Bluehost - User Reviews and Comments

Many web-hosting providers offer their potential customers things that they simply cannot guarantee. Not only is this misleading and frustrating to customers when they find out that this is not really the case, it is on the borderline of false advertising.

For those who are looking at a web-hosting service, make sure that the company chosen is already providing what they are claiming to offer to their other customers.

Below are some examples of the types of guaranteed services that web-hosting companies offer their customers when they know that these services are impossible to guarantee.

100% Uptime
It is impossible to offer 100% up time 24/7 to customers. Even the most expensive, best quality machines are prone to fail some of the time. If the web host loses even a few seconds of uptime then it is fair to say that they cannot provide their customers with 100% up time. If a web-hosting company is offering this service, check to see if they will refund or compensate the customer if they do have any down time.

Foolproof Anti-virus
With viruses popping up all of the time and the people creating the viruses getting better at creating trouble, it is untruthful to say that any type of anti-virus is fool proof. It is impossible to be up to date with all of the definitions all of the time. Even the best anti-virus services fail to catch a virus at times. This doesn’t mean that the anti-virus service the web host has in place is not good, all it means is that nobody is perfect and there is no such thing as foolproof.

Anti-spam that never fails
Anti-spam is a great service, sometimes. All anti-spam services have their negative points. They are known to block emails that are wanted and let in the ones that are spam. Good anti-spam services allow the user to ‘allow or deny’ emails into their email box. But it is misleading to say that anti-spam services never fail.

Unlimited disk space
There is no way that a web-hosting service can promise unlimited disk space. Even the biggest data center has limitations and size restrictions. The point being put across to customers may be that the disk space being offered is ample enough for any website, however, unlimited space is misleading.

Unlimited Email Accounts
By definition, any control panel has to have a defined number of email account allowed.
This number may be very high, lets say a thousand. You will probably never use a thousand email accounts for your business and it would be crazy to try to handle that many. However, high as the number of email accounts may be, it’s still not unlimited.

While all of these services are necessary, it is important to remember that, although outrageous promises made by some web-hosting companies can be very attractive, customers should make sure that the web-hosting company can deliver what they are promising before signing up for them.

When there isn’t a need to pay more for a service, no one wants to go the expensive route. Where a webmaster can save money, he or she can better use the funds for increasing popularity and services of the said website. But finding a cheap web host can be a tough action to go through- although there are some tips to get webmasters on the right road.

The biggest disadvantage to average cheap webhosts is the fact that they will commonly offer less disk space and bandwidth than other hosts. The trick is to find a webhost that is established enough to have extra disk space and bandwidth available. This means that the no-name hosts that don’t have reputation will likely be less appealing than the mainstream hosts.

Sometimes it isn’t about what one needs in a web host, so much as it is what they don’t need from a host. Some hosting companies will offer different services, programs, and tools that veteran webmasters won’t need. These often cost much more money in the long run, and are usually unnecessary. Other things such as the web hosting panel used can impact a bill- whereas cPanel will cost much more than a free web panel offered by a hosting company.

Although it is a little ironic, sometimes spending more money on a hosting plan will give a customer a better discount. Web hosting companies will charge based on amount of disk space and bandwidth allowed. Such limits are increased dramatically with bigger plans. The cost per megabyte, thus, is much cheaper when paying for a larger plan. This is usually the best option for medium to large websites.

Those who have the funds to make a commitment, there are vast savings to be had by agreeing to a length of service. The most common length of service is a year- in which case the webmaster pays upfront for the entire year’s worth of service. This will commonly give the webmaster a month or two of free service in savings, although it also means that they will have to use the same service for a year- so make sure it is a reputable company.

Cheap webhosts can also be obtained through other types of efforts, although it’ll take more time and patience. The first way is to simply place ads on one’s website that link back to the webhost. This will require an “under the table” deal with the webhost, who will agree to offer a discount in exchange for the links. Other things, such as forum posting, referring sales, or even completing offers can help reduce a payment each month.

