Spent all day on the phone trying to get my sites that I host usable again. These guys are extortionists and hoaxes. This is my last message to them:
As I stated on the phone with you this morning. I think you all are fraudulent. I have had HostGator remove your service from our hosting plans. We will no longer be held hostage by your company with misinformation and false positive results from your scans. HostGator says it best in the email they sent to me:
Dear Russell,
We’ve recently collaborated with our longtime security partner, SiteLock, to help you — our valued customer — add even more protection to your web presence| Website security is something we take very seriously at HostGator. For that reason, as part of your hosting package we’ll be including a basic malware scan for your domains that don’t currently have SiteLock, free of charge.
This scan will identify known malware and acts as a simple “alarm system” by sending you an email alert as soon as something malicious has been detected, giving you time to react prior to being blacklisted by search engines.
To provide more information on this scan, and to address any concerns you may have about its legitimacy, we’ve created this article, which offers additional details. For other ways to secure your website, please feel free to reach out to our trusted security advisors at 877-563-2849 today.
Best Wishes,
The HostGator Team
*HostGator does not guarantee SiteLock scan results.”
If HostGator doesn’t trust your results, than why should I?
Please, in the future, do not contact my company or myself for any reason. You all singlehandedly forced me to lose valuable time and money with your obnoxious and false reporting. HostGator allowed me to opt out of your service rather than me moving all of my domain hosting. It seems they believed my story that you personally targeted my companies domains after my email to you last night. Good luck in your future endeavors. I hope to blog about my experience with SiteLock on all of my blogs. You are an invaluable asset to no one.
You asked for the heads up on what I found after I called HostGator. This is what I found. I don’t like your company or your results and reporting. And I would never allow a third party tell HostGator to Suspend my sites on bogus information as you all give.
Rusty Allen / President, C.E.O.
TechANYWHERE.net, LLC
a: 948 Rutland Dr., Southaven, MS 38671
(: 901.515.8433
7: 662.470.6661
They actually have an extention (Just Push 3) on the HostGator Help Line.
I researched them and found this info. Thankyou TBWHS.com for the insite. I hope you all don’t mind this repost. https://blog.tbwhs.com/is-sitelock-worth-it/
Is Sitelock Worth It? – A Closer Look!
SiteLock is a service that is sold by a lot of popular hosts. A lot of them have licensing deals with SiteLock. Hostgator is one company that is partnered with them. SiteLock seems to be a big partner with all EIG owned web hosting companies. So, there is a good chance you have heard of them before. Maybe your website has been hacked, or your host has notified you that your account has been suspended. Typically, they require you to purchase SiteLock to help safeguard your files. Should you hurry up and purchase SiteLock or is it just a waste of money? In this article I hope to teach you everything you need to know about SiteLock; then you can decide if it’s right for your website or not.
Pros & Cons of SiteLock
Pros
- Daily malware scans.
- Automatic malware removal.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF).
- Remove you from a blacklist.
- DDoS attack protection.
- Website acceleration.
- PCI compliant.
- Builds trust between your customers and your website.
Cons
- Monthly or yearly fee.
- Nothing you can’t do on your own.
- Deceptive billing.
- Lots of negative feedback.
- False claims.
How Does SiteLock Work?
You sign up through their website, or your web hosting company will send you a link to sign up with them. The process of integrating to SiteLock on your website takes up to 24 hours to install. You will get a notification whenever there is a problem. Notifications will be emailed to your inbox. You can go right to SiteLock’s product page and learn more about the process. But you are paying for site scans, backups, DDoS protection, malware removal, and a seal to build trust between your website and your customers.
SiteLock Malware Removal
Your website is scanned once a day automatically. Think of it as an anti-virus service for your web server. SiteLock uses something called “SiteLock911 scans.” What this does is scan all your files on your server to see if there is any malware injected into them. If any files are corrupted SiteLock will download them and reupload your data. It sounds like a simple process for safeguarding your data, but as you will see it isn’t that black and white.
Sitelock Security
I’m not going to argue the fact that websites getting hacked aren’t a big problem. But, some host does get hacked more frequently than another host. I have worked on dozens of sites over they years and seen the ugly world of hackers. A lot of webmasters don’t know that they are hacked until they get a message from Google or someone points it out. For me, since I use the WordPress platform exclusively I have written an article on checking WordPress for malware.
Does SiteLock Work?
Yes, SiteLock does work, and over 5 million websites have installed SiteLock on their website. I do encourage you to keep reading about SiteLock because I am going to show you why you don’t need this service, though.
SiteLock Cost
There are some different options for SiteLock. You can just display a simple badge on your website that is “supposed” to scare hackers away from your site. SiteLock also states that having their badge on your site increases trust and conversions will be increased by 15%. There are no commitments with SiteLock, and you can even get a 30-day risk-free trial. Here is a look at the current plans they offer:
However, webmasters have reported that it can cost an extra $30 to $300 to repair single pages on their website. So, basically what I am stating is your paying SiteLock for a monthly fee for security, and then your website ends up getting hacked. There is some malware installed on the site and then you will need to pay more money to fix the problematic pages. It doesn’t seem fair to me. In fact, there have been a lot of webmasters that are always complaining about SiteLock’s business practices.
SiteLock Reviews
Here is a bit of rant I found by Nathan Hammond which warns people to stay away from SiteLock. It does drive home a good point though that SiteLock baits you in with a 30-day free trial and makes it hard to cancel:
So, what are other webmasters saying about SiteLock? To answer this question I went to Google and typed in “SiteLock Reviews” and was shocked at what came up on the first page of Google:
Doesitreallywork.org This site showed the features of SiteLock and 21 people gave it a thumbs up, and 33 gave it a thumbs down. The comments on this article were very negative, though. People state that that customer support is “pushy” and people feel SiteLock paid people to leave positive feedback about them.
