 BlueHost was founded in 1996 and is known for its inexpensive hosting plans and great performance. They are one of the larger hosting companies out there and provide customers with large amounts of web space and bandwidth, making their hosting solution a valuable commodity. Additionally, they offer several free script plug-ins such as, chat, blogs, polls, web auctions and bulletin boards. Supporting multiple features like, CGI, PHP, Perl, Front Page, MySQL Databases, ecommerce tools with a free shopping cart and the ability to track website traffic, BlueHost makes an all-in-one deal.
Reliability
BlueHost, during our review of their services, proved to have performance and reliability on par with the best shared hosts out there. They are conscious of not overloading their infrastructure, and of staying ahead of the load-curve by constantly expanding their data center. This factor stood out above all others and if performance is a paramount concern, BlueHost is definitely worth a look. We only experienced a few technical issues, all of which were resolved within a reasonable amount of time.
Price Value
Despite Bluehost’s great features, or perhaps on account of them, they do cost a little more than the other companies on this list to host with. If you prepay for 24 months, you do get the $30 set up fee waived and only pay an average of $6.95 per mo. BlueHost only offers Linux hosting. If you need Windows hosting, such as for ASP.NET or Microsoft data bases, you won’t be able to host with BlueHost. Overall, their hosting plan is a good bargain, especially for the performance and reliability they have achieved.
Control Panel
BlueHost uses Cpanel, one of the most popular control panel systems used today. Some functions accessible through the control panel include account, email and database management and web protection/security and statistics. Other functions include password management, billing info, web stats and more! The Cpanel control panel only works on a Linux/Unix environment. As noted earlier, BlueHost does not offer Windows hosting. For most users, this is not an issue, but if you happen to develop in a Microsoft environment, such as ASP.NET or Cold fusion, or need to use MS SQL data bases or VB scripting for instance, you will need a Windows hosting account.
Customer Support
Bluehost offers TOLL FREE telephone, chat and email support in their help section which includes FAQs. It also provides the customer with the option of submitting their own questions with a ‘ticket’ number that is used as a reference for better organization. In February 2006, Bluehost introduced 24/7 Toll free support to their customers. This is a big deal for any customer, as problems do not always occur during business hours. We found them to be helpful and friendly and although not the most impressive support we have ever seen, we have no complaints with them at all. |
