BH and HM are ressellers?

[KazanDaemon]

BlueHost and HostMonster are resellers of one big hosting provider???
Today I saw changes in cPanel links again ("simple scripts" moved, "search engine marketing" added...)
I opened the demo of HostMonster's cPanel (http://www.hostmonster.com/cgi/demo) and see that it is the same panel

[redsox9]

BH and HM are both operated by Matt Heaton - the service provided is nearly identical so changes to one service would probably be reflected by the other as well. For more, check out his blog - http://www.mattheaton.com/.

[blundell]

BH, HM and Fast Domain all have the same owners, like redsox9 said. Essentially, same owners, management, employees and server specs. Only things different are the website names and color schemes really.

[Kloutier]

BH, HM and Fast Domain all have the same owners, like redsox9 said. Essentially, same owners, management, employees and server specs. Only things different are the website names and color schemes really.

I do not think they share servers.

[felgall]

I do not think they share servers.

With way over 1000 servers to host the sites they don't need to share any one server between their different brandings. They have enough servers so that the BlueHost hosted sites, HostMonster hosted sites, and FastDomain hosted sites can all have their own groups of servers in their data center.

[blundell]

With way over 1000 servers to host the sites they don't need to share any one server between their different brandings. They have enough servers so that the BlueHost hosted sites, HostMonster hosted sites, and FastDomain hosted sites can all have their own groups of servers in their data center.

You can always tell if it's a BH server by box##.bluehost.com, HM by host##.hostmonster.com and FD by fast##.fastdomain.com. They're sometimes in the same data centers though, if different boxes.

That being said, BH/HM/FD do use the same specs for all servers. Being as the servers are all custom built by the Admins, they prefer to use the same hardware whenever possible. They definitely prefer to use the same software.

[JamesYap]

LOL, they are one of the largest web hosting providers out there. Both of their sites rank in page one for 'web hosting' in google! They are not resellers and they do not outsource support either. They are so focus that they offer only one plan and don't even bother to do windows hosting and dedicated hosting.

[blundell]

LOL, they are one of the largest web hosting providers out there. Both of their sites rank in page one for 'web hosting' in google! They are not resellers and they do not outsource support either. They are so focus that they offer only one plan and don't even bother to do windows hosting and dedicated hosting.

Or VPS. And still hold a HUGE amount of domains. 2% of all domain names are hosted with BH/HM/FD: http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=191

You're good KazanDaemon. BH/HM/FD don't even offer reseller accounts to others.

[Early Out]

Matt was making rumblings about offering dedicated servers or VPS, but I haven't heard anything about that in quite a while. Judging by the number of people who "outgrow" their shared hosting on BH, I would think that there's a real opportunity there.

[blundell]

Matt was making rumblings about offering dedicated servers or VPS, but I haven't heard anything about that in quite a while. Judging by the number of people who "outgrow" their shared hosting on BH, I would think that there's a real opportunity there.

I think he's pulled away some. If you look at his blog post (http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=185) a while back, he indicates that most people go VPS because they need a more stable host and BH is working on providing that stability:


My opinion is that most VPS users really don’t need or want root access that requires their own time for security updates, Cpanel updates, etc. They simply want a contained environment and guaranteed resource allocation. We will be able to offer guaranteed resources just like a VPS or dedicated server solution without requiring any changes for our users.

That being said, people still outgrow and he'll probably start considering the idea again eventually. He is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to servers though and right now he seems focused on making the shared servers perfect. Bodes well for those who want VPS long term but the short term guys miss out.

[Early Out]

The inode limit problem may change the landscape, especially in an age of digital photography. Between thousands of images and thousands of email messages, more and more users are going to bump into that limit, and they're going to be looking for other solutions.

Keeping the email messages in a database would go a long way towards improving the situation. And if someone could crack the "storing images in a database" problem, he could get rich from it!

[blundell]

I definitely agree there. I'm personally praying that Matt or an Admin has a shower moment (http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=179) and suddenly solves the iNode/checkdisk issue. Even a way to reasonably store images in the DB would solve a ton.

Perhaps an option to allow ImageMagick to convert the thumbnails on the fly would help, but I'm hearing CPU intensive in the back of my head.

[alemcherry]

Using imagemagik (or GD) to convert images on the fly would take a lot of resources. Storing the images on database is very much possible even though not really advisable.