Bluehost Hosting
Bluehost Hosting Full Analysis

Bluehost Hosting


Back in 2012 I conducted a survey of 40 seasoned webmasters and asked what they recommended for hosting. Bluehost came up as the second best recommended Web hosting company. I tried them out and detailed my experiences.

There are countless reviews of Bluehost on the net, most talk about the same features, money back guarantee and a free domain name registration for the first year. I tried to touch on some other factors in this review.

Background


In early 2000 Bluehost was my top choice for hosting small to medium sized websites. I was satisfied with their tech support, hosting features and competitive prices. Around 2009 Bluehost introduced CPU throttling, and things changed for the worse.

CPU throttling is the hosting company reducing the user's server CPU usage whenever resources are too high. Once you hit this mark Bluehost would freeze, or substantially reduce, your CPU usage. The throttling process would essentially render your website inaccessible. You could check if your website is in throttled mode or not through your CPanel management screen.

The good news, in late 2010 the owners of Bluehost changed and they revamped how they handled throttling. Today Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the marketplace. Bluehost claims they are hosing over two million websites.

My Experience


I will start by saying Bluehost has a great provenance uptime, ranked by tracking sites at 99.9%. I've yet to experience any downtimes. Pretty good for $3.95 a month.

I really like the CPanel management system. It's the standard CPanel, but Bluehost has implemented a custom layout which makes navigation much simpler. Bluehost also offers many adding which other hosts leave out, such as phpPgAdmin, 404 settings, language preferences, Spam Hammer, domain management, goMobi, Weekly, Cloudflare and much more.

Support


Bluehost has a substantial support network, accessed through their support portal. Their service documentation is extensive and is linked to a plethora of video tutorials which are hosted on YouTube. This has saved me a ton of time as I don't have to set up a live video chat or make a call.

Plans


Bluehost has all levels of hosting covered off, shared, dedicated, VPS and reseller hosting. You don't have to worry about outgrowing Bluehost as you can upgrade as needed. If your just starting off I recommend shared hosting, reassess once your traffic spikes.

Bluehosts Pro Package claims to have 80% less users on each server. This would provide you with more resources, primarily more CPU usage, disk space and bandwidth. The result would be faster website performance.

Guarantee


Bluehost advertises an anytime money back guarantee. You can cancel your account anytime and get a prorated refund. Compared to other hosts this is definitely a competitive advantage.

Issues


Bluehost is a well rated Web host, as it should be, but it's not without problems.

Bluehost still throttles CPU usage. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, I haven't seen many recent reports of this and I've yet to experience it. It is still important to keep your eye on your CPU throttling log to mitigate any problems. If your site loads slowly it will drastically affect your search rankings.

Bluehost has expensive renewal rates, when compared to initial signup costs. Renewal costs can reach up to 90% higher than initial registration. Unfortunately, this is the case with almost all major hosting companies. A promotional price is used to lure you in, subsequent fees then skyrocket.

There are strategies to avoid getting hit with high renewal fees. You can keep switching hosting providers to get the promotional deals, or stick with a company that holds the same rate through the contract.

Conclusion


Bluehost is a good choice if you're looking for a well established hosting company with competitive prices. Bluehost is recommended by many seasoned webmasters and is popular for a reason, and you get good service for the price you pay. Read what other users have to say in the comments section. Remember to submit your own review.
Disclosure: the reviews here are unbiased, be it good or bad. But if you do buy something the linked company pays us a commission. This helps keep the site ad free, thanks.
Coupon Codes
Unlimited Space, Transfer and DomainsCode:UnlimitedBlue
Free SSL, Ruby, CGI and MySQLCode:FreeBlue
Free DomainCode:DomainBlue

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