Bluehost Reviews by Experts and Users

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Bluehost Overview

Bluehost

Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the most impressive webhosts that I’ve reviewed in quite some time, and it is perfect for the individual or small site and even the business website that won’t ever require a dedicated server and IP and some of the other... Read full expert review of Bluehost

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User Reviews

28

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Expert Rating

(5)

Users Rating

(3.2)

Recommended By: 12 of 28 users
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13people found this helpful

I think a lot of these people who complain are doing something shady, impossible to please or just don't understand how a business is run. I host about 30 domain with them and have been... Read all reviews for Bluehost

Reviewed by: Clay (Beginner)

7people found this helpful

Bluehost is in the niche of low-price hosting, and as such, there is a certain lowering of expectations that must occur. If you need hand holding or want help developing your website, then no...Read all reviews for Bluehost

Reviewed by: Chris Snyder (Beginner)

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Information

Bluehost keeps it simple. They only provide shared web hosting, and only offer one plan. But that plan beats most, if not all, competition.

The company has been a part of the web hosting business since 1996, and is currently hosting over 630,000 domains, certain signs of stability and reliability in the web hosting business. Their plan costs $6.95, but while the price is small, it includes unlimited storage and data transfer! With this plan, you get enough space to run a profitable eCommerce business, while being at the price of a small private web site.

The plan supports most scripts, and is a good choice if you're planning to start a company blog, as several blog tools are included. They also throw in several eCommerce features in the deal, such as carts and different forms of encryption, and if you're setting the site up yourself, there's a drag and drop site builder, which is very convenient.

For promoting your website Bluehost helps you out to rank high in the search engine results with their keyword analysis and position reports. When you've figured out your domain name, it can be registered for free, also you get an unlimited numbers of add-on domains as well as subdomains.

Regarding support, Bluehost has round the clock service on a toll-free number and can also be reached through email. From what we've seen, their help desk is very attentive and competent. The company operates out of Orem, Utah.

US

United States

(Utah)

Founded: 1996

Support: 1.888.401.4678

Uptime monitoring

Bluehost Uptime

Uptime monitoring shows how much a website is available. We are monitoring a few sites hosted at Bluehost

Response time monitoring

Bluehost Response Time

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What Does the Expert Say About Bluehost?

Bluehost

Bluehost is a relatively new webhost offering an enticing cPanel-powered professional package at only $5.95 per month. This is not some barebones entry-level package. For $5.95, Bluehost promises a free domain and unlimited domain hosting, storage space, bandwidth and email accounts. Clients also get statistics and analytics, a secure shell, SSL, FTP, CGI, Perl, PHP, Ruby (RoR), MySQL, Site Builder with a wide array of templates and much more. Bluehost has a stellar uptime track record, and they stand behind it with a 99.9% network uptime guarantee. They also have an anytime money-back guarantee, which allows you to take advantage of their most aggressive pricing structures with confidence. There was a little doubt that I had to take this host out for a spin.


Value for Money

To get the $5.95/month rate, you have to commit to 24 or 36 months. At a 12-month commitment, the lowest they offer, the rate is $6.95/month. As mentioned above, Bluehost offers an anytime money-back guarantee. They also include one free domain registration, and the caveat here is that if you opt out earlier than 12 months, they’ll reimburse you minus the cost of the domain registration. Other than that, the opt-out process is straightforward, and they don’t try to nickel and dime you with surcharges and whatnot. Bluehost also offers SiteLock domain security at $12.95/year, Site Backup Pro at $12.95/year and domain privacy at $9.95/year. An upgrade to the $19.95/month Pro package gets you a dedicated server, more resources, such as memory and CPU power, a dedicated IP, an SSL certificate and then Postini anti-spam accounts. They also provide seamless upgrade from the lower-tier package.

Performance & Reliability

Bluehost does a great job of assuaging concerns over them being a new host by offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is as good as you’re going to get. So far, they’ve had no problems living up to that promise, and while I was testing the service for this review, I didn’t experience any trouble at all. Of course, it’s nice to know that if trouble does happen, they’ll reimburse you the prorated amount. A prorate portion of $5.95 may not seem like much, but it is a considerable amount of money from their perspective, and the guarantee proves their commitment to reliability.


