Bluehost Review
- Bluehost.com trusted by 510,000 domain owner.
- Unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth transfer.
- Host up to 999 unique websites. Free domain name.
- Cpanel with fantastico. Blog, ecommerce, RoR, Joomla.
- Email, ftp, subdomain, MySQL, php 4/5, FastCGI.
- Bluehost Coupon: Special Link $6.95
To guarantee that we received no special treatment while conducting this Bluehost review, we purchased our Bluehost review account directly from the Bluehost website. At no stage did we inform Bluehost that we were conducting a review, so we are reasonably sure that we were treated the same as any ordinary Bluehost customer.
About BlueHost
Bluehost was founded in 1996, making them one of the oldest web hosting providers still operating. The fact that they have managed to survive in the often cut-throat web hosting business says a lot about the quality of services that they provide. Many lesser companies have come and gone in the years that Bluehost has been providing quality solutions to web-masters.
As you would expect from a company that has been in business for as long as Bluehost, their network infrastructure is first-class. The Bluehost data center is equipped with modern quad processor servers, mirrored storage backups, UPS / diesel backup power generator and 24/7 monitoring by trained technical staff. Internet connectivity is provided by an impressive OC-48 backbone connection, providing in excess of 2 Gbit / second bandwidth.
Plan Features and Pricing
Lately, it is becoming increasingly common for web hosting providers to simplify their product range and offer a single ‘one-size fits all’ web hosting plan and this is the path that Bluehost has chosen with their ‘Platinum Pak’ plan. Having only the one web hosting plan to choose from does make a prospective customer’s task in choosing a plan particularly easy, but there is always the potential problem that the single plan on offer will not provide the features you are looking for in a web hosting package. Fortunately, the plan that Bluehost has put together has more than enough features to satisfy even the most demanding customer.
The Bluehost Platinum Pak plan offers 1500GB of disk storage space, 15000GB of data transfer / bandwidth and a full set of features for the all inclusive price of $6.95 per month.
It is worth noting that Bluehost allows you to host an unlimited number of full domains and an unlimited number of sub-domains under the one account.
The table below highlights some of the major features that come as standard with the Bluehost Platinum Pak plan. Of-course, for an exhaustive list of plan features, you should visit the Bluehost web site.
| Key features of Bluehost Platinum Pak web hosting plan (as reviewed) |
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| 1500GB disk storage space |
| 15000GB per month data transfer / bandwidth |
| Unlimited domains (and sub-domains) hosted under the one account |
| One free domain name registration included with account |
| Free domain WHOIS privacy |
| 1000 FTP accounts (with anonymous FTP support) |
| 2500 POP3 or IMAP e-mail accounts |
| Unlimited forwarding e-mail addresses |
| Spam-Assassin e-mail filtering |
| Easy to use cPanel based control panel |
| 50 MySQL or Postgre SQL databases |
| Frontpage 2000/2002/2003 extensions |
| PHP4, PHP5, Perl 5, Python, CGI and Ruby / Ruby on Rails script support |
| SSI – Server Side Includes fully supported |
| Fantastico script support |
| .htaccess and CRON access |
| Shell access via SSH |
Shared Server
Our Bluehost account was placed on a shared server containing two quad-core Intel Xeon E5320 1.86Ghz CPUs (for a total of 8 cores), 4GB of RAM and three 750GB volumes. The server was running the CentOS 64bit Linux distribution. These specifications are very impressive for shared hosting in this price range.
During our testing, the average server load on our server was measured as 1.5 or less and we did not experience any server slowdowns due to excessive CPU load. Our test site remained fast and responsive, even during peak usage periods.
Control Panel
It came as no surprise that Bluehost, in common with most web hosting providers these days, supplies the industry standard cPanel for administration of your web-sites. cPanel is popular with good reason, as it very easy to navigate and provides access to all the configuration options you could wish for.
In addition to the normal configuration options, the Bluehost panel offers a web-based file manager and easy to use Page-Wizard, allowing reasonably professional looking web-pages to be created with a minimum of fuss. Fantastico script support is also available via the panel (more information below).
Scripting Support
As mentioned above, Bluehost provide Fantastico script support via the Bluehost panel. This allows the easy installation and upgrade of dozens of useful software packages, including packages for blogging, forums, content management systems, picture galleries, online surveys and polls etc. Fantastico has built an admirable reputation among users and by making it available, Bluehost has added enormous value to their already excellent hosting plan.
For those that prefer to install their scripts manually, Bluehost offers a large variety of industry standard scripting languages, including PHP4, PHP5, PERL5, Python, Ruby / Ruby on Rails and of-course, CGI.
Custom php.ini settings are supported, as are Apache .htaccess files and CRON jobs for executing scripts at regular intervals.
