Cancel HostGator.
Back up the site and keep the domain.

You cancel hosting by turning off auto-renew.

HostGator’s help center says a hosting plan is cancelled by turning off Auto-Renew in the Customer Portal’s Renewal Center before the plan renews. The deadline is 15 days before the renewal date, or 5 days before for a plan on a 1-month term. HostGator asks you to call or chat with Support before cancelling so it can look for a solution, and Support is available 24/7.

1. Back up the site first. Download a full cPanel backup before you change anything. The backup section below has the steps.
2. Sign in to the Customer Portal. Sign in at hostgator.com/my-account/login, then select Renewal Center in the left-side menu.
3. Select the hosting plan. Check the box beside each product or service you want to stop renewing, then select Disable Auto-Renew.
4. Confirm. In the pop-up, check the confirmation box and select Disable.
5. Do it before the deadline. At least 15 days before the renewal date, or 5 days before on a 1-month plan.
6. Watch for HostGator’s emails. HostGator says a confirmation email should arrive within 1 hour, and if it doesn’t, the request was not received and you may be charged. It allows up to 48 hours to verify your identity and close the account, and the account stays active until a second email confirms the cancellation.

• HostGator: how to use the Renewal Center
• HostGator: already cancelled but still contacted to pay

HostGator.com only handles accounts bought from HostGator.com. Accounts from other HostGator brands, such as India, Brazil or Turkey, cancel with the company you signed up with. Add-ons like SiteLock and CodeGuard have their own cancellation steps.

The domain keeps renewing until you stop it.

HostGator does not cancel your domain when you cancel hosting. Domains renew automatically by default, HostGator invoices the renewal and may charge the card on file. Its terms say domains and Domain Privacy keep auto-renewing even after you turn off hosting renewal, and that no refunds are given once a domain is renewed.

The help center says to turn off a domain’s auto-renew at least 15 days before its renewal date. HostGator’s Terms of Service ask you to cancel a domain registration at least 30 days before the renewal date, so turning it off 30 days ahead meets both.

1. Keeping the domain? Leave auto-renew on, or renew it manually, and point it to your new host by changing its name servers.
2. Letting it go: open the Renewal Center. Sign in to the Customer Portal and select Renewal Center in the left-hand menu.
3. Turn off the domain’s auto-renew. Check the domain’s box, select Disable Auto-Renew, tick the confirmation box in the pop-up and select Disable. You can turn it back on or renew manually later.

• HostGator: why am I still being invoiced?

Download a full backup before you cancel.

HostGator’s terms ask you to back up all your content before you disable auto-renewal. A full cPanel backup is saved as a tar.gz file in your home directory, and you can download it through cPanel, FTP or SSH.

1. Generate the backup. Log in to cPanel. In the Files section, select Backup, then Download a Full Account Backup. Choose Home Directory as the Backup Destination, enter an email for the completion notice and select Generate Backup.
2. Download it. Go back to the same Full Backup page and select the file under Backups Available for Download, then save it to your computer.
3. Large sites: contact Support. Shared, Cloud Sites and Reseller plans can create cPanel backups up to 10 GB with 150,000 inodes or fewer. Anything bigger needs HostGator Support by phone or chat.

When the service ends, the site is deleted.

HostGator’s Terms of Service say that if the account expires, all content is permanently removed from the server, and that on termination for any reason, your content, websites and other data are deleted. It also terminates accounts left suspended or deactivated for 30 days, which loses all data on the account.

Domains stay with you only if you keep renewing them. Expired domains can be hard or impossible to recover, HostGator says, and a domain fails to renew if its invoice is not paid within 29 days of the expiration date.

• HostGator: why am I still being invoiced?

HostGator refunds only in the first 30 days.

HostGator’s 30-day money-back refund covers shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting when you cancel within the first 30 days of purchase. You ask for it by phone or chat with HostGator Support inside those 30 days, and the refund is issued only after the cancellation is complete. It goes to the original payment method and can take up to two weeks to appear.

It applies only to the first package bought, on a billing account less than 30 days old. It does not cover monthly terms, domain registration fees, administrative, custom software install or other setup fees, or add-ons like SiteLock. Payments by check, money order or bank wire are not eligible, and the terms limit the refund to PayPal and credit card payments. If your plan came with a free domain and you cancel within a year, the standard domain fee and any taxes come out of the refund. After 30 days there are no refunds, and fees paid in advance are not refunded. If you paid through PayPal, cancel the PayPal billing agreement too.

• HostGator Terms of Service

My HostGator account [account email or domain] has a [shared/WordPress/VPS] plan bought on [date] for [amount] by [card/PayPal]. I am cancelling within the first 30 days and request the 30-day money-back refund to the original payment method. Please confirm the cancellation and the refund amount by email.

Huck catches the renewal dates for the plan and the domain.

Huck finds HostGator invoices and renewal notices in your Gmail and texts you what you pay and when the hosting and each domain renew, so auto-renew comes off before HostGator’s deadline and a refund request goes in while you are still inside the first 30 days.

When you say yes, Huck turns off auto-renew in HostGator’s Renewal Center, or sends the cancellation or refund request to HostGator from your Gmail, then checks the next bill. You handle the HostGator sign-in and the backup download. HostGator decides any refund.

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