Support

When I signed up with Bluehost, I first spent some time talking to a support rep through their chat system. I’ve been through countless of these intro chat sessions. They typically do more harm than good, but Bluehost impressed me with their casual and very frank yet thorough approach. After I had signed up, I contacted support again and asked them a series of questions, starting simple and finishing with a complex one. This time I got a different agent, but the results were similarly impressive. In addition, Bluehost boasts an impressive helpdesk that includes forums, a searchable database, video tutorials, beginner’s guides, a ticket system, a server status checker and a lot more.

• Phone
• Email
• Postal Mail
• Live Chat
• Support Ticket System
• Community-powered forum
• Searchable knowledgebase with video

As you can see – there are more ways to get in contact with BlueHost than with the average provider.


Ease of use

With BlueHost you’ll get an easy to use cPanel. Never used cPanel before? Don’t worry – it’s all very easy to find and understand. BlueHost gets a golden star from me in regards to user-friendliness.


We like

• The helpdesk, which is one of the most thorough and sophisticated we’ve reviewed.
• Their direct approach to client communication, which is a breath of fresh air.
• The price, the reliability, the feature set and best of all, the anytime money-back guarantee.


Important to know

• You’ll pay for the domain registration if you opt out early depending on the "going rate".

Summary

Bluehost is one of the most impressive webhosts that I’ve reviewed in quite some time, and it is perfect for the individual or small site and even the business website that won’t ever require a dedicated server and IP and some of the other features in their Pro package.In the support section, I gushed a bit about Bluehost’s refreshing approaching to customer service and support. Every time I’ve talked to them, they’ve continued to be direct and honest with me, and that has won me over. I plan to continue being a Bluehost client for the foreseeable future.

Bluehost

Name: Kimberly Dovander

Experience: 7

Located:San Francisco

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Reliability

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(5)

Overall Rating

(5)

Bluehost User Reviews

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Overall Rating

(3.2)

Recommended By: 12 of 28 users

Number of reviews: 28

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User Ratings Loader

Douglas Ferrari recommends Bluehost

Excellent tech support - BUT - Their Reselling Prices keep going up while their services keeps declining. 

Douglas Ferrari Gravatar

(Intermediate)

Hosting Solutions: 1

Hosting Type: Unknown

Puppenhaus does not recommend Bluehost

The password complexity policy is absurd. My wife and I have
separate accounts and are always forgetting/losing what the
login is. due to this we've had several resets which results
in needing to update several settings across several sites
and I've had CMS upgrades that destroyed installation due to
this problem. Recently, they've had problems with password
self-service and I've been unable to access my account. None
of their support channels will allow you to contact them
without having your password, which is likely to keep the
password self-service questions out of the queue but is very
problematic considering their password requirements are
twice as complex and large (I think mine is 15 characters)
than any other company I've ever encountered (hosting... Read more

Puppenhaus Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 4

Hosting Type: Unknown

Web Guru does not recommend Bluehost

I have been with Blue Host for over 4 years now, and
recently noticed a huge decline in their quality of
services. My latest problem is that my web mail is no longer
working. After contacting support, I learned that their
standard Blue Mail is not longer available. So they gave me
a link to set up a new web mail account. Using this link is
going to cost me a monthly fee, instead of getting my web
mail for free.

I question the security of their web servers. About 6 months
ago my website got hacked. The database and plugins, and
virtually everything on my website was so messed up, I had
to take it down, and I just updated... Read more

Web Guru Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 2

Hosting Type: Shared

Russ White does not recommend Bluehost

I've been using Bluehost for several years. As background,
I'm an experienced IT professional with more than 20 years
in the business, and I'm using a premium VPS service from
these folks.

I've had very bad problems with the availability of their
servers, which they tend to blame on Worpdress or other
issues. When I can get into the root console, the problem is
normally some script running on their side, or some
misconfiguration on their side, rather than anything on the
wordpress side of things. I also have the consistent
experience of opening cases and having them tell me, "this
is your server, we don't maintain this stuff," while at the
same time being denied access to the directories/etc. I
would... Read more

Russ White Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 5 or more

Hosting Type: Reseller

Tracy recommends Bluehost

Great experience so far. I have a "plus" level shared hosting account running 4 or 5 simple Wordpress websites. Customer service has been great, always someone to help. Haven't had any problems with security or downtime. 

