This is one of those posts I wrote “In case of emergency”. With my leg swelling up, and my left arm too sore to lift to the keyboard, this seemed like a fitting time to use it. Tomorrow I meet my doctor again and hopefully get some real painkillers.
Bluehost
has hosted Turnipofpower.com for almost 5 months now. Since I’ve recently been promoting a “Special Offer” on my website for Bluehost, I’ve taken an opportunity to promote the offer and explain why I think Bluehost Hosting is a good deal.
First of all, the Bluehost stats:
- $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
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.
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”. Unfortunately, the woes of shared hosting apply to all companies, not just Bluehost.
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.
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24 users commented in " Bluehost Hosting: The Good and Bad "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********Thanks for this post. You really break it down and simplify the whole thing. And I hope your leg and arm gets better. I always have some posts laying in wait too in case of sickness, or family emergency.
Chris
nice review. It sounds a lot like hostgator. I host a lot of sites in a clustered environment called mosso - oddly enough - it goes down a lot more than the shared server sites. But the sites on mosso - use up too much resources to be left to run on a shared server.
Very informative, wish I had this information several months back, when I was trying to decide what to do..what to do! I got all up and running but this is still great material to remember.
Sounds pretty good, really. But what about IP addresses? Are you able to have more than one with this, or not? I like to have unique IPs for every site.
IP addresses will all be the same.
You may want to add their customer support is based in the US which, for me, is a huge plus.
I am using bluehost for my blog too and serveral other add-on domains. I have pretty much the same experience as you have with bluehost. I am very satisfied with their services. I used to work in a web hosting company as a customer support representative so I can see how much better Bluehost is.
I also have good experiences with Bluehost. And yes, they operate with two other names: Hostmonster and Fastdomain.
Thanks, Turnip O’Power (it’s almost St. Patty’s). I’ve been looking for a new host and Bluehost souded almost perfect. Perfect would be totally free and root access. ;-> I run several blogs on a server in my home, thanks to a business account from Comcast. But, strange as it may seem, I don’t have diesel generators for power backups. My current hosted space doesn’t give me the features like added domains or multiple mysql databases.
I’ll be buying a new domain name this week and setting it up on Bluehost. When I do, I’ll buy the plan through you. I want those 1000ec!
Hope you feel better.
Peace.
Thanks for the review. I have been looking around for BlueHost so I’ll add this to my list of host options.
Hey Turnip - I sure wish you’d had this offer up when I was buying hosting from bluehost and setting up my blog. I’d have been willing to pay YOU the 1000 credits for help. Actually I was wishing I could find someone, easily, who had a website set up with live help - I was so frustrated I’d have gladly paid real money. Anyway, this is a great offer and I’m sure you’ll get lots of takers.
Ok, I’ve been thinking about using bluehost for a website I’m in the process of setting up, so I took you up on your offer.
But, hey, I can’t find your email address………….:(
Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place.
I was one of those trusting souls who gave Turnip a password. I couldn’t be happier than I am with Bluehost. I called them about some plugin thing recently and they were quick with customer service and had me off the phone in about three minutes. Even though I’m not so sure it was an issue with Bluehost as it was with Wordpress, but they still helped me.
BTW, get well soon, Turnip.
I will also keep Bluehost in mind especially once I make the move to Wordpress.
Hope the Dr. gets you fixed up quickly.
A dedicated server is too expensive for a small blog, but it keeps the scripters from doing harm to a blogger. I use shared hosting too and I’ve always wondered what the buzz about Blue Host is all about.
Thanks Turnip.
so that’s what blue host is all about. so they only offer shared hosting? not that i’m into dedicated servers as they’re too expensive, but I’m just curious.
Thanks for sharing this Turnip. Hope you get more sign ups!
Yikes! I felt bad cause I’m one of the cause of a shared server to go down (several days ago)
I’ll keep in mind that you use them if I ever decide to stop doing it myself. Thanks for the info.
Mommie
http://www.mommieshome.net
I was on bluehost for two years and I was pretty happy with them.. until I expanded my hosting and had 6 blogs and a forum and a couple of galleries, and got the dreaded CPU Exceeds Usage message way too often.
I went to steadcom instead, VPS, unmanaged, and it’s not that much more a month and I’m really loving it so far! F
I’ve been shopping around for new web hosting (GoDaddy is a joke) and I’ve seen nothing but good reviews for Blue Host, especially their customer service. As soon as I figure out how to move my site, I’ll probably go for it.
Bluehost sounds good. I have not really looked too hard at web hosting until I can afford to register a domain. I have seen some sites where you can buy domains pretty cheap. What is the deal with those? Are they a good deal? Where is the best place to go to register my domain name?
I probably could find this information pretty quickly from their site, but …
Can you establish ssh connection to your server and get to shell (=command prompt…), if you want?
If answer is yes to the first question, do they have rsync installed?
Those are some basic issues that some hosting providers do provide and others don’t.
Bluehost has been my webhosting service for over a year now. They are easy to use and have fabulous customer service and I will likely be using them for years to come.
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