WordPress 3.6 was released on Thursday 1st August and chomping at the bit, I put aside some time to upgrade my sites on Friday morning. Hostgator problems put a spanner in the works…
On 2nd August, several Endurance International Group (EIG) owned hosting companies died a death with a total unexpected outage. That included popular hosting companies Hostgator, Bluehost, JustHost and Host Monster.
As if the website and email being off more than it was on throughout Friday wasn’t enough, EIG servers were then hit with an ongoing attack on Saturday 3rd resulting in yet more downtime and mega slowness.
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Why I’m Saying See You Later Alligator!
The latest problem at Hostgator – a HUGE downtime over two days – was the straw that broke the camels back.
When I first heard the rumours back in June that EIG were buying Hostgator I groaned and put it in the wait and see what happens pile. EIG, one of the largest hosting providers in the world with many hosting companies under their belt, are not particularly known for great service.
I’ve had sites hosted with Hostgator for around 4 years and originally had no issues – infact I regularly sing their praises from the rooftops. When I started My Local Business Online I did shop around to find a UK/European host for clients who prefer me to organise hosting for their websites. There was no overwhelming reason to me to move my site anywhere else.
For me, the best test of a web host is when the crap hits the fan. How quick and helpful are they getting you back up and running? I don’t want 9-5 support, I want support when I need it. Hostgator ticked the boxes.
Email Hacked
Then in June, my email was hacked and sent links out to every contact. To say I was mortified would be an understatement.
I got in touch with Hostgator support to be told it was my fault, I had introduced the issue via a virus on my computer. The solution was “change your password” (I had, it was the first thing I did) and scan the computer. I asked what the virus was and how I could prevent this happening again and got more stock answers.
At the time, I was ill and it physically hurt to sit infront of a screen. I spent days scanning and rescanning my laptop with various antivirus and malware software – all the while still locked out of my email. As someone who works on clients sites, I know it is possible to introduce issues from your computer, even if it is unintentional. So, I am careful – I regularly scan, I don’t download from iffy sources, I scan everything I do download even from trusted sources, I don’t store passwords in my browser.
But I am not naïve enough to think that it couldn’t be possible that it was down to something on my laptop.
Needless to say I didn’t find anything other than cookies. Hostgator never gave me a straight answer how it happened or indeed why I was locked out for so long.
Server Upgraded?
A few weeks later I received an email from Hostgator to let me know I was being upgraded to a new server. “Fantastic!” I thought…
Soon after I received an email saying the upgrade was complete and I needn’t do anything else.
But my mail wasn’t working again…
On and off to support again for what seemed like an age and it turned out that yes, I did need to do something. I needed to change IP addresses on Cloudflare. Not a huge issue and easily done – but why wasn’t I warned of this first? Why jump through hoops to get a straight answer?
Dead Slow and Stop
Throughout July my site slowed down. It did the hokey kokey – down, up, down, up and shake it all about. A few minutes down here, an hour there…
MLBO has been online for 2.5 years and I use it to test things out. I will admit it needs a clean up. You would think an “upgrade” would be faster not slower and I certainly didn’t expect so many outages no matter how small.
That is when I discovered EIG had bought Hostgator and we had moved to their datacentre in Utah. It was not an upgrade.
Friday’s downtime was simply unacceptable. Surely they have put systems and practices into place to protect their customers while performing maintenance and prevent such a catastrophic failure? EIG are one of the largest hosting companies in the world, not some little independent company.
The attacks on Saturday – not their fault, an expected hazard online these days. DDoS attacks aren’t uncommon – if you follow online news you may have heard of the large “botnet” attacks targeting WordPress sites that have been going on throughout the year. I have no idea if this was related, the point being these types of attack are on the increase.
Large hosts should be able to see an attack and take steps quickly. What seemed to happen was the attack just moved from server to server all day with no control resulting in massive downtime and interruption.
See you later Alligator…
Because of the ongoing problems and unhelpful support I no longer feel confident recommending Hostgator, which saddens me. They have been wonderful up until June this year. It’s not just the massive downtime at the end of last week. This is the web, you expect problems, not everything can be rosey all the time. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the great service and top notch support up until recently but there’s only so many times you can say, “Let’s wait and see.”
I’ve removed Hostgator from my nifty online toolbox. When everything has settled down I’ll be moving my sites and test sites from Hostgator to my reseller account at Webhosting Buzz. That will be a job and a half and I’ll blog about how it goes too.
