Bluehost Web Hosting Service Review
I’ve been using Bluehost as my web hosting service provider for just over a year now, so I decided to write a review of my experience with them for your reference.
*DISCLAIMER: I have an affiliate account with Bluehost so while I’m being as objective as possible in this review, I acknowledge that if you follow any of my links to Bluehost on this site and subsequently sign up for their hosting package, I benefit by receiving a commission.
First let me say that so far I have really enjoyed using Bluehost, and I have set up several of my clients on Bluehost with their own hosting accounts.
At a glance, here’s some of the reasons that I like using their hosting service:
-
They are very affordable (ie cheap). With their current price holding stead at about $7 per month, Bluehost is very affordable.
-
Bluehost offers unlimited monthly storage and bandwidth, so you don’t have to worry about paying extra for getting too much traffic on your site, or having too much content.
-
Reliable uptime. Their average downtime for server maintenance, etc. for 2010 so far has been right around 99.9% uptime, with three months so far this year actually having 100% uptime.
-
Personal telephone tech support, 24/7 (with native English speaking reps, no less!!). This is a huge benefit to me. Knowing that I have the option to call and speak with somebody who will understand my issue and help me find a solution makes me feel very confident as a web developer.
-
Access to other help resources (in addition to phone support) like step by step online tutorials. Bluehost provides a fairly extensive set of video tutorials for accomplishing several advanced web mastering functions that you may need to accomplish on your site. In fact, just about two weeks ago I used their tutorial to walk me through setting up Google Apps on my site, and configuring the Bluehost mail server for my domain to use Gmail.
-
Simple Scripts. Bluehost offers this really incredible feature called Simple Scripts, which is more or less a “one click” installation service for many popular web scripts you might want to run on your server, like WordPress, ModX, Magneto, ZenCart, Ruby on Rails, bbPress, phpBB, BudyPress, Joomla, Drupal, QuickBooks, LimeSurvey, PHPList, ZenPhoto, Gallery, BaseCamp, WebCalendar and dozens more. Simple Scripts also manages your version upgrades, so once it’s time to move from WordPress 2.9 to WordPress 3.0, for example, Simple Scripts will notify you and then manage the upgrade! (Actually I just used it for that purpose yesterday to upgrade this very blog from WP 2.9 to 3.0 without a hitch.)
-
Many other features, including: an easy to use control panel (a.k.a. “c-panel”); easy subdomain management; email account management; web based directory browsing and code editing; affiliate accounts.
There have honestly only been a few cons to the service that I’ve experienced, but nonetheless some things to consider:
-
While you can always call their tech support line and get a helpful rep, I’ve noticed that most reps have a default reliance on pointing the customer to the online tutorials back at the Bluehost website. Usually the first thing they want to do when you describe your issue is send you back to watch a tutorial and resolve the issue on your own. While often that is still a sufficient solution, and many times I’ve been happy to resolve the my own issue that way after a rep showed me where to find the tutorial, sometimes you are going to want a little bit more hands on support. The reps will give it to you, but you sort of have to prod them to do that. I would suggest if you are less tech savvy, you might want to insist that they help by walking you through your solution personally.
-
Accounts are only intended to administer one domain, and one site (ie Bluehost does not currently offer a “developer” or “reseller” hosting plan). While technically you can manage multiple domains on your account, they are treated as add on domains and must be pointed to a subdirectory (or the main directory) in your main hosting account. The control panel is set up to only administer one primary domain. So their hosting package is not really suitable to add your clients to and resell hosting to them. Instead I have simply set up my clients with their own Bluehost plans, and set myself as the administrator to that account.
-
The C-panel has excessive promotional offers always featured at the top, like a $50 free Google Adwords credit, etc., which I just find annoying and worthless. While you can hide them each session when you login, I have not found a way to remove them permanently.
Despite some of the cons I’ve encountered, my expereince with Bluehost has been overwhelminly positive. I would recommend Bluehost to the average consumer and even to many developers. Since Bluehost at this time still does not offer a reseller plan, they may not be a good fit for developers who require greater multi-domain support. But for what most consumers and front end web designers or developers need in a webhost, Bluehost is an excellent choice. You should sign up today here.
