FatCow vs. HostGator vs. Pantheon

I honestly can't speak to whether FatCow would be well suited for large companies. But for independent contractors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs, FatCow is a perfect fit. If you're a novice user, their tools and interface allow you to build a site quickly. For advanced users, the clean interface makes it simple to find what you need. One-click installation of web applications is awesome. I haven't updated my site in a while, but they provide a great platform for those looking to showcase their portfolios and blogs.

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HostGator for email, domain and website hosting--delightful, 100% satisfied! Have always had ample capacity for company email needs, features work well. I have used it off and on for several organizations since 2011. HostGator website building is fairly straightforward, although I wouldn't recommend it for first-time web designing. The pluses on the HostGator website builder: great-looking themes, adequate webpage capacity, really cool scrolling capabilities, which trends well now. Easier than building a WordPress website from scratch, which can also be done for free in HostGator. I'd say it's limited compared to feature-rich WP, but it designs as nicely as Wix.

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Pantheon is excellent for medium-large websites that require high availability and a managed workflow. It would be inappropriate for small websites because of the cost or for situations where more control of the environment is appropriate. We find it useful because we rarely do anything outside of the Drupal application.

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• Flexibility of how you want to use it (WordPress, HTML coding, Wix, etc)
• Unlimited storage for all your website needs
• Reasonable rates as compared to other hosting services

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• The pricing is a big feature for this hosting company
• Every three years when the hosting contract is coming to an end, they offer a reduced fee to upgrade your server plan, which is more cost effective than renewing at the regular rate for whatever plan you're currently using.
• The customer service workers are professional and friendly.

• Effective use of our codebase deployment and implementation.
• The dashboard functionality and general stability and security are excellent.
• The server is quite consistent, and if you need assistance from the support team, they are very quick to respond.
• Automatic updates let me ensure that my customers have safe websites without increasing my own expense.
• The team offers excellent assistance and help for chat.

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• I was very disappointed with my initial renewal. I understood that the price I had paid was an introductory price, but the renewal rate was much higher than I anticipated. They could be more transparent with their renewals.

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• Support could be better, it takes a long time to connect with somebody
• You need to pay extra for a backup you can rely on
• SiteLock is sold separately, but did not help when we were hacked
• Site seems to slow down from time to time

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• Pricing structure has too large of a jump between Basic and Performance plans
• Have run into issues with prescribed WP updates not working through dashboard and having to do manually.
• Pantheon site dashboard occasionally is unavailable (the site is never affected though)

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Because we have in house technical support to compensate the lack of quality HostGator tech support, and because the price continues to be affordable the business is likely to continue using HostGator. They provide what the business needs and we have in house support to maintain it.

The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.

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Pantheon is an easy system, especially to the users with previous experience with other similar platform and the interface is clear enough to easily understand how things operates. On the Cloud deployment everything also works effectively and the technical team from Pantheon community are very helpful on providing the necessary assistant to their customers.

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While you will get support from HostGator, it seems to be a different level from 8-10 years ago. It may take 15-20 minutes to get someone on chat, and unless you follow up, I've found followup email support to take a couple of days. If you stick with it, though, you will get support, and I've never had a problem they couldn't help with.

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Even tier 1 Pantheon chat and ticket support are knowledgeable, competent, and useful. They routinely understand and promptly resolve urgent, complex, and/or unusual issues that other hosts need to escalate to tier 2 or tier 3 support personnel. I honestly can't think of a truly negative or disappointing support experience in the years I've used Pantheon hosting for client websites.

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Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.

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Before choosing FatCow, I looked into a few services. As this was 9 years ago, the options weren't as diverse as they are now. GoDaddy was the most popular at the time, but the rates were significantly higher for a smaller package, and they had a pretty sexist ad campaign at the time that really turned me off of their services. Since choosing FatCow, I have looked into using WP Engine as I do my website in WordPress, but it wasn't worth it to move it over at the time and I elected to stick with what I had.

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I prefer HostGator over GoDaddy. HostGator does have better and more reliable customer support, and the user interface and user experience are overall much more friendly and easier to use. GoDaddy does have downtime associated with their hosting in my experience, but I have not experienced that with HostGator.

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Although it may seem a good fit for a company that needs extra control over the deployment process and development process, for a firm that is mainly concentrating on SEO, it would be an overkill. Pantheon provides that sweet automation that allows us to shed some weight on development and focus on our business activities.

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• Integration of Google Analytics made it simple to see where traffic comes from.
• Ease of use frees me up to focus on communicating ideas rather than fighting with software to make it work.
• Stability makes it perfect to showcase my work.

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• Usage of resale options easily quadrupled the money I was spending on HostGator
• Trust in the host has to be earned, and HostGator has not retained that for me -- it will be a while before I feel confident in their uptime again
• Overall, HG has been a positive impact on my business as a web developer

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• Pantheon allows ordinary sites to excel esp if there is consistent development going on behind the scenes.
• Website management is super easy and the hosting fee gets paid off as you save on developer hours.
• Expensive for those who are not consistently developing on the platform, there are other options out there at better price points.

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