founded october 23 2002 ; 13 years ago 2002 10 23 1 founder brent oxley headquarters houston texas united states products web services revenue 34.2 million 2008 2 owner endurance international group website hostgator.com hostgator is a houston based provider of shared reseller virtual private server and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in austin texas . 3 4 contents 1 history 2 incidents 2.1 2012 social engineering attack 2.2 2013 service outages 2.3 spring 2014 blackouts 2.4 october 2014 outage 3 references 4 external links history edit this article may be confusing or unclear to readers . please help us clarify the article ; suggestions may be found on the talk page . november 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message hostgator was founded in october 2002 5 by brent oxley who was then a student at florida atlantic university . 6 by 2006 hostgator had passed the 200 000 mark in registered domains . 7 in 2007 the company moved from the original office in boca raton florida to a new 20 000 square building in houston texas . 3 in 2008 inc. magazine ranked hostgator in its list of fastest growing companies at 21 in the united states and 1 in the houston sugar land baytown texas area 8 the same year hostgator decided to make their hosting service green hosting by working with integrated ecosystem market services . 9 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 3 in 2011 hostgator started operations in india with a its office in nashik maharashtra and a data centre . on 21 june 2012 ceo and founder brent oxley announced the sale of hostgator to endurance international group 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 . 10 hostgator was sold to endurance international group for 225 million usd . as of 2013 hostgator hosts over 9 million domains and has over 400 000 customers . 11 incidents edit 2012 social engineering attack edit further information ugnazi whmcs leak 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 . 12 13 a member of the group cosmo called whmcs s hosting provider impersonating a senior employee . 14 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 14 website files and cpanel configuration . 15 after this issue whmcs emailed members to change their passwords . 2013 service outages edit since its acquisition by endurance international hostgator has suffered an increased incidence of server outages and downtime . notably on august 2 2013 and december 31st 2013 endurance international group s data center in provo utah experienced network outages that affected thousands of customers of bluehost 16 hostgator 17 hostmonster and justhost . 18 19 20 21 spring 2014 blackouts edit during the afternoon of april 16 2014 the data center in provo utah experienced a networking issue that affected customers of hostgator 22 hostmonster & bluehost . 23 the issue was fully rectified only after 24 hours on april 17 2014 11.35 am . 24 there was another outage on may 19 2014 that took nearly 9 hours to completely resolve . this problem occurred in the same data center . 25 october 2014 outage edit during the morning of october 29 2014 hostgator suffered another major outage that affected their reseller accounts . the company did not immediately announce the cause of the outage though they stated on facebook and their forum that an os upgrade was the cause of the issue . they made the reseller sections of their forum inaccessible to the public visible only to registered users . 26 the server level problems were resolved on november 2 2014 almost five days after the outage began . 27 on november 4 2014 users were still reporting widespread account level database problems . 28 references edit hostgator.com whois dns & domain info domaintools . whois . retrieved 2016 04 12 . hostgator business services inc5000 article inc. articles . inc. magazine . 2008 . retrieved 2010 06 17 . a b c about the company . hostgator . retrieved 11 august 2014 . harrell barry may 25 2010 . hostgator expanding to austin bringing 300 jobs . austin american statesman . retrieved 2010 06 17 . happy 10th birthday snappy hostgator blog . hostgator.com . 2012 10 22 . retrieved 2016 04 12 . management team hostgator.com . hostgator.com . retrieved 2010 06 17 . web host host gator at 200 000 names . 2006 . hostgator business services inc5000 article inc. articles . inc. magazine . 2008 . retrieved 2010 06 17 . host gator paints itself green . thewhir.com . 2008 . retrieved 2008 10 06 . see you later alligator . hostjury . 2012 . retrieved 2012 09 19 . hostgator . top10webhostingsites . 2016 . retrieved 2016 05 29 . ugnazi leaks 1.7 gb of data from whmcs servers . news.softpedia.com . retrieved 2013 08 18 . samson ted 22 may 2012 . hacker group ugnazi leaks and deletes billing service s database . infoworld . retrieved 22 november 2013 . a b hackers impersonate web billing firm s staff to spill 500 000 users passwords and credit cards . forbes . retrieved 2013 08 18 . leyden john 22 may 2012 . titsup whmcs calls the feds after credit card megaleak . the register . retrieved 22 november 2013 . warren christina august 2 2013 . bluehost hostgator and hostmonster go down . mashable . retrieved 16 february 2014 . network outage multiple servers . hostgator . retrieved 31 december 2013 . bluehost hostmonster and others taken down for a day . new times reporter . aug 2 2013 . retrieved 16 february 2014 . bluehost hostmonster and hostgator websites go down following maintenance issue . the inquisitr news . august 2 1013 . retrieved 16 february 2014 . miller rich august 2 2013 . major outage for bluehost hostgator hostmonster . data center knowledge . retrieved 16 february 2014 . henderson nicole august 2 2013 . network issues cause hostgator bluehost and hostmonster provo data center outage . retrieved 16 february 2014 . network outage provo . hostgator . 16 april 2014 . retrieved 16 april 2014 . bluehost hostmonster and hostgator face downtime . keith . 23 april 2014 . retrieved 23 april 2014 . arun thomas . hostgator network outage . valant sean 19 may 2014 . network outage provo dc . hostgator forums . retrieved 19 may 2014 . your solution outage restore sites back . retrieved 3 november 2015 . http forums.hostgator.com oct 29 02 00 emergency maintenance p533335.html post533335 http forums.hostgator.com your solution outage restore sites back p533422.html post533422 external links edit companies portal official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title hostgator & oldid 743465644 categories web hostingcompanies established in 2002companies based in houston2002 establishments in texasendurance international grouphidden categories wikipedia articles needing clarification from november 2015all wikipedia articles needing clarification navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout 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