Off Niche!, Hostgator and X10hosting compared. How the backingup and and restoration is done

How did this all start? I will narrate the story in indepth details. I had a vital issue to settle down with Hostgator and X10hosting regarding backups and restorations. So, Yesterday I directly emailed Hostgator and contacted X10 through their ticket system (is there any live chat facility? Oops I forgot that) My query to the Hostgator Date: May 22 what if a site get hacked? How is the restoration process is done? Do you restore the site with a back up on your own (by your technical staff for free) or you leave the user with a back up leaving him to do the restoration on his own? Do you charge to provide back ups? Hostgator's support systems reply Date: May 22 Hello, If you have a backup that you have created yourself, we will restore from that free of charge, however there is a $15 charge to restore from one of our backups. Our administrators will be more than happy to help you restore from one of your own backups free of charge or from one of ours for $15 if the need should ever arise. My second query May 22 Websites are constantly hacked. For how many times you provide the free restoration services through customers backups? Hostgator's response May 22 Hello, You might be surprised how in- frequently sites hosted here get hacked. When it happens, it is nearly always because of an outdated WordPress or Joomla installation or the like. In general, we always charge $15 to restore from our backup server, while restoring from a backup you create yourself would be free. This is not absolutely set in stone, however, and we do take extenuating circumstances into account when making a decision. My third query 6:48 am 1. If we provide a backup that we have created on our own, does your staff do the restoration for free? 2. For how many times a customer get this grace? Two times a week, thrice a moth, 10 times a year? 3. 15$ for both backup and the restoration, or only for the backup? 4. Each time you charge 15$ to provide a backup and for few occations you provide free restoration and then onwards charge for the restoration too? 5. Every time a website get hacked, the only thing the customer has to do is pay 15 bucks and the restoration is done? 6 Is this applicable to every package, including hatchling (5$ a month single domain * 12)? be specific. I dont need a romantic novel to read here Their swift response 7:01 am Hello, I'll try to answer all your questions. 1. Yes, if you provide the backup we will generally do the restore for free so long as it is a cPanel backup or zipped contents of your files with sql import. 2. Generally there is no limit but if abuse is suspect this may change. 3. We maintain a weekly backup so long as the account is under 10GB and under 100k inodes, backups are done automatically, you as the customer pay for the restoration. In extenuating circumstance we will waive the restore fee. 4. See #3 5. In most cases yes, but sometimes the backup we have may be too recent and include the bad changes. this is why we always suggest the customer keep their own backups. 6. We keep weekly backups on account packages ranging from the Hatchling to VPS's On the other hand, at the same intervals, I contacted X10hosting. Contrary to the X10hostings slow motions, Hostgators average response time was impressive Here how that story went 2012-05-22 08:41 what if a site get hacked? How is the restoration process is done? Do you restore the site with a back up on your own (by your technical staff for free) or you leave the user with a back up leaving him to do the restoration on his own? do you charge to provide back ups? 2012-05-22 04:06 Do I get a response to this ticket? 2012-05-23 05:25 hello somebody out there Eric B - ACO, x10Hosting Staff 2012-05-23 07:00 Repeatedly bumping the ticket actually causes this ticket to get sent to the back of the queue as it has the most recent activity; whenever possible, please avoid bumping tickets for this reason. On premium, we utilize the R1Soft backup system; you should be able either to restore the backups yourself, or if you'd prefer you could open a ticket under premium support and staff could restore it as well. Generally speaking, I still recommend making your own backups through the backup icon in cPanel (the icon isn't on Free hosting due to the resources it uses, but on premium where there's less users it isn't a problem), just so you would have a local copy as the R1Soft system doesn't actually make the backup and send it to you. Backups are free, as is restoring from them; the only drawback to potentially being hacked in this situation is waiting for the backup itself to finish restoring, as larger sites can take a bit to restore all their files (the bigger the site, the more files/larger files there are).