BlueHost Review

My Top 3

Have you seen all those web hosting ads like the one on the right or those bluegrid favicons and wondered what the…? Well, stay tuned, because here’s the scoop on Bluehost web hosting.

Bluehost has hosted Turnipofpower.com for almost 5 months now. Since I’ve recently been promoting a “Special Offer” on my website for Bluehost, Bluetrick was kind enough to give me an opportunity to promote the offer and explain why I think Bluehost Hosting is a good deal. First of all, here are some stats:

Their Cheapest Plan

• $6.95 per month on a 2 year package - There are no other hidden costs or fees. No sucker packages that trick new people into signing up and then find out they can’t even run WordPress.
• Bandwidth: 15k GB per month
• Space: 1500 GB
• Domains: Unlimited Addon, Unlimited Parked Domains, Unlimited Subdomains
• MySQL: 50 Databases
• Control Panel you can demo ahead of time. Fantastico Support. Great support forums and tech support
• Several Affiliate Programs

The Good

For those new to blogging, let’s break down those stats into something useful. I run 4 WordPress blogs, 4 subdomains, 2 addon domains, 4 MySQL databases, yet only use 1% of my bandwidth! In theory I could buy 49 additional domains, add them to the same control panel as addon domains, install 50 of copies WordPress using the 50 MySQL databases, and run 50 blogs all for $6.95 a month.

The Bad

Now for the bad. Shared hosting by definition means you share your server with other people. Some of the people are knowingly bad or are unknowingly stupid. Either way, it is possible for them to temporarily crash the server. When that happens all your sites go down at once. My sites have gone down on occasion, but always came back up before I finished my phone call to tech support. Tech support is honest and helpful. Last time I called they told me some scripter crashed the server, but they couldn’t kick him immediately because of a “3 strike policy”. Funnily enough, I found scripters who complained about their site going down without warning and getting bad customer service. I wish they’d just freakin’ kick them off right away, those damn spammers.

Dude, you’ve gotta commit for two years before you can even try it out?? C’mon now! I don’t even like to buy ice cream without tasting it first. This one’s definitely not for the commit-o-phobes.

In the end, you will find most reputable hosting companies (those not trying to trick you with sucker deals) all offer similar packages with similar options at similar pricing. What separates them is customer service and an active support community. To entice my readers into using Bluehost, I’ve been offering the following Turnip Special Offer: Those who sign up for Bluehost using the link on my site receive 1000 Entrecredits once their site is set up. I will even walk you through getting WordPress set up on your blog using instant messaging. Some trusting souls have given me the passwords to their account, picked a theme, and said “Go!”. I don’t recommend that method in the interest of security, but it does make things quick. Just email me after Bluehost has called you to confim your hosting package is all set.

And that folks is round 2 for web hosting tales. Not a ton of dirt on this one. Stay tuned as the saga continues.

tag: bluehost