Deceptive Hostgator Marketing
November 25, 2008 by Steve Hetrick · 1 Comment
Almost daily we receive messages from new customers or current customers interested in purchasing new hosting or upgrading. Very often the message contains a question about whether we can match Hostgator’s unlimited bandwidth and disk space hosting packages. The short answer is no, we can’t match Hostgator’s packages simply because we won’t lie to our customers. That’s exactly what it would take to match a Hostgator package and that’s exactly what Hostgator is doing. Surprisingly, the owner of Hostgator freely admits this.
I’m writing this today not because I harbor any ill will against Hostgator. Even though I do not agree with their less than truthful method of marketing, I’m sure they are a fine hosting company. We don’t normally care or comment on what other hosts do except in this case we find ourselves having to constantly answer questions asking how Hostgator can offer unlimited resources. We are writing this message and posting it publicly so current customers and new customers can read and understand our policy and philosophy and why we will not attempt to match a Hostgator unlimited package or any host that uses such deceptive marketing practices.
We can not in good conscience offer hosting packages with unlimited resources because there is no such thing as unlimited disk space, bandwidth and domains. The fact is Hostgator is simply offering eye candy. They can not deliver the resources they advertise at the price they advertise. No host can because all hosting resources are finite and cost money.
A SIMPLE ANALOGY
I’ll use the example of an all you can eat buffet used in one of Hostgator’s own explanations to illustrate and clarify.
Imagine you go to an all you can eat buffet or salad bar. It’s advertised as “unlimited”, all you can eat. Sounds great but there are a couple problems with this claim. First, you know the management is not going to allow you to eat all the food on display and in the kitchen. They have other customers to feed, they can’t afford it, and the food will run-out eventually. They enticed you into their eatery appealing to bargain hunting, hunger and, let’s face it, greed.
Second, the management knows it is impossible for you to eat all of the food no matter how big your appetite or your capacity to pack it in. In the event you somehow figure out a way to gobble up every bit of food available, before that can happen you would be asked to leave on a technicality. Some excuse like… there isn’t any food left for other customers, or your food eating is causing nausea to the customers, or the restaurant itself is closing because the kitchen overloaded.
All you can eat buffets and unlimited hosting packages both appeal to human nature to get as much as possible at the lowest price possible, even if deep down you know it’s too good to be true.
Let’s review a basic Hostgator hosting package.
Plan: Baby
Disk Space: UNLIMITED
This is false. There is no such thing as unlimited. When you start to use too much space, you will be asked to leave or upgrade and the reason cited will be overuse of CPU resources. See Hostgator’s terms of service.
Bandwidth: UNLIMITED
This is also untrue. There is no such thing as unlimited. When you start to use too much bandwidth, you will be asked to leave or upgrade and the reason cited will be overuse of CPU resources. See Hostgator’s terms of service.
Domains Allowed: UNLIMITED
This is yet another fib. Hostgator is offering you 1 top-level domain with unlimited addon domains. Addon domains are just sub-directories with domains pointing to them and not even ideal for SEO. Create too many addon domains in one account and you will be looking at resource usage overloads along with a weak SEO position for your sites.
To be fair, all hosts do a certain amount of overselling, but Hostgator takes it to an extreme level that becomes an outright lie and false advertising. They are banking on the fact their customers will not understand the nature of hosting resources and how they are being oversold, and the fact that a majority of customers will never use more than a tiny fraction of their bandwidth and disk space. They are also gambling that if they discuss it freely and expose themselves for lying and inflating hosting resources, this will divert attention from the lie itself and diffuse criticism. Again…dishonest but very slick. If you visit the Hostgator blog it seems the strategy is successful, unless critical posts have been deleted. Amazingly some of the customers are thanking the owner for being open and honest about the deceptive advertising.
http://blog.hostgator.com/2007/10/06/selling-out/
You can see how the the owner himself happily explains how he uses these less than truthful tactics to deceive customers into thinking they are getting unlimited bandwidth and disk space.
http://blog.hostgator.com/2007/10/06/selling-out/ He conveniently doesn’t mention the unlimited domain name fib. Astonishingly many Hostgator customers seem to support the fibs and the justification.
In summary, we choose not to lie, scam, or insult our customer’s intelligence by promising something that can never really be delivered. Instead we provide generous, realistic amounts of resources at each price tier that we know we can deliver with an understanding to not automatically suspend accounts going over bandwidth and disk space. We consult with customers to review resource usage and make package adjustments if needed. This is the honest sensible approach.
If you need the illusion that you can have unlimited resources for $6.95, and that’s your overriding criteria for choosing a host, then Hostgator is the host for you. We can guarantee you that you will never use the resources promised. And if you try, keep DataWebPRO in mind when you are booted from the Hostgator servers for using too much CPU resources.
If you still have questions about resources and why Hostgator packages are really just smoke and mirrors, submit a private comment in the the help desk at http://support.dtw88.net or post a public comment here in this thread.
Thanks,
Steve
