Gate.com Review - Do Business With Them?

Name: Gate.com
Plans: Shared and VPS.
Website: www.gate.com
Summary: Gate.com is not a company I recommend you do business with. There are a lot of better hosting companies out there. This Gate.com review shows why I do not recommend them for your web hosting needs.

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Gate.com Logo Gate has been offering web hosting services ever since the Internet has been part of our lives. Gate has started offering web hosting services since 1996 and has since hosted over 600,000 websites. Gate offers complete web hosting services for both Linux and Windows users. Gate has a specific plan for the web hosting services you need, so choosing the right plan is relatively easy. Should you need to change your plan, upgrading and downgrading is a swift process.

Whenever I review a web hosting company I like to look at a number of different things. I want to look at their features, performance, uptime, customer service, and then last but not least their price tag. I used to recommend Gate, but since I got a lot of negative feedback from people I have changed them to not recommended.

Gate.com Features

Gate.com offers a number of different hosting plans for those webmasters that are looking for a shared of VPS plan. You can register domain names with them, purchase email accounts, buy online applications, etc. I am going to go into the plans and services they offer now.

Shared Plans

Gate.com offers a number of shared plans. They offer 3 in total. The details are down below:

Basic

The basic hosting plan offered by Gate.com is the lowest level hosting plan you can purchase. This plan comes with 20 GB of storage. This plan does tell you, you will receive “unlimited web traffic” which I am not really a fan of. A lot of web hosting providers do offer you these types of plans, but unlimited bandwidth is really just a marketing gimmick. This plan does come with a website builder which only supports 10 pages. You also have access to up to 25 mailboxes. This plan does limit you to Linux servers only and cost $4.95/month or $49.50/year.

Business

The business plan is a popular plan that a lot of webmasters choose because it comes with a lot of features. You are not limited to 10 pages like their basic plan does, which makes it a better option. Everything is nearly unlimited aside from only being allowed to use 10 MySQL databases or MS SQL databases. However, this plan does support either the Linux or Windows operating system. This plan is $9.95/month or $99.50/year.

Professional

Next, is the Professional plan. This plan has all the same exact features as the business plan, but has a lot of features that helps develop your website. Meaning, the focal point behind this plan is you get a free domain name, mobile site creator, Facebook page manager (for managing your Facebook business page, local directory submissions, search engine submissions, SEO keyword Assistant, email marketing, and is available for $29.95/month or $299.50/year.

VPS Plans

For VPS plans Gate.com does offer both Linux and Windows plans. They offer 3 Linux plans and 3 Windows plans. The details are down below:

Linux

Here is a screenshot of the Linux plans offered by Gate.com:

Windows

Here is a screenshot of the Windows plans offered by Gate.com:

VPS Add-ons

Storage. You can always purchase extra storage for any VPS plan that you choose. You can buy 10 GB for $3/month or 20 GB for $4/month.
Bandwidth. You can always add more bandwidth to your VPS plan if you want. You can buy 500 GB for $20/month, 1,000 GB for $40/month, and 2,000 GB for $80/month.
Ram. If you need more RAM for your VPS you can buy this too. This will cost you $20/month for 512 MB of extra RAM.
IP Addresses. These will cost you $2/month per extra IP address you want.

Domain Names

You can always purchase domain names with Gate.com. Here is a table which shows how much each domain extension will run you:

Control Panel

In order to make changes to your hosting account on the backed of your server your going to need to use some kind of control panel. You’re in luck because they do offer a control panel. Gate.com does use Plesk 11 for their control panel. So if you’re comfortable with cPanel sorry you’re out of luck because you have to use Plesk 11 whenever you host with them. You can purchase extra licenses for $5/month (100 licenses) or $10/month (for unlimited licenses). Plesk does offer a “Plesk Powerpack” which gives you Kaspersky Antivirus protection, mobile mailbox support, ecommerce extras, etc. for $5/month. However, really Plesk is pretty easy to use if you’re new to it. I really don’t have any issues with it.

Gate.com Performance

Uptime

Gate.com does have a 100% uptime policy. For me this is a red flag, because much like MochaHost they to have a 100% uptime policy. This means your server will be up 100% of the time. Really this is misleading because there is no way you can promise your clients that your website will be up 100% of the time. I have had sites on some of the most dependable hosting companies and even their uptime was 99.98%.

However, from the research I have done on Gate.com it doesn’t look like webmasters are complaining about their uptime. In fact, they seem to be quite pleased with it. So I can can’t knock Gate.com for their uptime. Chances are if you host with them you will not have lots of extended amounts of downtime.

Performance

When I review a web hosting company I take their performance very seriously. Just about every host out there will try to tell you their servers are blazing fast and are integrated with the latest technology. Gate.com does tell you that their servers are deployed in minutes and are “ultra fast”. I did my research on Gate.com and found out that they are using SSD hard drives. These hard drives are faster than the mechanical hard drives. Up to 50X as fast.

I really do favor companies that do use SSD. I am glad that Gate.com does use it. Therefore, I can rank them fairly high in terms of performance.

