Posts Tagged ‘web hosting review’

Web Hosting: Bluehost Review

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting companies on the internet. They have repeatedly updated their hosting plan to include more features than their competitors. By keeping their old customers happy and by attracting new ones Bluehost has successfully grown into one of best known web hosts on the internet.

Bluehost hosting plan: Over the years Bluehost has been lowering the pricing of their hosting services considerably. In addition to being able offer cheap web hosting, Bluehost web hosting is very easy to use. Cpanel, the control panel that comes with their hosting plan, is widely recognized as the best control panel in the web hosting industry. The price to pay for Bluehost hosting is $6.95 per month if you take the two year contract. If you want a yearly contract instead, you’ll have to add $1 per month to the price.

The performance: Bluehost services lead other hosting company when we talk about performance. Though their advertised 99.9% uptime is not entirely met at the onset, but an average of 99.5% showed by a test account is not bad at all. It is important to note that the downtime decreases as your account get older. For a period of about 8 months, the downtime was noticed to have reduced from around 470 minutes to mere 1 minute. Interpreting this simply means that Bluehost services only gets better with time. The longer you stay with their services the better it gets.

Hosting features: When it comes to hosting features, Bluhost has always been in front of their competition by offering more features at a lower cost. Their hosting plan is extremely easy to administer using the best control panel in the hosting industry. The Bluehost hosting plan comes with unlimited storage space, unlimited monthly transfer and you can host unlimited number of domains on one account. The hosting plan comes also with PHP (including custom php.ini and .htaccess), MySQL and Shell access (SSH), a truly great feature for all advanced customers.

The help/Customer service: We have looked at the numerous sterling qualities that make Bluehost stand out but one thing is unfortunately lacking, their level of support to their customers is really not impressive. It has online chat room, which is common in the hosting industry, but the fact that they do not respond fast enough can be discouraging especially when you really need their help. Their 24/7 toll free service does not offer faster assistance too so you are advised to read their FAQ sections when you have some urgent concern.

Conclusions: As a conclusion to our Bluehost review, we can say that Bluehost is one of the best shared web hosting providers on the market. They have received a good number of positive reviews. Although their customer service could be better, they offer great value for money with their excellent web hosting plan. If you are looking for cheap shared hosting package with plenty of features, you should seriously consider Bluehost.

For more information see our full Bluehost Review and also visit our list of best affordable web hosting.

Essential Tips for Finding a Cheap Web Host

Saturday, February 21st, 2009
by Joe Davies

Anyone who needs web hosting will always want to get the best deal, but price is not the only criteria you should use when choosing the right web host company. There several basic minimum selection criteria which must be met by any company you are considering to host your website or blog.

Consider Their Technical Support Service Before You Commit

As with any business arrangement communication is key. You will find that if you do not understand anything or have a problem or query then you need to be able to talk to your web hosting company whether they are a cheap web host or not. Your ability to ask questions and get sensible answers in a timely fashion is extremely important.

Many will ask you to submit tech support issues via their website, but unfortunately many take way too long to reply and you can spend a lot of time just waiting. The best solution is a web host that provides all day and all night live chat or phone technical support at some level so there is always someone around who you can help you. Direct conversation is always going to give you the best support.

A good trick is to phone the technical support line before getting an account with your potential web host just to see if the support you get is what you want. If possible ask them a few technical questions and make sure that they know what they are talking about and reply to you in a way that you find acceptable. If you are not happy then that web host is not for you.

Insist on Reliability, Total Security, Big Power and Best Capacity

Always check what you will get in terms of power and capacity from your web host. Note exactly what disk space and bandwidth limitations are imposed and check that availability of the servers is very close to 100%. Compare web hosts on these criteria and always go for the best if you can afford it.

For some the more technical aspects of their hosting will be important such as PHP or ASP support. For others the option to run more than one website or domain or MySQL databases from their hosting account is critical, especially for specialist software such as Wordpress. Some offer unlimited domains for those that need it.

You must also check out how powerful and reliable the servers at your web host will be. Also consider all the relevant security aspects of what is provided as you do not want hackers getting in and messing up your site. Consider what each web hosts provides before choosing.

If possible get a hosting account that has cPanel and Fantastico support as these are currently considered the best web hosting management tools. They will make it very easy for you to control the hosting of your website and also provide for easy and instant installation of many other important software packages, such as the WordPress content management system for blogging and building websites.

Finally Get The Very Best Price You Can Find Which Has A Money Back Guarantee

With a cheap web host cost is always one of the important criteria, but make sure that all your other essential requirements are met before you look at the prices. Getting a cheap host is so competitive that there are always special offers being promoted and you should be able to get a great deal with typical monthly prices well under 10 dollars. If you are in a hurry check that instant account activation is available so you can start building your website or blog immediately.

Finally get a full money back guarantee if you can so that if you find you are not happy with the web host service provided in the first thirty days then you will be able to cancel and get all of your money back. Many cheap web hosts now offer this and it just makes common sense to use it.

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