Here is a big news for all Hostgator customers, (Even ShoutMeLoud is hosted on Hostgator). Hostgator is sold for $225 million USD to Endurance International Group.
According to reports, Mr. Hari Ravichandran, CEO of EIG, offered $225 million to Hostgator CEO, Brent Oxley and he accepted. This news came out as a shock for Hostgator users and people are already discussing the same in Webhosting forum.
Some background about Endurance International Group:
EIG is a business group, which has acquired many popular Web-hosting company and domain registrar. If you are not aware of the fact, Fatcow, iPage, Bluehost, VPSLInk and many more companies are part of this group. Since, Hostgator is one of the top Webhosting company, with this acquisition EIG will get get hold in Webhosting market.
You can learn more about EIG and list of Web hosting companies owned by them here. In the complete list of hosting companies, only Bluehost is considered as one of the top hosting, else all others are budding hosting companies. With Host gator in the list of companies they own, they already created a lot of buzz in the hosting market. You can see what others are feeling about this on Webhosting forum discussion post.
What’s in for Hostgator customers?
There is good and bad news as with great financial background of EIG, We can expect better service & support from Hostgator. As it is, they are known for their excellent customer support. Bad news is, we are not sure about the future of our sites on Hostgator. As, this acquisition of Hostgator means, moving our data center to different location, and if you are into Web hosting, you might know that there are chances of losing data (Websites) at the time of data center migration.
Now, as confirmed in an Email, Brent Oxley mentioned that this whole process will take 3-4 weeks and once Hostgator is completely sold to EIG, they will sign the lease agreement for Houston and Texas data center. And, if everything goes planned, they will be expanding the infrastructure. The only sad part is, CEO Brent will not be a part of the company once Hostgator is sold to EIG.
Well, I’m still uncertain if this is good or bad news, as the only scary part is data centre migration, we need to be ready with all the necessary backup. I suggest you set up a daily backup of your site as if Hostgator data centre moves after the complete deal agreement is done, it may be a disaster for many. Better safe than sorry. I’m using ManageWP to take backup on my AmazonS3 account. Also, HostGator offers cPanel backup, you can use that too.
Also, if you are renewing your hosting package or buying a new package from Hostgator, I suggest to stick to monthly bill payment until everything is done or opt for Bluehost (Discount coupon) which is one of the best alternatives to Hostgator for now. I will be moving my site to a VPS server in the coming week, as I have read many horror stories related to data centre migration. I will keep updating you about the latest news on Hostgator and EIG, you can subscribe to my Email newsletter for quick updates.
- Read: My Experience in Withstanding a hosting outage
Do let us know, What steps are you going to take? Will you be moving your site to any other host or will you be simply taking a daily backup of your site to avoid any disaster situation.
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This is very sad news. 🙁 I chose Hostgator, in large part, because it’s a local business and employs many in Texas – in Houston and Austin. I also chose them because of their stellar service, and have stayed with them thanks to that. I’m really in shock.
I guess there’s little to do but wait and see, but I never expected this.
Finally the moment of truth! EIG is migrating HG data to their Provo datacenter and the migration has turned disastrous! 2nd August 2013.
WOW! That’s really a big news.
My Blog is also hosted on HostGator, I’ve also seen Data Center migration taking place Yesterday but They confirmed on their Facebook Page that It was unsuccessful, Many Blogs & Websites had down times, Me Too!
Let’s see If we will get Good services from now as always or It’s the bad time started for HostGator & It’s customers.
Disaster for Hostgator users! Both Shared, VPS and Dedicated are lacked many times!
Moving to a new data center has been made 1×24 hours server down. And today it almost 5 hours down!
Hostgator is better without EIG!
Myself has move all my website out from Hostgator today!
