I am EX-Hostgator employee, ask me anything
February 11, 2010
Stumble it!Always wondering how Hostgator have been so successfull? You will never know from inside a company what they are doing or what they did. I got an ex hostgator employee that will tell you all the secrets about this dirty company from how they treat the employees, customers and even their affiliates.
Let me tell you something and if you are an old reader on Googlelady you know that I promoted them as hell. How many of you promoted hostgator affiliate program and paid even less than 50% and all reversed? I was a fan with hostgator till I did my research, even I have one account with them that I paid for 3 years and till now I have it but not using it reason? You will know after few minutes.
I can’t tell you the name or where I found this ex-hostgator employee but I am sure that this is REAL. So get ready to read and spread the word.
Introduction of the ex-hostgator employee
I see lots of people use or want to use Hostgator. I just QUIT from there and can make more money from affiliate program than they paid me hourly.
They are so cheap towards the employees, so be nice when you get support since they get paid very low and have to deal with lots of crap, usually min 5 people at the same time. Ever wonder why the live chat takes forever sometimes???
SO, if you have any questions about Hostgator issues or questions I can give you the real inside info.
Questions & Answers
Note: In bold will be the questions asked by people and the reply will be from that ex-hostgator employee Not mine.
Q. Does Hostgator have a nice office?
A. Oh the building is a 4 story old bank. 1st floor is for Voipo and 2nd is not there offices. 3 and 4 are all cubes for the techs they underpay and admins. You know we didnt get paid breaks, no vacay pay or sick time.
Q. well something serious now how good is their VPS for a video adult tube site? would they cancel my account if i go over the limit bandwidth or send me a warning first?
A. They dont care about anything but spamming and abusing the server.
The VPN are designed for advanced users and they kinda leave that out. IT iss really a dedicated server that is not setup. It is designed for advanced users who KNOW how to tweak the settings and 99% of VPN users hate it since they werent aware that nothing is setup like it was on the shared accounts and dont understand why nothing works the same.
The shared hosting is setup so people cant kill the servers since they cram so many people on a server.
They only time they care about content is if they get DCMA notice from someone and most times if you just rely they will turn your account on. IF you go over BW, your account just shows the error. I wouold use the baby plan and only run that one site since you get unlimited BW
Q. I was just on their live chat they said with the VPS level 3 it comes with a cpanel so its easier and a hatchling plan comes with an unlimited bandwidth but database process of 25.
A. VPS level 3 or higher must have cpanel to get any support on a vps. If you order without cpanel option 10.00 or level 1 or 2 you will get no support.
The process limit is set to 25 on vps as well, they dont tell you that, you have to request it to be raised. AGAIN the vps is a raw dedicated server that must be setup how you want and most people are used to the setup on the baby which is designed to not lill the server. When you get vps things arent set the same, scripts wont work and you go nuts since you dont know that you now have a dedicated seller WHM and there are 100 tweaks and settings. VPS is setup just like a dedicated server and literally has 1000 settings you can or will need to change.
Q. Yeah, I have a vps…level 3, i’m gonna go back to a reseller cuz for a while there mysql kept crashing and i’d have to reset mysql in whm. tech support told me that the vps wasn’t that great….and that their shared/reseller was running on more powerful servers. all i was doing was running autoblogs.
A. honestly, cheap webhosting, anything less then dedicated server, is designed for over crowding and jamming as many users on a server as can be. Hence, the restrcitions and when you finally use the server you get banned.
They dont want customers like you, they want the people who put one site and gets no traffic. The VPS is crap since they dont know what there doing and there setup sucks. THey will never tell you that. For the most part we got NO training on VPS and you will get a different answer to tech questions depending on what tech you get.
Reseller is the way to go so you can spread the 25 limit on each cpanel. Just put 1 domain on each cpanel and you can use the full 25 limit.
Q. Hostgator shaving? I need to know cause HostGator aff program pays 50$, and CJ pays 100$ per new member.
A. HG caters to internet noobs so easy way to add people to there network since more then half are get rich quickers so the HG customer can promote them. Heck there PR is 8 now.
Free advertising for them so a win win. Dont think most know about CJ so they dont sign up there.
HG is tiered so u can get 125 a sale
Q. Why did you quit the job?!
A. They pay very badly, $10.00 hour, crappy benefits and they work you to death. Min 5 live chats at a time. No paid breaks, dirty nasty conditions working with dirty nasty people.
Then they bragged they made 38 mill last year and would rather pay to put the gator on some UFC scrub then give us raises.
For 8 hours a day, have to hear people call in an whine why there images dont show or fix my site. They were too cheap to pay someone to fix there sites and thought we did it for them.