Reliability
Massive storage space, bandwidth and plan features are of no use if your chosen web host lacks basic network reliability. Nothing sours a relationship with a web host faster than frequent downtime. Of-course, some planned downtime is unavoidable, for things like network upgrades and maintenance, but a good host will keep such outages to a minimum and provide adequate warning to their customers.
Thankfully, we can report that our Bluehost test site experienced excellent reliability. We only detected one short 30-minute outage during our 3-month monitoring period. While we would have preferred no downtime at all, the 30 minutes represents only a very small percentage of the total, and our overall uptime during the 3 months was in excess of the ‘magic’ 99.9% that is often quoted by other web hosts.
Technical Support
Bluehost give customers a number of choices when it comes to technical support. Firstly, there is the superb on-line help-center, where you can browse or search a large knowledgebase of articles on a diverse range of subjects; this is often the quickest and easiest way to solve a problem. The help-center also provides the ability to open a support ticket directly to Bluehost support staff. We opened a number of support tickets during our test period and found the replies to be both prompt and accurate.
For those that prefer receiving their technical support from a ‘real live human’, Bluehost provide a 24 hour / 7 day technical support phone number. Bluehost also supply a separate technical support number for those customers outside of the United States.
Conclusion
Overall, our experience with Bluehost was pleasant and uneventful. Their network proved to be solid and reliable (except for one small incident) and Bluehost technical support was first-rate. The plan we reviewed supplies 1500GB of space and 15000GB of data transfer at a very affordable price.
If you are in the market for a new web host, in our opinion Bluehost warrants your serious consideration. In-fact, we were so impressed by the overall service provided by Bluehost that we recently moved this site to our Bluehost account.
From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget, Bluehost provides your complete web hosting solution. View a listing of what we offer below or try our services for yourself by accessing our online demo site.
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FEATURES INCLUDED / ALL ACCOUNTS | |
INCLUDED | |
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Disk Storage (NOW MORE!) | |
Unlimited | |
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Host UNLIMITED Domains (WOW!) | |
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Free Drag and Drop Site Builder (NEW!) | |
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Free Domain Name | |
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Support International Domain Names | |
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POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support | |
2,500 | |
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IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support | |
2,500 | |
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2 Different Web Based Email Solutions | |
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May 16th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I have been with Bluehost for a little over 3 years now. I am constantly working on my websites and relying heavily on the email service. So far they have proved to be very reliable overall. When you call technical support you get through very quickly any time of the day. The uptime is the single most important thing and they have only a few seconds here and there when they cannot be accessed. First class. Phone support 7/24 is good. I like features like Fantastico, unlimited add-on domains, PHP suppport and MySQL. The forum often has answers too. Their C-Panel is enhanced to be the best I’ve seen.
I have 14 accounts there and they’ll get more unless they drop the ball – but no sign of it yet.
Emails have always been returned within 1 day. Server settings are sometimes changed without customers being notified, causing web applications to “break,” but Bluehost has always been prompt in helping get the site running again. Overall I feel that I get much more than the $7.95/mo that I pay for hosting.
My Rating: 10/10
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Awesome host!
Bluehost is amazing! Great service, fast servers, and amazing prices and features! I’ve got 4 different sites hosted on the same account and none have suffered any downtime apart from a pre-notified 30 minute maintenance check. Their customer support is pretty good, open 24/7 and usually very helpful. The one thing I could complain about would be that their online chat operators are sometimes a bit slow to respond. Other than that, I am very satisfied and will continue to remain a customer. I’d recommend Bluehost to anyone.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I’d just like to say I use bluehost and I haven’t had very many issues at all compared to most web hosts I’ve used over the years. I have over 35 sites and over half of them are on Bluehost so that’s saying a lot.
The negative might be if you are using a cgi script that needs to call out to another server to get information. The security firewall might interfere. I was able to get around this by paying for my own IP address. It costs around 30 dollars a year. It’s not very expensive at all. You may want to call and check with bluehost to get the exact figure. Java scripts I’ve used work fine even when they have to call out to another server since java runs on the users computer and not the server.
On the positive side of things whenever I’ve had to call their tech support they’ve usually been very helpful. They seem like regular people who actually give a care about their customer. Other companies I’ve worked with made me feel at times that I was the enemy. Bluehost tech support also seem pretty knowledgeable, and will find answers for you if they don’t know.
Tech support is closed on Sundays, but they can be reached on emergencies. One thing to keep in mind, they don’t support the scripts that are available through their fantastico setup. Those are extras that are thrown in to basically make it a lot easier for webmasters to develop their own site, and make it fun as well. Fantastico installs the programs, and setups the databases for the scripts you choose from content management to discussion boards.
Disclosure: Just so you know I am the webmaster of this site which is hosted on Bluehost. I’ve got about 5 accounts with them right now. I still use a couple of other web hosts, but right now Bluehost is my favorite. I’ve used them for I’m guessing two years now.