this outage)

- any other option that clearly clarifies how HostGator is using the word "guarantee" or that shows HostGator is serious about taking action to meet the guarantee (then the wording would not have to change)

Regards,

Review: My website has gone down 3 times with Hostgator, ranging from 1 hour to todays debacle which is 7 hours out with no end in sight.Hostgator also managed to lose my entire website while transferring to a dedicated server, and instead of apologizing, or making it right, they just responded with, "Oh, I hope you have a back up, hehehe." Ive been on hold for 15-40 minutes at a time just waiting to talk to someone. Horrible, horrible customer service.Desired Settlement: I would like a full refund of my last billing cycle and I will take my business elsewhere.

Business

Response:

Good Morning,

Review: I have had Hostgator for several years and am frustrated with their service at this point. For the most part their technical staff members have been professional and helpful. During the last month I have come to my wit's end with them. I called back in February, last month, to report that I was concerned I had been hacked, because of what I saw when I logged into one of my Wordpress sites. I had installed only 2 plugins, yet I saw about 15 of them upon re-login. 3 of the plugins were in German, and when I researched the name of one of the plugins the description said something to the effect of "allows dual access to a website". Another of the plugins said something about [redacted]. If I put those two together, what comes up for me is a hacking situation that somehow involves stealing a site's revenue.This particular site is [redacted].com. I received an email from the admins saying they found no problems. I experienced more evidence that something was wrong, & sent an angry email to the admins saying something WAS wrong. At that point they researched and came back and said they did find malware, but had removed it and everything was clear. For a month now I have not been able to send emails and have had various other problems. They keep saying everything is fine, but it's not. On March 5th, I called in to report other problems and the admins came back and said my site had been blacklisted because 400,000+ spam emails had been sent from 1 of my email accts. They said they fixed things. I STILL CANNOT SEND EMAILS. I do not trust that things are being investigated and fixed properly. In the past I have reported evidence of hackings and have been ignored! I do not trust the safety of my sites and intellectual property. Hostgator has totally bungled this one. I have requested to be moved to different IPs to no avail. I feel like a sitting duck who is pouring my hosting money and marketing efforts down a rathole. Someone at a high Hostgator level needs to get involved to solve this fiasco.Desired Settlement: I'd like to have totally new IPs for all of my accounts and assurance that no malware or hidden back doors are transferred over. I do not know how this works but would like to discuss options with someone at Hostgator who does. I want [redacted] to be on it's own IP as I requested in the first place. Hostgator made it an addon and then told me it was too hard to change. I wish to be compensated for this mess, which has been a HUGE time drain for me. More attentive admins!

Consumer

Response:

AFTER I filed this complaint, I tested a form on my [redacted].com site, and the form still did not work. I called in to Hostgator support, and spoke with a [redacted] L. who was kind enough to test the site and confirmed that he was not able to send email from the site either. I was in contact over a period of several hours with him. He asked me to call him back after a period of time, which I did. He told me that [redacted] was being moved to it's own IP, and I would receive an email when that migration has been completed. He said it would take a while. Today 24 hours later I had received no email, so I called in and spoke with [redacted] R. who said there was no open ticket as the ticket had been closed out and there was no migration that had taken place. I told him I still could not send email from the domain. After over 2 hours on the phone, they finally changed the mailserver IP and tell me that I can now send emails from that domain. This change also seemed to fix some other problems I was having, like not being able to receive email resets for Wordpress admin. panels. I am still unable to access a good portion of the wordpress sites I created over the past month.

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for having brought this to our attention. I’m sorry to hear of the troubles you’ve experienced recently after dealing with multiple compromises on your server, however I’ll be more then happy to assist you with getting this all resolved fully. I’d like to first note that it’s somewhat concerning that you would submit such a complaint prior to the matter being resolved which it wasn’t, however given the confusion and general nature of the situation it’s likely best to ensure this is being resolved appropriately, but with clarity as well so the situation can be avoided in the future.

