I wish I that I had found HostGator earlier in my internet career. It would have saved me a bunch of money and aggravation.

I’ve been playing around on the internet for about 10 years. When I first started out I knew nothing about web server space, hosting companies, reasonable cost, html, etc. All I knew is that I had just enough knowledge to have a web page display using my newly paid for hosting account (I’ve since learned a bit and have written about what to look for in a web hosting company).

Expensive Lesson

I had a $24.99 per month plan with Ultimate Host. Not only did I pay way too much, I had too much space. My website consisted of approximately 10 pages with a couple of images.

To show how little I knew, I created another site hosted through the same hosting company (yep, I was now paying $50 a month with way too much server space). At the time I was gainfully employed and didn’t think anything of wasting $50 a month every month on two sites that weren’t earning anything.

Thank God for Friends

A friend later turned me on to another hosting company Fat Cow. They only charged $99 a year for web hosting and offered more than enough server space for my two sites. So, I got my first lesson on how to transfer a domain and a website from one host to another. Instead of spending $600 annually, my web hosting costs were reduced to $200. I was thrilled.

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I was getting the hang of the HTML coding and was having a great time adding content and pictures to the site. I spent a lot of time making the site pretty. I never heard of SEO or site optimization. I didn’t really care. I was having too much fun creating sites for the sake of creating sites.

Over time I stumbled upon Google Adsense. I couldn’t believe that all I had to do was add some code to my site and earn money. So I added the code and in the first month earned 63 cents! The next month I earned $2.63 and the following month $3.58. I was on a roll!

The Honeymoon Ends

All was moving along swimmingly until I started to notice that my websites were off line ore than on line. There was an ever-increasing frequency of server down time. This started happening right at the time when Google started to notice my site. My traffic was growing, but having an inaccessible site has a way of stopping traffic dead. Fat Cow proved to be unreliable and I had to switch server yet again.

From the Frying pan into the Fire

I transferred my sites I transferred to Startlogic. Startlogic offered a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so I jumped on it. I paid $142.80 for two years of service for each site. The transfer process was a bit of a nightmare because both sites had grown and contained configurable scripts.

Over time I found that not only were my sites off line quite often, but Startlogic did some software upgrading, which wreaked havoc with my sites. I transferred the most lucrative site from Startlogic to a company called ICD Soft. The other still remains with Startlogic, but will be transferred to HostGator soon.

I happen to like ICD Soft. They are reliable, have a great up time and great customer service. The reason I’ll have to transfer is because they don’t provide WordPress blogs. Additionally, I have more server space then I’ll ever need (I chose the wrong plan).

Where does HostGator fit in?

Host Gator came to my rescue. After bouncing all around the internet going from hosting company to hosting company, I stumbled across Host Gator. By this time I have 4 or 5 sites, and similar number of blogs. I’m like poop on the bottom of a shoe; I’m all over the place.

HostGator allows me to consolidate all of my various sites, domains and blogs on one server for one price. No more $10.95 per month to Living Dot for Moveable Type blog (yes I have an account with Living Dot too). No more staggered annual renewal fees, no more off line and down time. Host Gator is a one stop shopping service.

This blog is hosted through Host Gator. I’ve had nothing but great experiences with them. The one time I had to contact customer support, I received a response in less than 15 minutes.

After 10 years of bouncing around, I think I’ve finally found the right home.

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