Tracy Gravatar

(Intermediate)

Hosting Solutions: 3

Hosting Type: Unknown

TG does not recommend Bluehost

Bluehost http://www.bluehost.com shut down my main site
along with ALL of my client and other sites attached to the
main site, because they "found" malware; so they say.

There was NO warning.

I was forced to PAY Bluehost $49.00 to have THIER Bluehost
people remove the offending malware to get my site(s)
restored. They are still not restored even after paying them
the $49.00

BEWARE of putting your business or personal site on
Bluehost. Bluehost has quite the SCAM going.

I used to recommend all of my clients to Bluehost; however,
I will NEVER recommend Bluehost to another client, EVER. I
will not risk my clients businesses to Bluehost's very
questionable practices.

If you value your web presence STAY FAR AWAY from... Read more

TG Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 5 or more

Hosting Type: Unknown

John does not recommend Bluehost

For the Pro users bluehost servers have not been staying up and appear to have many glitches in the past year, The technician, Billing and customer service departments all sing the same tune sorry we can not do anything to help you, we do not compensate for any down time from our servers. IF you lose sales and customers due to our servers not working oh well you can just find another hosting company, if we reimbursed everyone for our servers being down we would not be in business. 

John Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 2

Hosting Type: Shared

Jon does not recommend Bluehost

As a former client I want to share my experience with Bluehost. It all started before one year when I decided to start e-business. The first few months, everything went fine, without relatively large problems. Unfortunately this did not last long, the third month problems started, my site was repeatedly unavailable due to problems with servers that had to be removed quickly in the words of technicians, but not pads were really long. This caused a large outflow of current and future customers, but since I'm too patient, I decided to stick with them and give them another chance, and so all year, until finally lost patience and decided to... Read more

Jon Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 1

Hosting Type: Shared

Clay recommends Bluehost

I think a lot of these people who complain are doing something shady, impossible to please or just don't understand how a business is run. I host about 30 domain with them and have been a happy customer for years. I've used their tech support extensively and they are in fact knowledgeable. Wait times for phone support is about what you'd expect - in the five minute range on a busy day. Their support team is the USA so that is much appreciated. Their Cpanel is feature rich and easy to use.What more do you need? 

Clay Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Nick recommends Bluehost

I love Bluehost. Having one plan isn't a con when it's $7/month and unlimited for almost everything! Support hasn't ever been a problem either, considering questions were answered in about an hour. 

Nick Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Khaled Javeed recommends Bluehost

I have been hitting diffrent hosts for my domains but finaly
bluehost bound me to stick with them. All good except their
recent years greed for money. They have raised their charges
and are offering domain name to exisiting customers @ $13.99
and renewal of account @ $8.99 which is almost double to
what they are offering to new customers i.e. $4.95.
So! if your are looking for a reliable and fast hosting,
this is the right one but if you are concerned of recurring
charges then find an other one. 

Khaled Javeed Gravatar

(Intermediate)

Hosting Solutions: 1

Hosting Type: Shared

Nathan does not recommend Bluehost

I have been a multi-year client of Bluehost. At first they were excellent. No down time, quick response from the support desk. As the years went on all those things went downhill. Every other month my sites go down and they always say there is a problem with the server and it takes forever for them to get it working again. Meanwhile all my sites are down and customers are unhappy. I will be leaving Bluehost when my contract is up. I don't want to leave, but they have left me with no choice. :( 

Nathan Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 5 or more

Hosting Type: Shared

Kerry does not recommend Bluehost

On the plus side they do answer the phone quick. My site is erratically slow or down due to a time-out, or mysql connection error. For hours things will run fine and then BOOM! They tell me it is a CPU balancing..blah, blah, blah. Upgraded to the Pro... blah, blah, blah. Try telling that to lost customers and lost traffic. 

Kerry Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

John Murphy does not recommend Bluehost

I too recieved the "Your web hosting account for domain.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems). Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted." I couldn't even access my log files to see what could have happened.

When I contacted them they said the owner had disabled my account for causing server problems. Not sure what it was they would offer no further explanation. 

John Murphy Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Justine recommends Bluehost

I don't understand why a couple of people here bash Bluehost. I have NEVER experienced anything really bad with web hosting. Sure, I've had some downtime but tell me one web host that has 100% uptime - they don't exist. I like BlueHost very much. 

