Its exactly two years since I abandoned APTHost and relocated eleven sites to Hostgator. I thought I would write an update to earlier reviews

Over the course of the last two years I have had exceptional service and support from the Hostgator team – via live chat, their support system and via twitter. Granted there have been occasions when my sites have been down but each and every time this has occured Hostgator have been on the case almost immediately and remedied the issue. When the load of one of my clients site was exceptionally high they offered help and advice which enabled me to remedy the issue (with solutions I now operate on all my wordpress sites in order to keep them healthy, lean and ticking over well).

Support

As I have touched on above the support received has always been exceptional. The support ticket have always been responded to promptly with knowledgeable and helpful responses. I have received exceptional advice and support via the live chat system and, when needed, friendly support via twitter. They have always been on hand when required, which is as much as you require from any host.

Reliability

In all the hosts I have used over the years Hostgator has the award for reliability. There has been occasions when my sites I have been down but this has been rare and I could always trust Hostgator to address the issue as soon as aware. My previous host suffered days of downtime at a time owing to server issues – and this was the deciding factor in my move to Hostgator. Reliability is extremely important if the vast majority of your income comes from your websites!

Value for Money

With support and reliability assured you would expect to pay a premium for Hostgator but they are actually exceptionally competitive. As I have a large number of websites (both my own, friends and clients) I have a reseller account.

Reseller Plans start at just $24.95 per month – with 50GB of Disk Space and 500GB Bandwidth. For that you can host unlimited domains. They even offer your billing software free of charge (I utilise WHMCS which I think is exceptional and will, in time, be reviewed here seperately). My license came free of charge with Hostgator.

Some of my clients have their own account on Hostgator´s general web hosting and are, to date, exceptionally pleased with their level of service. Their webhosting plans start at $3.96 per month for a single site with unlimited webspace and bandwidth. Their business hosting plan for me is the most value – comes with the ability to host unlimited domains, has unlimited diskspace and bandwidth and a free private SSL and IP! – at just $10.36 per month.

If you requirements are more demanding check out their VPS Hosting from $15.95 per month and Dedicated Servers from $139 per month.

Green Credentials

• - They have invested in Texas Wind Energy to help offset server emissions
• - Climate Friendly, Wind Powered, Certified RECs (View Green Web Hosting Details)
• - HostGator purchases certified Renewable Energy Credits (REC’s)

Overall

I am as happy with Hostgator now as I was in the first few months of moving to them. They combine excellent service and hosting at a price I can afford. They are the hosts I recommend to all my design and development clients not because I am an affiliate but because I firmly believe they are the best hosting company for their sites – if I didnt I would not utilise them myself.

As someone who cares about the impact their lives on the environment I always keep an eye out on good deals from “Green Webhosts”. Originally, when these companies started to hit the market, they were priced out of my reach and I was unable to give them a try. It was recently recommended I should try Super Green Hosting. A short while I signed up for their Reseller plan to give them a try – here is my review!

Cost of Super Green Hosting

Hosting with Super Green Hosting is considerably cheaper than I expected – with standard hosting starting at just $4.95 per month for the following:-

• FREE Domain Name
• FREE Site Builder
• FREE Instant Setup
• Unlimited Hosting Space
• Unlimited GB’s Of Transfer
• Anytime Money Back

If you have several accounts you will want to try their Reseller account which is just $24.95 per month (current offer $19.95). This gives you

• 75 GB Disk Space
• 750 GB Bandwidth
• Unlimited Domains
• Private Name Servers

Unlike some green hosts I would say they manage to compete pretty successfully with standard hosts which is a serious plus in their favour.

Reliability of Super Green Hosting

I received my sign up details pretty quickly but experienced issues for approximately 12 hours because, although I could access my WHM, I could not add new accounts. I queried support and it was remedied fairly quickly.

Thus far however reliability has been very strong. None of the sites I setup with them have experienced any downtime and I have not encountered a single issue with load times or reliability.

Control Panel for Super Green Hosting accounts

Unlike some hosts who use their own control panels Super Green Hosting choses to offer industry standard which I personally prefer. Each hosting account comes with the latest CPanel with all the usual additionals intact – including Fantastico Deluxe. Resellers, as usual, have WHM.

Customer Support

Very strong. Initially when I went to sign up with Super Green Hosting they were experiencing difficulty with their billing system. Finding myself encountering error 503 messages whenever I tried to sign up I decided to contact Live Support. The issue was explained well, albeit with a short delay between questions and answers, and I was told to return one hour later. To be perfectly honest I did find this off putting at first but chose this time to give them the benefit of the doubt and proceed with the order.

The twice I contacted Customer Support they were very helpful. Responses seem to have a small delay but nothing out of the ordinary.

Green Credentials of Super Green Hosting

There are many green webhosts out there who claim environmentally friendly hosting when, in fact, they are not. Super Green Hosting are very upfront and detail all their credentialson on their Green Ethics page. They were, in fact, one of the first companies offering green hosting. Here is an excerpt from their site

As a Super Green customer, your website will be hosted on one of our super reliable “Green” Dell servers. These servers produce 20% less CO2 than the average server, for the other 80% we are INVOLVED in a tree planting project which aims to neutralize our (and your) affects on the environment.

Super Green Hosting is a carbon neutral project meaning your website will not have any effect on the environment. If you want to go a step further and reverse the affects of global warming your kind generosity is welcomed by our special green addons that will allow you to plant more trees, purchase green energy certificates for your website and much much more. Super Green Hosting provides users with Green badges for to display on your website and show you really care about the impact your website has on the environment.

Overall experience of Super Green Hosting

All in all I was very impressed by the standard of service offered from Super Green Hosting. The sites I currently host with them have been loading well and are behaving themselves tolerably! The customer service was professional and I did not have to wait very long on either live support or for a response from their support ticket system.

I would heartily recommend them to anyone who is in search of a green webhost who does not compromise on service or reliability. Very impressed. Intending to merely try them for a month to put them to the test I now intend to keep my reseller account open with them to host some of my own sites and, should my clients chose to try our green hosting, some of theirs too.