Years ago, we were introduced to a new hosting company named Hostgator. They ran environmentally friendly servers, offset their usage with RECs, and everyone seemed to love them. And we did too, through many years with no issues.

Then, sometime in mid-2016, Hostgator was bought by the Endurance International Group (EIG), a company with a long and well-documented history of buying web hosting companies and running them into the ground. It took some time for us to notice the differences, especially since none of these changes were disclosed to their customers. Server performance and security took a dive, as we witnessed in our own accounts as well as in the tsunami of bad reviews that started to pour in during late-2016 and throughout 2017. At the beginning of 2017, Hostgator still held onto a respectable 7.5 average review online, however, by the end of 2017 their overall rating had dropped to an average of around 2.

An acquisition like this could be good or bad, depending on the companies involved. However, the following paragraphs sum up who EIG is and what they did to Hostgator:

"But EIG also did something that’s unusual for most industries — they hide. When EIG buys out a brand, it’s not made known to the public or the customers. No press releases. No branding changes. Most new companies love to rename their acquisition, or somehow add their name to it. (For example, the recent acquisition of Softlayer by IBM now carries the tagline “an IBM company”.) EIG now owns more than 60 brands, such as Hostgator, Bluehost, A Small Orange, Arvixe, and Site5.

News involving EIG comes almost entirely from investigative “follow the money” type reporting within the hosting industry. And because web hosting is still considered too techie for the average news reader, it never makes it into regular news outlets — not even the national ones like USA Today, CNN, or BBC. This is why most folks were completely blindsided a year after the EIG acquisition of Hostgator."

Our experience:

We signed on with Hostgator in 2008, renting server space from them on one of their Shared Reseller accounts and, as I mentioned earlier, we didn't have any significant issues until the change of ownership in mid to late 2016. I can honestly say that, after eight years with no real issues, we were shocked at how quickly their service declined during 2016 and 2017. Security holes appeared and didn't get patched, services like shared SSL disappeared without warning, simple service requests started taking much, much longer, and their whole system seemed to crash down around them.

We fought against the security issues as best as we could, but unfortunately, even on a reseller plan, we had very little control over the server itself or even over our account settings, which is fine if someone is managing those tasks for you but once Hostgator started getting lax about updates and server maintenance, we were forced to jump ship before it sank.

In January 2018, we officially began transitioning all Nebula42/Zandergraphics Studio accounts and sites to a Virtual Private Server where we have full control over security, filesystem monitoring, and software updates. After our experience with Hostgator, we felt the need to be in control of the server so that we knew that issues could get resolved without having to wait weeks for Hostgator support to do their jobs.

Billing:

Billing was always a weak point of Hostgator. We paid for dedicated IP addresses for several years that they couldn't tell us why they were there or if they were necessary for anything. After many hours on the phone with their "support technicians" no progress was made and we still didn't know what the charges were we came to the conclusion that it was easier to just pay the extra $10 a year charges rather than spend more time trying to get it corrected. It also came to our attention that at some point they lowered the price of their plans but kept charging their existing customers higher rates. So, if we wanted to start over with them, we could have gotten a much better price as a new customer than as a customer who had been with them for nearly a decade. 

Support:

We used Hostgator support quite a few times over the first eight years or so without any issue. However, all of the requests that we have sent recently have been a complete disaster.

Here's an example:

We purchased an SSL for one of our sites. Primarily because Hostgator discontinued the free shared SSL that was originally included in our subscription so we were just left without SSL one day without any warning. Installing an SSL is a process that should be able to be completed within a few hours considering we did most of the work for them (buying and validating the certificate and sending the files to Hostgator). Here is a step-by-step description of the experience we had with Hostgator:

1. Request to install SSL sent on the 16th of the month.
2. Two days later they respond to ask for our security PIN, which we provide within minutes.
3. Three days after that we sent a follow-up message asking why there hasn't been any progress.
4. They respond that they need to send an email to verify ownership (again). Again, we verify within minutes.
5. Four days later we send another follow-up to the ticket asking why the SSL still isn't installed over a week after we requested (and paid extra for) the install.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident, but apparently seems to be typical of their support and service quality these days.

Security:

We noticed a MAJOR uptick in attacks starting sometime in 2016. This is apparently pretty typical for EIG owned hosting companies as one of the primary partners is a company called Sitelock, who are pretty well known for pushing shady, overpriced "security solutions" onto unknowing clients, sometimes falsely claiming their site needs cleaning or misrepresenting the situation. We have come across several of these types of "security" companies and none of them do anything that can't be easily done from the command line of the server with root access. At this point, I think it is safe to say that EIG and Sitelock are intentionally deceiving people on matters of internet security and both companies and their associated subsidiaries should be avoided at all costs. Hostgator now pushes Sitelock cleaning after your site gets compromised due to negligence on their part.

Cons:

1. Very limited SSH capabilities (and you have to pay extra for each user).
2. No root access at all.
3. Can't install SSL. Can request the installation via support for $10 but expect it to take several weeks.
4. Server software not kept updated.
5. Shared SSL was discontinued without warning, leaving many sites unprotected.
6. Shady, non-transparent billing practices.
7. Support is unresponsive and takes weeks to perform simple tasks.
8. Weak server security. As of early 2018, Hostgator seems to have a reputation for being easily hacked.
9. Pricing is very expensive for what is essentially an unmanaged server (though 'unmanageable' may be a more appropriate term).

Pros:

1. Can't think of any at this point. If I had written this five years ago I probably would have had something to say.