Online Dating Blog

Why has my hosting become so slow? That is the question I found myself asking about my GoDaddy account after a few months of having this website. In this “off topic” article I wanted to discuss my problems for this site when using GoDaddy and why I chose HostGator as my new hosting company. I’ll also discuss how well things have gone since switching.

My Problems with GoDaddy

I can break my issues using GoDaddy into a few different categories but it really came down to one issue: inconsistency. To be more specific, these were the areas where I had issues:

Database Performance
This was the first area where I started noticing problems. I found that static web pages (like HTML pages) always loaded great at GoDaddy. However, as soon as I started using a database (both with Ruby on Rails and later with WordPress) the performance went downhill.

The confusing part about this was that some days my site would load in a few seconds while on others it would take up to 20 seconds to load one page! There were times the pages would never load at all and just timeout which is just unacceptable. With Google recently stating that page speed can affect a site’s search results, it became even more unacceptable.

GoDaddy is by far the biggest hosting provider and the general consensus they really struggle to balance their users across their databases. Things may be going along great for a long time and then a few active users are added to your database server and everything slows down.

Support Issues
Again, the problem for me (aside from having to pay long-distance for the calls) was inconsistency.

At times, I would call in and get bad advice, given with the greatest degree of confidence, only to find out later it was the wrong approach to solving the problem. But then other times I would get super helpful support where I could tell I was dealing with someone who knew the issues well and who was able to help me fix things pretty quickly. Also, GoDaddy was very quick to insist that software issues or setup were not their problem which was very aggravating. The problem with that argument is that it can very subjective and some support people seem very quick to jump to that explanation.

One Other Issue…
The last straw for me was when I got a virus on my site. This was at a time period where a large number of GoDaddy hosted sites were being compromised. The official word from the company was that this was a user issue because certain settings or software versions were incorrect. Well, I didn’t fall into any of the categories they listed as a user issue but no one could explain why I was affected. It was at this point that I had to admit to myself that it was time to find new hosting. After moving away from GoDaddy, I read of people who were being repeatedly compromised even after “fixing” things as instructed by GoDaddy so it seems that my hunch was right.

A Desire to Not Switch (and Tips if You Don’t Want to Switch)

I really didn’t want to leave GoDaddy. Often, I found the service to be adequate and honestly I didn’t want to deal with what I saw as the hassle of migrating to another service. As I’ve posted here in the past, I went out of my way to solve my issues within their hosting service. I feel like I helped solve two pretty big issues for myself and other users of GoDaddy, both of which I discussed on this site:

• WP Cache on GoDaddy 500 Error
• Setting up Ruby on Rails with GoDaddy

I also liked having one account for both my domains and my hosting (which I suspect is a big draw for many people who find themselves using GoDaddy). I spent two-and-a-half years using GoDaddy but eventually switching was finally worth the effort. As I began to take my blog more seriously, the idea that my site would be unavailable or extremely slow at random times just didn’t feel acceptable any longer.

Still, I’m sure there are a few people out there that would like to stick it out with GoDaddy, maybe for the same reasons I had. If this is you, I can give you a few recommendations for your site:

• Use W3 Total Cache: If you are using WordPress, check out W3 Total Cache. It won’t make things perfect but it will make things better. Just keep in mind, this will only take you so far. A slow database will still be a slow database and if you begin to attract significant traffic this will be inadequate
• Creating a New Database: This is a trick I found to work pretty well. First, backup your current database then create a new database in your hosting account. Restore your backup to this new database and then point your application (for me, WordPress) to the new database. This actually worked well for me a few times since (I’m guessing) I ended up on a new database server that had less users on it. This solution only temporarily helps since the new database can slow down as well. Keep in mind this is really a game of chance! You could actually end up on a slower server.
• Stay Up-to-Date: GoDaddy offers options such as upgrading your hosting software version which would do things like move your site from PHP4 to PHP5. I would recommend doing this as early as you can. Because GoDaddy is such a huge company, they are a big target for hackers and older software versions do create a bigger risk.

Why I Switched to HostGator

Based on my previous hosting experiences, I felt I had identified the two areas most important to me: performance and support. These two areas are where I started my search for new hosting.

