I have been using HostGator since May, 2008 now, to host our church website (www.aumcgreece.org). So far I have been happy with their support, contacted them once to upgrade from their Hatchling to their Baby shared hosting, and their response time was great, it only took one hour or so to complete the upgrade. I also contacted them to have an SSL certificate installed, which they also performed very quickly.
Not everything has been great with HostGator, our church website is not as fast as I’d like. I host a test version of the site with HawkHost that has a much faster response time. I have noticed very heavy server loads with HostGator.
Another minor thing with HostGator is that they don’t allow you to install your own SSL certificates, you have to pay them ($10 USD) to do that work for you.
One plus for HostGator is that their customer base seems to be very large to their support forums are very helpful.
HostGator also allows you to have SSH access, which for me is very handy, I am used to doing work from the Linux command line. Although SSH access doesn’t seem to work all the time, I haven’t pursued the issue with support yet, but I am wondering is somehow the issue is related to server load.
In general I think they provide a good service for your money, out of all the issues, the performance issue is the biggest one for me. Maybe as soon as my contract expires with them I’ll move to VPS with WiredTree instead.