When I started looking into using a new hosting company it was for a few specific reasons. The main reason was because my site was running slower than I wanted. With Google recently stating that the speed of a site will count towards how well that site ranks, I found more motivation to research my hosting options. I was also concerned with how well the hosting company provided support because as anyone who has been hosting for a while knows, good support can make all the difference.
As I researched hosting options I found that with HostGator I had a hard time finding negative feedback for the company in these two areas. Not just that, people appeared to be going out of their way to sing the praises of HostGator and with their 45 day money back guarantee I decided to give them a try. What follows is a description of my thinking when searching for hosting and how I feel HostGator has addressed those areas.
The Problem with Website Speed
The problem with most hosting companies and speed really comes down to one area: the speed of your database. When you first sign up at a website hosting company you will likely be presented with few static HTML pages and you’ll think to yourself, “Holy crap! My new site is fast!” Then you’ll research solutions you want to host and almost without question you will find yourself venturing into the world of databases either using WordPress or some other application.
This is where things go wrong.
The problem is that shared hosting companies don’t just put you on shared servers but also shared databases. The web servers are able to handle this very easily but what most people find is that the databases, which are also shared across many users, are not able to handle this load very well. It is not uncommon for a simple web page on a shared hosting account to take 7 or 8 seconds to load.
The Issue of Pricing
So once you’ve identified that your database is your problem, now what? You can’t tell how much load any given hosting company is going to put on each database server. They might overload there servers, causing slowness, or they might not. On the other hand, you’re probably not in the position to be paying for any type of dedicated hosting which will have awesome performance but will easily cost you hundreds of dollars a month. How do you find a good middle-of-the-road solution?
The truth is at this point I believe you need to look at price and if the speed of your website is a concern to you, you need to be willing to spend more than $3 a month. The cheap hosts are great for hobby sites or for someone just learning to manage a website but you will get what you pay for. If someday you find that you have outgrown your cheap hosting it is very, very unlikely that you are going to be able to solve your problem without spending a little more. Once I realized this I took the approach of specifically searching out hosting plans that were priced between $10 and $30 assuming that to charge this price these companies would have to bring more value. I eventually found HostGator with its Reseller Hosting at $24 a month, read tons of great reviews and then decided to give it a try.
Did HostGator Solve My Speed Issues?
For me, the answer to this question is a resounding YES. Now, I should reiterate here: I decided that speed was a top priority so when I left my old hosting company (which was very cheap) I knew I was going to have to spend more. With this in mind, I went with the HostGator Reseller account – even though I am not a reseller! Everything I was reading suggested that the reseller accounts had better performance than their shared hosting counterparts. I have heard that the shared hosting options at HostGator are better than their competition but I would still recommend that you be open to the idea of the higher end shared hosting options (which will run you between $10 and $15 a month).
I moved two sites to my HostGator account. The first was loading WordPress pages in around 15 seconds and is now down to 3 seconds. The second site was loading pages in around 4 seconds and now averages between near instant load times and 3 seconds. Now it’s not perfect and I do occasionally have a long page load but the difference for both sites is still night and day and I’ve been very happy with this choice.
The Problem with Website Support
I’ve had problems with support at hosting companies in the past. There have been three categories of problems I have experienced:
- Where I didn’t understand or made a mistake. Obviously for someone who is learning about websites every day I don’t hold any grudge against my hosting company when something like this happens.
- When the hosting company says that “it is not our problem.” You know, I can accept and understand this but if you hear it a little too early and a little too often you begin to wonder if all hosting companies would handle the problems the same way (they all don’t but I’ll get to that soon).
- Where the hosting company made a mistake or did not fulfill a promise. This is where I become irate and seriously start to look for other options. This has happened to me once in the form of having site downtime for a change that the support personnel said there would be no downtime for. A second time this occurred when my site was down and when I called in several times and got very different answers each time. It also occurred when I would get the general feel that support was trying to offer me any solution to get the case closed.
All Hosting Companies Have Issues
Any hosting company you use is going to have problems and I’m not the type of person who yells when things go wrong. I just want to see that my issue is handled properly and failing that I feel my hand is forced to find another hosting provider. I can accept that not every issue I have is a problem that my hosting company is required to solve and I can also accept that they have human beings at their company who are going to make mistakes…and that’s fine to a degree.
Did HostGator Solve My Support Issues?
Again, I can absolutely say YES. In my first week of hosting with HostGator I was trying to test WordPress prior to my domain being repointed to the new name servers. I ran into problems with this and when working with HostGator, they were the ones who would not let the issue drop. Literally. I was chatting with their support person and I said something to the effect of, “I was just testing so it isn’t a big deal that this get fixed. I imagine when I point my name servers things will work fine” but he didn’t take the queue. He just said he wasn’t sure and that he was going to keep looking into the problem. An hour-and-a-half later we had the issue resolved (and it was my fault not theirs).
This was exactly the kind of support I was looking for. For the first time ever in my online hosting life I actually felt like my host was on my side. That my site was their site. Prior to signing up at HostGator I read plenty of reviews that said this very thing but I only understand it now that I’ve seen it myself.
What is Most Important in a Host to You?
So for me, HostGator has been an excellent move and my top priorities have been met and my expectations have been exceeded. If speed and support are two of your top issues with your website hosting I would really encourage you to looking into HostGator. So far, I don’t think I could be happier.
