After hearing a lot about Hostgator, I decided to use their services for hosting my website. I got their level 3 VPS plan for a sum of Rs 25, 400. Now, my website is no traffic heavy website and sees a max of 1000 -1500 visitors a day. It was working fine on a shared plan before but I wanted to switch to a faster service, so I chose VPS level 3(which is more than sufficient). Since the first day of hosting, the site was down showing an error establishing database connection. I called up the customer care and they fixed the problem only to return a couple of hours later. It kept on happening for 2-3 days at which point of time they told me that the problem was with the website(which was perfectly working on the cheapest shared plan at Bigrock) earlier. I even showed the website to two professionals who gave it a clean chit.
Anyway, after a week of fake assurances from their side I applied for a refund. But instead of returning the entire amount, they deducted Rs 1200 for no reason. I called up the CC again to which they informed me that even though the hosting is 100% refundable, I’ll have to pay for the cpanel usage based on pro rated basis. I payed 6000 rs for the Cpanel so maths tells me for a week’s usgae it can be at max 300 Rs. At this point of time , the sale reps on the phone said he’s raised a ticket. Later, I receive a mail telling me that even the hosting costs for the time it has been used, contrary to their previous mail, which said hosting had a full refund policy for 45 days.
My Advice, go for better companies like godaddy or bigrock. Not only was Hostgator’s VPS terrible, but their excuses for deducting from my refund and the way they changed with every email left me surprised and amused.