People calling in were rude and never happy even when you did recode there site for them.
Q. SO how do I get around the ID requirement?
A. What country are you signing up in? You only get flagged for ID in certain countries.
Q. So if i wanted a plan with lots of storage in your opinion I could just get the reseller plan since they on a better server than the vps?and HS wont care if i use it all by myself as long as no spam/abuse is involved? i know sooner or later i’ll have to get a dedicated server from HS or not but i am starting out small for now
A. All the servers are the same, actually the later you singed up the better the server is. say you are still from 2005 signup, I used to be, then the server is old and they never upgraded you. On VPS you pay for the amount of RAM and CPU so it all equals what you pay for. Want more CPU, pay more money.Baby and reseller are same servers.
Spam kills the server. The cram so many on a server that one person can crash a server and then they have to work, they have to fix the problem and that costs them money. If your site used 1000gigs of BW but never was issue then you could host forever.
There goal is cram as many people on a server and hope they dont cancel. Had a few people that were paying via paypal for over a year on account the canceled. THe money is not in people who use the hosting, but the people who forget they have an account
Q. Screw this. He said no benefits paid breaks dirty working conditions?? Looks like they take care of there employees… Nice try troll. And why did it take so long to lets us know your a employee ???
*This user was not believing and he shows the benefits in the url that is on Hostgator click here
A. Wow, wont even waste more time with your reply then this. I guess you believe everything you read. They have a job affiliate program, you should apply, go work there and then come back to this thread when you know what the hell your talking about.
Your so funny.
- * Free lunch provided daily to employees — premade ham and cheese sandwich or if the chef wasnt hung over he would cook something. He is related to one of the owners so he doesnt get in trouble and they do order pizza alot.
- * Competitive compensation 10.00 an hour you must work cheap
- * Up to 3 weeks paid vacation — after 4 years. turnover is so high avg emp has been there 3 months.
- * Relaxed, but professional environment there all pothead and gamer nerds
- * Flexible scheduling
- * No dress code Except for when the COO brought a girl to show off there was NO ONE there so you could show up naked if you wanted.
- * Medical/Dental/Vision packages available AVAILABLE lol
- * Life insurance packages available
- * Relocation assistance for those who qualify Ya, if you sold your soul and are windows admin maybe.
- * Company outings (ex. Paintball) So funny, they do that once a year
- * HostGator fitness gym HAHA, that is the storage area for the kitchen
- * Game Room with a air hockey, ping pong and pool table ONLY thing correct.
- * Triple monitor work stations for all system administrators I had 2 monitors and you needed them for 5 people at a time.
Q. Is it better to buy a vps, reseller, or just a bunch of shared hosting?
A. It all depends. if you are running all joomla sites that use resources I would say reseller and put each domain on a diff cpanel to get full resource limit for each site.
If static sites you can fit 200 on a baby plan. they are not designed to be used so if you are going to use the server, get traffic or stuff like that then a VPS or dedicated since you can then tweak it to what you want.
Q. What is the true limit on how many emails we can send /hour and /day?
500 per hour per cpanel. Again they only care about spam and server abuse email causes drain on server
if you stick to 500 hour never any issue
Q. Hey man, would you call these benefits? No 401K program. Life insurance available? Medical packages available? What does it mean? Available if you pay for? There are so many startups that even don’t list these things.
A. They arent a startup, open since 2002 and they happily brag they made 38 mil last year. Seems yall take what you want out of context. Any american on the internet who ever had a real job, by the remarks I read, seems most of you havent had one, will know what real benefits are.
Offering shit that no one can afford since the pay is so low is not really a benefit. Offering benefits when the company is profitable vs a broke ass gargae startup is completely different.
You can pick and choose anything you want from anything and make it however you want to sound.
CRAPGATOR AS A COMPANY IS HORRIBLE, I never said anything about there hosting, which is what alot of you think I am saying.
Q. I use both reseller and vps. The VPS was a bit of a pig to get going. I was one of the first people to get it and although there was cPanel on it (Level 3), I found that Fantastico was missing and had to be turned on. There were one or two other issues but generally speaking the VPS seems to work ok but strangely slower that my reseller account. That may be because I’m running CRON jobs every minute.
Now big question for you pluto. You mentioned increasing the tasks beyond 25. Could you please advise what I should ask the techs to set it at? And is it ‘tasks’ I ask to increase?? Also, it would be MOST helpful if you could advise of the top 20 settings that I would need to put on the VPS in order to get it up to Reseller standard!
