BlueHost $7 hosting

14 Oct

So, I’ve been looking for a hosting solution for my church’s website … we need to grow, and our current host is just not positioned to make that affordable. I was looking for something over 500 MB of disk space, with over 15 GB of monthly network traffic, and in particular, for a host with SSL enabled so we can set up a storefront to sell Concert tickets as well as books and CD’s that are being produced by EGC and Elim Publishing … Of course, we’re also talking about setting up seperate domains, or possibly just sub-domains for the “Youth” and the “Concerts” ... and I need to be able to give the people in charge of those areas FTP access, but limit it to those areas, and of course, I need seperate SQL databases for them.

With all that in mind, I went shopping. I’ll add some more information about other hosts later on, but the bottom line is that BlueHost looks astonishing, with 2 4 GB of disk space, 75 100 GB of Transfer, SSL and even GPG so you can generate certificates, as well as SSH access and the ability to create your own MySQL or PostgreSQL databases. Of course, they also have anonymous FTP, and the ability to create up to ~~1000~~ 2500 individual POP3 and FTP accounts with their own directories … They have an amazing number of preinstalled scripts: from three different webmail apps (NeoMail, Horde, SquirrelMail) and three statistics packages set up on each subdomain (and on the whole package) (Analog, Webalizer, and Awstats), they even have fantastico set up so you can easily install anything from Mambo (An amazing CMS) (which we’re thinking about using for the church site) to Moodle (which I just set up for Elim Bible Institute) and of course WordPress and Gallery (both of which I use here on this site).

So anyway … I haven’t signed up for an account yet … I’m just wondering if anyone has tried them? I’m basically looking for testimonials (other than those which might be planted out there already). Incidentally, if you have other recommendations, feel free to mention them, but keep in mind the stats on this deal and don’t waste your time on huge descriptions, since I can check out the feature set myself []

Update: 9-Dec-2004

Well, I ended up going with BlueHost for ElimOnline and the moodle install worked perfectly. So far, I’m quite happy with it, no problems whatsoever.

Update: 7-Jun-2005

I just noticed BlueHost has doubled the disk space they offer, so I figured I’d update this post in case anyone finds it while looking for information on hosting companies. I’ve now got several sites hosted with BlueHost, and the only problem I’ve had is one of my “customers” that couldn’t make up their mind if they wanted the free domain or the free domain transfer, and ended up confusing the BlueHost sales guy.

By Joel 'Jaykul' Bennett
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CommentsBlueHost+%247+hosting2004-10-14+17%3A51%3A26Joel+%27Jaykul%27+Bennett for "BlueHost $7 hosting"

Joel "Jaykul" Bennett October 14th, 2004 at 1:04 pm 1

You ever notice how many acronyms you use when you start posting about technology, and in particular about purchasing computers or internet services?
Brian October 19th, 2004 at 11:40 pm 2

Excellent host. Excellent support. I use it, and while I had a few issues at first, support cleared them up instantly.
Bryan Villarin October 27th, 2004 at 8:57 pm 3

So much for so little? If you haven’t already, WebHostingTalk would be a good place to find some information on them. (I linked to the search already.) Sitepoint is an awesome resource as well.

I’ve been using Potent Products since 9/2003. (Not spamming, just looking through different blogs from the plugins I’ve installed for WP.) Hope this helps though.
nead October 31st, 2004 at 8:42 pm 4

I use ICDsoft as my host and provider. Excellent tech support – usually replying within an hour via email. I believe you need to register the domain name through them also. Check them out at: http://www.icdsoft.com
Blog-on!
Sam
tA?m November 7th, 2004 at 9:49 am 5

I operate 5 domains/websites, all hosted at Bluehost.com. I switched from Hostway.com have been using Bluehost since Jamuary 2004 and have nothing but praise for their features, reliability and their great tech support… not to mention their prices!
Christopher December 9th, 2004 at 12:50 am 6

So did you sign up with them? I am looking at them right now.
Joel "Jaykul" Bennett December 9th, 2004 at 11:15 pm 7

Oh, yeah … i should have updated this post …
does so
Gary December 16th, 2004 at 9:04 am 8

Bluehost are the worst. Constant down times, no support (well you can email them, they just never respond), broken or non-working applications like MySQL, PHP, etc.