I’ve used Webhosting Buzz for 2 years now and find their service great – fingers crossed they don’t sell out to EIG!
Over to you…
Have you been affected by the recent outages? Will you be moving hosts?
Hostgator Problems and Downtime – See You Later Alligator! by Jan Kearney
Hi Jan,
I have had my sites hosted by Dreamhost lately, but had to move to Hostgator for the same reason. And guess what – I came to what I was trying to escape… They say that the downtime was due to cyber attacks. But who cares what the reason is? When you have an online business, the only thing you care about is for your sites to be online all the time, and if something goes wrong – for the problem to be fixed quickly. Unfortunately, both hosts seem to be faltering. Looks like I will have to go travelling with my websites again… But need to find a good host first. Disappointing…
Looking forward to hearing how your self-hosting goes. All the best with it! 🙂
Galina
It’s really frustrating isn’t it Galina – we don’t ask for much in life, just let us know what’s going on and fix it. Disappointed in Hostgator recently, they have been fab for years.
Friday was a NIGHTMARE! I’ve never had a problem with Bluehost until then. I hope you find a new “home” that makes you happy!
I shifted a few people off Bluehost before this current mess, so I was less than impressed that Hostgator were bought out by the same company. That said, many people do like Bluehost and recommend it, I know just as many who moved there too!
I read about the servers being down. It must be frustrating for those with on line businesses.
There are so many providers and things change so quickly that it is quite difficult to make an informed choice these days.
Hi Paula – very frustrating! The best way to choose is to speak to people you trust and get an honst opinion from people actually using the services – even then the service seems to vary lots!
Thank you for the information. I haven’t had any problems with HostGator but will be vigilant in checking things out.
Thank you
Fingers crossed and good luck Sue – hope everything remains good for you 🙂
Am I to understand that Bluehost AND Hostgator were bought out by EIG? How freaking wonderful – NOT! 🙂
I moved from Hostgator to Bluehost after all that downtime mess I had and I was happy with Bluehost until the downtime this last weekend.
Now that explains everything. I paid for a full year of hosting with Bluehost, but I’m going to move to a hosting account that has SSD plans in place.
I want FAST load times and not a string of “we can’t figure this out, it must be you BS” so here we go again with changing things over to another hosting account. UGH!
I was a bit bemused why you shifted to Bluehost Bonnie – EIG have owned then for a couple of years now. It would appear the recent issues with Hostgator were because of the move over to the same data centre in Utah. Although I’m with you on support – it must be the luck of the draw who you get, but all of my recent support issues have resulted in the it’s not us it’s you answer… I’ll hold my hands up if it was. One was solved because of problems you had and I was onto support saying look up the support request and solution for bonniegean.com – that is what is happening, it’s not me! lol
Funnily enough the news of the outage came as a relief to me! I was moving a site – ironically from “somewhere else” to Hostgator (consolidation, rather than for poor service) and I just COULD NOT make it work. Finally I heard the news of the outage, decided to hold fire, and sure enough once all was well at Hostgator, my site “reappeared”.
I’ll watch your progress of finding someone else with interest, although actually Hostgator have just been very helpful sorting out problem I had.
Joy
I couldn’t even get through to support on Friday, Joy 🙁
Fingers crossed your experience with Hostgator remains a good one. I’ll be waiting for a few days for everything to settle down before moving anything – probably over to my reseller account because I have had no issues with them at all.
I have nothing but good experiences with HostGator support – I must be lucky! Even during all of that down time my sites were down for 2 minutes here and two minutes there… during the time I was awake and checking maybe a total of 20 minutes over two days. I guess I just got really lucky.
Do you know Amanda, if you’d asked me before June I would have whole-heartedly agreed with you. Hostgator were fantastic, support was amazing – quick and helpful. From June, every support chat I’ve been on lasted around an hour and then my problems were escalated up and dealt with by email and stock answers. These weren’t major issues in my eyes, stuff that a chat support should be able to deal with. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt in the past!
I hope your experience with Hostgator remains a great one – and I am jealous at your down time, I was hit hard on Friday and Saturday!
I think that this was the first time that I had problems with Bluehost and I have been with them for over 5 years. Whenever I had an issue, I always got help and support.
It is a shame that this has occured now. I am in the “wait and see” camp at the moment.
One thing that i discovered was that this company was owed by the company that owns Hostgator. I had no idea. This is the sad news – when you think you are choosing and individual independent company only to find that it is part of some major conglomerate. Sigh…