As soon as I signed up with HostGator, I was sent an invoice. I paid it through PayPal and within 5 minutes I had all the credentials I needed to get in and start administering the site.

For security reasons, SSH access is disabled by default. So from CPanel, I just had to request an SSH be turned on for my account. It was an easy, quick, and painless process as a ticket was created for my request. I kid you not, within 7 minutes of my request, I had an email informing me that the account was enabled and instructions on how to log in.

HostGator is such a breath of fresh air compared to my dealings with 1and1. In fact, let’s compare HostGator to 1and1 real quick. HostGator handled my ticket within 7 minutes. I submitted a help request to 1and1 5 hours ago, and I still have not heard anything about it.

The biggest hurdle with HostGator has been getting familiar with their architecture, but I’m over that hurdle now and all my sites are ready for prime time. However, 1and1 continues to drag their feet and not all the sites are pointing to HostGator yet. I guess in just 24 hours of dealing with HostGator, I’m already spoiled and expect other companies to act the same way.

I’ve tried numerous times to get them to move me to a new server or to find the offending sites and keep their server loads under control. Their typical response is, “We can pull your site up within 2-3 seconds so all appears to be well on our end”

Just today, I tried to pull up my site and look at the screenshot of the following load times:

In case the image isn’t clear, it took my site 18.8 seconds to load; that is utterly unacceptable! You should also be able to notice that anything NOT hosted by 1and1 (those not coming from creanium.net) is what’s loaded so quickly. The Flickr photos only took about 150-200ms each, whereas a simple 275 BYTE image took 5.51 seconds to load from my 1and1-hosted server. I’m quite happy to be paying for my 50 byte-per-second hosting service.

I’ve decided to let my wallet do the talking and I’m leaving 1and1. I’m also taking 2 other hosting packages with me that I had set up with 1and1 and I will steer all future customers far away from 1and1.

I’m currently looking for a new hosting provider so if anyone has any recommendations, I’m open to ideas.