Hostgator hosted site down half the time. Worth getting dedicated server?

netmatrix

13 years ago

Here's something to think about... Every time your website is down, your conversion rate is 0%.

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WillR

13 years ago

I've been using both Hostgator shared and dedicated hosting for 8+ years now. I've never experienced the downtime you are talking about. Sure, a site may go down here and there for a few minutes but that happens with most hosting and it's definitely an exception to the rule.

I would contact Hostgator and ask them why you are experiencing this downtime or asked to have your account moved to a different server. If you are truly experiencing that type of downtime then there is something wrong.

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Duvallmarketers 13 years ago

There is high likelihood that you have a security issue on one of your sites or you are using a plugin that is under attack and your site can't resolve. This happened with a very popular membership site plugin that I use. Their server was under attack causing all sites that had their plugin installed to crash. It was a major nightmare for them and all their users. Fortunately they were able to get it fixed fairly quickly and send out an updated release.

Perhaps that's what's causing you so much downtime. Hostgator has been great for me.
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- RKeele 13 years ago
  
  Call HostGator immediately. I have never had that problem with them. I would guess it may be something with your site, and their support can figure it out and fix it.
  
  If it is a problem on their end then they will be notified and can rectify the problem.
  
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maz1207

13 years ago

Speaking of Hostgator, they are currently running a 50% off their usual price for the unlimited web hosting. Just go to their website and you can see the offer there, it will only be available today (29th May 2013).

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Snow_Predator

13 years ago

Thanks all, I'll get in touch with Hostgator.

I did want to know about dedicated servers though, or other options aside from shared hosting. Is it worth paying more for non-shared hosting?

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SoloAdMonkey

13 years ago

I've been using shared hosting for many years as well and never had a problem until I had a security issue and someone was purposely bringing down my site/attacking it. Definitely call host gator and put some better security measures in place.

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Tang

13 years ago

I feel like there's definitely something going on over at HostGator. I've been on long support chats with them 3 times in the last week or so for the '500 Internal Server Error' I've been getting across all the sites I have with them.

We narrowed it to an overload of Processes, which you can view by scrolling down the left hand column of your HG control panel.

The solution they gave? 'Reduce the amount of times your email client checks email.'

Oh, and one more suggestion: 'Or buy one of our dedicated hosting plans.'

I'd have no problem with this advice, except that I've had that particular shared account for almost two years, and have in the past had probably triple the email accounts I have active now (like 5 email addresses) with no such problem until now.

When I deactivate two of the 5 accounts -- boom: all my sites reappear. *shaking head*

Something has definitely changed at HostGator. My guess (and this is only a guess) is that they've quietly dialed back the capacities at the Shared Hosting level.

And I'd be very surprised if they weren't getting a bump in dedicated hosting sales lately.

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Snow_Predator

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Tang

I feel like there's definitely something going on over at HostGator. I've been on long support chats with them 3 times in the last week or for the '500 Internal Server Error' I've been getting across all the sites I have with them.

We narrowed it to an overload of Processes, which you can view by scrolling down the left hand column of your HG control panel.

The solution they gave? 'Reduce the amount of times your email client checks email.'

Oh, and one more suggestion: 'Or buy one of our dedicated hosting plans.'

I'd have no problem with this advice, except that I've had that particular shared account for almost two years, and have in the past had probably triple the email accounts I have active now (like 5 email addresses) with no such problem until now.

When I deactivate two of the 5 accounts -- boom: all my sites reappear. *shaking head*

Something has definitely changed at HostGator. My guess (and this is only a guess) is that they've quietly dialed back the capacities at the Shared Hosting level.

And I'd be very surprised if they weren't getting a bump in dedicated hosting sales lately.

Yeh, I get those '500 Internal Server Error's all the time!

Well if I have to go dedicated, I'm most certainly not going with Hostgator after they give me such a bad shared hosting experience!

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happyifthi

13 years ago

I am very surprised to hear about it as I subscriped to Hostgator doing proper study and I have no regrets for the past 6 months. Even their customer service is excellent - very detailed. In fact they have solved some very complicated issues for me.

Please immediately try to get on live chat with them and check whats happening to your hosting package.

