Hostgator Toll Free Number and Free SSL Certificate: With the very new interesting feature from Hostgator, you can get FREE 1800 toll-free United States number for your business, if you signup for the business hosting plan, at no extra charge. This service includes 100 minutes free with additional 4.9 cents per minute if your callers are from US and 6.9 cents per minute if the callers are from Canada and is provided and supported by Voipo. By default you can only receive calls from within US, but you can enable calls from Canada in your Control Panel. This is great for people who want to establish good business relationships with people in US and Canada, because the people can get in touch with you without paying a fee which is important for a serious company.
Hostgator Business Toll Free Number
There is a discussion going on at HG pre-sales forum and I don’t know the exact details about this new feature. You can always ask in their forums, live chat or their tickets system and get fast response. In my opinion the calls will be routed either to your VOIP software or VOIP phone but I am not sure about this. Will update you as soon as get more information.
Update:
HostGator’s shared hosting plans all offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space. They are priced according to what other features they offer. Their basic Hatchling shared web hosting plan is $3.96 monthly, and comes with unlimited bandwidth and disk space, a single domain name allowance (the baby hosting plan have the same features, except different price and unlimited domain names allowance), and a shared SSL certificate. Their top-of-the-line shared hosting plan is called their Business plan, and offers customers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited domains, a free private SSL and IP address, and a free toll free number.
With HostGator’s Business plan, customers can click on the ‘Addons’ link to order their free toll-free number. This is not an actual phone line, it’s a forwarding service that directs calls to another phone number provided by the customer. Because it is a forwarding service, there’s no equipment, no additional software, and nothing for the customer to worry about. The toll-free number can be linked to a land line or cell phone, but can only receive calls from the United States unless it is specifically set up to include Canada. The first one hundred minutes of use are free each month. After those one hundred minutes are used up, additional minutes are billed at approximately five cents per minute. This service is handled by a third party, VOIPo, and only offered by Hostgator as part of their Business hosting plan.
Hostgator Free SSL Certificate
HostGator’s free private SSL is an important feature for businesses. Secure socket layers keep information encrypted, which is crucial for security. Almost all e-commerce sites have SSL to protect their customers’ credit card and address information, for example. Though HostGator’s basic hosting plans offer a shared SSL, this can cause error messages and warnings to pop up for some visitors, which discourages people from using e-commerce sites with shared SSL. With private SSL, this doesn’t happen- instead, visitors can access sites without warning messages, and be confident that their information is being transmitted securely. Therefore, it behooves anyone with an e-commerce site (or any other site that requires payment or address information) to pay for HostGator’s Business plan with private SSL.
Though a toll-free number and private SSL aren’t required for a business site, they make it much easier for customers to do business. A toll-free number allows your clientele to contact you at no cost to them, and is practically a must for sites that have customer support. A private SSL certificate lets your site’s visitors know that you care about their privacy and security, making them more likely to want to do business with you. HostGator’s Business plan starts at only $10.36 per month, making it a very easy, affordable way to get hosting for your business site, a toll-free number, and private SSL all in one shot.