I Host On Host Gator And It Seems The New Owners Are Hard Up For Money As I Was A Couple Of Days Past Due And They Would Not Give A 5 Day Extension For $33 Dollars The Old Host Gator HAd Great Customer Service And Would HAve Turned It On Right A Way Not Any More So I Am Moving All of My Sites On Host GAtor To My Dedicated Server I Will No Longer Use Host Gator And I Suggest No One Else Does Either
This note is being left in June, 2013.
Since December of 2012, I’ve had highly questionable customer service from HostGator. It feels very, very different.
One site I have hosted via HostGator suddenly started going down since Dec of 2012. It has gone down three times, and once, I was locked out of it for 13 hours. (Combination of resolving the issue and replies from HostGator taking 2 to 4 hours each.)
It does feel very different, because now, every time I have an issue, one of the suggested resolutions is to upgrade my hosting plan.
I started looking at hosting alternatives, but when I settled on Bluehost, I found out that they too were owned by EIG. Sigh.
EIG reduces the quality of anything it puts its hands on.
And with that sell-out, Hostgator in NOT what is was. Expect virtually NO customer service in contrast to what you were getting. Whenever you take a good thing like Hostgator had and it sells out, you get what spells C-R-A-P.. and that is what you have in Hostgator right now.
Hi Harsh,Can we expect acceptance of Indian Debt Cards for paying these EIG group hosting providers ?
It’s common in US & UK, big companies do mergers & Acquisitions very frequently. i think its a good move, recently we’d seen a similar kind of move when Symantec acquired Verisign.
Hope Hostgator services will remain the same .
My website is also hosted on Hostgator. I am also thinking to migrate to bluehost.
Bluehost is owned by EIG too.
Yeah, Its Quite Unexpected, That Hostgator is now sold out. Well we can’t even guess what will be its future :/
Lets see Pulkit how it goes. As EIG managed to maintain the quality service of Bluehost, I hope they do the same with Hostgator.
What are you talking about??? Bluehost is dreadful under EIG. Any coincidence that they no longer have an uptime guarantee? Their servers are down for *hours* a month and their support is incompetent.
I never expected to hear this from the worlds number 1 hosting company. Now what is the future of their users and new customers ? Gone !
Actually from my personal experience on Netfirms, EIG has worsened the quality and price tag of their services.
I’m also considering to move to a VPS. Which VPS do you suggest?
Sreejesh
I would recommend Knownhost, that’s where SML is hosted now:
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/knownhost-review-fully-managed-vps-for-wordpress.html
I see no reason why Brent should be selling such a successful business. It is truly shocking indeed.
Lets see how well EIG manages hostgator 🙂
Totally shocking & Sad news for hostgator customers.. But don’t worry EIG will do something better… As Harsh Said, i also recommend you to “do your backup on daily basis”..
Whether EIG would be able to give the same customer support and services that hostagator is known for, only time would tell. Meanwhile we hope that EIG manages to give the same unmatched services and support and even better it in times to come.
Anyways, good and very useful update for all the hostgator users, Harsh. Do update us on the latest updates as to whether hostgator is still the best option for shared hosting post acquisition.
Hey harsh,
Really its sad news for hostgator lovers, because they are not sure about their sites future on hostgator.
I hope that, EIG group will maintain it easily 🙂
Still one question twisting my mind !!! Why Brent Oxley sold it ??
It’s really shocking news. Will Hostgator be as good and reliable hosting service as it was before now?
@Ehsan
We will be sure about it once the dust will settle down. For now, just configure daily backup using any plugin or service.
My experience has been one of absolute nightmare. All of a sudden they are shutting down access to things without notice. The customer service isnt what it was and Im paying for a host that is down more than not.
Yeah its time to leave
Yeah! They changed my VPS account access too without prior notice. And when I submitted a ticket they took days to answer it. Not like before that they have superb customer service.
Now, I transferred to another hosting company after 4 years that I stayed to them.
No, the server after the EIG takeover of HostGator is terrible, the server performance is slow slow slow and slower. So horrible… it’s really time to leave HostGator. I’m am a 6+ year customer and the past year had been a nightmare.