This BlueHost review offers an unbiased review of the web hosting products and services offered by BlueHost. Find out what makes BlueHost one of the best web hosting providers today, and what sets them apart from other web hosting companies.
BlueHost’s Appeal
BlueHost offers inexpensive Linux shared hosting with a number of features to appeal to both people developing personal sites and small to medium business owners, and to both beginners and more advanced webmasters.
The Features that Separate BlueHost from Other Shared Web Hosts
There are a lot of web hosts offering inexpensive shared hosting, Here are some of the features that should make you look twice at BlueHost.
• The CEO’s blog isn’t kept up that often – but any posts from the CEO give you an immediate indication that this isn’t just a cookie-cutter web host, made like all the rest. The most recent entry—March 8, 2011, as I write this—actually provides facts and details about the BlueHost data center.
• They have a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Many web hosts that specialize in shared hosting don’t offer an uptime guarantee, and there’s not much you can do to be better than 99.9%.
• BlueHost offers an “Anytime Money-Back Guarantee.” Some other comparable web hosts offer this, but there are also those offering 30-day, 60-day, or 90-day guarantees, and those just don’t compare.
• The control panel is cPanel, not the less well-regarded vDeck offered by some comparable hosts.
• BlueHost offers a free resource protection plan that’s invisible to the user but nevertheless provides some of the benefits that used to only be available via signing up for more expensive VPS or Dedicated Server hosting plans, including making sure that intentional or unintentional resource hogging of memory, CPU, or I/O operations do not impact other users.
• The BlueHost HelpDesk has not only a knowledgebase with 100s of articles (more than a number of other comparable web hosts and dozens of video tutorials, but also has a user forum, which not all web hosts have, and when compared to those hosts using a comparable forum, BlueHost has added topics, allowing users to branch into areas that are not strictly BlueHost questions. Stats help you find articles and threads that many have found to be important.
• Unlike some other web hosts that hide their server, languages, and technical information, BlueHost lets you know that your website will be hosted on Linux Operating System with a customized Apache Web Server and MySQL 5 Database Server, PostgreSQL Database Server, Perl 5, Python, and PHP5 all available.
BlueHost Does the Basics Right
In addition to these unusual features, BlueHost has all the basic solid features that are typical of shared Linux hosting:
• unlimited domain hosting, hosting space, file transfer, and email accounts
• free, instant setup, free domain for a year, and free website builder with templates
• between seventy and eighty applications available for one-click installation through SimpleScripts, which also provides access to support materials and documentation, including WordPress, PHPbb, Drupal, Joomla!, Zen Cart, Agora Cart, and many more standard applications