I have been reading on some other forums that Hosting Gator may be acquired by Endurance International Group in the next 3-4 weeks. Has anyone else heard about this?
I have 3 account at hostgator and heard nothing about this…
Yeah, heard about it. There’s a lot of speculation whether this means profound negative changes over at Hostgator. I hope, and not without reasons, that it won’t mean much change. EIG did a terrible job when it bought hosts and switched them to its vDeck control panel, firing staff etc. They haven’t done that with Bluehost and Justhost, which are cPanel based hosts. As a result, there was little to be heard after the change in ownership.
I am guessing it will be a down for HG. EIG plain crap! First thing is they replace the backup feature with some of their own which makes it very very difficult to migrate sites out of them to a cpanel webhost.
“Very difficult” seems too strong. Migrations can still be done, and it’s not all that complicated. I don’t think it’s unnatural for a host to consider not making it especially easy to move to another host.
It is a disadvantage though given that some hosts offer free migrations if you come from another cPanel host, but without and easy/automated way to do that transfer, the customer will probably have to do it himself the old fashioned way.
I haven’t heard anything about it. If it is true I hope it doesn’t effect their service. Hostgator has been one of the best.
This isn’t good. My webhost, which I love, was purchased by Host Gator 2 years ago. Fortunately, quality did not suffer one bit and, in fact, it has gotten better. It was excellent before, and even moreso after the acquisition. Host Gator bought it to target the middle to upper end of the hosting market. Host Gator is, as we all know, an overseller. I hate oversellers. I won’t do business with them.
Go Daddy was purchased last year. It seems the hosting market is consolidating. Go Daddy was pure crap. Can you imagine a world where there are only 3 or 4 big web hosting companies and they are all crap? Wouldn’t that be horrible?
I also didn’t hear about it, but not sure if they will sell it, its getting bigger and bigger…
From what I’ve read, HostGator did sell 
Httpalive or anyone else, do you have any confirmation sources or links to confirm the sale? It seems open to rumor and speculation at this point and I would enjoy reading some solid information about the acquisition.
It has not been officially confirmed, but I emailed Brent (HG’s CEO) and he confirmed it to me. A couple other people on WebHostingTalk had the same experience with Brent. I explained the situation and have a copy of the emails here. I think an official announcement should be coming soon; it would take a very strange event to stop the deal from going through.
Thanks for the udate Chr. I’m curious to see how the official announcement will be presented.
Is the host you were referring to ASO? They were purchased by HostGator?
Seems that EIG has already started making HostGator worse as I’m seeing new complaints everyday from previously satisfied HG customers.
Yes, ASO is my host. When A Small Orange was originally acquired from its founder back in 2010, it was purchased by the same guy who owned HostGator. We were assured that A Small Orange would be operated as a separate company and target a little higher end of the hosting market than HostGator did (which targets the absolute cheapskates in the industry who want to use as much resources as possible for next to nothing). For the most part, ASO was operated as a separate company, at least as far as what we customers experienced. And to be honest, after being acquired it got even better than it was before. Overall, it was a good acquisition. No complaints and only praise thus far.
When I read that HostGator was sold, I was a bit fearful. But I’ve read nothing and heard nothing about ASO going to EIG. Just the thought makes me feel sick (seriously). A Small Orange is only a tiny fraction of the size of HostGator. I don’t even know if EIG would be interested in a relatively small host. Companies like EIG are looking for mass and scale and usually don’t bother with smaller players. Big companies don’t usually expend the time and resources to buy small players. Not to mention that EIG tends to target a different (lower) market segment than ASO does and it would be serious mismatch. One reason ASO customers are with the company is because it isn’t like Go Daddy or EIG. An EIG acquisition would not go over well with ASO customers.
I, like you, have been reading complaints about HostGator on various web hosting boards recently. HostGator was (and still is) an overseller and I don’t think anybody serious about hosting would ever host on an overseller. But as far as oversellers went, HostGator got mostly positive reviews and had some very enthusiastic customers, until recently. Having hosted on two oversellers, I would never do business with any company that offers “unlimited” or a ridiculously huge amount of resources because some customers will indeed try to take advantage of that and quality will suffer. You can’t have 150 or 500 or more customers on a shared server all trying to use unlimited resources and data transfer. You can’t. There is a limit to how many requests a server can process and how much data it can transfer.
All I know is that there is a huge difference between a good hosting company and a bad one. When you got a good host, you want it to stay that way forever. But the nature of the hosting industry is that companies are started, they grow, and then they are sold to larger competitors. I don’t like it, but that is the way it is. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
A lot of customers are worried about the “take over” but from what I can tell it will make HG better. Let’s be honest here. Their service is very subpar in my opinion and this take over will only make it better. I just don’t see EIG making things worse.