These guys must have paid for the good reviews around the Internet because no one in their right mind would ever give more than a 1 out of 10 to Bluehost (and a 1 would be generous).

Bluehost is just terrible.
Gary December 16th, 2004 at 3:11 pm 9

Wish I had the same experiences to relate.

Bluehost ripped me off bigtime. I can’t say enough about how bad these guys are. I wrote up some of my experiences on my blog at http://bluehost.blogspot.com.

They are absolutely terrible.
Joel "Jaykul" Bennett December 16th, 2004 at 9:48 pm 10

I see Gary felt so strongly about it that he posted again when my filter paused his first comment for having a link in it

Well, I guess I’ll post again about this after I’ve run into some kind of problem, to relate how well they handled it
scott February 15th, 2005 at 10:29 pm 11

I use shieldhost.com for my blog hosting. It is very cheap ($1.99/month for a limited time).

It has unlimited mysql databases, ftp/ssh, and the uptime has been very good.

I’ve read that some people have had trouble with MT, but wordpress works great on it for me.

Scott
Robert June 24th, 2005 at 6:39 pm 12

Well I have been with bluehost for a few months now hosting my Webhost Review Site http://www.2revu.com . So far I have had no problems and I rank them at the top of my list for features and there support has been great for me!
robert July 21st, 2005 at 12:42 am 13

Bluehost is certainly NOT an excellent service.
It is hit and miss with the TECHs there. About 40% have good attitudes and are knowledgable.
They are cheap, but this is a case of getting what you pay for.
... Like someone else who posted, I suspect they are writing their own “excellent” reviews.
It’s a good, cheap service if you don’t expect much, but they really never solve recurrent
tech problems, and often don’t return your email asking for help. (They send you a auto-generated
“We Believe In Excellent Service!” which is IRRITATING as hell when they don’t bother to follow up)
I don’t recommend Bluehost, although it seems there are many WORSE hosters…
Alfredo August 8th, 2005 at 4:33 pm 14

Hi:

I tryed to create a domain with Bluehost but after more of one week i’m still waiting, I received a mail asking if my domain was a transfer or a new domain but after this mail I sended many mails to the support mail but never sent me an aswer.
hugh December 12th, 2005 at 11:53 am 15

I’m quite happy with http://dragonfort.net. The $1 hosting is 500MB/10GB. You might need to talk to James, the admin, about more storage. If you set up your site correctly 10GB of transfer should be plenty. I have an ongoing series of articles titled “Podcasting Should Not Be Expensive” that explains how I’m keeping my hosting cost as close to zero as possible. You can read the series at http://illudium.com/tag/series:psnbe . I haven’t gotten to the article that might be the most help to you. Part 4, which I’m currently writing covers setting up the wp_cache plugin. I suspect Part 5 is going to be about the Bad Behavior plugin, because that’s a priority for me. Somewhere around Part 6 I’ll be talking about using the Coral cache for the frequently requested pages like the main page. (there’s no point in redirecting people to Coral for a page that’s almost certainly not going to be in Coral’s cache). Part 2 covers using Coral for large media files. Part 4 which I just implemented and am still writing up, is needed before you can usefully offload your page requests. Feel free to shoot me a mail if you have any questions.
blondiechick March 25th, 2006 at 5:30 am 16

I just had a recent experience with Bluehost after researching all of the reviews online. I was with them for two days, then cancelled. I must say the cancellation was quite easy, they answered the phone and did it quickly for me. I cancelled because they do not have any decent website-building tools and I am no techie, I also do not have Frontpage and am not willing to buy it just for the site builder tools in it. I’m not sure if I did buy Frontpage I could figure out how to use Bluehost. I found it very difficult to use and create a website with. They do not have a good “question answering” area, and they do not have forums to jump to and ask questions. I was disappointed to say the least. At least they cancelled me with no money owed (30-day cancellation policy). The GOOD thing I can say about BLUEHOST is they did a good job cancelling my site!
Magda Wojtyra April 14th, 2006 at 11:43 pm 17

Bluehost is definitely turning out to be a mixed bag.

I’ve been with them a couple of weeks, a few issues here and there were quickly resolved, and then today I hit a wall.