Jlellis.net This is a post written by Jennifer Ellis who practices law. She feels that SiteLock tricked her because they told her they didn’t scan the “full” website. SiteLock urged her to pay $199 to remove links from her site. Her website was blacklisted. It turns out there wasn’t anything wrong with the site in the first place. People left comments on her article and are always complaining about canceling their service, spending more money to fix problems, etc.
There are various complaints on consumeraffairs.com, webmastertalk.net, ripoffreport.com, etc. from webmasters that feel they were conned by SiteLock.
Final SiteLock Review
I do not recommend that you sign up with SiteLock. The conclusion I draw from them is you pay a monthly bill, your website gets hacked, and then you have to pay more money to fix the problems. Sure, they do work but at the end of the day the prices to fix problems don’t seem to be worth it. Be careful if you are with any EIG owned web hosts because they are partnered with SiteLock and tend to really push this service on to their customers.
I feel that there are some WordPress plugins that you can use to protect your website. A lot of them are free. I use Wordfence (the free version), and they have been amazing. I just don’t feel SiteLock is worth the money. There is a good chance that you could end up spending money if your site gets hacked on top of your current monthly bill. It doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Please read the comment below for even more insight into SiteLock. If you have experience using SiteLock yourself then please leave your comments down below about SiteLock. Are their services good or bad? Worth it or not? Why?
Hi Garen
I have never heard of SiteLock and I did not know that having your website scanned was a thing. I mean, I thought that the hosting platform would perform such a task. Am I wrong? After reading your review, I have to agree that SiteLock is not necessary. It seems like they hook you with a free membership but then “pretend” that you actually need to pay more to have additional or full on scans of your site. And that is misrepresentation if they originally say that it was free.
Most host will do a scan on your website for free. For instance I have asked InMotion to run a scan on my server a couple times before. They ran a scan and didn’t charge me anything. I really think SiteLock is a waste of money!
The biggest thing here I’ve noticed in these reviews on Sitelock is the lack of education. Sitelock doesn’t appear to be a scam. It’s the misinterpretation of services offered and the technical understanding of website security as a whole by many uneducated website owners/consumers. Don’t blame the company because of what your host support or sales rep is saying about it. They are not specialists in the company product or the technical aspects of what it entails and the web application firewall is always a good thing to have on any website that exists.
Agree. Today hosting companies concentrate on selling you something and often don’t even understand what they sell.
Sitelock is a good software.
don’t get suckered people , you sign a total one sided contract that only benefits them , you are stuck for a year to pay them way to much money for a service where there are better and cheaper alternatives then signing with this company . 50% of an annual fee as cancellation , that is what you call a true scam.
Their sales people are very pushy and will trick you into paying for their services for entire year. I got a notice from my dashboard that my website had some vulnerabilities and SiteLock said it was urgent. Otherwise, my websites seal would no longer be in good standing. The price for fixing the problem was in the hundreds. I actually checked my website with https://sucuri.net/ and found out that there wasn’t really anything wrong with the website.
I requested a refund and SiteLock would not honor it. This company extorts people into getting more money from you. There should seriously be something done about this. They are charging people a monthly fee for protection. Then, they will tell you something is wrong when in actuality there isn’t anything wrong. Don’t let them trick you out of your money.
Thanks for your input. Sorry, you had to deal with SiteLock.
Unfortunately, I was conned by SiteLock. I use BlueHost and one day they contacted me because they suspended my account. There was a malware injection which they discovered. I panicked at the time and didn’t know what to do. I spoke with a SiteLock agent. He was very smooth talking and eventually signed me up for a $14.99 a month plan.
About 4 months after SiteLock I got a message in my Google Webmaster Tools. This told me my website had been hacked. I contacted SiteLock. They were unaware of the problem at first. Later they told me there was malware on the site. They requested that I pay them $249 to resolve the malware.
I couldn’t believe this. Why am I paying $14.99 for a service that is supposed to protect my website. Then it gets hacked and these these people want $249 to fix it! I canceled my account with SiteLock and hired someone on Upwork to fix my site for $15.
I feel cheated by SiteLock. Learn from my mistake and avoid them if they ever approach you. There are hundreds of stories like mine that I have read online. This is horrible!
Hey Ryan,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience with us. $249 to clean up the malware and still charge you $14.99 a month for something that is supposed to protect you doesn’t seem like a worthwhile expense.
Hey, I’m currently going through the same problem that you did a couple years ago. I’m getting smooth talked by a Sitelock rep too.
What was your experience with the person you used from Upwork? Can you recommend that person? I’m interested in taking this route!
Thanks!
I am very troubled that now that HostGator has a strategic partnership with SiteLock, I have seen a dramatic uptick in security and malware issues on my hostgator servers. After years of only having an issue of perhaps one per year, I am now dealing with new reports of malware on a weekly basis and more. Imagine how much money that would be if you could set a script on a server (and lets face it, this would be a piece of cake for HG) that would set off malware and antivirus detectors? Then you sell your clients marketing details to SiteLock and let them sell you a $100 or $500 / year fix PER DOMAIN!! You could be talking many many millions of dollars. Scary stuff.
I agree it’s really kind of an unethical business plan in my opinion. Charging people for protection and then once that fails charging $100+ doesn’t seem right to me.
Similarly BlueHost as well