Can I sue hostgator for potential loss of earnings?

Great commission structures for folks in IM.

To the OP, you can sue anyone for anything...regardless what's actually in your contract. That doesn't mean you'll win, mind you, but you absolutely have the right to sue. The real problem comes in where it looks like you lost $500-1000 in income for the day and you'll spend that just getting a decent attorney to write a demands letter for you and making the initial filing.

So unless you lost out on $500 a day income for months because of HostGator, it's not even worth considering...unless you're just filthy rich and want to get your day in court. If that's the situation, then sue the poo out of them regardless whether you have a case or not. And even though you'd probably e in the wrong, they may just settle to avoid the legal fees...it happens every day in the USA.

Just move on and be glad you're away from HG.

It will be very difficult to accurately prove the potential amount of sales/earning for the time period in which your site was down. Even if you're talking about tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in revenue lost (in which case I'm pretty sure you're not) then it's not going to be worth your time to seek out legal help for an issue which is likely to cost more in legal fees than what HG will ever give you.

That $500 you made in half a day is what some attorneys charge for a single consulting session. Just move on and pick a better host next time (who hopefully isn't EIG related).

It absolutely boggles my brain to think anyone would sue over the loss (or in this case, presumed loss) of a few hundred dollars.

Your time and money would be far better spent in other ways, even if you did win your lawsuit (which sounds extremely unlikely in this case).

Btw, if this happened 2 months ago it seems odd you'd be asking about it now...

Exactly right. I've been using HostGator since I started my business in 2008 and I have only had one problem where my account was hacked and I lost all of my websites (this was early on in my "career" and I knew nothing of taking and keeping your own backups, etc.)

I was angry at HG at first because when they tried to restore the backup they take weekly, there was nothing there. I was outraged and blamed them and was very rude because they could not restore my backup. Once they explained to me what happened I realized it wasn't their fault. The hacker was smart (or very lucky) and wiped out all of my website files minutes before HG took the weekly backup. This means that when HG did their backup, they backed up my account which had already had all the files deleted, so in effect, there was no backup to be restored.

I realized that was MY FAULT and had nothing to do with HG. I should have been taking and keeping my own backups at least weekly (which I now do religiously).

Every time I have had any issues and requested customer service they have always been very professional and courteous and 99% of times were able to resolve the problem in less than 30 minutes (even after they were sold, which I had no idea about until recently).

The issue here is that you used shared hosting and blasted your website with a lot of traffic in a short amount of time. I do not know of any shared hosting company that would not disable your account in the event this occurred. My guess (and it's only a guess) is maybe they were concerned that it was a DDOS attack or maybe they just had to do it to be fair to the other customers and to ensure that everyone on your shared hosting account had equal resources.

If you are going to have a lot of traffic coming in on a daily basis and you are able to make that traffic produce more than $500 in revenue for a half day, then I'd be willing to say you could afford VPS or a dedicated server.

I'm no attorney so I cannot give you any advice on a lawsuit. I can only say if it were me I would chalk it up to a learning experience and adjust your business practices accordingly to avoid the problem from occurring again. It's not worth the time, money, aggravation, and all else that comes with legal proceedings over some revenue you may (or may not) have lost on one half day.

if you replace the word "legal" with "marketing" this statement still holds true, yet everyday hundreds of unqualified people give their opinion here regarding marketing advice.

over the years, the bad marketing advice given on this forum has cost people exponentially more dollars than the bad legal advice given on this forum.

legal advice is no different than marketing advice. you dont need a degree to have an educated understanding of legal things no more so than you need a marketing degree to have an educated understanding of marketing related things.

bad advice is given on both subjects around here. it just so happens there is countless times more bad marketing advice given as opposed to legal advice.

Not really fair to give a company a bad review if someone is violating their TOS and doesn't like the consequences...

I don't know about that.
There are lots of "hosts", but many are NOT companies, and just amateurs and kiddies in mommy's basement.
Be careful who you trust and rely on for your business.