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little grey

13 years ago

I was having the 500 internal service error too, especially on days when I was getting mega-traffic. It turned out the problem was mainly due to plugins that were producing major error logs. One error log was literally over 10,000 pages. Max banner ads was the main problem. I fixed it and most of the time I have no trouble. Give them a call. They were extremely helpful.

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carnal

13 years ago

Hostgator is actually one of the best web hosting providers, their customer service is simply top class. I think it is 100% worthwhile getting dedicated server from Hostgator

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Snow_Predator

13 years ago

Hey folks, it turns out it was one of MY sites that was causing the problem, lol. It was a popup plugin called Pippity, which I have now deleted.

It's a bit stupid what they did though, they shut my site down rather than turn the plugin off. They later told me they didn't want to shut the plugin down because it was a paid plugin, so thought it was OK to shut my whole site down instead!

I went a good 5-6 hours without any traffic to my main money site. Not very happy.

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Snow_Predator

13 years ago

Hey folks, it turns out it was one of MY sites that was causing the problem, lol. It was a popup plugin called Pippity, which I have now deleted.

It's a bit stupid what they did though, they shut my site down rather than turn the plugin off. They later told me they didn't want to shut the plugin down because it was a paid plugin, so thought it was OK to shut my whole site down instead!

I went a good 5-6 hours without any traffic to my main money site. Not very happy.

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Patrick

13 years ago

They don't have any right to turn off your plugin or access your site, but they do have the right to shut down your site.

http://www.hostgator.com/tos

Read Point No. 7, Resource Usage

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paultheseer 13 years ago

Nope it is happening every month now, twice last month all sites were down and all of my sites have been down now for the last two days, see there forum here http://forums.hostgator.com/network-status-f14.html its really bad, live support times are now 28 minutes, I have been with them for years and never seen this. I am now losing google positions because of this, thank god my main site isn't with them, there is definately something wrong here.
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boonefhh

Banned 13 years ago

[DELETED]

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Brian Tayler 13 years ago

Originally Posted by boonefhh

I've never experienced the downtime you are talking about.

Most people don't notice it because of the volume of traffic their site produces (or you simply aren't visiting your site when its down).

HostGator is known for down time (granted maybe only 5-10min at a time, sometimes as short as 1-2min... but downtime is downtime... and Google Bot *HATES* downtime). Even latency is an issue (how long it takes for HostGator to serve a page). Google will penalize you for either of these. Think about it... does Google want to display a site with a slow response time? Or a site that doesn't have stable hosting? Of course not. It makes them look bad.

Want to monitor your site and know when its up?

Use a service like: https://www.pingdom.com/
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paultheseer

13 years ago

Nor had I until last month, couldn't believe it took days to sort out, saem thing today if you read that service forum, mysql database problems so anything with a shop or datatbase returns code errors.

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Brian Tayler

13 years ago

HostGator sucks. GoDaddy sucks. I try to preach this as often as I can, but alas, I usually fall on deaf ears.

Visit WHT (Web Hosting Talk).

Visit the "Shared Hosting" forum for personal sites and "Reseller Hosting" for personal sites + hosting of client sites.

You'll find good hosting. Ask any questions in the threads before "committing"

Shared Hosting Offers - Web Hosting Talk

Reseller Hosting Offers - Web Hosting Talk

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Kingfish85

13 years ago

Also, most don't have a clue that everything is starting to get migrated over to BlueHost - Hostgator is moving datacenters? - Web Hosting - Web Hosting Talk

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Karen Blundell

13 years ago

folks - it`s not your hosting company -

it`s your WordPress sites using a slew of resources - don`t bother using WordPress unless the hosting company you use has at the very least Litespeed installed on their servers - and even with that - if you are being hit by the wp-login.php bot (or any other malicious bot) - your resources usage will go right up making your site temporarily inaccessible.

In your cpanel - you need to take a look at your resource usage and then at ``latest visitors`` - what an eye opener that is! You will be able to clearly tell if there are more bots than real visitors visiting your site. And you`ll also be able to tell what IP addresses are trying to access files they shouldn`t.

I strongly suggest if you want to use WordPress, switch to a hosting company designed for using it.

