It would be nice if canceling HostGator were as simple as placing a phone call and speaking to a customer service representative, but the company won’t allow you to do that. The reason they give for this on their site is one of security: Because canceling your account also results in the deletion of your data, we require the cancellation request to be ‘in writing.’ This protects you from someone impersonating you on the phone, like an ex-employee, ex-web designer, etc. and provides you proper notice that a cancellation request has been received on your account before we cancel it (since we try to contact you to confirm). When the company says “in writing,” they don’t mean that the request has to be handwritten, hand-signed, or printed on paper. Rather, it just means that you have to submit an online form. You can cancel domain registrations by phone, however, as we discuss above.