Nowhere in the Bluehost Terms of Service does it say that you will be limited to sending 50 emails per hour for the whole account, even if you are hosting several domain names with a few addresses in each.

Who cares if you can have a total of 2500 pop accounts, if only 1 of 50 of those accounts can send an email per hour! It’s just that kind of terrible inflated statistic that makes hosting plans sound good until you try it, very disappointing.

I sent out an email to friends and family with some pictures. Just about 800KB of attachment, but split it up over two emails anyways. The first email chugged through (was sent to 51 people), and the second went nowhere. That’s the last email I’ve been able to send on the account today, about 7 hours ago! Totally froze the account…

I didn’t even know what was going on, and I find the email limiting policy, based on trying to limit outgoing spam, rather outrageous. Isn’t it enought to limit bandwidth usage? Because they SAY it’s for limiting spam, but I don’t believe them. I think it’s to limit server access.

Support raised the limit to 400, but in my case that is not enough. I explained that I send out newsletters and party invitations to 300+ friends at a time. If an error appears in the email, I won’t be able to send out a correction for an hour. I’m not planning to send out hundreds of emails every hour of every day, but it does happen, and this kind of limit is just plain weird. No other hosting company has it.

I was told I could start throtling my email, or switch hosts. That’s just about the most cavalier customer support attitude I’ve ever heard!

Having just switched FOUR domains to Bluehost and purchased FIVE years of hosting based on glowing reviews here, there, and everywhere, set up all the email accounts for everybody, troubleshooted all the little problems associeted with the transfer, and just barely got used to the Control Panel (which is NOT smooth), email is NOT number one on my list of who and what I want to throttle right now!

The worst part is that 6 hours later I still can’t send any mail, and, as of maybe about 3 hours ago, can’t receive any, either.

Tickets started at the beginning of this issue have been labeled “resolved” and moved to Closed Ticket History, and I have gotten no reply from Support in over 3 hours. Plus, the resolution deadlines on the tickets are dated for Monday, three days from now!

Sorry, this turned into a rant. I just think people should know.
Dillon September 29th, 2006 at 8:03 pm 18

I’ve been with bluehost for a year now, hosting 3 sites, one for my own artwork and sculpture, one for the artist studios and events i help coordinate, and one as a more general arts network pages for Sydney and Melbourne.
Up until last week I’d had relatively few problems with them, their support seemed to be faily prompt when I needed it, they obliged quickly when I said I needed more mail traffic, and had experienced a couple of periods of downtime, but nothing major and a vast improvement on the Australian based host I was previously with. All in all I felt I was getting a reasonable sevice for the money.
We recently restructured how we do our banking, closing down a couple of peripheral accounts to stream line the accounts. one of these accounts was the one that bluehost was billing.
Unfortunatly, rather that do us the courtesy of notifying us of a billing problem by email, thus allowing us to login to our bluehost account and update the relevant information, and sending us all on our merry way, they decided just to delete my entire account, webmail, php the lot, and then not even inform me of this action – I found out when I couldn’t access my @mekanarky.com mail accounts, had to mail them through yahoo and wait 24 hours for a response. Being based in Australia, trying to sort things out by phone is not economical or practicle, the response i recieved was a very brisk “sort it out with billing” from a mister Jay Ward, who was also unable to inform me whether the deleted information was backed up and retrievable. Billing is now shut till monday, leaving me with at least another 2 days downtime, for me, the forum, several dozen artists that use our webmail, the mailing list and newsgroup etc. etc.
I now have to figure whether it’s worth rectifying the situation with Bluehost, even just to retrieve the site architecture and mail info, which I’m informed “might” be backed up, or to just screw the whole deal and go with a more obliging host that has abit more respect for it’s clients, but face the somewhat daunting prospects of filling in the gaps in the sites (mambo, blogs etc.) and trying to compile a list and contact the various people who have lost their email accounts (numerous irate phonecalls have helped with this to some extent, but some of the crew are overseas, hard to contact and relying on their email).
I was recommending bluehost as a hosting solution up until 3 days ago, now i feel utterly screwed by them, am shopping around for a new host and recomending to anyone and everyone not to go with bluehost.

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Update: 9-Dec-2004

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