My general thoughts about the quality of service at Hostgator is generally very good. I also have dedicated servers (real ones) elsewhere in the US that don’t have cPanel and I’m trying to move away from them.
A. VPS is really a mini dedicated so takes lots of work to get working correctly, correctly in the sense that you are used to the way the reseller was setup. They rolled out VPS on a whim and where clueless, you bought it on Oct 30th huh? Seems people think I am a faker.
The VPS limits your CPU and RAM to what you pay for. If you were on a server with 1000 people who never used the server then it will be faster then your VPS unless you got the super CPU package. You get what you pay for on CPU. They really mislead you on the VPS. Its true use is for people who need root access or to install FFMPEG. Otherwise the cost to get the specs to good are as much as a dedicated server and VPS is just a way to market to noobs to make more money, when in reality is pisses them off and I bet they lost more customers in the switch, who like you got pissed runs worse then the 10 plan they on.
You are allowed to run 25 process per cpanel. That is the limit!! On VPS you can tell them to raise that to whatever you want. Problem is is you bought levl3 which is stiill low CPU too many process can crash your VPS. You asked for tweaks, it is more like settings and ways the setup and cpanel works. Like creating addon domains that dont need the NS pointed to yours b4 you add the domain in cpanel.
Q. How do they manage to Pay $50 Commission per sell, while they charge $10x3Month?
A. exactly, the whole business is a house of cards They pay 100 and take in 30, though some stay for years and never host 1 site so that is what they are looking for. It is truly Enron math.
Q. Why are there so many different interfaces, ex. one for registering domains, then another for adding it to you dns, etc?
A. The registrar is ENOM and they use the reseller page that enom gives to any reseller. Registering a domain with them is such a horrible experience. The interface is very limited and is really designed for noobs who never bought a name before.
Q. How can I get my god damn files from them without paying past due hosting bill
A. YOU CANT. Just pay past due amount, get data, cancel and request refund. ONLY way
Q. They’re monetizing the traffic in other ways than just the monthly bill. It’s been done to death in adult. There’s plenty of programs in adult that pay $100+ on a $1 trial (some up to $250) and they’re profitable. It’s all about knowing your customer, scrubbing the right way, and squeezing EVERY DIME out of them no matter what.
A. Well adult is 40 a month and avg is 3 months so they pay 100 and make 120, HG pays 100 and keeps 3 months = 30 so the math isnt correct. Huge shell game.
Q. Why is the gator in their logo blue and yellow? As far as I know, those are not a standard gator’s colors.
A. no idea how they came up with that only cool thing is they have the logo made in Lego.
Q. In terms of new sign ups, what’s the percentage of complete newbs? whats the highest selling package?
A. I would say most singups go like this:
1000 per day
500 are fraud/spammers blackhatters lol who get caught on the signup
250 blackhatters that make it thru singup
250 people who were referred by “there MENTOR” who made a ton from the signup and the monthly fee he collects from them
Now some people need real hosting and some ded servers are bought.
a dedicated server is 379 so thats the most.
Q. I was an affiliate once and did all completely whitehat, have seminars, promote IM and ask ppl to go home and sign up using my affiliate ID
A. I cant sign them up on the spot because when I contacted AM, he said dupes wont be paid so I had to ask my attendees to go home and do it.
I have about 26 legit signed up within my 90days but when it was time to get paid, I was paid only about 12
Any idea why they did not pay the balance?
I know for sure all the 26 are paying up to date payments.
This is what i would do since you can get ahold of the people signing up. Get the domain and how many months they have been paying and email them and tell them these were done at a work from home web seminar and you can see all the domains are owned buy all different people, they have been paying for x months and these are legit sales. Please pay me.
That should work. When you can prove not a scam and even go as far as saying call the customer or I will have the customer call in or email you on my behalf.
Q. I’ve never got for my two affiliate sales I made for them…what would you recommend to make them pay me??
A. email affiliates@hostgator.com and ask.
if legit signups I would state that they were and you want your money
if you know the date and user info give that as well. usually they say they were existing customers or no record so if you have info you can make them prove why they didnt pay
Q. will hostgator shut me down for huge traffic? from natural blogs as well as autoblogs?
A. like if you are using cron with plugin that will klll the server they will tell u to use super cache and then suspended you if still messes up the server
Q. With a share plan, what would yo say is the most resources you can pull before your account is shut down? HOw many WP blogs/ Amount of traffic?
A. there isnt a set # if your blog is optimized and not causing a drain, usually due to plugins then never an issue.
Q. Why is it there are times that it takes 5 days before hostgator activated the site? I encountered this 3 times
you get welcome email in 20 mins if you dont then you got emailed to verify your account. You never verify then account never created or is your domain is something they dont like then they maually setup the account and forget most times since the girls doing the pending accounts are the supervisors girlfriends and they are f*** ups.
