UPDATE NOV 19, 2011 - I've finally shifted all my SiteGround sites over to my HostGator Reseller account!  The last straw was not being able to do simple Joomla component installs (the indespensible Akeeba Backup), without getting timed out by SiteGround's slow ass, blocking my functions servers.  Endless tickets back and forth as SiteGround pretends it's not an issue with their slow-ass servers. No More!  Final sites have been moved to dependable Host Gator server hosting. Done and Done!

Oh, and I installed Akeeba Backup on the sites, without a burp or hitch or time out from HostGator. Thanks HostGator Reseller Hosting!

OK, so about 6 months ago all my sites on SiteGround started getting SLOOOW. No amount of tweeking cache or gzipping could fix them. Now, I admit, I have this site on a SiteGround reseller account, so god knows that's gonna get slow, when they load that server to the max and beyond.

I know the saying is, "You get what you pay for."  I understand that. I really do now.  Except that SiteGround isn't really that cheap. Especially when it comes to renewing a site, when they ask for over $90 a year, for slow servers and pathetic customer support. Yeah right.

When I was searching about for a new hosting platform for my employer's site, an online community for women of all faiths, as well as a publishing venture, called Prayables.com. I knew that I had to get their beta site away from SiteGround, where it was already bogging down in Reseller Hosting Purgatory (RHP).

For about 3 seconds I was tempted by SiteGround's Cloud Hosting, but since I found them such an ongoing pain in the ass when it came to simple customer support, I quickly came to my senses.

A typical customer support episode with SiteGround went like this:

1. Site glitch isn't allowing members to log in. The page is white.
2. I search their knowledge-base...nothing, despite their proported expertise at hosting Joomla sites.
3. I use a couple of their automated tools to run diagnostics on my site...no solution
4. There is no live calling support option.  At least not for my level of service.
5. They finally allow me to submit a trouble ticket (This is only allowed after using the automated diagnostic tools, several times, because they tend to glitch.)
6. They respond that they do not have a solution and cannot hazard a wild guess, and close the ticket.
7. I search online forums using Google, until I find a solution.

I shifted the Prayables.com site to a HostGator VPS so fast it wasn't even funny! I did do quite a bit of research and found that HostGator was proported to have the best customer service.

A typical customer support episode at HostGator goes like this.

1. I'm backing up the site in cPanel and creating a new MySQL DB and users, when something glitches in the Matrix.
2. Site glitch has turned the whole site white, with an error message saying it cannot connect to the MySQL DB.
3. I waste 1 hour, undoing my work and hunting for a solution in the forums.
4. I call HostGator and get on the phone with a live person from Tech Support within 15 minutes on a busy Monday. He starts helping me, barely checking my level of service.
5. 15 minutes later my site is back up, due to actual collaboration with Tech Support in hunting down the issue to a configuration.php file.
6. I praise Zeus for HostGator.

Oddly enough, this sort of customer support has been the norm for me at HostGator. Since I'm not a man who typically loves running his own VPS, Tech Support at HostGator is great.

So unless they get bought out by some company in Luxembourg, and turn into nay-saying, non-supporting, jam up my server, euro-posers (SiteGround), I think I'll be with them for some time to come.

And when my Reseller Licenses come due at SiteGround? Guess who I'm switching to. That's right, I'm getting a VPS at HostGator, because managing the server as well as client sites (using WHM and cPanel) is pretty freakin easy. Even for a novice Webmaster like me!

And do I get paid if you click on the ad running at the top of this post? I damn well hope so!

But really, I would have written this blog post anyway.  HostGator has saved my webmaster ass so easily and often, I really owe them.

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Ed Eusebio  - Head Taser   |2011-08-29 08:04:08 BTW: I ended up moving this site from SiteGround to HostGater a few months ago. I just got tired of the slowness, and hinkiness of the SiteGround servers. Reply

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