Hostgator.com review - Things you must consider in a web host

Choosing the right company to host your website very important, especially if you are trying to make a living online selling your products and services. The worst thing in the world would be to have your website go down right before having a big product launch and you can’t get anyone on the phone to help get the website back online.

Each web hosting company is going to offer some combination of either Widows or Linux servers to physically run the website. For those who want to read all the technical details, please go to HostGator and read the details until your heart is content or until your brain explodes. The main thing we want is a company that offer all the features that we desire and that can quickly respond to issues when they arise.

Web hosting these days is almost a commodity, so don’t buy purely on price.

I’ve reviewed many web hosting companies in the past and in this review I’m going to be looking specifically at HostGator.com. Hostgator is hosting something like 1.8 million domains on its servers. HostGator started its operations in 2002, with three servers. In less than a decade’s time it has achieved the distinction of being in the “Top 10 in the World” list last year.

So from a skeleton crew, HostGator today has more than 200 employees serving their clients. HostGator is a perhaps the first in its class to go green. It buys 130 per cent of its power consumption from renewable energy resources. According to their website, this translates to saving 5654 barrels of oil and protecting 554 acres of forest.

So how does it reflect on the customer of HostGator?

It reflects their commitment to social responsibility and by the same token the professional comment of HostGator.

Pricing Plans:
For all those who think that hosting a domain costs piles of money, you couldn’t be more wrong. HostGator services are super affordable. For less than the cost of a large Starbucks Coffee, you can get started with a Hatchling plan costing less than $5 a month.

Site Builder:

For those who are not familiar or comfortable with html or writing code HostGator offers the services of a Site builder facility and best of all, it’s free. It is an online application with a hundreds of templates. One can choose a template and configure it. One could always edit and customize it with content. With preview enabled, one could test the website in real time how the site looks and feels on line.

Hosting Features
HostGator offers almost unlimited disk space with unlimited bandwidth. What does it mean? It means that if you are going to be creating video’s, then you can store those file right on your own web server and not have to be dependent upon some other company to house those for you or to have to pay someone else to store those.

Unlimited disk space means HostGator can allocate you as much space as you want at a reasonable price. You can have 100’s of pages of dynamic content without affecting the the performance or imposing constraints on others using the service.

Similarly unlimited bandwidth. This will prove to be very important because streaming video takes up a lot of bandwidth. With HostGator you can just forget about it and focus on being creative and providing value to your customers.

Help line (24*7*365):
All said and done there are bound to be times when one would need some technical support on the site and HostGator support is always available. In fact they have a LIVE CHAT on the site, which I put to the test to see how knowledgeable they were and how quickly they were able to response. All one has to to do is log into the chat and it should not take much for their support team to be there to help you. One need not wait for an email or generate a ticket or fill in forms and submit or go to a forum to post it. Help is always available right there when it is needed.

What’s been your experience with your hosting company?

Do they respond when you need them the most?

Feel free to share your horror stories as well.

Internet Marketers of Georgia (IMOG) Inaugural meeting

What do you think the response would be if you were to ask a group of people to have a mid-week get together to talk about the internet and marketing?

I forgot to mention that the weather would also be perfect for sitting outside on the patio and sipping a beverage of choice (mine was a mojito on this night of nights). To answer the question, I don’t know the exact number but I’d say there was at least 30+ folks there.

The topic for discussion was “Social Media” and was presented by Joey Smith as well.

You can see the video that I shot here (please excuse the quality)

What was the take away from the meeting? Embrace and utilize social media in all aspects of your business.

I had to break the video up into 3 parts to get around YouTubes 10 minute max length, so you’ll have to click on each file to play them.

Social Media Part 1

Get your social media on and get it NOW! The main areas identified were the usual suspects:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Myspace
• Linked In
• your own personal blog

Note that this list can be exhausting and I know that we’ve just scratched the surface here with this list, but I think you get the general idea.

Social Media Part 2

Social Media Part 3

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