Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : HostGator packages. =O

[richmix]

Hey everyone. I'm starting my first web project that's going to be open to the public, and I wanted to find a cost-effective, feature-rich shared hosting service. I got lots of recommendations to check out HostGator, and what they offer seems thoroughly impressive. In fact, it's a little too impressive. $10 a month for 100GB and 1TB on a shared server seems like way overkill, but I'm not really interested in paying for an entire year until I get a fairly stable setup. Still, though, at $10 a month I can afford to simply pay for overhead I'm not going to use; the price isn't rough at all. I guess my question isn't so much a question as it is a feeling of being overwhelmed. Is 100GB web space REALLY necessary on a shared host? (And their shared plans even go up to 200GB...) Am I missing something, or is HostGator simply a ridiculously good deal for shared hosting?

Sorry for the naïve question. I'm just trying to settle on a solid host, and I don't want to be caught by any surprises.

Edit: I noticed that the $10+ plans support unlimited FTP accounts, so I'm guessing the huge space allowances are for file storage and such. Still, what's up with the crazy low costs?

[Jay H]

For the most part, they are banking on a majority of their users using very little of the space they are offering.

You can find reviews about them here on WHT by using the search feature.

[ashley5]

Hello richmix,

Welcome to WHT.
Hostgator is a good host ,am not dealing with them personally but ve heard fairly good reviews abt them.
Shared Hoating is a good option.
But you are requested to read their TOS carefully before stepping forward.
Keep all your options open and stick to RnD (research and development) instead of review(s).
good luck.

[Hastings]

Hey Richmix,
First off, greetings, and welcome to WHT!
Hostgator has plenty of praise around here. Pretty much everyone likes them. Their support is fast and good, sale with the sales and billing. Shared hosting is a good option, as ashley5 stated. Good luck!

[richmix]

Aye, I've done the searches. I've found many positive mentions of HostGator (both here and on other forums), and those few negative impressions I have seen have been mostly about unique situation billing issues. It just seems peculiar to me that a hosting company could actually live up to what a hosting company should be.

And I did read through the ToS. Nothing really stood out to me, and I'm not at all concerned about violating them. It's just odd that they even give users the option to use so much space.

Thanks for the welcomes and quick responses too, everyone! I've been around on a few PHP forums and such, but most of my development so far has been internal. No need for a host in those cases. Well, I've decided to start a project, so I guess HostGator will get my business this go around. Exciting. They seem to be just what I was looking for if you ignore the 800 billion pounds of unnecessarily awesome fluff.

[The Stealthy One]

richmix, I used HostGator a couple of years ago and was very pleased with the stability of the service. As far as the pricing/features, you will find that most shared hosting providers have gone that route in the past year.

[CretaForce]

Many webhosts oversell their disk space and bandwidth and that's why they have these packages. If you don't need so much space and bandwidth it's better to find webhosts with more reasonable packages. The bigger the plans they offer, the bigger the chance to host your website in overloaded servers.

[utropicmedia-karl]

Originally Posted by richmix

Hey everyone. I'm starting my first web project that's going to be open to the public, and I wanted to find a cost-effective, feature-rich shared hosting service. I got lots of recommendations to check out HostGator, and what they offer seems thoroughly impressive. In fact, it's a little too impressive. $10 a month for 100GB and 1TB on a shared server seems like way overkill, but I'm not really interested in paying for an entire year until I get a fairly stable setup. Still, though, at $10 a month I can afford to simply pay for overhead I'm not going to use; the price isn't rough at all. I guess my question isn't so much a question as it is a feeling of being overwhelmed. Is 100GB web space REALLY necessary on a shared host? (And their shared plans even go up to 200GB...) Am I missing something, or is HostGator simply a ridiculously good deal for shared hosting?

Sorry for the naïve question. I'm just trying to settle on a solid host, and I don't want to be caught by any surprises.

Edit: I noticed that the $10+ plans support unlimited FTP accounts, so I'm guessing the huge space allowances are for file storage and such. Still, what's up with the crazy low costs?

It's a marketing gimmick. Please search on the boards.

[crinner]

Originally Posted by CretaForce

Many webhosts oversell their disk space and bandwidth and that's why they have these packages. If you don't need so much space and bandwidth it's better to find webhosts with more reasonable packages. The bigger the plans they offer, the bigger the chance to host your website in overloaded servers.

I agree fully. If you want more info about overselling, here's a very good article written by a WHT member.

[richmix]

I agree fully. If you want more info about overselling, here's a [Sigh. Can't use vbcode...] written by a WHT member.

Thank you for the direct link! I did a specific search for overselling per utropic's recommendation, and I expected that was the case anyway. After further investigating HostGator in particular, I also picked up on what ashley meant when she told me to read their ToS carefully. I already knew both facts, I just hadn't put the dots together. My site, though, won't have many users for awhile to come yet (if ever) and I'll only be using scripting to do some light MySQL work, so I'm not worried about the CPU demands. They look like they know what they're doing with their overselling, and most people seem happy with them (again, with the exception of a few cases, which as far as I can tell are unique). I'm going to give them a shot, and if they screw up, I can always switch. I keep copies of everything (including semi-daily backups of the database) on my local machine, so even if all dogs go to heaven, my site won't suffer much. <3 non-commercial operations! No harm no foul for monthly test drive plans!

[encoderX]

Hi richmix

Thought I'd give a quick addition

By enlarge HG are very good (+) but, obviously you get exceptions to the rule and sometimes maybe it's HG fault but, I find when things pan-out it's often customers misunderstandings (deliberate?) that brings a lot of negative HG postings.

The space, bandwidth, features and services are easily attainable by HG without any problem but, one has to remember you won't get VPS requirements on a budget shared host.

I know you say you aren't a heavy user but, if things grow so should your plan (move up plans) as demand increases.

I've 3rd party monitored HG and it reports 100% uptime and the servers sys. info. also shows low to medium usage and demand on the system server (I'm on on).

I myself find it obvious that HG do oversell (like most hosts) but, they manage it very well and are experts at load balancing.

I'm sure you'll be happy with HG.

We look fwd. to you posting your experience and or review of HG

[richmix]

Thanks for the additions Encoder! I of course know full well that you get what you pay for, and there ever comes a point where I need more resources than my shared account can provide, I'm sure I will also have come by some means of attaining that money. I'm not interested in cheating the system, but I of course am very interested in making sure the system doesn't cheat me! Moving hosts can be a pain, so I'd prefer to pick a place where I'm less likely to have problems (and where I can get those problems solved rather than giving up if it does happen). Don't get me wrong. I'm not expecting many users at all for a long time to come. It's just that I've heard some nasty horror stories about other hosts in the past, and I really don't like being a horror story protagonist myself.

I appreciate all the advice I've gotten here (both in this thread and over the rest of the forum). This is a helpful place. I'll be sure to pitch in my opinions of HG too, though my experience is limited to their and GoDaddy's shared plans (which I don't really want to talk about hehe).