Reviewing your recent security requests I’m not seeing any that were ignored as you allege however if you’d please provide those tickets I’d be happy to review them further. As for the compromises and situation at hand currently, there are actually two entirely different issues occurring. One with an account which looks to have been transferred to the VPS already compromised which we located and cleaned for you during a recent scan, then the second email issue spam, which has been preventing proper email function.

Having reviewed the tickets with our security supervisors as well as having reviewed logs myself it’s clear the first issue with wp-admin is not in fact related to the email blacklisting that was experienced most recently. I’m also seeing conflicting information as to what you’ve reported and what our logs show as being installed to the software. All recent installations look to have been from your area geographically based on the IP in logs, though regardless given the reports it appears multiple scans have been performed on the server to clean it. As for the compromises they appear to be the result of inadequate passwords which is easily preventable, and to that end I’d like to encourage you in the future to use random string passwords, upper and lower case characters as well as numbers and symbols to ensure your passwords are as strong as possible. Avoiding common words and personal information is also a great tip as those are often easily guessed.

As for the delay with the IP blacklisting, I do apologize for the time this has taken to resolve however we do typically get these listings cleared with some patience once we’re able to communicate with the involved spam haus. We also usually will not provide a customer a new IP address after seeing an instance such as this where 400k spam emails were sent which is regrettably the client’s responsibility to keep tabs on, though it’s good to see our staff made exceptions as needed such as in this case. We do certainly take network security and spam sending very seriously here at Hostgator.com functioning with a zero tolerance policy, though given the compromises it was also fairly clear you did not intentionally send the spam. Regardless of where responsibility lies, should compromises of this nature continue in the future we may be unable to provide a clean IP like this meaning you’ll need to remain patient while we reverse the actions taken on the IP address. That can regrettably take the better part of a week at times, though these do ultimately get resolved once the spam haus can release the listing.

Moving to your request for compensation we’ll unfortunately not be able to consider that given the source of the issues resulted in the way of weak passwords being set on the server which were compromised. That’s unfortunately out of our hands, however with my earlier recommendations the situation is typically avoidable.

In closing as for the situation at hand still in that you’re having trouble loading a few sites, I’ll look forward to any other details you can provide about the sites of concern, however if you’d please email me directly at [redacted].com that would likely be the easiest way to work through the remaining concerns.

Best Regards,

Hostgator.com LLC

[redacted].com

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

[Provide details of why you are not satisfied with this resolution.]

Regards,

I see no attempt on Hostgator's part to resolve this complaint. Rather I see blame and defensiveness, rather than any effort to resolve my issues. If this is typical of their senior management, I now understand their admins attitude. It's the old trickle-down effect. Thank God many of their front line people are humane. [redacted] talks out of both sides of his mouth as far as I can determine. On the one hand he says they gave me sevice that was compromised in the first place. I have tried to tell them this on many occasions, to no avail. On the other hand he says being hacked is all my fault due to weak passwords. It seems to me that at all costs their desire is to put the blame on me, with no attempt to really resolve the bottom line issues.

You will find my response to Hostgator's response below, plus an attachment to support my statement regarding [redacted]. What I hear [redacted] saying on the one hand is my account was compromised BEFORE they even passed it off to me. Since they are providing the service, I do not understand why he would hold me responsible for them providing me with contaminated hosting. What he is saying goes right along with phone calls I have made many times over the years telling them something was not right as the hosting seemed to be contaminated. They always put me off and never really did a thorough investigation. If they had, we would not all be here discussing thi right now.