Final Thoughts

Web hosts have a lot of fees, bills, and expenditures to abide by. But this doesn’t mean that they can’t offer cheap hosting to their customers! To get the best deals, always ask about referral programs, ad placement opportunities, and always opt for the service agreement each year if the funds are permitted. And in the end, opting for established web hosts is usually the best route to take.

By: Chris Channing

Hosting Features

300GB space
3,000GB bandwidth
24/7 Tech Support via phone/live chat
Unlimited Domains on 1 Account!
Free Domain Name Forever
Free best hosting company Bluehost Site Builder
Unlimited Email Accounts (more than any Bluehost customer will ever us)
Unlimited Email Forwarders
50 MySQL/PostgreSQL Databases
PHP4+5, MySQL4+5, Your choice!
SSH (Secure Shell), SSL, FTP, Stats
CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL
Fantastico (Free Scripts like Joomla, Mambo, Wordpress, phpbb Forums)
eCommerce Enabled
Streaming Multimedia
Free Search Engine Submissions

Prices

3 Months: $9.95 per month + $30.00 Setup + Domain ($10.00 if purchased from BlueHost)
6 Months: $8.95 per month + $30.00 Setup + Domain ($10.00 if purchased from BlueHost)
1 year: $7.95 per month (no setup fee, free domain from Bluehost included)
2 years: $6.95/month (no setup fee, free domain from Bluehost included)

best hosting company Bluehost, which began in 1996, touts itself as an affordable and reliable webhosting provider that serves over 475,000, domains/websites. I feel I’m qualified to do a Bluehost review because I actually use Bluehost.com for some of my CMS/Blogs.best hosting company BlueHost has some amazing features in its control panel. SSH is just one of the tools Bluehost comes packed with. What is SSH you may ask? Basically a SSH connection is a way for two computers to connect securely to each other without worry from outside interference or hacking. With SSH you can transfer files or have remote logins without worry because your Bluehost SSH encrypts info for you.

Crowns

Like most other hosts they do offer 24/7 toll free lines for support. Also you have a knowledge base, online chat and email support available. Better still, they have an active support forum which is a real help for the newbies. You get to share the information with support staff as well as experienced webmasters. Support tickets may not be fastest, but they do get replied in a reasonable time limit.

* Bluehost offers 24/7 managed care and tech support for your site. In my mind this is absolutely essential for any low cost web hosting service. Based on our personal experience with Bluehost and what we read in Bluehost reviews, the staff has always been honest, professional, courteous and will give you as much time as you need to help you with your issue.
* The best hosting company Bluehost Contol Panel is easy to navigate and comes with Fantastico, where you can get automatic and free downloads to put blogs, a CMS, forums, mailing programs, etc. seamlessly on your site with just a click of the mouse. Amazing!
* Drop and drag unlimited FTP makes it so simple for a non tech guy like me to upload files to my site.
* How can you beat the $6.95 per month Bluehost charges for all the features they offer?

The CPU quota is surrounded by a lot of mystery, speculations and rumours. Recently, Alligosh, Bluehost’s principal systems administrator dropped into the bluehost forum and gave an exact definition of what constitutes the CPU limits.

The Bluehost CPU quota defined:

The CPU quota is calculated using a set number of runtime CPU seconds over a set number of realtime seconds.

With us, if you use more than 40 CPU seconds over a 60 realtime second period, the cpu quota system will suspend the website until the average over the last three minutes is below 40 CPU seconds. The three minute average is calculated every 15 seconds for the previous three minutes. As soon as your average is below the 40 CPU seconds, you will be unsuspended.

Also, processes are not terminated for going over the quota, as we don’t like killing half done processes. After the process finishes, it’s entire CPU usage is added into the last minute of processes.

If you have 200 processes in a minute that each use .5 CPU seconds, it will get you suspended. If those same processes take two minutes, you won’t get suspended.

Since the last sentence didn’t make any sense Alligosh later clarified that he meant to say .4 CPU seconds which makes sense again.