HostGator

HostGator is a Houston-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in Austin, Texas.

HostGator.com, LLC
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryWeb hosting
FoundedOctober 22, 2002 (2002-10-22)[1]
FounderBrent Oxley[2]
HeadquartersHouston, Texas, United States
ProductsWeb services, Cloud services
Revenue$100 million (2012)[3]
Number of employees
1,000 (2012[4])
ParentEndurance International Group (2012–present)
Websitewww.hostgator.com

History

HostGator was founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at Florida Atlantic University.[1] In 2006, the company moved from the original office in Boca Raton, Florida to a new 20,000 square foot building in Houston, Texas.[1][5] In June 2006, the company opened its first international office in Canada.[1]

In 2008, Inc. Magazine ranked HostGator in its list of fastest growing companies at 21st in the United States, and 1st in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas area.[6] The same year, HostGator decided to make their hosting service green by working with Integrated Ecosystem Market Services.[7]

In 2008, HostGator prepared for competition with companies touting themselves as providing "unlimited" hosting services. Founder Brent Oxley was adamant about being able to back up an "unlimited" option prior to offering service named as such and increased staffing. He suggested that this move increased sales by at least 30%.[8]

In 2010, an office was added in Austin, Texas.[5] In May 2011, HostGator started operations in India with an office in Nashik, Maharashtra and a data center.[9]

On July 13, 2012, HostGator was sold to Endurance International Group (EIG) for an aggregate purchase price of $299.8 million, of which $227.3 million was paid in cash at the closing.[10] On 21 June 2012, CEO and founder Brent Oxley announced the sale of HostGator, and advised employees and users not to worry in part because Oxley would still own the buildings HostGator used. He said he wanted to travel the world before he had children. He was also candid about the failures in creating stable billing and register portions of HostGator, and hoped that Endurance might fix those.[11]

In 2015, HostGator launched Optimized WP, a set of tools for building and maintaining WordPress websites.[12] By the end of 2015, EIG launched local HostGator sites in Brazil, Russia, India, China, Turkey and Mexico.[13] As of 2019, HostGator also offered a web hosting service in the United Kingdom and Australia.[14]

Incidents

2006 Trojan attack

In 2006, HostGator suffered from a Trojan attack that affected more than 200 machines.[15]

2012 social engineering attack
Further information: UGNazi § Attacks

In May 2012, the computer hacker group UGNazi claimed responsibility for hacking the web server of the web host billing software developer WHMCS in an apparent social engineering attack involving HostGator.[16][17] A member of the group Cosmo called WHMCS's hosting provider impersonating a senior employee.[18] They were subsequently granted root access to WHMCS's web server after providing information for identity verification. UGNazi later leaked publicly WHMCS's SQL database containing user information and 500,000 customer credit cards, website files, and cPanel configuration.[18][19] After this issue WHMCS emailed members to change their passwords.

2013 service outages

Since its acquisition by Endurance International, HostGator has suffered an increased incidence of server outages and downtime. Notably, on August 2, 2013 and December 31, 2013, Endurance International Group’s data center in Provo, Utah, experienced network outages that affected thousands of customers of Bluehost, HostGator, Hostmonster and JustHost.[20][21][22][23]

2019

In January 2019, TechCrunch reported that Paulos Yibelo, a well-known bug hunter found serious vulnerabilities at Bluehost, DreamHost, OVH, iPage and HostGator.[24]

References
  1. "A Brief History Of HostGator.com". HostGator. 2019. Archived from the original on September 5, 2019. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  2. Toren, Matthew; Toren, Adam (2011). Small Business, Big Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right. John Wiley & Sons. p. 35. ISBN 9781118098585 – via Google Books.
  3. Verge, Jason (August 5, 2013). "How A Switch Failure in Utah Took Out Four Big Hosting Providers". datacenterknowledge.com. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  4. Perloff, Catherine (August 23, 2018). "After His Web Startup Sold for $220 Million, He Built a Disneyland for Exotic Game Hunters, of Course". Inc. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  5. Harrell, Barry (September 21, 2012). "Web hosting company expanding into Austin". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  6. "HostGator". Inc. 2019. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  7. "Host Gator Paints Itself Green". whtop.com. October 6, 2008. Archived from the original on April 24, 2019. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  8. Low, Jerry (August 29, 2019). "The Truth About Unlimited Hosting". webhostingsecretrevealed.net. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  9. Vikas SN (June 20, 2012). "GoDaddy Launches Indian Operations; Appoints Rajiv Sodhi As Managing Director". medianama.com. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  10. "Endurance International Group Annual Report 2013". 2013. p. 95. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  11. "Blog: See you later Alligator: Brent Oxley talks about sale of HostGator to Endurance at Hostjury". hostjury.com. 2012-06-30. Archived from the original on 2012-06-30. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  12. Khatri, Shilpa (September 7, 2015). "HostGator launches Optimized WP to power small business". infotechlead.com. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  13. "Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. (FORM 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 2015. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  14. Wilson, Jeffrey L. (January 30, 2019). "HostGator Web Hosting". PC Magazine UK. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  15. Goodin, Dan (October 30, 2006). "2006 InfoWorld Security Survey: IT's confidence crisis". InfoWorld. Archived from the original on September 6, 2019. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  16. Kovacs, Eduard (May 22, 2012). "UGNazi Leaks 1.7 GB of Data from WHMCS Servers". Softpedia. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  17. Samson, Ted (May 22, 2012). "Hacker group UGNazi leaks and deletes billing service's database". InfoWorld. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  18. Greenberg, Andy (May 22, 2012). "Hackers Impersonate Web Billing Firm's Staff To Spill 500,000 Users' Passwords And Credit Cards". Forbes. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  19. Leyden, John (May 22, 2012). "Titsup WHMCS calls the Feds after credit-card megaleak". The Register. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
  20. Warren, Christina (August 2, 2013). "Bluehost, HostGator and HostMonster Go Down". Mashable. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  21. "Bluehost, Hostmonster and Others Taken Down For A Day". New Times Reporter. August 2, 2013. Archived from the original on October 16, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  22. Johnson, James (August 2, 1013). "Bluehost, HostMonster, And HostGator Websites Go Down Following Maintenance Issue". Inquisitr. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  23. Miller, Rich (August 2, 2013). "Major Outage for BlueHost, HostGator, HostMonster". datacenterknowledge.com. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  24. Whittaker, Zack (January 14, 2019). "Some of the biggest web hosting sites were vulnerable to simple account takeover hacks". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
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