Since I have been with Hostgator, I have always used [redacted] to build Wordpress sites. No one has ever mentioned a charge for this service. Three days ago Hostgator suddenly cut off my access to [redacted] and said that I have to pay a fee to use it. They also said there is no way I have been using [redacted] to build Wordpress sites. I have built 49 Wordpress sites since I have been on VPS with Hostgator. They have no explanation as to how I built 49 [redacted] sites. What slipshod customer service. You would think we were at war and I am the enemy, rather than a living breathing paying CUSTOMER! They don't seem to have the same definition of that word as I do. With regard to [redacted] they might have just as well used the word 'liar' to my face. The fact is, I HAVE had access to [redacted] for all of the years I have had VPS and there are 49 existing Wordpress sites as evidence. When I asked about the 49 WP sites, they said they did not have an explanation. Unbelievable!

I do not understand why [redacted] I so sure me being hacked in February and having spam sent out in March as unrelated events. I don't really know how hackers work but it is certainly logical that if they found malicious activity inside my part of the server, that they could be related, or the hacker access is still present. In cases like this I would like to feel they are concerned about what has occurred, not only from my perspective, but from their own as well. They have a high reputation in the industry and that is why I chose them. I my case they don't seem to be living up to that high reputation.

Review: I signed up for a Website Hosting package with Host Gator and never received what I paid for. I spent a collective week and a half trying to get this issue resolved with Host Gator. I tried to reach them via e-mail, "Live Support", and over the phone. Despite hours of attempts, the only time I actually got to speak with someone was after waiting over three hours on their "Live chat". I was told that the charge to my account was only pending and that it would be dropped as an account was not created for me. I took solace in this fact since I thought that I was no longer associated with Host Gator and would therefore not be continuously charged for a service that I didn't receive. However, the payment posted and I had to do a stop payment to prevent any recurring charges. I was not able to dispute the charges because I wasted to much time trying to get in touch with Host Gator.Desired Settlement: I think Host Gator has the responsibility to refund my initial charge of $7.16 as well as stop any other recurring charges if they still plan to charge me after my claim for a stop payment.

The check may be mailed to [redacted] and made out to [redacted].

Business

Response:

Good Afternoon,Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention so we can get it corrected. I'd like to first and foremost offer our sincerest apologies for any frustration or inconvenience this situation has caused you, though it's definitely not a problem to review and correct for you. Looking over the billing account I see that the payment actually didn't initially apply itself directly to the client ID, but to our payment processing account. When that was caught later that afternoon by the billing team they went ahead and applied the payment for you and I think probably should have reached out to you prior to doing so to avoid this unfortunate alarm it caused.Given this occurred manually, the system actually wouldn't process the refund back after 48 hours as part of the pending process, but I've requested a refund be issued and that's taken place for you as of 12/8. I apologize for the delay in response here as well, though you should have the refund back within a business week or so. Probably not this week, but I would expect it middle of next week, end of the week at the latest. Should you have any other questions or concerns regarding this please let me know!Best Regards,[redacted]

Consumer

Response:

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response. If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me. They have admitted to their error and refunded my money.

Review: Hostgator has offered me bad customer service, extremely slow technical service and trouble with each issue that I've had building my website. Hostgator claims to offer templates for building a website. They do, but in 50% or more cases, they're not compatible with some plugin or service that one needs to continue to build his or her site. Hostgator has tried to charge me to use their memory after a plugin related issue caused my website to be reconfigured. Hostgator has presented several issues with signing in to my [redacted] account dashboard, and several issues signing in for technical assistance. Hostgator, has ignored issues that I've had with my account, as well as, now tried to corner me into paying for the services of a website developer. Hostgator is also false advertising with the post of services to use for building your site, as if they come with a package service, however, there is an underlying fee.Although Hostgator offers a 45 day money back guarantee, 45 days is not enough time to check out the service, find proper widgets to build the site, nor present the site for market testing.Desired Settlement: I would like to request a refund of $14. 95 per month, for 6 months, equaling $89.70 for the amount of time they've wasted in customer service, false advertising, for the inability to be able to create the actual website with the tools they present as free, and for the incompetent technical support I've received for the last 6 months.

Business

Response:

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Address: 5005 Mitchelldale Suite 100, Houston, Texas, United States, 77092

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