This morning, I got the following e-mail from HostGator India:
Hi Bhagwad,
We are reaching out to let you know that we will be ending the HostGator-India Affiliate Program on 31/07/2022. Final commission payments for all qualified referrals will be made by 01/12/2022 when your access to our affiliate portal will also end. Please make sure to download any historical reports for your records and check that your payment method is correct before we make final payments.
We know this decision impacts you and your business, and we wanted to let you know as soon as possible. If you’d like to continue to be an affiliate, we recommend signing up with Bluehost.
HostGator India is Closing its Affiliate Program
HostGator India has been operating since 2011, and I’ve been a HostGator India affiliate for years, but this news doesn’t surprise me, since HostGator India has been diminishing as a brand, and they’ve already handed over parts of their products to Bluehost India. Here’s a screenshot showing that they use Bluehost India for the WordPress packages:
Unlike their global counterpart, the HostGator India coupons are lackluster, with discounts far below the parent company. To make matters worse, it’s also terrible for India-based hosting because the servers in India are far more expensive than the US servers. Here’s a screenshot showing the side-by-side comparison of the prices of US and India-based servers for HostGator India:
The servers located in India cost almost double the servers in the US. For an India-based hosting company, this is scandalous. Why would anyone choose HostGator India for hosting in the US? The Hostgator promo codes of the parent company are far better than those of the Indian branch, so they might as well host there instead.
HostGator India’s Commissions Dropped off a Cliff
There was a time when I used to get lots of sales from HostGator India. I don’t know what changed, but I’ve barely registered a few sales over the past few years. It’s hard to examine what went wrong or broke in the affiliate chain, but the termination of the affiliate program won’t affect me at all. I get many commissions from the global HostGator program and other value-based web hosts like HostArmada, for India-based hosting.
HostArmada: Best HostGator India Alternative
For those affiliates looking to make a switch, I suggest HostArmada. It has far more features than HostGator India, and you can see that the HostArmada promo gives better discounts. HostGator India makes you purchase CodeGuard for backups, and SiteLock for security, all of which raises the cost of hosting. But HostArmada has the best backups for free and also throws in malware scanning and fixing at no charge.
Compared to HostGator India, HostArmada also has a better architecture with NGINX and LiteSpeed servers compared to HostGator India, which uses an uninspired Apache-based LAMP stack. Here’s the full HostGator India vs HostArmada comparison.
Other Options for India-based Hosting
There are plenty of other options for web hosting with Indian data centers to choose from once you ditch HostGator India. Among these are:
- HostingRaja
- MilesWeb
- LeapSwitch
- DigitalOcean
I wouldn’t recommend Bluehost India because it’s the same as HostGator India – why move from one EIG company to another?
Like the End of an Era
Ironically, I started WP-Tweaks.com with HostGator India in mind, but things have turned out very differently. So I greet the end of the affiliate program with a mixture of sadness and inevitability. So long!
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