BlueHost Review: With a slew of customer-centric packages BlueHost is a serious contender vying to grab your sites hosting rights. They have a wonderful suport system and with 13 years of hosting web sites theyve just got a little better coming in to this decade.
When it comes to budget hosting, there are numerous options available to customers. Many of these options tend to lack the scalability and reliability, which means that finding a dependable host for less than the average cost of web hosting can be a difficult task.
Bluehost is one of the more reliable hosts that specialize in cheaper web hosting. They provide numerous options that scale from meager shared hosting to full-blown dedicated hosting.
Bluehost provides, the numerous uptime and money-back guarantees they support and the capability to use both PHP and ASP.NET. These additional features and high degree of dependability tend to be missing from other hosts in this price range, which makes Bluehost a viable competitor for web hosting.
Parties ranging from individuals seeking value hosting to medium businesses will find the most use when it comes to Bluehost’s services.
Pros/Cons
Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of hosting as it pertains to Bluehost. Keep in mind that each of these items are generalized, meaning that they may not necessarily apply to specific plans or packages.
Pros:
- Pricing – Bluehost offers some of the most competitive pricing available for new customers when it comes to shared and VPS hosting.
- Uptime and Speed – Compared to other web hosts, Bluehost offers excellent reliability and performance for the relatively low cost.
- Support – Customer service representatives will often go out of their way to ensure that you are satisfied with Bluehost. Their priority is to resolve any issues that you might have using every resource available to them.
- Usability – Hosting comes with numerous packages designed to make website management easier for experienced and beginner webmasters. Cpanel, WordPress installers and more are available to accomplish this.
- Value – Bluehost provides an incredible amount of value with both their base hosting packages and the additional features you can opt to purchase. The prices stay incredibly competitive as a tactic to maintain existing customers and gain new ones.
Cons:
- Availability of Deals – Some discounts, such as the three-year shared hosting packages that cost a little over $4 a month, are available only to new customers. The price of hosting may rise considerably after those three years are up.
- Occasional Support Problems – Depending upon the type of hosting you purchase, customers have stated that you may run into problems with customer service. There may be delays, forwarding of your issues, or a lack of any real answer in certain cases.
Packages
Bluehost offers numerous packages designed to fit the needs of customers. Each package is configured to run efficiently with a few unique uses of cutting-edge technology.
Let’s explore each package that Bluehost offers in detail.
Shared Hosting
The most popular plan on Bluehost is its shared hosting. It comes with the ability to manage multiple domains on one plan, spam protection, unlimited bandwidth, numerous domains and a significant amount of email usage.
The one thing to keep in mind is that Bluehost’s cheapest shared hosting plan will often be insufficient for most business purposes, as it only supports the use of one website with a limited amount of storage. The basic plan is still cheaper than those offered by other hosts.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress hosting is unique to Bluehost. It’s geared towards bloggers and businesses with a large number of visitors each month. Bluehost’s most robust WordPress Hosting is designed for websites with millions of visitors each month.
Server configurations start with specifications similar to VPS hosting but for a price that is cheaper. It comes with an optimized version of WordPress along with the ability to have multiple WordPress website that utilize a content delivery network (CDN), SiteLock Pro and more.
VPS Hosting
Bluehost’s VPS hosting is unique in that it utilizes cloud technology. This enables it to be more efficient on average than other hosts that may use the standard type of VPS hosting where a set number of instances are run on each machine.
Another difference with Bluehost’s VPS hosting is the ability to have multiple IP addresses without paying an additional fee for them. These come with the enhanced level and above of packages, which in turn enables your website to be more accessible on average
Dedicated Hosting
The most robust of Bluehost’s packages, their dedicated hosting is designed for medium and large businesses that may need to run customized applications that VPS hosting won’t adequately support.
Although not as attractive as Bluehost’s other packages given the limited bandwidth and heightened costs associated with it, Bluehost’s dedicated hosting still offers a competitive alternative. It’s recommended that most customers take advantage of Bluehost’s money-back guarantee to see if this dedicated hosting fits their needs.
