Nicole Thomason's Blog: Making the Switch: Hostgator to BlueHost

Ever since I started blogging back in 2008 I’ve always used Hostgator. Hostgator’s customer service is excellent and I was up and running in no time. As my blog grew I began to have a lot more connection issues and timeouts happen which wasn’t super cool with me. I know switching from a shared server to a dedicated server could’ve probably helped but I wasn’t really a big enough blog to justify the cost. So, I dealt with it for awhile and then as soon as my monthly hosting costs were increased by $2 I knew it was time for me to make a change.

If you’ve been on this blog at all within the last few days you could probably tell I was up to something…

I was transferring my blog to a new host! If you were dealing with connection issues, timeouts or error pages…most of that was my own fault. Womp. Womp. I totally didn’t know anything about how to actually make the switch to a new host and I didn’t want to pay somebody $150. I’m stubborn and thrifty, a real DIY-er, but I knew I couldn’t attempt to do this all by myself.

I tempted to let my new host make the switch for me but then I thought of the wonderful world that is Fiverr. I paid a grand total of $16 to have my blog moved to a new host and I was also given copies of my backups. It would have only been $10.50 but I was screwing around with the blog and messed things up so I had to go back to my service provider and he helped me get it back up and running. Because of his willingness to help me and his patience with me, I opted to purchase another “gig” so he would get paid for my mishap. Now, I won’t be messing with it AT ALL.

My blog is now hosted by BlueHost and so far I’m really happy with it. One difference between Hostgator and BlueHost is that BlueHost makes you prepay for hosting and you must purchase a minimum of one year to get started. (With HostGator I paid monthly via automatic billing and my cost per month is now a few dollars lower, yay!) Your hosting package does include a domain which is pretty sweet. You can even purchase two or three years up front if you like. The more years you prepay the lower your “cost per month” is.