Bluehost WebHosting Review 2016
www.bluehost.com
is a popular web hosting company, widely recognized for its business-grade web
hosting services. Bluehost is run by its parent company, the Endurance
International Group. EIG is the 2nd largest web hosting company in the US and
manages a variety of other web hosting companies. Bluehost was founded in 1996
and hosts millions of websites for customers worldwide.
Some Benifite On BlueHost:
- Fast & reliable web hosting
- Enhanced, high speed network
- Easy backup and restoration procedures
- Increased bandwidth compared to other web hosting options
- Suitable for both amateurs and pros
- Secure hosting with available SSL certificates for eCommerce websites
- Friendly & knowledgeable customer service
- Popular choice for hosting WordPress & Joomla
- Website Optimization Services for WordPress & Joomla
GET 60% OFF ON BLUEHOST
Bluehost
Network & Server Locations
Bluehost has a 50,000 square foot web hosting
facility located in Provo, Utah. This space is also shared with its sister
company, HostMonster. Bluehost uses custom built servers and powerful
network equipment to help provide customers with a hosting account that is fast
and reliable. Their data center allows Bluehost to provide decent web
hosting services for both small and large online businesses.
Bluehost
Customer Support
Bluehost offers U.S. based customer support
via telephone, email ticketing system, and live chat. Support is available to Bluehost
customers 24/7 who have a question or problem with their web hosting account.
From our experience, their customer support is generally helpful and friendly;
although we have experienced longer wait times. Average wait time on the phone
is 5-10 minutes although we have noticed times where it reached near to 30
minutes with live chat.
Bluehost
Hosting Plans
Bluehost
offers shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. They now have a total of 3
shared hosting plans, so called Starter, Plus, and Business Pro. Starter is a
great place to start for any new website with the option to upgrade to the other
packages if additional performance is needed. Each web hosting plan offered by
Bluehost comes standard with Unlimited Bandwidth, unlimited Disk Space, and a
99.9% uptime guarantee. Bluehost also includes an easy to use website builder
and thousands of free website templates to help get your website quickly
online. Furthermore, Bluehost offers additional benefits such as free
advertising credits from Google Ad words, Facebook, and Microsoft Bing.
Bluehost
Hosting Management
Bluehost
uses cPanel, the industry standard control panel used by many web hosts. Note
that Bluehost recently updated the design of cPanel. The look not only matches
the Bluehost colors and branding, but has a more simplified, coherent user
interface. Their newly designed cpanel should allow customers to more
efficiently manage their web hosting account, modify settings, and setup
features. Naturally you can still do all the same things you normally would
with the default cPanel design, like adding email accounts, using FTP to
transfer website files, viewing your website traffic statistics, managing your
domain name, setting up your database, and anything else. Bluehost has used its
own cPanel design for quite some time now and continues to improve upon its look
and feel.
Bluehost
Performance Review
How reliable
is Bluehost and what kind of performance will I get if I host my website with
them? These are 2 essential questions you’ll have when considering Bluehost as
your next web host. Needless to say, every webmaster wants a reliable and fast
loading website. But how can you determine if Bluehost will give you this?
These factors are typically measured in terms of server uptime and response
time.
Server
Uptime & Response Report: January 2016
Bluehost has
a solid record for uptime and response time, excluding the rare, but notorious
downtimes they’ve had in the past. Bluehost rarely goes down, but when it does,
it does! Like last April 2016, when Bluehost was down nearly the whole day due
to network issues. Keep in mind, these outages are very rare for Bluehost and
they have fixed all the issues that had led to these downtimes. In general,
Bluehost has above average performance. Listed below is an overview of last
month’s uptime and server response report of a Bluehost hosted website:
You should
expect to see similar results with your website if you decide to host with
Bluehost. This report was generated from the basic (Plus plan) shared hosting
account we have from Bluehost. For this month, we’ve found Bluehost has an
overall uptime score of 99.96%, slightly better from last month. Although there
are occasional downtimes, Bluehost is still a decent choice. In our opinion,
Bluehost is above average in terms of performance & downtime. With a short
response time, you can be sure your website will load quickly and be zippy!
Bluehost
Site Optimization Service
Bluehost
also offers customers with WordPress or Joomla websites an optional website
optimization service. This service does cost extra, but is geared specifically
for increasing the performance and page load speeds of WordPress & Joomla
based websites. Bluehost has confirmed with us that this service will increase
your website speed by a minimum of 25%, although the average increase is closer
to 180%. This service includes leveraging browser caching, optimizing images
without loss of quality, enabling superior caching plugins, and enabling the
CloudFlare CDN. Bluehost uses pagespeedgrader.com as a metric to see a list of
optimization changes that are recommended for your site as well as determining
the total load times of before and after the service.
Recently
Added Features & Updates
Most web
hosts, including Bluehost, are constantly working on updating their hosting
infrastructure so they can bring their customers a better hosting experience.
This includes updating hardware, software, and adding new features.
What’s new…
- New Look of Bluehost – Bluehost updated the look and feel of their control panel. The new design is more coherent and simplified, making it much easier for users to manage their web hosting account.
- Google Apps for Work Integration – Bluehost has partnered with Google to provide customers with a seamless integration of Google Apps for Work. This means customers can professionally use Google services like gmail, hangouts, calendar, drive, and more, all at their domain name. This service costs an extra $5/mo per user.
- Improved Network Performance – Bluehost has improved their entire network by adding higher capacity routers. Security, load balancing, and throughput have all been fine-tuned to better serve their customers.
- Full Power Redundancy – Bluehost has improved their power redundancy on all levels of the DC power grid. UPS units, PDUs, and other bare metal infrastructure has been both upgraded and replaced with the best technology available.
- Daily Efforts – Bluehost makes an ongoing daily effort to improve performance and security with things like their kernel, application layer, platform, and client login.
- Should I buy from Bluehost?
Bluehost is
a popular choice for WordPress and Joomla hosting. They are also a solid choice
for businesses because of their high performance, good technical support, and
numerous features that come standard in all their services.
