Host Gator is a web hosting provider founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley, a web entrepreneur frustrated with poor-quality providers promising 99.9% uptime rates and instead delivering ridiculously slow hosting services. In operation for nearly a decade, HostGator has burgeoned into the fastest-growing, top hosting provider in the United States. They host over 5 million domains and have been recognized multiple times for their exemplary service.
Features
Host Gator offers shared, VPS, dedicated and reseller hosting services at affordable, business-friendly rates. Unless you intend to build the next Amazon.com, your best option is to opt for shared hosting, which you can obtain for as little as $3.96 per month. All shared hosting plans from HostGator feature unlimited storage space, bandwidth and MySQL databases, as well as access to two Intel quad-core processors and up to 12 MB of DDR3 memory.
Software
Most of Host Gator’s servers feature CentOS Linux x86, but you have the option of going with Windows Server 2008 R2 instead if you sign up for a dedicated hosting plan. The benefit of selecting Linux, however, is access to a myriad of programming and development tools, including but not limited to PHP 5, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, CGI, Frontpage, Image Magick and WordPress.
Control
Unless you sign up for VPS or dedicated hosting, all your control decisions will be executed via the HostGator Cpanel, an easy-to-use, industry-standard web hosting control panel. With it, you can instantly setup a WordPress blog, install open-source scripts, manage your email accounts, oversee multiple domains, add new databases with a click and perform basic administrative tasks via an intuitive graphical interface.
Uptime
Another defining trait of Host Gator is its ridiculously fast uptime. Unlike most hosts, who claim a 99 percent uptime but never deliver, HostGator actually delivers results. This is due not only to their cutting-edge server technology, but also to their redundancy system. Every server is backed up by 4 additional servers. This means that if a server were to fail, one of the 4 backups would immediately take over full control, so as to prevent any disruption in service.
Support
What really defines Host Gator is its outstanding technical support. If and when you seek to contact them, you may rest assured that they will promptly reply with either a solution or questions. In the latter case, they will ask questions to acquire the additional information needed to rectify the dilemma you are facing. The bottom line is that a solution will be discerned and either presented to you or applied for you within 24 hours of you submitting a ticket to HostGator.
