Bluehost Review
Bluehost are primarily known for shared hosting, reseller hosting and domain registrations. Started in 2002 / 2003 in a 50,000 square foot HQ, Matt Heaton built up much of the company for eight years. Dan Handy now has the job and development continues to sore. Bluehost is owned and controlled by Endurance International Group, a US company which also owns Fastdomain and Hostmonster.
Bluehost sells itself on topnotch customer support and boasts a call waiting time of under 30 seconds. Bluehost is ideal if you like all services offered in-house by a specialized team. They do not outsource anything, they own their data servers, fiber connections and run custom kernels on customized servers. Having a one point contact for you problems has its definite benefits.
Hosting Plans
Bluehost focuses on Linux based hosting. Their hosting packages are competitively priced and offer lots of storage with tons of features. The price of shared hosting is based on the contract length chosen. Bluehosts shared hosting is great for a small business or personal website that doesn't use lots of resources. Lightweight programs will run smoothly, such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and similar tools.
Bluehost uses CPanel to manage their hosting features, domain settings and email preferences. Users have direct access to manage their active services such as SSL, PostgreSQL, Mysql, Ruby on Rails and all the usual CPanel features most hosts provide. Simplescripts provides a one click install of your favourite scripts and programs.
Alongside shared hosting, Bluehost has a strong reseller hosting program and have recently introduced VPS and dedicated hosting.
Reliability
Bluehost's custom servers all have power backups through UPS' and generators. User data is also backed up routinely, however if you value your data this should not be relied upon.
Bluehost claims to offer a refund if you decide to change providers based on a server outage. That being said, Bluehost has been around for awhile and their investment in infrastructure does give some reassurance to stability.
At this time it doesn't look like Bluehost offers any type of redundant / clustered servers. If your site uptime is vital then you may have to look elsewhere for better protection.
Support
Bluehost customer support is offered 24/7 through email, phone and live chat through a helpdesk portal. Support staff is located in the US and can be reached directly through a toll-free number, if you live in the states. Otherwise, you can contact staff through a separate international line.
The support section has an extensive knowledge base, user forum and tutorial video series. You can also view a live readout of server status and any outages.
Extras
When signing up for Bluehosts shared hosting users will receive a free domain name registration for one year, vouchers for Google Adwords, free SEO report, Facebook ad credits and a free Yellow Pages listing.
Cancellations
Bluehost offers a 30 day money back guarantee after registering. There are a number of non-refundable fees which are related to SSL certificates, SEO services, custom backup services, SiteLock and any fees related to domain services.
A full refund is only offered within the first three days of registration. Between 3 and 30 days the refund is granted less some fees and the free domain name that was linked to the initial purchase is now subject to a fee. A request to cancel can be sent to Bluehost through any of their support contact options.
Summary
Bluehost offers competitive shared hosting plans through a simple interface. They are fairly new to the VPS and dedicated server game, so you may want to go with another host if you require heavy resources.
You will enjoy Bluehosts simple interface and customer support system. Bluehosts primary advantage is their in-house infrastructure which should make troubleshooting issues much easier.
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