Gate.com Customer Service

Gate is a grab bag for customer service. I have never had a problem with their customer service. They have a 24/7 toll free number that you can call whenever you need to get in contact with them. You can even jump on live chat or contact them through a support ticket. They have replied to most of my concerns in a timely manner. However, the way that they deal with problems isn’t always the best way of handling them.

People have reported the worst experience happened when they wanted to cancel their account. As soon as they advised people would stop their service they instantly cut their access to the control panel. This is expected that and it was perfectly okay with them. What people don’t expect is that they were continued to be billed from Gate. Very frustrating and a number of people have had to put a bank block on there account. Overall, I really feel their customer support could be improved drastically.

Gate.com Summary

So you’re probably wanting to know what is tbwhs.com stance on Gate.com? The short answer is I do not recommend them. This doesn’t mean that I think they are horrible or anything like that. If you are a small or medium-sized business or need personal web hosting, you can make do with Gate.com. They really don’t come with as many resources (RAM, CPU power, etc.) that a lot of other web hosting companies come with. Therefore, if your website grows to big your website might be able to be hosted with Gate.com.

All and all, I don’t think they are bad I just recommend InMotion Hosting for VPS and dedicated servers over them. However, if you’re looking for a shared server I would go with SiteGround. They are much cheaper and both of these companies are a much better option.

Around July 2015 I wanted to create a special part just for Gate.com. I want to show my readers my research I have conducted prior to writing them up a review. I spend hours and hours researching everything I can find about Gate.com before publishing my review on them. Then, other webmasters stop by and leave their comments on them so we can all learn what it’s like to host with them.

Depending on what I find on Gate.com will determine the section it goes in. I have three different sections for them; positive, negative, and neutral. Based on the content I read I then will place it in one of the three categories. This lets you see why I state whatever I publish on Gate.com. Hopefully, you take a couple minutes out of your day to view my research section down below:

“Positive”

“Negative”

HostingsThatSuck.com

Gate.com is one of many webhosting services out there on the internet. In order for a user who wishes to host a server or website, it is imperative to research a hosting company which includes checking on the reviews of said companies. Gate.com reviews have been manipulated in such a way that it makes Gate.com look like a good web hosting company for its users; however, it is imperative to dig a little deeper.

After closer examination, when a user searches for bad pages against Gate.com, they are bound to see tales of users complaining that Gate.com is having yet another outage or that Gate.com is not delivering on its promises of x and y features. The catch is that when you try to find this information it is buried underneath 950,000 search results. Gate.com’s so called Hate per Pages Ratio is quite low which can be a red flag, and most certainly in this case it is. The low ratio would make you think that Gate.com is a reputable web hosting service; however, the users it has angered have gone to the internet and cried to the masses which has alerted many review sites to think twice about Gate.com.

Gate.com’s prices are pretty steep compared to other companies at around $5/mo for hosting which is almost $50 more a year than other companies; therefore, it is only logical to award Gate.com with a low score of a 1 out of 5 for both failing to be cost efficient and reliable as a web hosting service.

For this reason I am adding this part to my research to the negative category.

“Neutral”

TopTenReviews.com

TopTenReviews.com is a website that reviews anything from electronics to credit card processing software. Yes, you guessed it they even have a section for web hosting reviews. Really, I do like this site because they offer tons of reviews on lots of different industries. I do agree with a lot of the reviews they have on their site when it comes to web hosting though. In there review this was stated:

Gate.com is a web hosting service that provides web design services, hosted exchange for email services, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Overall, Gate.com scores a mediocre 5/10. Gate is a basic web hosting service that is meant for more casual users. Casual users are looking for simple shared hosting plans to host a simple website that doesn’t contain any complex actions. This is perfect for small businesses who want to host their site to reach out to their customers.

Gate has many limitations, one being that cron jobs are a hassle. If a user wishes to create a cron job, then they must submit it to Gate for review. If the job is found to be safe, then it will be placed onto the server; however, this can limit the functionality and creativity of the website. On the other hand, Gate offers a free SSL certificate with all of their services allowing users to have https and secure connections from the start. The free SSL certificate is nice, but Gate also doesn’t offer advertising credit while most competitors will give $50 or more for free.

The biggest positive for Gate is their customer support is incredibly helpful, but it takes a number of tries to reach them which may not be very helpful if you need an issue sorted out quickly. Therefore, the limitations and support Gate provides is very limited and that should be kept in mind, and thus Gate.com is appropriately awarded a 5/10.

I am adding this piece to my neutral section because of the how they are rated on TopTenReviews.com.

The interview section of this Gate.com review allows us to get some 1 on 1 feedback about what it’s like to host with Gate.com. A lot of the times someone will stop by tbwhs.com and leave a comment and I will follow up by sending them an email. I will conduct an interview with them and then publish it in this section of tbwhs.com.

I am looking for you if you have experience with Gate.com. I want to do an email interview with you and publish it here. Please contact me through my contact page or if you would rather send me a tweet @tbwhs feel free.

All content on tbwhs.com are opinions and not facts. I have thoroughly reviewed each company and then provide my personal opinions on them. It’s up to you as the consumer to do your due diligence and do more research if you feel something might be inaccurate.

Gate.com Review – Does Not Get Good Feedback