• Location: Provo UT
• Year Founded: 2004
• BBB Profile of BlueHost

BlueHost Review

BlueHost has been on the scene since 1996, which makes them one of the older web hosting services that is still online. In such a competitive market, lasting this long means that they must be doing something right. Let's take a closer look at what BlueHost has to offer, as well as some potential benefits and drawbacks of using them.

Pricing

BlueHost prices may vary based upon the length of your contract. Currently, they are offering shared hosting for $6.95. They have 3 different contract lengths, which includes 1, 2, or 3 years. It is important to note that when you sign up, you must pay for your contract in full. They do not offer monthly billing and have gotten rid of their 3 and 6 month contracts. Additionally, if you sign up for a promotional price, you will pay the regular price when you renew your contract.

Features

BlueHost offers the same features, regardless of which package (contract length) you choose. It includes:

• Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, domains, and sub-domains.
• Free domain name
• cPanel control panel
• FTP access
• 100 MySQL databases
• Supports: PHP 4 and 5, Perl 5, Python, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Flash, Shockwave, and more
• Free website scripts for: message forum, blogs (Wordpress, b2evolution), Drupal, Joomla, and more.
• Fantastico

Potential Benefits

1. Reliability

BlueHost is known for using a top of line data center that includes a variety of backup measures, including a diesel generator. Each server also has resource protection. This is a proprietary solution that prevents abusive users from using too much CPU, memory, or disk I/O operations. This ensures that your website will not be hampered by slowdowns that are possible with other shared server hosting services.

2. Flexibility

BlueHost supports a variety of different languages and scripts, which ensures that webmasters can do almost anything they want when designing their website. Additionally, Fantastico has become a must for many webmasters who do not want to install popular open source scripts themselves.

Potential Drawbacks

1. Pricing

While the pricing is competitive, many people are hesitant to pay for a full year (or more) without ever trying the service. If you are looking to pay month by month, then BlueHost doesn't offer a solution for you. They do offer an anytime money back guarantee so that you will get a prorated refund for any time left on your contract, minus $10 for domain registration.

2. Support

Depending on who you talk to, BlueHost either has excellent support or terrible support. This can be said of every major host, however because BlueHost offers so many different ways to contact their support department, it is surprising how many people complain about not being able to get a fast response. However, because this type of complaint will exist with any major hosting company, it is only a potential drawback and should be taken into account by everyone.

BlueHost has been in the hosting game for a long time, which means that many people believe that the benefits that they gain far outweigh drawbacks. However, it is important to gauge your own needs in comparison with what BlueHost offers in order to make the right decision for your website.

Read what current and former customers of BlueHost web hosting service have to say about the features, customer service, and more.