Bluehost Bio:
- Established: 1996
- Sites Hosted: 2,000,000+
- Location: Jacksonville, FL
- Host Award: Best Overall
- Featured Package Price:
$1.99
/month- Storage Space:10 GB
- Transfer/Bandwidth:Unmetered
- Setup Fee:Free
- Domain Name:1 Free
- Money-Back Guarantee:30-Day
- Uptime Guarantee:99.9%
- Free Website Builder:Yes
- Multiple Domains:Unlimited
- E-mail Accounts:Unlimited
- MySQL Databases:100
- Control Panel:cPanel
- Operating System:Linux
- Server Backups:Daily
- 24/7 Monitoring:Yes
- Wordpress
- Joomla
- Drupal
- Ruby on Rails
- PHPMyAdmin
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
- Overall Score:
98%
- Our Total Rating:
- Number of User Reviews:
67
- Avg. User Rating:
Our Review of: Bluehost
Overview:
Bluehost, a well known web hosting favorite, located in Jacksonville, Florida has been in the web hosting business since 1996 and currently hosts a whopping 2,000,000+ domain names. They excel in providing low cost web hosting, with many features only found with larger, more expensive hosting companies. Many features of which you will never need to use, but it's nice to know that nearly any widely used script is available if you do need it.
As noted above, they're a large host, that has the experience and know-how to make sure things run smoothly. That expertise, combined with outstanding technical support and being veterans in the web hosting industry makes them the solid top pick on our list.
Pros:
- One of the oldest web hosting companies.
- They own their datacenter and are 100% US based.
- Nearly every hosting application you could ever want.
Cons:
- Have heard of a few gripes with tech support.
Features & Specials:
Bluehost has unheard of hosting deals with the perfect plans for any small to medium sized business, or personal web site. We currently feature their most popular hosting plan, but for the price and what it offers, it can't be beat. In addition to a huge storage and transfer limit, it offers a free domain name for life, free/instant account setup, free domain privacy registration and 24-hour toll-free support, with a 30-second support wait time average.
Account features offered are too numerous to list, but a few that really stood out and are most significant are Flash support, message forum, live chat, web auction software, along with a host of e-commerce shopping cart plugins. Their free site builder also is a great feature, which makes building a web site a breeze. Bluehost also lets you host unlimited domains on each account, great for clients with extra domain names.
Last but not least, for a limited time, new accounts also get free web site search engine submission and free $75 advertising credits at Google and $50 credits at Yahoo! Search Marketing.
- They offer pretty much unlimited everything.
- $75 Google Adwords and $50 advertising credit at Yahoo!
- Message forum and chat software free on every account.
Reliability & Speed:
Bluehost's top notch datacenters, which they really do own and operate, featuring world-class equipment and industry leading network connections, enables them to have a super reliability and speed rating. They include a 50,000 sq. ft. headquarters and 2 secondary datacenters, totaling over 20,000 sq. ft. of datacenter space. From their high performance equipment, biometric entry security, total UPS power backup and 24/7 monitoring, Bluehost always has your site's uptime in mind.
They also utilize mirrored storage backups, which helps ensure that your data is never lost due to equipment failure. Mirrored backups basically keep a near realtime second copy of your files on another hard disk, which gives their file storage system great redundancy in case of a main hard drive failure. This would be similar to a Raid type backup system, widely used to protect against accidental file loss.
Reliability & Speed Factors:
99.9%
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OC-192
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Summary: Runs own datacenter, with top notch server equipment. Mirrored storage backups, help ensure data isn't lost due to hard drive failure. |
Support:
Bluehost offers great customer service and support, with usually less than 30-second hold times, via english speaking support. As a matter of fact, their support staff is located in Jacksonville, FL, at their main headquarters. Their friendly staff are always there to help with most any problems that might arise. You can reach them several ways, either by 24/7 free support chat online, which is our favorite, by 24/7 toll-free phone, or e-mail.
They also offer an extensive help desk section, with FAQs, advanced online trouble ticket system and more. They also offer a customer message forum, to get answers from other members.
