Bluehost Review

Based in Utah, Bluehost is a leading provider of shared web hosting.

The company was founded in 1996 and the fact that it is still around and appears in most top 10 lists of hosting companies says a lot about the service it provides. It is owned by the same company as the HostMonster hosting service.

 

On thing you can say about Bluehost is that they keep it simple. There is only one package. This is a linux shared hosting package which costs $6.95 per month. You can sign-up, and pay in advance, for 12, 24 or 36 months but the price does not change.  However, the prices on the sign-up page are promotional (for new customers) and the standard (i.e. renewal) prices are $8.95, $7.95 and $6.95 for 12, 24 and 36 months respectively

 

There is a 30 day money back guarantee during which time you can get a full refund and after 30 days you can cancel at anytime and get a pro-rata refund.

 

The package includes a free domain name, which is optional. If you do register the domain name it is free as long as you continue with Bluehost. If you cancel $10 will be charged against your refund but you will continue to own the domain name.

 

The package is sold on an “unlimited” basis which includes, bandwidth, storage, domains and email addresses. The Terms explain in some detail what “unlimited” means and this is worth reading. A site builder is included as is cPanel.

 

The package is comprehensive and includes support for every technology most users will want including multimedia and ecommerce. There are also 1 click installs for many common software packages (including WordPress).

 

You can pay extra for additional domain names, a dedicated IP address, SSL Certificates, Mail Filtering and Domain Privacy.

 

Bluehost has a reputation for providing a fast reliable service and many people are very happy with it. It did seem, however, that in recent months (late 2010) there have been more comments about downtime.

 

Support is available 24/7 by telephone, live chat and a help desk system. Customer Bluehost reviews are generally favourable particularly as regards being able to make contact. Some people felt that support staff could be more helpful but this is inevitable given the number of customers.

There were several complaints about automatic renewals and site being closed down but the company’s actions seemed to be within their terms and conditions. It is worth reading these to ensure you know what is acceptable and what isn’t.

 

Possibly the biggest drawback with Bluehost is that there is no upgrade path so if you expect your site to outgrow a shared web hosting service you should go elsewhere at the outset.