HostGator is among the most popular hosting companies in the world today with millions of websites hosted on their servers. Recently HostGator was bought off by EIG (Endurance International Group) for a whopping 225 million dollars. Unfortunately, this didn’t go down well with their customers, many of them complaining about deterioration in the performance. So, what actually went wrong and how much truth does this concern hold? Was this something temporary or the quality has gone down for ever? Let’s have a look.
We eat up the competition, they said; and EIG bought them over to do it for them!
What actually changed after the takeover?
EIG is a big player of the web hosting industry that has been eating up competition like crazy. Many of the big brands you and I know of are owned by them; Bluehost, FatCow, HostMonster, iPage, VPSLink, Directi, BigRock and many more. And now HostGator too is in their list. Whenever EIG takes over a hosting company, it is obviously not for killing the brand. In fact, they are known to maintain the separate identity of their brands so well that most of the customers don’t even know that their web host is owned by EIG.
Except for some personnel here and there, the staff and work culture too remain the same. Their main focus is on consolidating the datacenters and other major infrastructure. So, after the takeover, they have been moving over from leased Softlayer datacenters to EIG owned datacenter farm in Utah. This process of upgrade/migration was marked by quite a noticeable downtime every now and then. All HostGator hosted sites went down for several hours when EIG’s Utah datacenter had some unexpected issues on August 2 and December 31, 2013. This was enough to send the wave of panic through the customers. It also came down in the list of recommended web hosts of many review sites, most of which had been hitherto ranking them in the topmost position.
But how fair would it be to say that there has been a constant decline in performance? Though it may not be practical to expect everything to be same as before, they for sure need some time to settle down with their new parents. Except for some hiccups of the early stages of acquisition, HostGator services remain the same with nothing more than just specialisations linked to the acquisition.
While it is still too early in the transaction to determine any major changes, it’s safe to predict the hosting company will be offering some attractive offers to current and new clients for hosting plans. One major thing many people haven’t realized is that only the company’s ownership has changed hands and the staff and company heads remain the same. Many global companies have been sold to new owners in the past, but at the same time they have continued delivering high quality services to the consumer. The same should hold good for HostGator as well and their campaign, even intensified further to increase customer confidence with the company.
An expansion that sees the unification of hosting companies
EIG is not set on acquiring only HostGator but has their eyes set on acquiring several other hosting companies and building a huge network. This has been noted with companies like Lafarge Cement which today owns a large percentage of cement companies in the world. This results in the company offering the products and services for lower prices since they are tapping in a much larger client base as they expand.
Conclusion
There is no reason to worry about HostGator’s recent ownership changeover and clients should actually look forward to seeing some major price cuts and improved services in the future. By observing previous Company ownership changes there is much to look forward to with the hosting services in the future.
I think BlueHost is comparatively better regarding service. There is not much difference in the pricing though.