Everything works fine expect the price. I don’t understand why, but we pay $10.74 per month for very basic hosting plan.
One our project is hosted with Hostgator. Website is an extraordinary asset in terms of age and authority. It’s order than Google (Whois record was made on August 22, 1995). It has circa 3,200 monthly visitors who make around 7,100 sessions (2 sessions per visit). It doesn’t consume significant resources, no special servers requirements are needed.
Website is hosted with Hostgator. It was a decision of the previous owner. We didn’t want to change it for these 2 reasons:
- The Google reaction
Speed of the website (webhosting quality) is one of main factors which determine SERP position. Performance of the Hostgator servers is satisfactory. - New hosting test
Hostgator has a strong reputation and we didn’t use their services before. Many positive reviews convinced us to test their services.
Hostgator is standard in the industry
We chose package called “Hatchling Plan” which includes: single domain, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and shared SSL certificate.
After 7 months I can say that HG met our expectations. Their cloud is fast with perfect uptime. Customer service responds to emails quickly enough. Chosen package also provides an ability to enable shell access – it’s impossible to live without “unzip” command 🙂
Wild wild prices
Hatchling Plan costs depend on billing period. It’s $3.96 when you pay each 3 years, and $7.16 with billing period per month.
After login into customer panel I see info, that I pay “$8.95 every 1 month(s)”. But the most important information is the number written in the bank statement: $10.74 every month (4GB RAM VPS costs $12/month). Hostgator pricing policy is really confusing.
It’s time to take action
1. step: Contact customer support
First thing I’m going to do is to write an email asking for explanation why do the numbers vary so much. May be I’m missing something.
2. step: Find better package
We don’t know how long we are going to possess this asset otherwise we would choose longer billing period. It seems that we will succeed to sell this webstie. Problem with hosting will then just disappear.
3. (optional) step: Test a new webhosting company
One of the last updated Cloudwedge reviews is about Justhost. With Justhosts, similar package costs only $5.99 (monthly billing period). “Our record uptime is 99.9%. Our average downtime can be up to 45 minutes of monthly server maintenance” said for Cloudwedge David T., Justhost support representative and it sounds good. I like to test things.
Update 1:
Answer from customer service solved the mystery (VAT is not included):
Hello,
Thank you for contacting HostGator. I would like to inform you that the monthly renewal charge for the Hosting package ‘XXX’ is $8.95 and including tax ($1.79) you need to pay $10.74 for the renewal. If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us we are available 24X7.Warm regards,
Rajesh K.
HostGator.com
Update 2:
The difference between $8.95 and $7.16 reflects 20% discount on the first invoice.
Leave a Reply