Q. How do i get a mail from Hostgator that I have some due and i need to pay it on or …..this day??
A. You get the mail to the email you chose when you signed up. Just login to billing and pay the bill. You have 10 days before late fee and suspended.
Q. I have a question. If one of packages under reseller account is not complying with DMCA and HG receives a notice, will they take down the package or the whole reseller account?
A. They send you an email about it. you then need to fix the issue, if you dont reply they will suspend that cpanel. They will send about 3 more emails and if no reply suspend the whole account. The key is to reply and fix issue.
Q. Why do I get cpu violations on a vps with just a small wordpress blog?
VPS are not setup like shared accounts. They suck and are sold for people who want a “vps”. VPS is marketing tool
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February 12th, 2010 at 3:12 am
What makes you go out and talk non sense of our company? This is going around forum’s like this is true.. I will be contacting your host.
February 12th, 2010 at 9:11 am
That is your answer brent?
June 16th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
I would be interested in speaking to the ex-hostgator employee, especially since hostgator is on webhostingstuff.com’s top 25
July 17th, 2010 at 7:02 am
There needs to be a few corrections / updates to this article. I live in Houston and just became employed at Host Gator as a Tier I Tech. The office building is fairly nice by Houston standards. Plenty of parking and the neighborhood is fairly nice as well. This is important when considering security.
Secondly, they offer salaries between $10-$13 an hour. The only way you are going to get the minimum is if you are a total noob that cant login to Cpanel.
Thirdly, so what the Chef doesnt cook often. Get a clue – Its a job, not a daycare. Bring your own darn lunch if you don’t appreciate it.
I do not know much about the turnover rates but i can explain it if it exist. Houston’s economy is one of the largest in the country. It isn’t hard or abnormal for workers to migrate to other jobs for a higher salary. It doesn’t neccessarily have a thing to do with Host Gator.
Skeptics can take my reply for what its worth. But in fairness of reason examine and compare my statements to the others.
P.S. I have been a HG customer for 4 years on a reseller plan as well as an affilliate and have not experienced any tragic issues as I have seen described here. Its not rocket science, its hosting. Nuff said.
August 22nd, 2010 at 4:58 am
Hey Anonymous…Can you be a affiliate and a reseller at the same time?
September 3rd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
This ex-employee doesn’t give an accurate description AT ALL. Some of the stuff he says is true, but the only thing that I find somewhat irritating is that supervisor/management does look out for their friends/relatives/significant other regardless of their occupational performance. That is really annoying, but it is a private company so either put up with it or leave.
@Anonymous,
You are definitely wrong with one part, I do not think that neighborhood is very nice at all. My car has never been broken into and I haven’t ever been mugged or anything, but that one underpass bum is occassionally lingering on the property. Also, the neighborhood is just a little ghetto, not extremely but it isn’t what I consider a nice neighborhood.
Personally, it looks like “ex employee” got fired for probably personal browsing or doing something stupid.
And people questioning the affiliate program and how they are able to pay out such high amounts of money, ever heard of fucking marketing? A lot of these customers don’t just stay for 3 months, many stay for YEARS. I’m sure HostGator makes back their money plus plenty more. Especially since a lot of customers also order SSLs, or pay for other install/work being done on their account.
The benefits aren’t bad at all, either. No, they aren’t free but they aren’t unaffordable. It is an hourly wage job, what makes you expect full benefits and a 401K? Maybe you should find a new company since you are used to such lavish benefits and a high income. I’m only 20 years old, so these benefits and the wage are OK for me while I’m going to school and working at HG.
Also, the other thing that is a somewhat of a lie is that HostGator has a gym in their Houston office. The gym is just kitchen storage as pluto said, that is definitely true. To be honest, I’ve never seen it used lol.
Overall, I love working at HostGator at this time. If you don’t like working hard and taking 3-5 chats at a time, just don’t work here, that simple. If you want to be a lazy ass, just get on welfare and let the government take care of you since it seems you cant even make your own lunch.
October 15th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Honestly, the pay rate may be a bit low, but if you perform well, you will be well compensated. Just gotta hang in there. Also, your grammar is terrible. Please proof read your rant before posting a rant.
Thanks,
Peter
November 21st, 2010 at 3:56 pm
I am considering getting a VPS plan with HG but from this review i have my doubts for the time being with HG .
