Hostgator hostees please advise.

[laurenceh]

I currently have a hostgator baby package that allows me to have unlimited domains on my account.

I registered two domains with them but what i didnt realise was that even though the second domain is a seperate entity, it is classed as a subdomain with the first.

Both domains have the same ip address also.

I have been advised that a reseller package may be better if i am planning on having a lot of websites (which over time i will) as they will each have their own seperate ip address and cpanel sign in.

So just wondered what other warriors using hostgator thought and what they most perfer service wise.

[Frank Donovan]

Hi Laurence

I'd always go for a reseller over a "baby" package for the following reasons:

1) "Unlimited domains" doesn't mean unlimited bandwidth. When you reach the limit with a baby account, all your sites are in danger of being shut down. When you have a reseller account, you can control which sites get the most bandwidth and allocate more to your busiest domains - thus keeping all your sites active.

2) With a reseller account, it's a simple matter to transfer a site, if you ever want to sell it. You could either sell the whole site, or just keep the hosting and charge the new owner. You wouldn't have that flexibility with a baby package.

HTH


Frank

[john_kennedy]

Even with a reseller account, you will be working with 1 IP address.

What we Warriors should do is to get together a network of those with reseller plans and dedicated servers and do hosting swaps so that everyone's websites are all on different IP addresses.

John

[Charles Washington]

Unfortunately, that is how it is for me. It is classified as a sub domain, but it is also a stand alone domain.
In my Hostgator account, each site I have hosted has two listings:
www.realdomain.com
realdomain.primrydomain.com

Just load everything on the top level domains in your account and you will be fine.

[mediamogul]

Like Charles above said, I am with the Gator and do the same thing. Works fine. If you want different IPs you can buy them from host gator.

[laurenceh]

ahhh charles thats where i had a problem. The realdomain.primirydomain.com situation.

So there will only ever be two domains linked? IE if i have 5 sites it wont create a listing a.b.c.d.e.com will it?

Stupid question too i'm sure charles but when you say load everything on top level domains do you mean the first registered or something else?

[laurenceh]

Also what are the major downsides to having say 10 sites all with the same ip? Would it cause major issues down the line?

[mediamogul]

The top level is the one that has the domain you want to use. Like it may say bigmoney.com, thats the top domain
bigmoney.domainIstartedtheaccountwith.com is secondary

make sense?

[la dominatrix]

Originally Posted by laurenceh

So just wondered what other warriors using hostgator thought and what they most perfer service wise.

I started out like you and bought the baby and I upgraded to a reseller account immediately because like you I did not realise that they were subdomains and since then I a have never looked back. If I remember rightly they even moved them for me.

la dominatrix

[laurenceh]

so with trhe reseller package in other words you do not get the two listings domi?


And thanks media i understand that now.

[netkid]

I've had the Hostgator reseller package for about 2 years now and it is great! Although they are all on the same IP address, I get to control over 60 domains on separate accounts. It is not as important for me to have all on the same IP address because I manage blogs on these domains for my customers.

I strongly recommend you get the reseller package. Support is outstanding too.

Hope that helps,

Bruce

[Ricky Parker]

Are you planning on linking all of these sites to each other?

Because if not I personally don't think it matters enough to worry.

There have always been a TON of topics/discussions all over the net about unique ip's and ranking and blah, blah, blah.

If your goal is to build a blog farm/network/etc and inter-link them all some how then I suggest getting uniques. But if these sites are all gonna be different and not do that then shared hosting is fine.

I've had all sorts of different types of sites running on the same shared hosting ip over the years and never had a problem with ranking well/etc...

Just my personal opinion.

[BurgerBoy]

I've had a reseller account at HostGator for 3 years now and it's the only way to go.

The same IP address hasn't hurt my sites at all.

I've never had any problems or site down time with them. Each site you put on the reseller server has it's own cpanel and you can specify how much storage and useage you want for each seperate domain on your server.

[verdi]

I've had the baby account for years and never had a problem.

At first I was surprised that my second and subsequent sites are subdomains of the first one, but it hasn't made any difference to me.

If I want to use site 3 I just upload everything to that site.

My server name is always the first site I registered with.
My domain name is is www.site3.com
My ftp directory is public_html/site 3

I have no need to worry about IP stuff. I don't understand it so I don't worry about it.

Best Wishes
Joe

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by Frank Donovan

1) "Unlimited domains" doesn't mean unlimited bandwidth. When you reach the limit with a baby account, all your sites are in danger of being shut down.

Frank,

Baby accounts DO HAVE Unlimited Bandwidth.

[john_kennedy]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Frank,

Baby accounts DO HAVE Unlimited Bandwidth.

Good luck trying to use it all. You'll most likely get shut down for using too much CPU time or memory before you use up enough bandwidth.

That doesn't only apply to HG, most other webhosts have the same limitations in the fine print.

