BlueHost Review

You'd think that 'unlimited' would mean that there would be no limits, but this is not at all true. I signed up several years back when the rankings were good. At first when they were growing, they didn't harass customers about what is used, but now they will find any reason to ban you and not refund your money. Want to use SQL? If you use more than 50 tables, your account will be blocked without warning until the 'abuse' department has a chance to shame you. Want to store 'unlimited' data? If you use more than 1GB, your account will be blocked until the 'abuse' department can peruse through all your data to make sure you are really using it for hosting. If they decide you aren't using it for hosting purposes, they deactivate your account. No refund. No second opinion. I had a single website and was still in the development phase. I was the only user. Apparently, this utilization of the server was too much, so my account was deactivated. Look elsewhere - bluehost is bad!

if you want a reliable email service and your emails to arrive = forget bluehost. I complained many times that they use proxy ips to route mail and the answer is "cheap hosting comes at a price". Problem is that scammers use their services and get all other mail blacklisted. When I started with them several years back, no such issue. They used to be excellent. USE TO - NO LONGER. here are a few examples: Connected to 82.57.200.133 but sender was rejected. Remote host said: 550 mail not accepted from blacklisted IP address [69.89.22.20] Connected to 82.57.200.133 but sender was rejected. Remote host said: 550 mail not accepted from blacklisted IP address [66.147.249.253] Connected to 62.211.72.32 but sender was rejected. Remote host said: 550 mail not accepted from blacklisted IP address [67.222.38.55] I have no idea why they do not offer private, dedicated IPs for a supplement. This forced proxy ip mailing with russian scammers is pathetic.

I have more than one account on Bluehost - one for a charitable organization, one for my personal site. Both have been easy to manage and update. The price is reasonable given all the things I get, and I like having access to all the options on cPanel. The BH customer service has been helpful on three fronts: 1. online video tutorials 2. responsive community/discussion board 3. online "live" chat with a real person. In the latter instance, I was using iWeb to create a custom site instead of using one of the included template providers or WP. I was having trouble uploading the site correctly from within the iWeb program. I was able to talk to a support person in less than a minute, he was able to diagnose my error, then stayed with me until the site went live. I know some have expressed problems, but my experience has been nothing but positive and I'm in the process of transferring another domain to their hosting service. So far so good.

I know I should not submit a review under "hot" circumstances but this has been such a terrible experience. Basically today he server hosting my websites crashed hard, for several hours. This also included the control panel and so on. A terse reply from support informed me that an admin was investigating and fixing it in 15 to 45 minutes. But after 45 minutes, only the server status (on cpanel) page said all was fixed, but all the websites don't work any more and it's going on for the whole afternoon. Another call, and again the admin has been put into fixing it (both times they admitted issue on their part). Now, their stats will still say 99.9% uptime guaranteed because *their* cpanel states the server was fixed in 45 minutes. To bad the real websites are all dead.

On 5 Nov 2011 my on line accounts were attacked in an attempt to steal my identity and get into my bank accounts. The hacker first got into my Blue Host account and then used the recover password process to intercept the emails and then hack the next account. It took 5 hours for Blue Host to lock down this account. During those 5 hours I emailed, used the on-line chat for assistance, sent my ID (credit card and drivers license) 7 times by email and once by fax. I was told "all of the supervisors are busy, it will be several hours before they can help you." That my account was actively being hacked was made very clear but for 5 hours no one listened. Finally I got the right person on the phone and all was resolved in 5 mins. In total 27 accounts were hacked, all of which were fixed easily once I identified the site. Only Blue Host made this difficult and in fact exaggerated the problem because hacking was on-going while they sat on their hands. Litigation is pending.

Without warning Blue Host has wiped out my site and email accounts. When customer service was called they started down the "Terms of Service" trail and I let them know that I don't store files, haven't changed the website in two years and basically just used it for email hosting. The service tech was rude and stated that"well you must have done something". I asked him what that might have been and he had no answer. He said that everything was gone and that I should have backed it up. I informed him that I have the Pro package and they were supposed to back it up. He had no reply. I would not use Blue Host for anything. I have not decided what the next step is, but moving as far away from Blue Host as I can get is top of the list.

Lately performance has been poor. Several times a day Mysql / ftp connection drops. This has been going on some months and getting worse and worse.

I am intermittently using Bluehost since several years. Unmatched uptime, responsiveness, courteous and prompt support that fixes problems were their distinction sign. Lately - probably due to the rebates and price decrease - their hosts are getting slower to below modern standards. All you need now are 30 viewers to kill your website with huge CPU throttling (did not happen on same website with no changes till 1 month or 2 ago). If you contact them, sometimes you get disgruntled copy paste replies linking their canned FAQ. Too bad I can't remake Wordpress to suit their CPU politics. Basically since September, if you have a very light static website you are OK, if you have to install a Wordpress you will get clipped at memory usage, CPU throttled and even basic downloads like pictures of videos take minutes some times, videos stutter and halt (so my customers say, not just me). If they don't fix this overload I'll have to move to another host, where I've seen my site go way faster.

I have had up to 50 plus domains with Bluehost and am now in the process of moving them. Their slow and often down.

I've been a Bluehost customer for about 4 years and host approximately 40-50 websites. Basically, our server has been super reliable and I have never heard any complaints from my customers on uptime, etc. Support: This is where Bluehost shines, in my opinion. Frankly, I'm baffled by the negative reviews - because as a long time customer I probably would've come across a bad tech support rep here or there... but I have not. In fact, today, I accidentally deleted an ENTIRE website on a Thesis Wordpress installation. My most recent local backup was from 12 months ago. Bluehost had multiple backups from yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, etc. to restore files and compare. I worked with Matt and he was SO reassuring (me freaking out) and we walked through merging my old backup with Bluehost's backup and fixing some permission issues, etc. and got the site back up in > 30 minutes. THANK YOU BLUEHOST, and PLEASE hire more guys like Matt!!