7.Bluehost

Summary

At first, BlueHost appears to be a very typical shared web hosting service. Indeed, for some reason, BlueHost doesn’t try to differentiate itself for position against the other web hosts. It offers a typical one-plan-fits-all solution with unlimited data transfer and disk space, MySQL databases, e-mail boxes, etc. at the typical rate of $3.95 per month.

Dig deeper and you find that BlueHost is located in Provo, Utah and is obviously owned and managed by the same team as HostMonster. No wonder the offers of these two web hosts are very similar. So are their pros and cons.

Featuring 24/7 U.S. based technical support, a rich choice of available scripts, and $100 of Google Adwords free credits, BlueHost is easy to start off with. More experienced customers will benefit from SSL server, a number of e-store applications, and a dedicated IP address, which, however, is a paid option. The promotional price of $3.95/month turns to a pumpkin on your next billing date, so be ready to pay $6.99/month for the next 3-year period.

Reliability

We measured the reliability of the web host using the Pingdom™ online service. Just like HostMonster, BlueHost doesn't give any kind of uptime guarantee. Pingdom™ reported 99.84%* uptime during the test period. We also estimated overall performance of the web host and the average response time was 0,492* seconds according to Pingdom™. The company doesn’t provide daily backups for free, but it does offer a Pro Package including backup services and other options.

Money Back Guarantee

BlueHost promises to return your money back at anytime if you don’t like the service. However, if you cancel your account after 30 days, the actual amount refunded is pro-rated, meaning you only get back money for the unused time. Canceling an account within the first 30 days refunds the entire sum less setup and domain name registration fees.

Ease of Use

The frontend control panel BlueHost offers gives the user rapid access to the most common functions and all standard commands of cPanel. What are the typical tasks any new client usually does? Link a domain, create an e-mail box, build up some design for the website, or setup a third-party blog or CMS. All of these are readily available from the management panel and that’s certainly convenient, especially for new comers.

All standard functions work without a hitch. Setting up e-mail forwarding or browsing files through the file manager is a no brainer.

Just like its monstrous cousin, BlueHost offers a number of free tools to help you deploy a new website quickly. These are eight site builders (Two of them are free trials, but the rest are free); and SimpleScripts installation framework that allows you to load any kind of third-party software to your brand new site with a few clicks. In addition you are entitled to receive $100 in Google AdWords credits and $50 in Facebook credits for free.

To evaluate the functionality of the software, we tried to install several applications using the SimpleScripts auto-installer.

When we installed WordPress, the auto-installer automatically suggested we add several plugins to make our WP-powered website sales-ready from the start. The installation completed twenty seconds later.

We didn’t face any significant hassles while managing or configuring BlueHost. However, just as with HostMonster some third-party solutions are apparently outdated and aren’t monitored by the web host personnel for updates. Trendy Site Builder’s 10-day trial always produced an error message. That is unfortunate because a free site builder is a promised feature and could be a determining factor in the decision to choose BlueHost.

Overall, the web host is quite easy to use. The control panel is straightforward, but the compatibility issues could mean that the staff doesn’t pay much attention to updates.

Technical Support

As a typical offering on the web hosting market, BlueHost provides a quite typical range of support options as well. Phone lines and live chat are for quick response, and the online ticket system should help resolve more complex situations. We submitted inquiries using every available channel and measured the response time in each case. The results were: a three minute wait to answer our phone call; a three minute wait for a live chat; and a six hour 36 minute wait for a response to our ticket. Wow!

If your problem is minor and you’re ready to solve it yourself with FAQs, the knowledge base, and video tutorials, you’re okay. But if you run into a serious problem, waiting for the support team to solve it, or even to answer your ticket, may require a whole nine yards of patience.

Conclusion

BlueHost provides more than you would expect for $3.95 per month and, honestly, more than it can manage. Tons of third-party software products look tasty but have minor issues. The sluggish support response is way beyond the bounds of decency, though you may never happen to need their assistance.

Overall, BlueHost is a strange mixture of excellent usability and technical problems. You won't make a big mistake if you select BlueHost, though. It is a reasonable choice for the price asked.