Hostgator is a great hosting provider, especially in India. Its customer support and uptime is commendable. However, I would like to mention about some Hostgator India facts as I have been a customer for long. Do remember, these are just facts and do not cover any positive or negative.
To know the pros and cons, Read: Hostgator India Review
But there are few things which you know before making a decision to buy a hosting plan from any hosting provider. Some of them are common for all hosting providers and some of them are specific to Hostgator. This is a critical review and it is written to make you all aware so that you can make your decisions in a better way. I learned about them through my intensive research.
Here are a few facts that you must know before you buy hosting from Hostgator India:
1. You should not buy the domain from your hosting provider, no matter how lucrative is the offer. Similar is the case with Hostgator India. You should consider buying your domain either from Godaddy or Namecheap (Namecheap has much better reputation). They are good service providers in the domain business. The reason is that if you want to move your website from hostgator in future, domain propagation will be an issue and they might not let you do it. As you know your domain name is the brand of your website, so try to have full control over them rather than relying on your hosting provider.
2. You should not use the free website templates or free sitebuilder provided by Hostgator. I know many of us might be tempted to use the free stuffs provided by the hosting providers. However, you must review the pros and cons before opting for anything. The free stuffs provided by the hosting provider are basically (and legally) their property, not ours. You can use them as long as you use their service.
However, if in future, you want to move to some other hosting provider, you would have to leave the website template and the settings that you have made so far. This would mean that so many days of your hard work in setting up your site goes in vain. So, think long term and try to set up some standard template for your website. I prefer using the WordPress platform, and recommend the same if you are a blogger. I would highly recommend the Genesis Framework if you want a great responsive website.
3. If you are opting for the shared services of Hostgator, your website will work fine till you have 20,000 visitors per day. However, beyond that point your website will act slowly. Even their VPS is not that good in accepting the load and the traffic. So, if you have huge traffic, there are other good Web Hosting providers that offer better service. However, for initial starters, Hostgator’s Shared Hosting is awesome and you will not face any problem. Another alternative is that you should keep your website template as light as possible with limited plugins. This will allow your hosting provider to take up more loads on the traffic.
4. You must have seen that Hostgator provide discounts all throughout the year ranging from 20-50 %. However, these discounts are available only on your first billing, no matter whatever is the amount. So, if you have subscribed to their service either for 1 year or 1 month, you get discounts only once. After your first billing, you will be charged as per standard rates and this might turn out to be expensive for you.
5. Free Private IP and Private SSL are available only for Business plans. Also their VPS plans are not that good and cheap as compared to their shared plans.