BlueHost Review

I've been with BlueHost for about 5 years and have hosted many sites and clients with them. They by far have the best customer service from any of the hosting companies I have worked with between my sites and my clients' sites. You can't beat the service and price and the ease of use of their services and control panel features. The one time I had a site with major email issues, BH worked with me consistently until the problem was resolved. They are a great state-side company that doesn't sub out over seas and they know their stuff. If you want to know snow-ski conditions for Utah, they'll even provide that when asked ;)

I am new to Joomla and to hosting, I decided to go with blue host since hey were a large well know hosting company and they seemed to work well for others.

The signup was easy and so was the set up of my joomla site.

No issues yet so I am very happy with them.

Just wish I had not spent so much time trying to select a hosting company. I am up and going and now it is time to learn more about Joomla.

Account was PERMANENTLY suspended after being hacked for the third time. No warning, no mention of '3 strikes' rule in TOS, no nothing. I went through all the clean up, called to reactivate and was told 'we can't host your domain any more - a church site that was hacked.

Don't bother with bluehost. I'd rather go back to Netfirms at this point who is really bad. They pulled shady stuff trying to get more cash out of you but never tried changing their TOS really dumb like this.

Half way through my yearly contract Bluehost changed my terms of service to limit the number of "files" on my account. Although I don't have even a few percent of the maximum disk space use, after this terms of service change my account has been suspended multiple times due to "excessive numbers of files". What happens is Joomla and other open source web apps create a bunch of temp files and in my case I've determine without warning bluehost has suspended my account. This is completely unexceptable hosting and questionably breach of contract on bluehost's side. If they're going to suspend an account after a TOS change, it would seem required to refund at minimum the pro-rated contract and more likely the full contract if they cannot meet their original agreement. Once i get this resolved I'm changing hosts and never coming back. BLUEHOST IS NOT REALLY JOOMLA FRIENDLY. If you're going to put up a static site with a few photos of your cat and dumb children, it would be a good host. Otherwise go somewhere else.

Best hosting company I've ever seen hands down.

I've only been with BlueHost for two months now. I switched one of my websites over from Siteground (who are terrible by the way, don't ever use them) so that I could test BlueHost out. The setup was easy and fast. The admin management area is easy to figure out They transferred my domain no problem and it is included in my hosting. They use the usual CPanel and Fantastico which so far seem to work fine. And the customer support so far seems great. So far so good and zero complaints. I will return in a year to post another review after I've had more time with them. The only thing I would quibble about is that you can't have all your websites in one admin account. They require a separate admin account for each website you have, and that means you also can't have separate CPanel login that is separate from your admin account login, which is a problem as sometimes I have to give access to programmers to my CPanel, but don't want them to have access to my admin area for my website. I hope that they will change this in the future since other hosting companies do allow that one have all their websites under the same main admin account, each with its own CPanel access. But, everything else has, so far, been great.

Uptime is great, with lots of backend features. Customer support is good, but help seems to be selective. I've asked about ftp issues twice and they haven't responded. Other minor issues have been fixed immediately. A little costlier than others, but you get more for your money.

I've used quite a few hosts in the last two years, and bluehost is the best. Unlike some other well-known hosts, they don't constantly bombard you with annoying marketing. It's good hosting, pure and simple.

In regards to Joomla!, I've never had an issue with the hosting. Can't say the same for other hosts.

Great site. Easy to use. Very fast. It has everything.

BlueHost is currently my favorite shared hosting provider. I have had very small downtime issues (maybe 2 times per year for about 1 hour on 1 of 10 sites) but I think that's pretty good for shared.

They continually add new features (like SimpleScripts, Postini, etc...) and have updated their UI regularly. Their cPanel functions/scripts work very well. I have also had very good experience with their support.

I think the only minor (very minor) quibble I have with them is their CEO's (Matt Heaton) blog. It doesn't seem very professional although, in his defense, he says it is his "personal blog." He is obviously very bright, but I simply think the image should be a bit more corporate/professional. I would be embarrassed if a client stumbled upon it and said "THIS is who you are hosting our corporate site with."

Overall, I feel like BlueHost is committed to providing a continually better product. I feel like others (Lunar, for example) spend more effort on marketing than on the actual product.

As a relatively inexperienced Joomla user, (I have installed 3 sites) I found BlueHost easy to use and full of features. I was able to get SEO working properly, which I could not do on another hosting company which a client chose. Pages load very quickly. It did take a while for support to reply to a question. I'm very happy with this company.