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Why We Encourage Everyone to Switch From Hostgator to A2Hosting.com
When you work in tech, about the only thing you can count on is that change is inevitable. And on top of that, good things don’t always stay good for all that long. It is the nature of such things.
For years – and quite frankly since we began working in this industry we’ve used Hostgator exclusively for Web hosting. we have also referred dozens of customers to them – friends, acquaintances, clients and the like – all with superior results. In the beginning, we were impressed with the quality of their product and their excellent customer service that always went way above and beyond for me. On numerous occasions we would find ourselves on the phone with their tech-support, frequently seeking solutions to problems that were often in no way their responsibility to deal with. We sung their praises and proudly referred as many people to them as we could.
Unfortunately, those days are over.
In June of 2012, Hostgator was bought out by a company called EIG, which is one of the largest Web hosting companies in the world. EIG owns about 60 different hosting brands, including Hostmonster, Bluehost, Intuit and Ipage, just to name a few. They continue to operate those brands under their original name. Their Wikipedia page contains a more comprehensive list of the companies they’ve acquired.
Since their acquisition of Hostgator, the quality of the service has degraded in my experience to the point that I no longer recommend them. There have been at least three known outages in the past 12 months alone, some lasting for multiple days. Their customer service has declined as well – what was once a very useful, friendly, knowledgeable staff has been replaced with unacceptably long wait times and generally poor support. It’s also much harder to get sometime to talk to you if you happen to be calling on behalf of a client.
Another issue is that their shared hosting servers have been overloaded with new customers, slowing them down for everyone. Since their acquisition, Hostgator has aggressively pushed the cheap hosting packages – which is fine unless the hardware can’t support the extra load.
It’s for these reasons I’ve moved on to another hosting company, and I encourage you to do the same.
Since the first of the year, I began using a company called A2 Hosting (affiliate link) at the recommendation of a colleague. He had referred a mutual client to me whose sites were already hosted with A2. I began to familiarize myself with their platform and found many similarities to that which I’d become accustomed. I began recommending new Enliven clients to sign up for A2 Hosting instead of other service providers.
Since I began using them for clients of Enliven, as well as for my own hosting needs, the results have been fantastic and I can’t recommend them enough. They are slightly higher than the typical $3.99/month hosting offered by EIG companies, but the quality of the service and support is far superior. The recommended shared hosting package with SSD runs about eight bucks a month, and of course varies depending on your billing cycle.
Click here to download a quick guide as to how you can get started with A2 Hosting. If you are switching from a different hosting company, contact us to see how we can help with your migration to your new hosting package!
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