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paultheseer 13 years ago

That's incorrect my sites aren't wordpress they are joomla and opencart you don't know what you are talking about. I have support ticket responses from them that confirm they have database issues with the server
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Kingfish85

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Karen Blundell

folks - it`s not your hosting company -

it`s your WordPress sites using a slew of resources - don`t bother using WordPress unless the hosting company you use has at the very least Litespeed installed on their servers - and even with that - if you are being hit by the wp-login.php bot (or any other malicious bot) - your resources usage will go right up making your site temporarily inaccessible.

In your cpanel - you need to take a look at your resource usage and then at ``latest visitors`` - what an eye opener that is! You will be able to clearly tell if there are more bots than real visitors visiting your site. And you`ll also be able to tell what IP addresses are trying to access files they shouldn`t.

I strongly suggest if you want to use WordPress, switch to a hosting company designed for using it.

What's the difference between traditional hosting & "wordpress" hosting? Been in this industry for a long time and still have yet to see "real" claims of a difference. There isn't any, it's hype - same with any other CMS/Blog platform. I could sell you HTML Hosting, yes?

I've personally probably migrated a few thousand Wordpress sites myself off of unlimited, very limited servers and can tell you the problems disappear almost immediately. The problem isn't always the website.

Some of the other points you make about security can easily be avoided with doing some research. Wordpress does have its issues however, when properly secured, maintained & run on a well maintained infrastructure many of the problems will disappear. Of course, I don't mean pennies on the dollar services either.

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CyberAlien

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Kingfish85

What's the difference between traditional hosting & "wordpress" hosting? Been in this industry for a long time and still have yet to see "real" claims of a difference. There isn't any, it's hype - same with any other CMS/Blog platform. I could sell you HTML Hosting, yes?

Well you can technically optimize servers to run a specific software like WordPress and they can do a better job at it than servers that aren't optimized for it. But I've yet to see a hosting company that actually does that. Most of them just have a "WordPress Hosting" page to rank for the term or advertise it on their homepage to make more sales. Which does suck for other hosting companies who don't use the same marketing tactics.

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Kingfish85

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Chase Watts

Well you can technically optimize servers to run a specific software like WordPress and they can do a better job at it than servers that aren't optimized for it. But I've yet to see a hosting company that actually does that. Most of them just have a "WordPress Hosting" page to rank for the term or advertise it on their homepage to make more sales. Which does suck for other hosting companies who don't use the same marketing tactics.

Wordpress is run off of a php engine. Typically, shared hosting would be just as "optimized". Pretty much all of the time it boils down to quality hardware, correct software configuration, updates and not jamming as many accounts on the servers as possible.

Its like saying xx wheels are optimized for goodyear tires vs bfg's.

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Kingfish85

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Chase Watts

Well you can technically optimize servers to run a specific software like WordPress and they can do a better job at it than servers that aren't optimized for it. But I've yet to see a hosting company that actually does that. Most of them just have a "WordPress Hosting" page to rank for the term or advertise it on their homepage to make more sales. Which does suck for other hosting companies who don't use the same marketing tactics.

agree 100% on the marketing tactics though.

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Rashell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Karen Blundell

folks - it`s not your hosting company -

it`s your WordPress sites using a slew of resources - don`t bother using WordPress unless the hosting company you use has at the very least Litespeed installed on their servers - and even with that - if you are being hit by the wp-login.php bot (or any other malicious bot) - your resources usage will go right up making your site temporarily inaccessible.

In your cpanel - you need to take a look at your resource usage and then at ``latest visitors`` - what an eye opener that is! You will be able to clearly tell if there are more bots than real visitors visiting your site. And you`ll also be able to tell what IP addresses are trying to access files they shouldn`t.

I strongly suggest if you want to use WordPress, switch to a hosting company designed for using it.

All I know is I switched just one of my sites last night from hostgator to arvixe and watched the load time with all the same plugins & configurations drop from around 80secs to nearly instant page load speeds.

Hostgator has gotten to a point of being dang pathetic.

The crap page load times began happening about 2 months ago. I'd optimize, cache, blah blah blah. The page load would decrease (but never to near instant) for about a day and then I'd get hung up in oblivion all over again.

