Well, it’s time to move my website to a new host. I think that I have been the longest with Hostgator, and it was a good experience, but it is time to move. My main reason for moving is trying to get SSL. I wanted to add security to my website, but it was going to cost way too much to do it through Hostgator.
Looking Back
- Lunarpages –> Web Hosting Hub
- Web Hosting Hub –> Hostgator
- Hostgator –> Prgmr
Lessons
Lesson 1: EIG bites again! I can’t believe that after I had blogged about avoiding them in the past that I picked a company that had just been acquired by Endurance International Group. Why does it matter? My impression is that they own so many web hosts and that the attitude is that it doesn’t matter if they make a customer mad and leave. That customer will just leave and go to another EIG host brand.
It bothers me that you can’t get a complete list of brands under the EIG umbrella. I admit, if you look on the EIG website, you can see Hostgator listed. Wikipedia does have a much longer list. This blog indicates that the list comes from searching for the legal fax number. If that’s the only way to find the list of brands, it seems shady to me.
If you want to read more about the Hostgator acquisition, check out the Shout Me Loud blog.
Lesson 2: Git causes an issue with iNodes. Hostgator has a limit on the number of inodes for the account. According to their support page, even VPS accounts have an inode limit. According to this support page, “However, please note that an excessive number of inodes on any server does negatively affect performance.” What I still have to learn is if inodes is something that I should care about on my new VPS. Will it really impact my performance there?
Lesson 3: SSL is more and more of a consideration. As you can see from Google’s blog post, they have been slowly increasing the SEO impact since 2014. My issue is that I don’t believe that Hostgator is really helping make it affordable. They are sure advertising it as an upgrade and wanting us to purchase a certificate. But, they are still selling their old style certificates. They charge for installing certificates and don’t support Let’s Encrypt certificates. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think they are doing all they can to help secure the web.
Priced to Switch
One of my big pet peeves is that all of these “cheap” companies have promotional prices. They don’t do anything to encourage loyalty. If you can master the art to moving from host to host, you are much better off and can save a lot of money! I found it true even if you are looking to upgrade your service! They didn’t offer any incentive for adding SSL or upgrading to a more expensive plan.
My renewal price was $107 / year. But, on the front page, the current offer is $3.95/month (47.40 / year).
One of the things that blew me away is that while I was logged in on their billing page, I get this ad:
That fine print reads:
*Special offers are limited-time promotional prices available to new customers and are valid for the initial term only, not for successive or renewal periods. Discount applied to regular rate.
So, it’s been a good time, but so long Hostgator.
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