John

[Frank Donovan]

Hi Fernando

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Frank,
Baby accounts DO HAVE Unlimited Bandwidth.

Not true. I'm afraid you won't find any shared hosting package with unlimited bandwidth.


Frank

EDIT: See also John's post above.

[Ricky Parker]

Lots of companies will advertise unlimited bandwidth but it is not true.

They will boot or shut down your site at the first sign of "strain on our servers" or whatever they label it at the moment.

But I will say Hostgator has been good to me with this issue. I had hosting with GoDaddy a long while ago and got shut down asap with no warning and then a bill for the exceeded bandwidth usage (and they nuked all my other sites on the shared account).

But Hostgator actually just shutdown the one site when they thought it was putting a "strain" on the shared server and left all my other sites alone. And even sent some suggestions to help.

[ErnieB]

Originally Posted by john_kennedy

Good luck trying to use it all. You'll most likely get shut down for using too much CPU time or memory before you use up enough bandwidth.

That doesn't only apply to HG, most other webhosts have the same limitations in the fine print.

John

Im not sure what the "secret" limit would be but I had to switch my site to a shared account because it ran out of bandwidth on resellers account. I havent had any problems. My site uses 400GB-630GB of Bandwidth every month with no problems. ( no thats not a typo ) Thats unlimited bandwidth in my book lol

[john_kennedy]

A straight HTML site using no database could easily use that much BW and not cause any problems. But, I can guarantee you that if you start causing the whole server to slow down due to CPU use or memory hogging, you'll find yourself on the curb talking to yourself! There is no way they or any other reputable host would allow one site to take over a server making all the other sites unreachable or slow to load.

[ErnieB]

Originally Posted by john_kennedy

A straight HTML site using no database could easily use that much BW and not cause any problems. But, I can guarantee you that if you start causing the whole server to slow down due to CPU use or memory hogging, you'll find yourself on the curb talking to yourself! There is no way they or any other reputable host would allow one site to take over a server making all the other sites unreachable or slow to load.

My site is a wordpress site that also has a forum so it utilizes databases. Hostgator clearly stated the issue with CPU load and warn you if your approaching that and also make recommendations on helping fix it. The above people stated a limit on bandwidth which i disagree with. Your statement doesnt address the bandwidth issue at hand. These are two seperate issues ( bandwidth and cpu usage )

[KenLittle]

I recommend the Hostgator reseller package.

I've had mine for 3 years with nothing but praise for
their support. They've always been there for me-
even when I needed several sites moved.

Hope that helps.

Success Belongs To You When You Yield to The Genius Within
KenLittle

[john_kennedy]

Originally Posted by ErnieB

My site is a wordpress site that also has a forum so it utilizes databases. Hostgator clearly stated the issue with CPU load and warn you if your approaching that and also make recommendations on helping fix it. The above people stated a limit on bandwidth which i disagree with. Your statement doesnt address the bandwidth issue at hand. These are two seperate issues ( bandwidth and cpu usage )

They go hand in hand. I ran a webhosting business for 10 years. I know what I am talking about. If your sites start to consume CPU and/or memory they will some after you and get you to fix the problem. They say that they don't monitor bandwidth, but every server is limited to how much data can be pushed or received at any one time. Let's say your website was mentioned on Dr. Phil and shortly thereafter the server was deluged with traffic to your site. I can assure you that your site will be shut down due to excessive bandwidth usage.

Traffic in and out of s server is like water out of a hose. The size of the hose determines how much water you can pump through it. Same with bandwidth. There is a finite limit and if you approach that limit, you will get noticed.
John

[Kay King]

I have hostgator reseller and the IP is not the same for all now. I think maybe HG is rotating IP addresses for resellers. Anyone else noticed this?

kay

[SageSound]

Three points:

1) on Baby Gator accounts, the additional domain hook-ups are called "Add-on domains". They can ALSO be accessed as subdomains of the main account. An "Add-on" domain is a trick they use to tell Apache (the web server) to route requests for somedomain.com to somedomain.maindomain.com.

2) Any shared hosting account that is consuming more than ~1% of ANY system resource -- CPU, disk space, bandwidth -- is going to get the hairy eyeball and very likely shut down. A shared server is usually rated for several thousand domains. So if ONE is using even 1% of any resource, it poses a significant risk to the others on the same box. Remember, 1% = 1/100th.

3) It's normally the case that all accounts on a shared server share the same IP address for their main accounts. You can always purchase additional IPs.

-David

[Neil Kieren]

I got mine with a reseller account. It works much better for me.

[HeyAdMan]

This is some timely and insightful information as I am currently looking at Hostgator for my needs and this gives me not just questions I would not have known to ask but also great answers as well.

[lisag]

I have 2 dedicated servers and one reseller account at HG. I moved away from Host Department, after 5 years, because they were acquired by another company and now they, hmmm, how to put this delicately....

SUCK!

I am blown away at the fast and professional support time from HG.