Bluehost Review
I have been a Bluehost customer for about 3 months and before selecting Bluehost, I compared them to Hostgator and Godaddy. I should mention that my objective is the hosting of WordPress sites. Some of what I report may not apply to non-Wordpress ites but most will.
Bluehost Review – Unlimited Sites / Bandwidth / Storage – One Price
Right off, before comparing other features, I selected Bluehost because I could have an unlimited number of WordPress sites for the same $6 per month. The other hosting companies I reviewed charged more per site. Since my intention is to have 100+ WordPress blogs running, it was really
attractive to pay just $6 monthly for that.
I rejected Godaddy quickly because you don’t get unlimited sites for the same price. Each site is extra. Also, not being a techie, I don’t know how much about bandwidth or storage or how much I use. With Bluehost, these are unlimited and with Godaddy, except for their highest priced plan, their other plans have limits.
However, I want to be reasonable in this Bluehost review. I am sure that if you start using gobs of storage and bandwidth and have thousands of visitors a day, they will impose some limits. So if you are a heavy user, then you may want to speak with them first.
Bluehost Review – Simple to Use
The other thing I should mention is that I have used WordPress before but I am not a techie–I don’t know how to modify the php scripts or anything about php, css, or xyz. It’s alphabet soup to me. You may need to use the FTP functionality (although a WordPress user could conceivably never need
to) and Bluehost has a tool that automated the set up of the FTP account with popular free FTP clients such as CuteFTP and Core FTP.
Now let me discuss some of the other items.
Bluehost Review – Good Guarantee
Next up for me was that Bluehost has an anytime money-back guarantee. So if you are not happy, you can walk. You can work with them on a month to month basis (you save a little if you sign up for a year but it’s only a few dollars). However, with the year program, you get a free domain (worth about $10).
Bluehost Review – Email Accounts
It was not a big issue for me, but you can also have an unlimited number of email accounts. What I didn’t like is that there is no email forwarding function so I could not forward the email to one of my existing accounts. For me this was not a big deal as I use MS Outlook so I simply created
another account in Outlook and have the incoming emails appear in my main email account. But if you use free email like GMail or yahoo, this could be an inconvenience (unless those services allow you to retrieve emails from another host).
Bluehost Review – One Button WordPress Install
Up until I started my account with Bluehost, I was not aware of simple scripts (one button installation), but don’t use any host that does not have it. Simple Scripts is a push-one-button set up of a WordPress site . Literally, you press one button and this tool generates the entire WordPress site so you can complete your first post in 5 minutes. This is an incredible time-saving tool and don’t use any hosting company that does not offer it.
Bluehost Review – Buying Domains
The next issue for me, which I did not realize until I had the account for several days, was the ability to buy domains through Bluehost. It is limited as I was unable to by a .cc domain through them. However, I realized that it was not a big issue as I was able to get all my domains through my Godaddy domain account and easily point them to Bluehost and use them in my Bluehost account. Remember, I am not a techie so none of what I cover in this post is very difficult.
Bluehost Review – Uptime / Reliability / Access Speed
There is now way to tell about issues like up-time and access speed before you have an account. I now have about 15 sites in my account and I have never experienced any downtime and the sites load quickly. Frankly, I think any hosting company would rank well on this score. Unless you think
you will have 1000 visitors a day, I think this is a non-issue.
Bluehost Review – Tech Support
When it comes to tech support, I cannot tell you anything as I have never contacted them. I have not had any need as when you log into your control panel, everything is quite self-explanatory and for me, its most important that the documentation and layout be so good that I should never need to
waste my time with tech support.
Unfortunately, I have purchased domains through Godaddy for years and have been continually frustrated at their poor documentation (it’s always missing at least one step) when I have had to do things like transfer domains in or out or assign a developer to my account. The Bluehost documentation is very good so I have never needed to call them.
Just my idiosyncrasy, but I find it a huge waste of time to need to talk to people rather than use email. So for me, it was annoying, when I first started the account, they had to call me to verify my information. I find this a waste of time as I don’t always answer the phone so I had to call
them. The call only took a couple minutes, but just my personal irritation when a 140 year-old device (the phone) gets used when the Internet will suffice.
Bluehost Review – Other
As to WordPress templates, ignore anything about the free templates. They have no value (same will be true of any hosting company) and you will either use one of the hundreds of free WordPress templates available anywhere on the web or buy a template you really like. Bluehost gives
you some “lite” version of templates and then you need to pay the provider for all the features you really want. (I happily use the Heatmap Template in all of my sites).
It appears that the Hostgator offering was comparable to Bluehost and I ended up choosing Bluehost only because the price was lower – I think $5.95 vs $7.95 a month. I have been happy with the choice.
Disclosure: I am a Bluehost customer and Heatmap customer and they pay me as an affiliate for referrals as they will you.
If there is something I didn’t cover, leave a comment and I will be happy to give you a reply.
