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I have become a big fan of Hostgator, one the internet’s leading web hosting companies.

If you are looking for a reliable, supportive and affordable web hosting company for hosting your website/blog, I strongly recommend you to go for Hostgator. Here is why I recommend them :

First of all a quick summary :

• They provide the facility of hosting multiple websites in a single hosting account for a very nominal fee. A big money saver!
• They have an excellent support team which respond to all questions in shortest time
• They have an always-on Live Support so that you can contact them anytime you want.
• They will shift your website to their hosting account free of cost no matter how big your website is.
• Their hosting servers are robust and reliable. Expect almost no downtime for your site.
• You can try them for one month for only 1 cent only by using their easily available promotional coupon !

Summary ends.

Let me now tell you in detail why I became such a huge fan of Hostgator.

My earlier experiences with my old hosting providers.

My first host was an Indian web hosting company based in Mumbai. They were charging me Rs. 1000 ($25) a year for a 25 MB web-hosting plan without any MySql database support. They did not have any control panel and I was allowed to access my files only through my ftp client. When I felt the need to install a blog on my website, they charged me additional Rs. 500/- ($12) for creating just one database (for installing Wordpress) on my site. They told me that for every subsequent database, I’ll have to shell out Rs. 500 each. What a rip off !

Since during those times, I was a complete novice and did not know much about web-hosting plans, I preferred to stay with them despite their being so costly. I was thought that in view of their location in India, I could easily talk to them on phone in case of an emergency without incurring huge International call charges which would be the case had I chosen an American hosting company.

However, my trust in them ended one day when their server crashed suddenly and my website went offline. After trying for many hours, I finally managed to contact their support team, which informed me that they had not backed up the files on their server! As a result I had to again upload my entire website on their server. During this chaos, my site remained absent from Internet for three days.

Even then, I continued to host my site on their servers as I was hoping that such incident would not occur in future.

However, the final blow came when I decided to add new sections to my website and requested them to increase webspace limit of my site. They asked me to shell out Rs. 250 for every additional increase of 25 MB. Though I was prepared to give them this amount, I noticed that even their highest hosting plan could provide only a maximum of 150 MB of webspace for any website (it is still the same!).

After making some queries with them regarding their various hosting plans, I finally realized that they were the reseller of a hosting company and their sole aim was to extract money from newbie webmasters like me by selling their high priced hosting plans. I decided to cancel my hosting subscription with them.

Then I opted for a new company based in Lucknow, India. This company was far better than the previous one. They had an excellent support team, regular backup facility and a range of affordable hosting plans. I purchased a $10 per month plan which gave me 2 GB webspace, 15 GB bandwidth, unlimited Mysql databases and a control panel. I was quite happy with this arrangement as this was an excellent deal as compare to my earlier host. Though I was paying 4 times more what I paid in a year to my earlier host, I was getting 80 times more webspace and unlimited databases. Further, first time I got the facility of point & click installation of various popular webscript such as (Wordpress & Joomla) to my website.

Except for some minor billing issues, my overall experience with this company remained satisfactory. They were very helpful and had a great support staff. I was planning to host all my subsequent websites on their servers. However, one day I got an email from them wherein I was informed that my website had exceeded its monthly limit of 15 GB bandwidth and I was asked to pay for more bandwidth. Clearly my website was getting popular day by day. They told me that their next plan costs $15 a month and I must buy it to ensure 24-hour online availability of my site.

Clearly I had only two choices. First one was to go ahead and purchase the $15 a month plan. The second option was to look for some reliable and affordable alternatives. Though $ 15 a month was not a big deal given the growing popularity of my site, in view of the fact that I had other websites also, I calculated that maintaining more than one website this way is going to be very costly in the long run.

However, finding a new webhost was also not that easy. My site, which had a total of 12,000 pages, was approximately 1.2 GB in size. Transferring so much data to a new server was itself a problem given 5-6 database scripts I was using. If I had to do it manually, it was going to take me many days.

Then I found …. the Hostgator.

One day while browsing the internet in search of a perfect host, I came across a blog post wherein the author had mentioned about this free facility Hostgator provides for transferring the entire site from old web host to their server. I promptly visited the Hostgator site to know more about it. Much to my surprise, a live support was available for answering all my pre-sales queries. I chatted with a Hostgator employee and asked him if it was true that they can shift an entire existing website to their server free of cost. He answered in affirmative.

Then as I read more about Hostgator’s hosting plans, I found that they allow hosting of unlimited websites on a single hosting plan. It simply meant that purchasing their one hosting plan would allow me to host all my existing websites on their servers. Given the cost I was incurring on hosting my websites in different hosting plans, it was going to be a big money saver for me. Finally I chose their $15 a month plan, which gave me unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth along with the facility of hosting all my sites on their servers. All other facilities of control panel, unlimited database and emails were also there in the package.

The process of shifting my website to Hostgator’s server went smoothly. They asked me whether I want to transfer only some portion of my website or the entire website. When I told them that I want to transfer my entire website on their server, they just performed a full Cpanel transfer of my website to their server. As a result I continue to manage my website through its older control panel without any hassle as the entire Cpanel was now on their server. All this process took less than a day. Though I had to make some queries with them before I changed my domain’s nameservers, I never experienced any delay on their part in getting a response. My all questions were answered promptly and satisfactory.

After shifting my website to their server, I transferred my other websites also on the same hosting account. As of now, my all websites are working very smoothly and I am quite satisfied with the service Hostgator is providing. My sites has experienced 99.99 % uptime and there has been no problem whatsoever with their hosting plans. .

If you are thinking to host your website/blog on a new webhost, I strongly suggest you to go for Hostgator because :

(1) You’ll be able to host unlimited domain on a single hosting account.

(2) Their hosting plans are quite affordable and their minimum plan with unlimited domain hosting is for just $ 7.95 a month.

(3) They will transfer your entire website to their servers free of cost.

(4) You can test their service for as little as 1 cent only. Just enter any promotional coupon while registering and you’ll get first month discount. A great way to try their effectiveness J

(5) They have a 24 hour live support where you can chat with their representative on any matter related to their service (including pre-sell questions etc).

(6) They are one of the most reputed companies in web hosting business. They have their own brand image and they try very hard to maintain this good image. So keep expect an excellent service from them.

So here concludes my experience of using Hostgator web hosting service. As of now I am a huge fan of them and this post is my attempt to tell about their excellent service to all those who are looking for a reliable and economical host for their website/blog.

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