Reseller Hosting
It should be noted that Bluehost does not directly offer reseller hosting.
While there is a link to reseller hosting on Bluehost’s website, it redirects to a third-party company known as ResellerClub. The only advantage in this situation is the fact that being referred by Bluehost gives a discount to new customers.
Additional Services
Unlike many other hosts, Bluehost does not specialize in offering additional services beyond those associated with what is provided in hosting packages.
Most additional services available from Bluehost are actually provided by other companies. While this may seem unattractive at first, it allows Bluehost to specialize in providing customers with a new level of support and reliability when it comes to web hosting.
Specialties
Bluehost specializes in providing reliable hosting to individuals, small businesses and medium corporations. They provide a high level of support, which in turn makes them a perfect match for customers seeking to avoid the technical details of managing a website in favor of having a site that simply works.
The other specialty Bluehost provides pertains to optimization. The ability to use a content delivery network with most hosting packages enables customers to have a website that can be accessed efficiently with the delivery of static content even when Bluehost’s services may be down for the inevitable maintenance.
Data Centers
Unlike many other web hosts that merely rent data centers from third-party companies, Bluehost maintains their own data centers beneath the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. This enables them to provide very fast responses to any inquiries related to technical problems along with much shorter maintenance periods.
It also enables them to quickly diagnose any potential problems, which in turn allows them to repair components before they cause unplanned downtime for customers.
Although Bluehost maintains their own data centers, they do utilize the Ox Network for all their bandwidth needs. This is the reason that many higher-end packages offer a limited amount of bandwidth rather than the unlimited amount of bandwidth that is common with other hosts.
Company
Bluehost was founded in 1996 during the historical Dot Com Boom. By regularly implementing new technology and smart hosting policies, they have since become one of the most popular web hosts to date.
As one of the first companies to implement CPU throttling, Bluehost was able to dramatically reduce the number of issues caused by users using too many resources. This allowed them to provide more reliable shared hosting to customers who would use it appropriately.
In 2010, Bluehost was acquired by Endurance International Group. This company had acquired other web hosting companies like HostMonster, FastDomain and iPage. Their experience has allowed them to drastically raise the quality of customer support and reliability that customers using Bluehost have experienced.
Bluehost is currently regarded as one of the 20 largest web hosting companies in the entire world. This is remarkable, as Bluehost only began to offer VPS and dedicated hosting in 2013.
User Experience
As a whole, user experience with Bluehost is overwhelmingly positive. Most Blue Host reviews state that Bluehost has excellent customer service, reliability and value. Many customers choose Bluehost for these traits specifically.
When it comes to negative feedback, the most common complaint about Bluehost is their lack of deals for recurring customers. Many customers will state that they found Bluehost’s services superb, but they were forced to cancel because the price became too high after the pricing for Bluehost’s initial deals expired.
Customer Support
Bluehost provides customer support accessible by email, phone or their ticket system. Response times are generally very quick, and issues are resolved in a similar time frame
It is worth noting that there are occasionally problems with customer support. These issues can often be rectified by staying on top of any issue that might happen, and any issues caused by delayed support can be compensated for by utilizing the numerous guarantees provided to customers by Bluehost.
Guarantees + Cancellation
Bluehost provides a 30-day money-back guarantee that can be redeemed within 30 days of the start of using their services. You can redeem it if you are, at any time, unhappy with the services provided by Bluehost. If you opt for this money-back guarantee after 30 days have passed, then you will receive a prorated refund.
Some products associated with hosting, such as domains, are non-refundable. You are allowed to keep these products in the event that this is the case.
The cancellation procedure can occur via email, by calling (888) 401-4678, or by utilizing online chat with a customer service representative. Intent to cancel along with the fact that any data contained on Bluehost’s services must be verified when canceling.
Once this has been verified, the cancellation procedure may begin. It can take up to 10 days for this procedure to complete and for any money to be refunded.