HG ranks number #1 at webhostingstuff.com… i would like to wait it out and check out more reviews …
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:44 am
Tmax, this has nothing to do with their hosting service. This is more about “employees”. I would recommend also Powervps.com
November 22nd, 2010 at 3:25 pm
HIe now a days hostgator sking for address prood or id prood for indian custemers(0.01 hoting trick). I need 10-20 acounts per day for the porpose of google adwords anyone can help me out************************** pls
December 7th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@GoogleLady
Sure is funny how you never responded to my comment, why don’t you take down this bullshit. It is just laughable at how false it is, it is obviously some disgruntled fat ass tech boy that got fired so now masturbates full time at home.
Also, this guy sucks at giving advice and descriptions on HG products.
I will admit that one of the annoying parts is that Pending is pretty much just girlfriend’s of supervisors. That is one thing that is annoying.
December 8th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Hey, I was wondering if the president of Hostgator is really a shill?
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1002524
December 25th, 2010 at 2:32 am
When you worked for Hostgator, were they sending out spam emails like in the link below?
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1000639
March 3rd, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Dammit !!! Who to believe !!?? This is really getting annoying now. I’m sure hostgator is more than likely a sucky employer. Bosses and work sucks by definition. You can’t have one ( boss/job ), without it sucking, lol.
One thing I find annoying is how obvious it is that most of the “reviews” for most of the friggin popular hosts are affiliate spam. No wonder with them all offering $100+/sign-up. Sheesh, I’m even considering writing some glowing reviews.
Now … where does one go to find actual/legitimate nonaffiliate spammy hosting ? That doesn’t oversell it’s shared hosting servers until they are ready to crash and burn the first time a website gets more than 12 visits/dy ?
Please advise … real recommendations and/or a point in the right direction as to where to find quality web hosting, would be appreciated.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
MrSmith as a hostgator customer, friend, and employee I would recommend Hostgator Shared Hosting. None of the shared servers are filled over 80% and are consistently monitored for loads under 5%. Now that’s not saying there are occasions where other clients can cause issues but you will NOT find any “Shared hosting” that does NOT have similar issues. I have had many host and none have held a candle to Hostgator. As for the employee side of things you have to love what you do to be happy with it. Every job sucks at times and people can always get on your nerves. Especially when you talk to as many as you do in tech support(your odds increase). But none the less I do honestly love my job and my company and I would recommend at no benefit for me as a person to use there services.
March 27th, 2011 at 7:19 am
GoogleLady,
If I were to also interview for the exact same subject, can you guarantee my anonymity?
If so, please leave a way to contact you directly.
March 28th, 2011 at 10:47 am
Anon4Now, yes defintively. Go to the “Contact”: http://www.googlelady.com/contact/ and let me know.
April 1st, 2011 at 1:12 am
$10/hr in Houston for someone who can admin servers and fix client HTML/PHP code (and that isn’t even a job requirement)? Jeez. You should be making at least $17-20/hr with skills like that. I am finding this all a bit hard to believe. And the article itself was written very poorly. I had trouble reading at some points. Please go to a translation board and get some grammar nazi to help you. That is…I am assuming it’s so badly written because the writer’s first language is not English.
April 8th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
GoogleLady,
Check you’re email, I have sent you an email from @hush
April 9th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Thank you for writing this post. In Austin all the things you share was true. It was really sad how they do business with their employees. Most of their employees are over worked and under paid. In their training they don’t take the time to educate you on thing you might not know; however, they didn’t want the people in the training class to ask questions. The wanted them to “SPARK” them on a chat this would allow them to rush the class for their training. All the people in the training was rushing their notes to keep up with the trainer (Jennifer Hilton/Sara Q). They would try to treat people like kids. This is very unprofessional when you have adults that own their homes and have a family. I have over 10 yrs of Sales & Marketing background 3 yrs on Tech side. I have made over $400k over the last few years income from a professional background. I showed up 1 hr before training and stay 30 minutes after training. Jenni and Sara was rushing me out of training everyday.
If your looking to work with this company I would look somewhere else. I would look for a company that is stable and want to pay their employees fair market value. Company that is willing to training and invest in their employees future. This means they would want to say with company.
I read this blog I was like this person must be lying. However, I found out they were telling the true.
April 18th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
To the people asking the questions above and the person who claims to be a former HostGator employee and is answering the questions: all of you can barely communicate the English language. Your grammar is atrocious and your spelling is horrible. Your attempts at communicating ideas or thoughts are certainly at the lowers levels of elementary school students.
My point is: you are fortunate to have had a job at all. The only thing that concerns me about HostGator after reading any of this is that if you are, in fact, a former employee, that HostGator actually hires people as ignorant and uneducated as you. That is deeply disturbing.
