HostGator is a
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
-based provider of
shared, reseller,
virtual private server, and
dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
.
History
HostGator was founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, and satellite campuses in Dania Beach, Florida, Dania Beach, Davie, Florida, Davie, Fort Lauderd ...
.
In 2006, the company moved from the original office in
Boca Raton, Florida
Boca Raton ( ; es, Boca Ratón, link=no, ) is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It was first incorporated on August 2, 1924, as "Bocaratone," and then incorporated as "Boca Raton" in 1925. The population was 97,422 in the ...
to a new 20,000 square foot building in Houston, Texas.
In June 2006, the company opened its first international office in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
.
In 2008,
Inc. Magazine
''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...
ranked HostGator in its list of fastest growing companies at 21 in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and 1 in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas area
The same year, HostGator decided to make their hosting service
green hosting
Green hosting or eco-friendly hosting is Internet hosting that involves strategies to reduce the environmental impact of their activities. These may include the increased use of renewable energy, planting trees, plants, and grass around and over ...
by working with Integrated Ecosystem Market Services.
In 2008, HostGator prepared for competition 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%.
In 2010, an office was added in
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
.
In May 2011, HostGator started operations in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
with a its office in
Nashik
Nashik (, Marathi: aːʃik, also called as Nasik ) is a city in the northern region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Situated on the banks of river Godavari, Nashik is the third largest city in Maharashtra, after Mumbai and Pune. Nashik ...
,
Maharashtra
Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
and a data centre.
On July 13, 2012, HostGator was sold to
Endurance International Group
Endurance International Group (EIG) previously named BizLand was an IT services company specializing in web hosting. The company was founded in 1997 and was headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.[WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...]
websites. By the end of 2015, EIG launched local HostGator sites in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
and
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. As of 2019, HostGator also offered a web hosting service in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.
Incidents
2006 Trojan attack Information
In 2006, HostGator suffered from a
Trojan attack that affected more than 200 machines.
2012 social engineering attack
In May 2012, the
computer hacker group
UGNazi
UGNazi (Underground Nazi Hacktivist Group) is a hacker group. The group conducted a series of cyberattacks, including social engineering, data breach, and denial-of-service attacks, on the websites of various organizations in 2012. Two members of ...
claimed responsibility for hacking the
web server
A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...
of the
web host billing software developer WHMCS in an apparent
social engineering attack involving HostGator.
A member of the group Cosmo called WHMCS's hosting provider impersonating a senior employee.
They were subsequently granted
root access
In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. In some cases, the actual name of th ...
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
cPanel is a web hosting control panel software developed by cPanel, LLC. It provides a graphical interface (GUI) and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site to the website owner or the "end user". It enables admin ...
configuration.
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
Provo ( ) is the fourth-largest city in Utah, United States. It is south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front. Provo is the largest city and county seat of Utah County and is home to Brigham Young University (BYU).
Provo lies between the ...
, experienced network outages that affected thousands of customers of
Bluehost
Bluehost is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It was one of the 20 largest web hosts in 2015 and was collectively hosting over 2 million domains in 2010.
Bluehost was among those studied in the analysis of web-based ...
, HostGator, HostMonster and JustHost.
2019
In January 2019,
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...
reported that Paulos Yibelo, a well-known bug hunter found serious vulnerabilities at
Bluehost
Bluehost is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It was one of the 20 largest web hosts in 2015 and was collectively hosting over 2 million domains in 2010.
Bluehost was among those studied in the analysis of web-based ...
,
DreamHost
DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is owned by New Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil, undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College ...
,
OVH
OVH, legally OVH Groupe SAS, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provide ...
,
iPage
iPage () is a web hosting company.
History
iPage was initially founded in 1998 as a full web service provider, but the company re-launched operations as a web hosting provider in 2009. It's currently owned by Endurance International Group. iPa ...
and HostGator.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hostgator
Web hosting
Companies established in 2002
Companies based in Houston
2002 establishments in Texas
Endurance International Group