Late in the evening of Thursday, July 9th, VanRamblings went down, and was off the Internet until early in the morning of Tuesday, July 21st.

Today, VanRamblings presents what occurred between July 9th and 21st, why VanRamblings went off the Internet, and how it re-emerged again.

Since its inception in February 2004, VanRamblings has been hosted by Hostgator, a small, entrepreneurial Texas company that, in recent years, has become one of the world’s largest hosting brands before being absorbed, twice, into a multinational conglomerate.

Founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, then a student at Florida Atlantic University, HostGator established its headquarters in Houston, Texas. By offering inexpensive shared web hosting with knowledgeable technical support available by phone, the company quickly earned a loyal following among bloggers, small businesses and entrepreneurs.

VanRamblings’ webmaster, current Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen, liked what Hostgator provided, that the service was steady, tech support was readily available, and the pricing very good — initially, VanRamblings paid $80 Canadian a year to have our website hosted. In 2004, Mike owned a company called Thinking Cap Media that designed websites — including VanRamblings, as it happens — for small businesses, and upstart bloggers located across the Metro Vancouver region, and the province of British Columbia.

All was well for a number of years, Mike Klassen’s influential website CityCaucus was hosted at Hostgator, as was the case with VanRamblings.

in 2012, founder Brent Oxley sold HostGator to the Endurance International Group (EIG) for approximately US$225 million. In 2021, Endurance merged with Web.com to form Newfold Digital, in a transaction valued at roughly US$3 billion. HostGator has operated as a Newfold Digital brand ever since.

And that’s when the troubles began for VanRamblings.

Hostgator pricing skyrocketed, service went into the toilet, the service became unreliable, Hostgator offering an inferior and unhelpful service compared to its early days, Hostgator offering an almost completely useless Chat facility rather than telephone contact with a tech support team member.

Hostgator customer complaints went through the roof following the merger.

• Better Business Bureau records show hundreds of complaints against Newfold Digital covering billing, renewals and customer service;
• Independent review sites and Reddit discussions consistently report increasing dissatisfaction compared with HostGator’s independent years;
• Customer complaints focus: unexpected renewal pricing at much increased rates; unauthorized automatic renewals; almost non-existent technical support; excruciatingly long Chat wait times; and difficulty cancelling services (to which circumstance VanRamblings can, most sadly, attest).

Right around the time that VanRamblings began to fail, Mike Klassen was running for civic office, and later won a seat on Vancouver City Council.

On July 9th, with no notice to VanRamblings, Hostgator changed VanRamblings DNS server, failing to point it to our Domain Naming Server at Rebel.com.  VanRamblings was down and off the Internet. After five days with no service, contact with Hostgator only through their incredibly unhelpful / useless Chat service, while visiting our friend Bill McCreery — who we will write about this next Monday, July 27th — VanRamblings, after much investigation and thought, made the unilateral decision to switch our hosting company from the U.S.-based Hostgator “service” (we use that word advisedly) to Web Hosting Canada, who have emerged this past week as angels sent from heaven to put VanRamblings back on the ‘Net, in the face of much opposition and an utter lack of co-operation from Hostgator.

Quite simply, we declare ourselves in love with Web Hosting Canada: migrating VanRamblings files from Hostgator dating back to 2004 to WHC, at no charge.

WHC billed us at $141 for three years of superior service, as opposed to $170 per year Hostgator was charging for their so-called Hatchling Plan (they wanted to charge $300 per year for their “regular” service).

You do the math: $47 per year Canadian for Québéc-based Web Hosting Canada — with all the bells and whistles, and 24-hour, readily available telephone tech support from near tech gods employed by Web Hosting Canada vs $300 per year for Hostgator, an incompetent, inferior Texas-based web host non-service.

After the three year introductory period, WHC will charge approximately C$120 annually before applicable taxes and optional add-on services.

While that represents a noticeable increase from the initial promotional price, the renewal cost remains competitive within the Canadian market, and is considerably more transparent than the steep renewal increases common among several large American hosting companies, like Hostgator.

Web Hosting Canada: A Canadian Success Story in Web Hosting

For Canadian businesses, bloggers and organizations seeking dependable web hosting, from what we have read, Web Hosting Canada (WHC) has quietly built one of the strongest reputations in the country. Founded in 2003, and headquartered in Montréal, WHC remains a privately owned Canadian technology company at a time when many of its largest competitors have been acquired by multinational corporations. That independence has become one of its defining strengths, allowing the company to focus on customer service, transparent pricing and Canadian-based infrastructure rather than quarterly shareholder expectations.

Over the past 23 years, Web Hosting Canada has grown from a small hosting provider into one of Canada’s leading web infrastructure companies.

Today, WHC reports serving more than 75,000 satisfied customers while hosting over 470,000 websites, making it one of the country’s largest independently owned web-hosting firms.

Accredited by both the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), WHC has consistently ranked among Canada’s leading providers of .CA domain registrations.

According to the company’s literature, WHC’s philosophy is straightforward: provide Canadian customers with fast, secure hosting on Canadian infrastructure, backed by knowledgeable support staff who understand the needs of businesses operating in Canada. Unlike many international hosting companies that outsource customer service, WHC emphasizes locally based technical support and places a premium on building long-term customer relationships.

WHC’s mission is to provide “powerful yet affordable” web solutions while maintaining high standards for reliability, security and customer care.

That customer-first approach has earned the company considerable recognition.

WHC currently displays an average customer rating of 4.9 out of 5, based on thousands of verified reviews collected through independent review platforms. Within Canada’s technology community, the company is frequently recommended for customers who prefer Canadian data centres, Canadian privacy protections and support delivered by staff familiar with the domestic market. While, as with any large hosting company, there are occasional negative customer experiences, its overall reputation for responsiveness and transparency remains among the strongest in the Canadian hosting industry.

VanRamblings would like to thank every WHC representative with whom we have spoken over the past week: Haivey, Achres, Zied, Nada, Ahmed, Maeva, Elyes, Nadia, Dan, Abir, Matthew, Ziad, Diya, Ren, and everyone who was a member of  …

… who got VanRamblings back on the ‘Net, configured VanRamblings’ WordPress, and enabled both the rtomlin@vanramblings.com and info@vanramblings.com e-mail addresses so they forward to our primary home e-mail account.

The best part of the past 12 days? Reconnecting with Mike Klassen, with whom we spent an inordinate amount of time — amidst his incredibly busy schedule and demands on his time — reconnecting with Michael (we call him, ‘Michael’) in a palpable and mutually supportive manner that served to recapture our 35+ year friendship in the warmest possible way.

The final piece of the puzzle to get VanRamblings up and running was to have Rebel.ca — our Domain Name Server, who Mike engaged to serve as our name server in 2019 — to connect to WHC’s newly configured DNS server. VanRamblings will remain with Rebel for now, but will switch to Web Hosting Canada as our Domain Name Server in the early part of summer 2027.

We spent in excess of 100 hours over a period of 12 days, at all times of the day and night (there were many 4 AM calls with Hostgator — to cajole them into allowing the transfer / migration of our files to Web Hosting Canada — calls that lasted for up to 90 minutes, during which time we set about to acquire information from an obstinate HostGator that WHC required in order to start the migration process). No one can say that VanRamblings was not up to the task; we most certainly were.