I’ve honestly never been to any message board and seen a more feeble attempt by a group of people to communicate with each other in my life. It’s like reading the grunts of cave people.
If I were any of you, I would hold on to the next job I got and not insult my employer in public, lest people start to become aware that you are incapable of expressing yourselves in print more intelligently than a toddler.
May 8th, 2011 at 3:00 am
If you don’t like it Jo, move out of the country. This isn’t web hosting support. This is a blog.
June 2nd, 2011 at 9:00 pm
I believe that HostGator is a great company. I have never had any trouble with them at all. I am actually still with the company and so are hundreds of my clients. They put up with my crap and I appreciate that.
HostGator YOU ROCK!
I actually just applied for the tech support job and I hope I get it. 10.00 hour is a start. I can work my way up by proving I can do the next job.
This person must have gotten fired and has just lost their mind. I can relate to you on losing your job but is it morally right to go bash a companies name because they fired you. I believe they can fire anyone they wish. They provide the job they make the rules. YOU MUST FOLLOW THEM AND SHOW UP TO WORK. Now that is work ethics!
Good luck HOSTGATOR! Thanks for the great service.
June 28th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
I got hired for hostgator and am deeply unimpressed. They try to make the job sound glamorous. But They pay me $14 an hour. I get no off time for the first 90 days. The trainers are bitches and they dont let you ask questions. They brag about how long they have been there (Jennifer is 5+ years!) and drives a old beat up crap car. Its very interesting how if they are so good to be here that long they dont have a real job.
I’m 20 so this is a good job. But thank the lord im only keeping it for 2 months. I was just offered a support and high level client sales person at a top level company that will let me pull in $34 an hour. FUCK GATOR. I cant wait to quit.
August 4th, 2011 at 6:01 am
Quite unbelievable, the quality of the sentence structure and grammatical errors in the article are horrendous, I think it’s just an employee that went postal.
August 10th, 2011 at 2:45 am
Yeah pay sucks but in this economy you take what you can get.
Also you will learn a lot at hosgator. Good job to get experience.
September 1st, 2011 at 3:26 am
I worked at hostgator and we had to do lots of support work because most of the times servers was overloaded and people kept complaining. Also their market share is now reducing, I won’t bet my future on this company. There are also talks of them getting acquired which will fire all employees and jobs will be transferred to third world countries like India. They do have office in India and their Indian support sucks.
September 18th, 2011 at 11:39 am
I was paid 15 an hour to work at hostgator. They offered medical and dental but the premium was so high priced with the cost of living no one could afford it. The triple monitor workstations were a lie, all work stations only had dual monitors. The senior admins , except Frank, and one other who was skinny and kinda red neckish had that smug RTFM attitude and didn’t like teaching people anything. Hostgator even claimed they fired me. I put in my two weeks and only showed up for 1 of them. Mark the instructor was quite helpful as a trainer. The meals were good. I liked the hours. Night time hours.
During that time they hacked my phone. Used recorded private conversations against me by giving them to friends and colleagues. Had people following me trying to use social engineering techniques to manipulate and make me come back to work.
Be careful if you work there and quit they might try to kill you by using drugs to make you loose your mind, literally. A week after I quit I was at a NoFX concert and someone threw some kinda drug cocktail on my head. I was targeted the sound booth was behind me. I felt sick and went outside. My head started tingling. I was sitting against the wall and Ford(head of hostgator security) walked by in a wig and looked at me). I went back inside and washed off my head. When I did the water i used ran over my face and and my hands and face started tingling. I went to security, then to the police. They had me sitting against the outside of the building. A man walked by and said “You will never play the piano again.” Playing the piano is a term that describes the acts of hacking on a keyboard. For the next week people followed me and the smell of in pesticides came from from my AC on my truck. While I walked from Conroe to Tomball to get my truck from a hospital where they would not take me seriously On I45 on the feeder a white truck with a full tool body passed 4+ times spraying out a fog that irritated my skin and made me feel horrible. Routinely a truck with the name Pest Bear past me as I walked down the street. I was picked up by a man in a Volvo with no plate. And he described to me how people who where not going to live long are not worth as much as other people and should die. He also hinted that I was not going to live long. Pest bear was a company registered out of Boca Raton. The home of hostgator.
Tech Address……… 5050 Blue Lake Dr.
Tech Address………
Tech Address……… Boca Raton
Tech Address……… 33431
Tech Address……… FL
Tech Address……… UNITED STATES
Tech Email……….. admin@pestmax.com
Tech Phone……….. +1.8886636648
Tech Fax…………. +1.8886636655
Name Server………. ns2.roninit.com
Name Server………. ns1.roninit.com
Maybe Brent isn’t that evil but Lance sure as hell is. They have so much control in the Houston area that if you do quit you better get the hell outta town and hang low fast.
