September 16, 2012

Bluehost Review

Bluehost is one of the leading webhosting providers today, and has been adding over 20,000 new customers every month. This is no surprise given the affordable rates and professional services that Bluehost offers their clients. Bluehost offers a basic package for less than $7 per month which gives you unlimited hosting space, bandwidth and email accounts, so you no longer have to worry about using resources beyond your limits. Bluehost also provides SSL protection and a free website builder that lets you use professional templates to build your website sans a web designer.

Most web hosts claim to provide 99.9% uptime and the entire world along with it. While some other hosts just use these numbers as a marketing gimmick, Bluehost delivers on its promise. Independent testing has verified that Bluehost exceeds their claims in this regard, with results, on average, of 99.96% uptime. This is vital for webmasters with busy sites where down time equals lost revenue.

The entire list of features that Bluehost offers is available on their website for everyone to see. They support popular scripts like WordPress and Joomla, and make it easy for their customers to install and use these scripts with the SimpleScripts installer. Bluehost offers professional customer support via email, chat, and even through their toll free telephone lines.

The control panel, known as C-Panel, offered by Bluehost is one of the best and friendliest control panels around. It is easy to use, intuitive, and easily navigable. A single glance gives the user all the information about their disk and bandwidth usage, and all the tools are provided in separate boxes. There are also tools with settings related to managing web pages and emails. The control panel can be customized to suit the customer’s preference using a simple drop and drag interface.

Bluehost provides a free demo of its control panel to anyone who might be interested in testing it. Their packages for reseller web hosting are competitively priced and come with the same level of high quality, professional customer service as any other package.

Bluehost web hosting has a huge number of features, some of which are as follows:

1. No limit on the number of websites hosted for $6.95 per month.

2. Provides quick and easy domain registration.

3. Excellent customer service to solve your billing or technical issues via chat, email or phone depending on your convenience.

4. Offers single click installation for popular scripts like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress to set your website up.

5. Complimentary website backup service which helps your retrieve all your data in case of a serious technical problem.

6. No limits on the number of email accounts hosted.

7. Truly unlimited disk space to host your website.

8. Offers security services like SSL which are very useful for e-commerce websites.

9. Free credit of $50 which can be used with Google Adwords to promote your website.

10. 99% network uptime guarantee which delivers on its promise.

Apart from general features, there are other helpful things that Bluehost offers:

1. Polls

Bluehost allows you to add a simple poll on your website to help you attract and retain visitors. Polls are a great way of collecting useful information from people on different subjects. The added benefit is that they increase the visitors’ interest in your website and keep them coming back.

2. Image Galleries

Bluehost allows you to add an image gallery to your website to store all your photos in a central location accessible from anywhere. This allows you to share these images with your friends and family and let them add their own images too.

3. Reliable Customer Service

Exceptional customer service is a must for any webhosting company. Bluehost employs a reliable and time tested support ticket system which offers quick support for technical or billing problems. You can also use chat, email or phone to seek instant support should the issue be a severe one. Bluehost offers excellent customer service round the clock through the entire week. If and when you need them, they’re ready to help you.

4. Multimedia

If you wish to use Flash, Shockwave, Midi or Real Audio on your website, Bluehost can handle these applications as well. The best part is that, unlike other hosts, Bluehost doesn’t charge a fortune to offer these services, making them affordable for everyone.

5. Databases

Bluehost provides support for MySQL databases which can be used with a variety of scripting languages like PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc. They also provide several tutorials on how to use these and maintain a high level of performance while minimizing any potential problems.

Bluehost Includes Email Accounts with Your Domain Names

For every domain name you host with Bluehost, you can set email accounts up very easily. There is no limit on the number of email accounts that you can have per domain. It takes no more than 30 seconds to create your personalized email accounts.

Excellent Tutorials to Help Setup Your Website

If you prefer building your own website instead of hiring a web designer, you can use the videos that Bluehost provides to help you use popular scripts like Joomla, Dreamweaver, Drupal and WordPress.

Minor Shortcomings of Bluehost

1. Bluehost doesn’t inform clients of impending system upgrades that might result in a temporary downtime. They used to notify customers, but the amount of questions they received made it a tough task. As a result, they decided to simply roll out the updates without informing customers. Thankfully, these updates aren’t very frequent and don’t result in any notable downtime.

2. The feature that allows users to check the availability of domain names isn’t very user friendly. This leads to a lot of people using other sites like GoDaddy to search for domain names. Once they find the domain name of their choice, they come back and register it with Bluehost.

Conclusion

Bluehost offers solid, feature-rich hosting packages, exceptional up time averages, and competitive rates. We recommend them wholeheartedly.

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