BlueHost Review

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User Web Host Ratings & Reviews Overall Rating:  4.3 / 5   Popularity:  4.5 / 5 Is this a popular web host used by a large number of people?   Cost:  4 / 5 Was the hosting package offered at a good price?   Features:  3.5 / 5 Was the features you needed available to you with your hosting plan?   Reliability:  5 / 5 How reliable was the web hosting service? Did your web site experience any down time?   Performance:  5 / 5 Was your web server fast enough? This rating includes bandwidth and processing power of the web server.   Customer Support:  4 / 5 Did Customer Support meet your needs? Were they prompt and did they answer your questions to your satisfaction? Was the other help acceptable? This can include FAQs, knowledge bases and user forums.   • 4.3 / 5 (by 2 Users) for BlueHost   View Add

Our Ratings Popularity 10 / 10 Cost 9 / 10 Features 10 / 10 Reliability 9 / 10 Performance 9 / 10 Customer Support 10 / 10 Overall 95% Explanation of our Rating Criteria.

Categories Web Host Belongs Too Linux Web Hosting Shared Hosting United States Web Hosting

Bottom Line Over 1,500,000 Domains Hosted!!! This is almost 2% of the Internet!!! Top marks for Feature Set. Your e-Commerce solution is here.

BlueHost has been in operation since 1996, making them one of the oldest web hosting providers for personal and business web sites. BlueHost now hosts over 1,000,000 domains giving them a 10 in our popularity rating and making them the largest web host provider we have reviewed. BlueHost aim is to provide a high powered service at a low cost to its customers. This includes quality equipment, leading feature set, secure and reliable backups and excellent customer service.

Current Special Offer: $6.95 per month , includes unlimited bandwidth, disk space and unlimited domains hosted on one account.

Hosting Plans & Features

BlueHost offers a shared server hosting environment. All servers have Linux installed which ensures a fast and secure server. You can order one of two plans available at BlueHost, the 12 month plan and the 24 month plan. Both plan come with the same feature set. The 12 month plan costs $7.95 per month and the 24 month plan costs $6.95 per month, both with no setup fees. Optional features after sign-up include:

• Dedicated IPs at $30.00 per year (or $2.50 per month).
• Additional Domain Names at $10.00 each year.
• SSL Certificates for $45.00 each year.

Here is a table of BlueHosts main feature set.

Fairly unique among web hosting companies, BlueHost provides access to the open source database PostgreSQL. They also allow PHP 4 or 5 and customizable php.ini files. Since it's Linux you also have the advantage of .htaccess to help secure your site and rewrite URLs. Another advantage is custom Cronjobs to ensure any scheduled tasks are run on time.

All standard features are available here that other hosting providers have, including FTP, Webmail, Storage Backups and Site Statistics. You also have probably one of the largest selection of free scripts that can be installed (Fantastico enabled!). These include forum scripts like PHPBB and PHP Nuke, Chat Software, Web Blogs like Wordpress, Image Galleries, Web Auctions and the list goes on.

Businesses using e-Commerce makes up an important part of BlueHosts customer base. They have included some of the most extensive features for these people. They include SSL secure servers, over 4 different type of shopping carts (including Zen and OS Commerce) password protected directories and OpenPGP / GPG Encryption.

Other Related Services Offered

BlueHost full concentration is on hosting web sites. The only other service they perform is domain registration when related to their hosting plans.

Cost & Value

Even though BlueHost per month costs are slightly higher than some of our cheaper web hosting solutions we decided to give them a 10 out of 10 for this rating. The reason for this is, BlueHosts extensive feature list more than makes up for it. Expert web site owners will have no problems customizing the servers at BlueHost to fit their sites needs.

Reliability & Performance

Combining Linux, Apache Web Server and cPanel, BlueHost has created a hosting environment that has been proven secure reliable and fast. On the hardware side their quad processor servers and OC-48 Backbone Connection makes sure your web sites can be accessed instantly with no slow down. Spam Assassin Protection and Denial of Service Protection is also built into the network to prevent hackers from taking any advantages. If the local power goes out, your up time is protected with UPS battery backup for any short spikes or blackouts and they also have diesel generator backup power in place if the need ever arises.

Customer Support

With 24/7 toll free customer support phone numbers, live chat and a full featured support ticket center, BlueHost customer service reps are easy to access and very knowledgable. I also found the BlueHost forum to contain lots of good information from both other customers and the forum moderators. They do not disappoint!

Conclusion

We recommend BlueHost, they tied for the number one spot in our web hosting ratings with an overall score of 95%. So if you are looking for a hosting provider for a personal web site or you are a small to medium size business looking for a web site or e-commerce hosting solution you can't go wrong with choosing BlueHost.

Last Updated: Saturday, January 23 2010 @ 03:28 PM Eastern Standard Time|Hits: 10,952