Hostgator controls scriptlance.com and manipulates that entire market. Keeping all the prices low by using high ranking accounts to way underbid the jobs to force other programmers who are unemployed or looking for extra money work at slave labor costs.
I left and fled to my grandparents house. In Boerne TX. I tried to get help for the hacking and people following me and was institutionalized for a week. After I got out, I stayed at my grandparents house for 2 weeks I started looking for another job in IT as a Linux admin. I was invited for a interview with rackspace. I went to San Antonio and got a motel room and all the weird stuff that was happening in Houston started happening again there. After being there 2 weeks I fled because of the harassment and hacking. I went to Denver Colorado. The harassment stopped. I eventually made my way back to NC.
September 18th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Jonathan Smith’s comment is probably not far from the truth. They will use pesticides to poison you until your body kills your mind on its own.
September 18th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
This post was from weeks after all the events I talked about happened, hence the purple monkey avatar.
http://neworder.box.sk/showthread.php/41052-Hiding-and-tracking-my-boss-when-im-having-days-off?highlight=skraps
September 18th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
I believe I was talking to one of my aggressors . I can’t say for sure it was hostgator but I believe it had something to do with hostgator. Id like to believe it wasnt but there was so many things that pointed back to them. I would like to work there again. But I wouldn’t want to loose my mind or loose my life over a job. Linux administration is a passion of mine and I just want to go back todoing it again.
I launched phonesnake.com a little over a month ago. I told some people related to hostgator and Brent. Then all the same stuff that was happening in Houston started happening in NC, I used twitter and facebook to post information about what I was doing and the weird things that where happening started to stop and my aggressors changed their tactics.
September 19th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
On linked in this is a dispute where acho-hosting claims hostgator fired me. Obviously he was told this by hostgator . I still have the emails that conspired between me and Brandi that was with HR at the time.
http://www.mediafire.com/?4aijaqaedijb8yg
http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Flnkd%2Ein%2FmmSHjr&urlhash=OX8f&_t=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-lnk&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-lnk
September 21st, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I agree with everything you said 100%! HG sucks so bad! I can’t wait until I get my stuff organized enough to leave them.
The stuff you mentioned about live chat, your are so right. Live chat sucks and takes forever. I have been on live chat for hours at a time and then one person can’t fix it or say’s they can’t or not allowed so I open a new window and start another live chat and that person will fix it in 5 minutes. Not all or even half of their employees don’t know what there doing and their employees are not on the same page as far as what they “can” and “can’t” do.
And to BRENT (you loser) your company does suck (if it is yours). You wanna say it’s going around forums like it’s true, well it IS true…. and you want to threaten this sites owner by saying you will contact his host… lmao, contact my host too if you want lmao I for one am glad to see this posted and will be sharing it EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To the writer of this blog I wanna send a thank you and let you know I will be sending this to everyone I know!!!!!!!!!!
September 21st, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Oh, I forgot to mention, their affiliate program, every sale I have made they never paid so I started using another hosting companies affiliate program and I make a killing from them.
September 21st, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Everybody stop talking shit about his/her grammar and spelling. we’re not here to be grammar police we are here to find the scoop on HG. So if you can’t say anything about that move on. I personally don’t care if it was written on the fly or by a non English speaker. It’s very informative and the damn truth. I have used HG for years and can’t wait to leave. guess I need to quit being lazy and take a couple days off of my job and get it done.
September 24th, 2011 at 3:36 am
Awww poor baby … you miss you mommy?
September 25th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
I wasnt the first and wont be the last last.
http://www.hotwebhostingtalk.com/threads/24868-How-many-people-run-their-webhosting-buisness-like-this
September 26th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Ok, I am a 2 time ex-employee (thats right, I worked there twice!!) of Hostgator and I wasn’t going to comment, but this The Purple Monkey guy? WTF! This guy is a total mental case! This is a bad case of drug abuse gone bad.
Let me set it straight. This guy was a chat tech, sounds like most of the ex-employees you got responding on here are all chat techs… chat techs are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to HG employees. Most cant handle the work load and quit before their 90th day. The turnaround for chat techs is huge. That is why the training classes churn them out as fast as they can.
Good thing about chat techs is, they can be found working at any McDonalds or BurgerKing, so the recruit level is pretty easy and plentiful.
I was a Linux Admin and we had it a lot easier than chat techs. When I started back in 2006/2007, it was advertised as ADMINS having 3 monitor displays. The chat techs have never had more than 2 monitors.