Justine Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

John DeLay does not recommend Bluehost

Requests I sent to the help desk were never answered once I was a customer. Long waits for phone support were the norm. If you put executables or mp3's on your site (even for personal use with single user access) they will disable your site. 

Reply from James Grierson, VP Business Development, Bluehost: Bluehost does not allow copyrighted materials to be hosted on our servers nor do we allow the use of a hosting account for personal backup storage.

John DeLay Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Hung Ying recommends Bluehost

Good web hosting services 

Hung Ying Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Chris Snyder does not recommend Bluehost

Bluehost is in the niche of low-price hosting, and as such, there is a certain lowering of expectations that must occur. If you need hand holding or want help developing your website, then no low-end hosting site is in your best interest.

I have been with them for four years now and I am a low-maintenance customer. I have only had to deal with them maybe three times, but each of those times have been horrible and could have ben avoided.

Once was for auto-renewal. My credit card had expired from when I had entered it two years previously. No problem, right. You send out an email... Read more

Chris Snyder Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Nicholas Halmond recommends Bluehost

I have been with bluehost for about a year now. Their live chat support is great. And my website is fast and up all the time. 

Nicholas Halmond Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Jose Alberto does not recommend Bluehost

They suspended my account without a warning or a specific reason! "Your web hosting account for domain.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems). Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted." I couldn't even access my log files to see what could have happened. 

Jose Alberto Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Matt recommends Bluehost

Bluehost have been nothing but nice to me and my website. Cheap hosting – Check, Great uptime – Check, Nice features – Check, Good support – Check… I recommend! 

Matt Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

James Pellerano recommends Bluehost

Solid hosting plan! A lot of features, and you have control a lot of control. Never seen my site down. I wish there was some better documentation for some things but I cant complain. I recommend this to anyone looking for a lot of features for a low price. 

Reply from James Grierson, VP Business Development, Bluehost: Bluehost offers a large amount of video tutorials and simulations at http://tutorials.bluehost.com along with a searchable directory of articles at http://helpdesk.bluehost.com.

James Pellerano Gravatar

(Beginner)

Hosting Solutions: 0

Hosting Type: Unknown

Nikos Skaftouros does not recommend Bluehost

I am 2 months in bluehost, I transfer all my Reseller from another provider and the only thing I can say is crap service when I got the package in WHMCS bluehost worked for my clients and for 6 days in WHMCS stopped working auto module and a response from the support that is no longer supported the WHMCS, hung me with my clients and outside that I have purchased the WHMCS. shame 

Nikos Skaftouros Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 5 or more

Hosting Type: Reseller

Roger Bates does not recommend Bluehost

I currently use BluseHost, I have 5 websites with them. I am tired of my sites going down and slowness. It seems they go down every day at the same time and nothing is being done to resolve this issue. UNACCEPTABLE! I have been with them for several years but their inability to resolve this issue or unwillingness is a deal breaker. Goodbye Bluehost...... 

Roger Bates Gravatar

(Experienced)

Hosting Solutions: 5 or more

Hosting Type: Shared

Dave does not recommend Bluehost

Bluehost was a great host when I first moved my blogs to
them. Everything was smooth for about a month and then their
service started to go downhill. For the past year they have
had major server issues. My blogs have suffered greatly from
all the downtime. I kept thinking they would improve and so
I signed on for another period of time. I really wish I
hadn't since I saw my traffic steadily decrease.

When my contract was nearing renewal, I started my hunt for
another host. I finally decided on SiteServing since I knew
a couple people who hosted with them and they all were
having a good experience with them. Ever since I moved, my
traffic has... Read more

Dave Gravatar

(Intermediate)

Hosting Solutions: 3

Hosting Type: Shared

Jaime Delgado recommends Bluehost

I spent a year at this company using their standard shared
hosting package. It is plenty of features, and the Customer
service is always ready to help.

The only feature I missed is the option to work with PHP 5.3
(which is needed by some frameworks such as Symfony 2, for
instance), but they are very close to implementing it. Just
ask about it before signing up, in case you need it.

Recently, I wanted to cancel my account since I was not
using it anymore, but the service was auto-renewed due to my
fault (I had forgotten it), and I was charged for the
following term. However, thanks to Bluehost support, I had
no problem to get a refund the... Read more

Jaime Delgado Gravatar

(Intermediate)

Hosting Solutions: 1

Hosting Type: Shared

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