Average Support Wait Times:
9 seconds
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30 seconds
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Control Panel:
Bluehost utilizes the famous cPanel control panel interface, which makes it easy to manage all aspects of your hosting account. cPanel makes managing your account a breeze, with a simple navigational platform and detailed usage instructions. A few notable easy-to-use functions include the ability to configure e-mail accounts, domain management, website statistics, script implementation and database administration. They have also made a few tweaks to their control panel, which makes it even easier to operate than regular cPanel accounts.
What sets them apart?
"Affordable, Reliable Web Hosting Solutions." - Bluehost |
Their great overall appeal to almost any small business. |
With Bluehost you can depend on: Highest customer service Quality equipment Maximum guaranteed uptime The leading feature set available. |
Summary:
We picked Bluehost as the #1 rated web host, because of their great price, account feature addons and excellent tech support. Not to mention, their long standing status as veterans in the web hosting industry, operating their own datacenter, in operation since 1996.
With all the above now said, we think you'll agree that Bluehost has one of the best web hosting offers out there. Check out an absolute top contender in the discount web hosting arena today.
Bluehost Ratings ChartScore: 98%
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Bluehost User Reviews
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Bulletproof...
Review by: James, from Herndon, VA
I haven't noticed our site ever going down to speak of. Exremely fast page loading also for a 3.95 a month host.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Near the creme of the crop
Review by: Adam, from Florida
Experience, large customer base, own datacenter, cheap, cutting edge servers pretty much all describe Bluehost. They are true veterans in web hosting. Being associated with them for many years I feel I can truly say this and recommend them to everyone. Happy Turkey day also!
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Good for the $
Review by: Sonny, from Buffalo
Most everything you could want from a host at this price point. Speed is also really good, as I don't notice alot of slowdowns at peak times of the day.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
No big issues
Review by: Charlie, from Syracuse
Signed up a couple weeks ago and got the account online near instantly. Was able to get site live and running with no issues or support from tech. No outages so far. Knock on wood.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Top of the picks...
Review by: Carlos, from Santa Fe
They have been our host for over 5 years. To be honest I can't think of a better deal out there. Their support is right there when you need them and the site is live almost all the time. No host is perfect, but they do the job right.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Fastest servers
Review by: Stuart, from Boynton Beach
If you know anything about hosting, you know it can be hard to find that "perfect" one. I was looking for a provider that was inexpensive and provided super fast servers along with it, without those stupid restrictions to deal with. They are easily the fastest servers I've used and hardly no downtime, that I recall.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Bluehost
Review by: Jon, from Ft. Worth
I can't lie, I'm a fan of Bluehost. If you notice, you don't see any many bad reviews on them as the other cheap hosts. They have all the features you will want, at least as far as I'm concerned. They are also very reliable, which many hosts in the past have not been, esp. cheap hosts.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Helpful support
Review by: Todd, from Spartanburg, SC
There was an issue with the database not working and support restarted it quickly and that fixed the problem. All around their service is very satisfactory.
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Hard to beat for the $$$!
Review by: Marcus, from Annapolis, MD
Needless to say I have tried quite a few in my time and Bluehost ranks up there with the best as far I'm concerned. They are a web hosting pioneer with many many years of experience. I can't say for a fact how new their equipment is, but it's been reliable for my site for the past few months...
- Value for Money
- Reliability & Uptime
- Customer Courtesy
- Technical Support
- Features
- Storage Space
- Bandwidth
- Tech Response Time
- Ease of Use
- Server Speed
Should be #1 on the list...
Review by: Alexander, from Los Angeles
Having been around web hosting and such for years, I know a thing or 2 of what to look for and most importantly, what to be aware of. Most of the smaller hosts today don't even own their own datacenter, Bluehost does and has been for years. Some hosts say they offer a specific script, but often times don't and certainly won't support the use of it. Bluehost offers what they say they do and helps you utilize it. For the price, you really can't beat them... Trust me.