Greetings, Gators,

We have some exciting news and several fun HostGator happenings to share with you this month.


Bandwidth Increased to 10TB on ALL Dedicated Servers!

All dedicated servers now include 10TB of Bandwidth standard (an increase of as much as 8.5TB FREE!). This includes ALL current/past dedicated server clients as well as new dedicated server orders. You don’t have to do anything to upgrade and it doesn’t cost any extra!

HostGator Loves Elephants!

By now, many of you have heard of the actions of a competitor of ours; GoDaddy’s CEO in the killing of an Elephant (An interview of his can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFsfchClBPk). We have welcomed a very large number of former GoDaddy clients over the last month due to outrage over his actions.

A client of ours recently showed us this video (it’s funny!). Check out the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rU_iegDCzs

We also had one of our clients and affiliates present us with a great HostGator “Elephant Safe Hosting” image below:

Feel free to share/use this image! …

Greetings, Gators!

We have another exciting newsletter in store for you. A lot has been going on this month, and there are a couple of big announcements to make!

We’ve outgrown our swamp! We’re expanding!

With so much growth over the last few years, we’re now outgrowing our headquarters office in Houston, Texas. So we bought a new, larger office building in Houston! It’s located on the North Loop and is a 170,000 Sq-ft Class A office building! There will be MANY more pictures to come once we get fully moved in and get it decked out, Gator style!

Here are a few pictures to tide you over in the meantime:

HostGator introduces Mobile Mail!

This month, we’re happy to announce the launch of our all-new mobile webmail system, which is available to all HostGator customers. The interface should work on all (or most) mobile phones, and it can be custom branded with your domain name! …

Greetings Gators,

South By Southwest:

SXSW is an annual music, film and technology festival in Austin, TX. In recent years, SXSW has been a large promotion and launching ground for new companies and products including, twitter, foursquare and more! There is a lot of anticipation on what will be happening at this year’s SXSW!

HostGator will be at SXSW this year! We are sponsoring the WordPress Party. If you’re going to be at SXSW, look around for us!

$25 in FREE Advertising Credits to grow your business:

We have partnered with Yahoo! + Bing to bring you $25 in FREE Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising credits to grow your business! …

Anyone who has ever watched the discovery channel for an extended period of time can tell you that if there’s one thing a gator is ill prepared to handle, it’s an ice storm. Due to the recent arctic cold fronts arrival here in Houston the HG staff got to experience first hand what a Texas ice storm is all about.

Leading up to the storm the mood around southeast Texas was very lively at the prospect of ultra-rare snowfall. Kids & parents alike were giddy with the notion of baking sheet sled rides, snow angels and of course the always highly anticipated snowball warfare. Unfortunately, that’s not what the residents of Houston received.

Instead, Houston got a nice healthy dose of Black Ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ice). Anyone who has ever driven on or around a Houston freeway can tell you that the fearless army of amateur demolition derby drivers that regularly patrol the cities roads need no help in creating a hazardous mess on a daily basis. The heavy coat of ice on all the overpasses and onramps that morning greatly increased their effectiveness.

Here’s a view of Houston’s transtar traffic map from 2/4/11. The red exclamation mark diamonds indicate either hazardous ice or wrecks:

Needless to say the management here at HostGator were shaking in our boots at the prospect of our entire Houston support staff being quarantined to their neighborhoods by ice slicked roads. Fortuntely the Houston gators sheer determination along with fairer weather conditions at our Austin location allowed us to keep our support volumes manageable. …

Gator Happenings

Greetings Gators,

2010 was a big year for HostGator. We have some exciting announcements in store for you in 2011, and a recap of some of the great events of 2010.

2010 Recap:

HostGator saw Record Growth:

In 2010, we grew by 2 MILLION Domains! We grew from 2.9 Million Domains Hosted in the beginning of 2010 to 4.9 Million+ Domains Hosted at the end of 2010!

We have grown to over 500 employees, and we’re growing every day! We had our largest training class ever start on Monday January 24^th, 2011 with 64 new HostGator support reps! This means much quicker response times for you, our valued clients.

Here are some of our Houston Office Employees!

We opened a new HostGator office in Austin, TX:

We sponsored a NASCAR Team: …

Greetings,

Back in 2007 we leaked a company email from Brent Oxley, then HostGator CEO, to our blog. Since that time we’ve grown by leaps and bounds (to the tune of 610%), became the 21st fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000, added a new office location in Austin, TX, and are over 450 employees strong. With those feats, we’ve had our fair share of challenges along the way, however we’re all ready to bring HostGator to the next level. Below is the bulk of an internal e-mail from Brent Oxley sent on Nov. 18th, showcasing some big changes going on at HostGator.

Hello Fellow Gators,

I want everyone to read this so I’m going to start off with some fireworks…

Every single Gator in the Houston office is getting a 10% raise starting immediately.

This raise will be reflected on your next paycheck and will not take the place of any upcoming reviews, bonuses or other compensation you have coming. A while ago I sent a news email stating that once we had more automaton in place every employee would receive a raise. We don’t have the automation yet, but we are nearly there with the new billing system so I’ve decided to give part of it in advance. I believe through automation we will become 22%-30% more efficient with staffing. I’m really hoping this 10% raise is just the start and I hope to pass along every penny we save from automation to all of you. While remaining understaffed, HostGator is completely bloated at the same time. What very few of you understand is that some of our most underpaid employees are making over $100,000 a year while some of our most overpaid employees are making $30,000 a year. There are a few of us that perform on such a low level that if everyone did likewise the company would end up bankrupt. Likewise there are other employees that do the equivalent work of four or more of their peers. At HostGator, the sky really is the limit to what you can make, but in order for this to be the case you must always be learning and growing. You truly do create your own destiny at HostGator.

Free Lunch for Everybody

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