As I’ll discuss, I decided on HostGator and I went with their Reseller Hosting. All the reviews I saw of Reseller Hosting raved about the performance. Now the Reseller Hosting is much more expensive than what I was paying at GoDaddy (I now pay $24 a month) but I wanted to luxury of not having to worry about the speed of my site. I figured that the Reseller Hosting was a nice stepping stone from shared hosting to something bigger (if I ever need anything bigger). Also, a great thing for me about the Reseller Hosting is that I was also able to move my wife’s website to the same reseller account so I could manage it from there, improving the speed of her site and helping offset the total cost of my hosting. Anyway, on to why I chose HostGator:

Support
No matter who you choose, every hosting company is going to have problems or issues. If it is impossible to totally avoid ever having problems, then I want to choose the hosting company that handles problems the best. I found the support reviews for HostGator to be universally good. I actually couldn’t find anyone who complained about it. Just looking at the top of their home page compared to GoDaddy shows that they care about support. Can you spot the difference between these two page headers?

If you look closely, you’ll see that support from HostGator is 100% free. Actually, it isn’t just free, HostGator is paying to support you with the 800 number. This is normal and should be expected but it is not the case with GoDaddy. I think a new rule for me having now used a support service that requires I pay long-distance to get support is that I will only ever use a service that makes getting support both easy and free.

Performance
HostGator was generally well reviewed for their performance. Where I couldn’t find anyone who complained of the support I was (eventually) able to find people who complained of the speed. Still, the majority of users wrote very good reviews for HostGator performance. Plus, as I researching hosting options I never found a hosting service where everyone was totally happy with performance, so it seemed as safe a bet as any other service. As I mentioned above, I went with Reseller Hosting to be safe but I have heard the HostGator shared servers perform relatively well.

Web Site Migration
In addition to those features that were important to me, HostGator also offered help on moving your old web site to their hosting server. After signing up, you can fill out a form to have them migrate things for you. You have to provide them your old account information but that’s to be expected if they’re going to do the work for you.

45-Days to Decide
The last thing that won me over was that they provided 45-days to decide if the service is working out and if it isn’t I could get my money back.

Unused Hosting Time
As far as I know, all hosting sites give you your money back for any unused time. While this isn’t specifically a reason to switch to HostGator, it is a reason why you shouldn’t feel like you would need to wait until your current hosting subscription ends.

My Experiences with HostGator To-Date

This article would have never been written if things hadn’t gone well but I’ll elaborate on how things have gone anyway:

Support
Within the first week of switching to HostGator, I needed support on testing WordPress before I updated my name servers. Working with HostGator’s support was kind of amazing. There was a point where I felt like we had done enough but the support person suggested that he continue to research the problem regardless. I actually felt bad that he took 2 hours to fix an issue for me just so I could test something before fully migrating my site. My first support call (and later a chat session) showed to me that everyone who talks good about HostGator’s support wasn’t joking around: they take it seriously!

Database and Hosting Performance
To-date, my site has been loading great. In over three months, I have had one page fail to load one time. Aside from that one instance, I’ve noticed no slowness and every page has loaded fine. I guess if you’re curious you can test for yourself by clicking around my site but my experience has been nothing but good.

While I’ve seen great performance improvements, I’ve seen even more dramatic improvements on my wife’s site since moving it to my reseller account. She runs a wedding photography business so her site is very image oriented and ran horribly slow before switching. Her pages wouldn’t load at all unless I used a WordPress caching plug-in. Now, they load in a few seconds consistently.

If you’d like to test the performance for yourself, just start loading random pages on this site or on my wife’s wedding photography site and judge for yourself. Unfortunately, I can’t show you what the performance was before but you can still see what it is like now.

Final Thoughts on Switching to HostGator

Overall, I’m thrilled with the choice I made for hosting. A few thoughts on if you are going to move away from GoDaddy:

• I kept my files on GoDaddy for the first 30 days of the 45-day guarantee at HostGator. I did this so that if I found HostGator inadequate I could just point my name servers back to the old hosting. While I doubt this would be necessary, I would still recommend making that option available to yourself although 30 days might be over-doing it.
• When you cancel your old hosting, I would recommend calling in to do it (yeah, you’ll have to pay long-distance once last time). I called in to cancel my hosting and they were very pleasant and understanding. I called in to be sure I was refunded for my unused time and to ensure that the refund went to the right account.
• If you decide to try HostGator, use the promotion code GREEN during the checkout process and it will save you 20%. This only works when you are signing up the first time, though.

I still don’t hate GoDaddy like some people seem to. They are still my preferred place to manage my domains. I think in some sense they are just too successful to support everyone using their service. If you have a small business where you are only going to ever need static pages (HTML/no databases) or where database performance is not an issue, I can see GoDaddy as a viable option (especially considering it is convenient to manage your hosting and domains from the same account). Otherwise, if you’re looking for new hosting my recommendation is HostGator. They’ve done right by me and based on what I’ve read, I’m not the only one.

Check out HostGator for yourself.