ArJ.uNo

Well, I said before that hostgator has launched Indian operations on this post. Which is actually good for all of the Indian users out there. But do you think that the services of the two are same? I would rather say they are not even comparable.

I review both of them as I have hosting accounts on Hostgator.com and Hostgator.in, one of my site i.e. MyWebStay.com and arj.uno are on the Indian servers and dotKB.com is on the Texas server. So here’s the differences i found which I would like to share with you.

1. Hostgator.in is expensive as you need to pay 10.3% extra as service tax. [1 point for Hostgator.com]
2. Hostgator.com is far so there is latency problem (means data will take more time to reach you), Hostgator.in is near and it is about 4x times faster [1 point to Hostgator.in]
3. Hostgator.com has a better technical support, the indian servers are expensive due to expensive network so Hostgator India has planned to cut cost by reducing their staff.[1 point to Hostgator.com]
4. You can pay your web host in Indian currency and there is no foreign exchange fluctuations for you. [1 point to Hostgator.in]
5. Hostgator.com is offering discounts upto 25% on their hosting plans and there are other coupons too, like First month for 1 cent. [1 point to Hostgator.com]
6. Hostgator.in gives discounts according to Indian festivals, so it gives you a feel of home. [1 point to Hostgator.in]
7. Hostgator.com has working affiliate system, whereas hostgator.in has no affiliate system. [1 point to Hostgator.com]

All the above points are what other peoples are discussing and there is nothing technicalities invloved in them. You can even check that out even if you don’t have a hosting account. But below is the comparison that provides things which you will probably came to know after buying. You should seriously consider them.

1. Hostgator.in will not give you adword credit
2. Hostgator.in is new.
3. Hostgator.in is not Green as Hostgator.com is.
4. Never go for a “Business Shared Plan”, as its of no use to you. Since won’t be getting a toll free number, its better to take the “Baby Plan” and put IP/SSL as addon, this would be cheaper and effective.
5. The system used as shared server on USA servers have 16 cores CPU, whereas the System used in Indian servers have 4 cores CPU.
6. Hostgator.in is not providing Windows Shared Hosting.
7. On bandwidth analysis I found that Hostgator USA servers give an average download rate of  4-5MBPS and peak is 8-9 MBPS that I have noticed. Whereas Hostgator.in servers gave average download speed of 300-400KBPS, however the peak level noticed by me was 5-6MBPS. I used wget tool in terminal to do that.
8. When it comes to dedicated servers you can see that Indian dedicated servers have a 1000GB-2000GB bandwidth, whereas USA dedicated servers have 10,000GB bandwidth.
9. Even number of IP’s assigned by Indian servers are less than USA servers.
10. Moreover the System spec of USA servers are far better than the Indian systems.
11. Indian servers are slow and sluggish, so as its support team. I was very happy with the support I got from Hostgator USA, means you just need to mail them and they use to reply within 15-20 min. Here even a very small and simple query takes 8-12 hours for reply.

Despite so many drawbacks why am I still using Hostgator India services, well here’s why:

1. My sites when working on Hostgator India servers are still fast (In terms of processing).
2. Even though it’s 10.3% expensive than american servers, its still it is cheaper than other Web Hosting companies in India.
3. The major reason is that one of my site wiz. CommentIndia.com uses Facebook Integration and there needs to be very less latency (in terms of ping time) to function it properly. This was not working well in the American servers as still in India many people use slow and poor quality networks (Edge, GPRS and High speed wireless internet are poor quality networks for me). Ping times on these network for USA servers is sometimes >1200ms, the same in Indian server is about ~400ms. And my Facebook intergation works well in that.
4. I had a good time with Hostgator with last couple of years and I believe that they will improve their services in Indian operations and make them usable for people those who had normal hosting requirements (Unlike specific hosting requirements like I had).

I still love Hostgator, if you are planning to get a Hostgator USA server use coupon code “25percentlower” to get 25% discount or use coupon “gatorfor1cent” to get First month for 1 cent. On the other hand if you are planning to go for Hostgator India server use coupon code “25percentlowerindia” to get 25% discount.

For further queries, feel free to contact me at [email protected]