They do have benefits, but they are expensive to pay for. I dont care what company you are with, the insurance is expensive to purchase. I am with a totally different company and from what I remember, the insurance here costs about the same as there.
The pay IS a little low, but blame the economy for that. Millions of people are looking for work and are willing to take anything, even at a cheaper pay rate just to be able to work. Is HG taking advantage of that overflow of talent willing to work for cheap, yeah, what smart money making company wouldn’t?
Chat techs do get better pay than they were making working at Long John Silvers, but it is not the best. I mean, for what they do, they cant expect to make big money. I was making about double what this guy stated he was making. But then again, I wasn’t a chat tech.
The Houston neighborhood is exactly that, the hood. The Austin office is in a real nice area of town and you dont have those issues. The Houston gym IS being used to store kitchen supplies, but I used to go in there and ride the exercise bike and watch tv with the chef all the time. Yes, the chef was related to a big wig and he was a little irresponsible, but he was a great guy none the less and I dont remember going hungry there at all. Some days it would be sandwich day, so what, at least its free food right?
Now that all being said… there are some downsides to working at the gator. Management is very strict on what you do. They want you to work, not play on gmail, facebook and surf reddit all day. That is better for the customers if the employees are actually working and not playing online. The management lifted the personal browsing ban and within a month, it was reinstated because of a few bad apples. The few mess it up for the rest. True, they monitor what you do on their network or in their buildings like hawks. Cameras everywhere, recording everything, again, that is due to the bad apples in the bunch. I remember someone getting fired for stealing ram out of the computers. If your property was being vandalized and stolen, wouldn’t you put up cameras too?
Yeah, some of their management staff are real tools (like Nathon H) and some of them are cool as hell and fun to hang out with after work. There can be bad apples in management too and it happens. Cant blame all of them for the few.
As for the Affiliate program… they see a LOT of fraud. You cant offer $125 per affiliate signup and not have thousands of scammers a week trying to get that money. The affiliate program does work though, if you are legit and dont try and game the system. The employee referral program is a bit iffy… you take a real gamble when you get chat techs hired, as most wont make it to the 90th day, so you dont get paid. Also, it is up to you to keep track of their hiring date, 90th day and for you to email affiliates@hostgator.com and ask them about it.
I am not going to comment on the all the different services and their limits… I will tell you that I have a reseller account and a baby shared account with HG and have had them for over 2 years… I havent had any trouble with either accounts.
I have a colleague that has a dedi with HG and that thing is fast and powerful. He has huge traffic spikes that would otherwise kill a shared account, but his dedi takes it like a man and keeps on going. Simply put, if you have a lot of traffic, move to a dedi, if you dont, stay with the shared or reseller accounts.
Also, be careful who you take advice from. Some of these chat techs seem bitter and pissy… probably for being fired or suspended for doing something idiotic or they could just be bitter because none of them finished high school and still smell like french fries from their last jobs and hate being the bottom of the barrel at HG.
If you chat techs want a better paying job with more respect, get some education, learn linux and cpanel and then go back to HG later. Being a chat tech is good training and you can take that training with you. Do they have cpanel at the Burger Barn?
November 4th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Do Host Gator employees steal source code, applications or other programs from successful Web site servers? I am considering setting up a Web site at Host Gator. But I have proprietary code that I do not want HG employees to steal. Should I just set up my own private server instead?
November 7th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Will Host Gator employees steal my source code from my programs on their Web servers? I am developing a Web-based service and do not want Host Gator employees to steal my proprietary code. Do you think HG employees would commit code theft?
November 8th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Purple Monkey’s comments seem a little extreme and exaggerated (made-up). But, I am a little wary of the so-called “pot heads” and “gamer nerds” at HG stealing my source code on my Web apps.
November 8th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
I have been receiving many emails (since I posted this) asking to remove this post and for the last time I will tell you (for the one who is sending the emails) I WILL NOT REMOVE THIS.
Thanks.
P.S: Oh and please do respect me and don’t call me bitch or something like this or should I make some screenshots from the emails and post it here?
December 5th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Hi,
I have had my issues with Hostgator and I cant prove what she says is the truth but for what I have had with them I kind believe what she is stating..
Beside and IT tech shouldn’t be paid 10$ even for starter a noob have not the acknowledge to support users and administer a Server.. its just plain not sense..
A IT employee should be paid to start minimum 20$ bucks so this way there wont be techs that aren’t qualified..
I am happy VPS user.. that really rocks.
December 7th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Alot of what is being said on this site is true.
Google lady whats is going one? How come my posts are not being shown?