Tl;dr: HostGator has brutally bad customer service and couldn’t handle a simple site restore.
Edited to add: I’m not posting here for sympathy or commiseration. I am posting here so non-technical users don’t purchase hosting with poor support who won’t communicate with them if they have a serious issue.
First, some background. I design WordPress sites a lot of websites for small businesses. I’m self taught and competent. Most people hire me as a step up from Squarespace and Wix. They don’t need anything super custom, but they don’t want to d.i.y. I also maintain and backup client sites and help them when they have issues. I mention this so you know where I sit as far as basic knowledge. I’m not a wizard but I have done many site transfers and restores over the past 10 years.
This being Reddit, I’m sure someone is going to tell me this was my fault or that I should have done something differently. That’s fine. I am posting this so people with less tech competency than me don’t get stuck with a host who won’t help them.
One day, when working on a client site we had an issue after updating a plug-in. I didn’t have time to troubleshoot that day so I did a restore using my backup provider (ManageWP). Unfortunately, something went wrong in the restoring process and I got a database error. The host this client was using was HostGator. I don’t personally use them for hosting, so this was my first time trying to get things back in action using their platform.
I tried everything; backup provider’s 1 click restore, ftp, and file manager in CPanel, fresh WP install, restored database. It failed every time.
I was 100% confident that my backup files were good because I was able to get the site live on my own host in less than 15 minutes (SiteGround). I did this so my client could have site access while I worked on the broken site.
After getting a temporary site live, I reached out to Host Gator for support and that is when the nightmare began. I’ll do this in point form for brevity.
– Support wouldn’t talk to me without a PIN number, but the pin reset function was broken so every time I needed to talk to them they had to email my clients an approval link. This seemed to be arbitrary though as sometimes they would just talk to me because I was logged in and other times they wouldn’t.
– The first couple of support people made an effort but couldn’t restore the site either. So, they said they would escalate.
– They never called me back, not once. They missed every deadline they set for themselves.
– They did not share notes or files so every time I called I had to explain everything all over again.
– One support person restored a super old version of the site and I told them it was wrong but they closed the ticket and said it was fixed.
– After 2 whole weeks of trying to work with them, no one was able to complete a simple site restore or explain to me why it wasn’t working on their platform when SiteGround was working just fine.
– Their user interface is garbage.
I ended up moving the site permanently. Luckily, all if the dns stuff and domain were elsewhere so it was a simple switch.
I’ve since read that HG was bought by EIG and they are notorious for running companies into the ground.
I strongly believe people should avoid them at all cost and consider moving to a new host if you have a site there.
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