Last week, they (hostgator) moved my site to a new server. Some of the links to my images weren't working. So I went to figure out what was going on. What a freakin mess. They had zip files and duplicate folders all over the place. We're talking copies of the entire website root directory folders in the wp uploads folder on a subdomain/add-on domain. Why? Beats the heck out of me.

Hostgator used to be awesome. Now I just don't see any point to stick with them.

Besides I got a lifetime coupon and a free domain with Arvixe. And their customer service is like what Hostgator used to be.

Rashell

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Alex Awes

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Rashell

Hostgator used to be awesome. Now I just don't see any point to stick with them.

Besides I got a lifetime coupon and a free domain with Arvixe. And their customer service is like what Hostgator used to be.

I've heard lots of people complaining about HostGator including when high volume traffic is sent to their sites. There servers grind to a halt.

Out of curiosity Rashell, where did you get your lifetime coupon with Arvixe?

Alex

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Rashell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alex Awes

I've heard lots of people complaining about HostGator including when high volume traffic is sent to their sites. There servers grind to a halt.

Out of curiosity Rashell, where did you get your lifetime coupon with Arvixe?

Alex

RetailMeNot. I just googled "whatever I'm looking for + promo code". Always do that before I buy hosting or domain names. Albeit I don't tend to switch hosting all that often.

HTH,

Rashell

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kpmedia

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Rashell

All I know is I switched just one of my sites last night from hostgator to arvixe and watched the load time with all the same plugins & configurations drop from around 80secs to nearly instant page load speeds.

I've been tracking Arvixe's quality (load speed, support, etc) for a few years now. If anything, it's gotten better this year.

Both them and Site5 are a safe choice.

Hostgator is not, and hasn't been for a solid year now. Rather than let HG do a messy migration, migrate yourself ... to a new host!

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carlo_sim

13 years ago

After 2:12:24 of chatting with support, it hanged and it happened twice in 2 hours.

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George Wright

13 years ago

All Sites go down from time to time. I've been happy with HG for years.

George Wright

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kpmedia 13 years ago

Originally Posted by George Wright

All Sites go down from time to time. I've been happy with HG for years.

Not really. I have nearly 100% uptime with Stablehost and EuroVPS/

Switch web hosting providers. Yahoo Web Hosting is a really good one - and they actually help you out with your internet marketing. Marvelous really.

Yahoo is even more terrible than Godaddy. Yuck.
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- George Wright 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by kpmedia
  
  Not really. I have nearly 100% uptime with Stablehost and EuroVPS/
  
  kpmedia,
  
  You make my point. "Nearly."
  
  Thank You,
  
  George Wright
  
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  kpmedia 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by George Wright
  
  kpmedia,
  You make my point. "Nearly."
  Thank You,
  George Wright
  
  Most months are 100% uptime. The other months it's "down" for reboots, maintenance, etc, less than an hour. I didn't make your point at all. HG just flat out goes down, TKO, for no reason. That's not the same. My monitors would go ape$hit because it would go down many time a day, for just a minute or two. That's PER DAY too.
  
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onegoodman

13 years ago

I have been with Hostgator ( all my sites under one reseller account ).

I do complaint about that company sometimes, but down time never was one of the reasons.

I would go check with HostGator about what is going on.

If you website over bandwidth, hostgator done something really bad, it will suspend your website instead of upgrade you temporary. This is why I usually watch my bandwidth

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Randall Magwood

13 years ago

Switch web hosting providers. Yahoo Web Hosting is a really good one - and they actually help you out with your internet marketing. Marvelous really.

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bstar

13 years ago

hostgator is not the same hostgator.

I've had more issues with these people in the past couple of weeks than I've had in the past 5 years.

Support sucks. They take forever to even look at your issue and then they don't fix it.

I'm on a dedicated server and they set up an auto backup. One of my sites got hit and they told me that there is not a backup. I get an email every morning with the backup log attached.

They escalated the ticket to a supervisor and the site still sits after 36 hours.

I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be back.

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eltara

12 years ago

Ah ... hostgator is down again.
All my sites got problem loading up ...
Right now they are experiencing network issues that may affect some shared and dedicated servers.

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Hostgator hosted site down half the time. Worth getting dedicated server?

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