Web Hosting

Everything seems to be ticking along nicely on the HostGator server. Spent some time changing my stats database so that I can track downloads and referrals from other websites. The old host provided AWStats (summed up) files that I could use, whereas HostGator provides raw logs. These contain much more detail but I needed a new process to make sense of them.

The EasySpace account has now been killed off. In my opinion they are best avoided as a company due to the following experiences I've had:

• Tech support is only core business hours and they are slow to respond, sometimes taking hours and thereby causing the issue to continue into the next day. HostGator are 24 hour and respond in minutes to chat requests.
• When I changed to a cheaper package of theirs they were unhelpful and did nothing to avoid downtime. I encountered disruption even though ultimately I stayed on the same server and didn't benefit from newer version of software (e.g. PHP).
• They publish prices for hosting on their website, but increase this by 15% + £2.50 year on year. The terms and conditions do not state this, saying instead "at our discretion". This effectively penalises existing customers and gives no incentive to stay with them as well as being underhand.
• Cancellation of an annual package requires 12 months notice. I am still waiting to be stung for another year's payment for a service I won't be using. This will teach me to spend more time wading through their unintelligible Terms and Conditions.

Onward and upward. Hopefully HostGator will continue to impress me with their responsive technical support. They only take a couple of minutes to respond to chat requests and thus far have answered all of my questions and were very helpful when I moved everything across.