Greetings, Gators,

Another month already!? We know we’re a little behind on this month’s newsletter, sorry about that! We once again have some great announcements for you this month though.

We Launched Unlimited Shared Windows Hosting:

We are excited to announce that we launched Windows shared hosting services last month. More information can be seen at www.hostgator.com/windows-hosting.shtml

We’re offering unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, Parallels Plesk control panel, ASP/ASP.net Support, Microsoft SQL 2008 (R2) and many more features!

Simply check out the new windows hosting page for more information.

New SiteBuilder! Beautiful Designs coming soon!

After MONTHS of searching and testing out more site builders than I originally thought were even available, we have found the best – and our clients deserve nothing but the best!

We will be introducing BaseKit, FREE to all of our clients within the next 60 days (at most).

Why BaseKit? Here are just a couple of the reasons we chose BaseKit:

• Extremely easy to use
• Completely Drag and Drop
• Huge List of beautifully designed templates that you can customize
• Tons of additional widgets for you to implement (Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, RSS, Flickr, forms, YouTube, PayPal, calendar, and many more)!
• Supports multiple Languages
• Can add/edit your own HTML and CSS
• Can import PSD designs
• Easy styling tools

And many, many more! …

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! …

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: …

QuickInstall
We are proud to announce the deployment of our new in house developed script installer, QuickInstall.

QuickInstall has been rolled out to all shared servers
at this time in its last test phase. To use QuickInstall, just login to your cPanel and click the QuickInstall icon.

QuickInstall is a HostGator designed auto installer, similar to Fantastico, that allows you to install common scripts with just a few clicks of your mouse! All programming for QuickInstall and the software library for QuickInstall is in house, which means faster updates and more flexibility. For example when WordPress 3.0 was released, it was updated and ready to be installed in our software library within a few hours compared to days with Fantastico.  No longer do you have to wait weeks to get the latest versions, with QuickInstall you will have almost instant updates available at your fingertips!

If you are on one of our dedicated servers or have your own vps here at HostGator and would like QuickInstall, just submit a ticket at https://tickets.hostgator.com.  One of our Administrators will be glad to install this for you, free of charge.

QuickInstall is still in a test phases, so if you see any issues please let us know by submitting a ticket.

WordCamp Houston

HostGator is proud to be a sponsor of the first WordCamp in Houston, TX.  WordCamp is a conference that takes place in different cities around the globe, focusing on WordPress and all things related to WordPress.  When it was announced that WordCamp would be coming to Houston for the first time we had to jump on board as a sponsor!  The conference sold out almost instantly, however we were able to secure 10 tickets for our customers and have created a contest on twitter.  All you need to do to enter is tweet this on twitter “@hostgator Sponsored WordCamp Houston (@wordcamphtx) August 7th, I want to be there! http://bit.ly/dl3gai #wchtx” and we will enter you into a drawing for the
passes. …

In 2006 HostGator.com moved from Boca Raton, FL. to Houston, TX.  We made the move because we could not find enough employees in Florida, also we ran out of space in the tiny office we occupied at the time.  We are proud to announce that we once again are  faced with this problem and are expanding even more!  We have chosen Austin, Tx as our newest location.

We closed on a 102,000 SQFT office building on the East side of Austin and have already started working on getting the office setup. We have been working diligently this past week closing on the office and getting everything in line, just as we did here in Houston back in 06.

When we moved to Houston a lot of our employees stayed in the office for the first few months. We are going to be doing the same in Austin as long as zoning permits it.   We are already looking to add a special area called ‘tent city’ for employees to sleep until they get situated in Austin.  If you have never bunked with 10+ System Administrators you are missing out!  Brent himself will be staying in the office if zoning permits. …

Finding a reliable web host can be more challenging than wrestling a penguin in a tub full of apricot jelly. I know this all too well after going through a few web hosting horror stories of my own. Having a reliable web host is vitally important for business owners and entrepreneurs whose uptime can make or break their business.

A reliable web host can mean the difference between paying your rent or standing out on the corner with a tea cup in your hand.

Since finding the right web host is such an important task, here are ten ways to tell if your current web host sucks -

…

HostGator recently reached 200,000 active customers and we are on pace to break 300,000 within a year.

I remember when I’d be out celebrating if HostGator managed to get two signups in a week. Now, we’re seeing thousands of signups a week. Back in the day, my celebrating consisted of nothing more than dropping the Ramen noodles or the tuna can I had in my hands and grabbing some sushi for an hour before scrambling back to work. At the time, I was a poor college student who invested every penny I had back into the business I was building.

The HostGator.com domain was registered on October 10, 2002 and here are some statistics about how many active customers we’ve had at a few points since then.

• 2/1/2003: 112 active customers
• 2/1/2004: 1,031 active customers
• 2/1/2005: 6,892 active customers
• 2/1/2006: 21,434 active customers
• 2/1/2007: 50,213 active customers
• 2/1/2008: 92,752 active customers
• 2/1/2009: 157,432 active customers
• Today: 200,000+

How HostGator Came To Be:

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. In sixth grade, I sold candy at school and had all the kids in my neighborhood working for me. When I was 14, my cousins and I had a business where we sold watermelons from a truck on the side of a road. The deal we offered was simple, but effective: “2 for $5.”

Ain't no Glory in Selling Watermelons

It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school that I got hooked on trying to make money on the Internet. What sucked me in was the paid to surf programs such as AllAdvantage, Bepaid.com, Cashfiesta, and the like. These companies claimed they would pay you to surf the Internet while looking at ads. I created my first website on a service much like GeoCities and was able to generate over 50,000 referrals between all the programs I was enrolled in. One by one, I learned that all of the programs were a scam. I made $65 when I was entitled to over a million. …