Bluehost Approval Rating

[Dave]

Some may have noticed that this forum has become more of a complaint department than a support forum. And the management of the forum is non existent. So I'm wondering, who wants leave Bluehost and get a partial refund? Lets see how many really want out?

Now there are supposedly more than 100,000 domains hosted here. I wonder what percentage of them are so unhappy they want a refund?

Lets get it out into the open. Whats your approval rating of this hosting provider? Post away...


. .

[routed]

I understand the ideal of your poll BUT
1) You made it public - not many will post how they feel and you may have some suckups vote for that reason.
2) Not enough options in your poll

[Dave]

uhoh... Now what?

[BrandonK]

Definitely doing a great job. ;)

[AncientStorm]

Very happy here - I have used their email and phone services (yes, from Australia) and any concerns are fixed quickly, more than that, I have been taught a cople of diagnostic techniques that have helped

[DaHiA]

im totally impressed with BH support response time
maybe im new now [so maybe that whu :rolleyes: ]
but,i didnt face any troubles yet
my plan is placed on box89 and i have no downtime ,no db outages
Thanks god i love BlueHost ;)

[thirstee]

After coming from my previous host, bluehost is a godsend. The old one was full of idiots that avoided human contact at all costs. There was more downtime than uptime. They turn off acounts for petty reasons without even notifying the domain owners to tell them why and they wont respond when you ask why. We do get some support here on the forums and the tech support (phone) seems to work fairly well also. All in all , theres been a few small issues, but I can live with those compared to where I came from!

[alligosh]

I would like to point out that the one completely negative vote was by someone that was having some serious issues with his site, which Bluehost helped fix. (Turned out to be a third party mod added to his third party phpbb forum, and not a BLueHost issue).

(Not saying BLuehost doesn't have the occational issue, just that this wasn't one of them).

[redsox9]

Hi, Dave:

Well, the only problem here, as someone point out, is that ANYONE can vote on this as it is a public forum.

However, as I have stated before, I have been very happy with BlueHost in the year-plus that I've been with them. Obviously, no one is happy when there is downtime but, as they say, stuff happens; even so, I can only recall one time since I've been with them that I had trouble logging into my account and doing whatever I needed to do. Again, I have very limited needs but what I enjoy is that there is so much offered for so very little and it gives me the flexibility that I need to do what I want.

Overall, I would have no problem recommending BlueHost to anyone I know (and I have!).

[timberford]

largely happy. had some issues with getting ruby on rails going and had an open ticket left unanswered for some time but once the help came it was very good. 3 of my friends have signed up with bluehost as a result of my experiences overall, i think that says a lot.

[dawhoo]

I think they're a ****ed good hosting company from my little time here. Phone support is top-notch. They don't BS you and it sounds like the person on the other end actually speaks English, which is nice change.

After trying 5 different hosting companies, I finally made it ehre and I'm please with what they offer. My only issue has been a mod rewrite, which is driving me nuts. Once I get that issue resolved, I would have to give Bluehost a 10/10.

[hofmax]

It´s all Linux and it´s all good. The Cpanel is great and so is the support.
By the way Dave, could it be at all possible that this is a sneaky attempt to do a little SEO for your affiliate signature?;)
The choice of host you´re advertising is a good one though - that´s why I became a bluehost affiliate as well.

Besides, I haven´t really noticed that this turned into a forum for complaints. As alligosh pointed out it was really just this one major issue where this guy completely killed his phpbb forum by adding a 3rd party mod.

[Kemper]

Uptime is great on box 32, only had one CPU issue, no sql or other issues. Response time on tickets has been quick... Bluehost is the host with the most baby!

[SASniper]

Well I am now with BH for about 3 months and I can only recomend them as all my problems were solved within a few min, so far I have had no down time and the package they give is superb. I have recomended them to some of my friends.
Good job Bluehost staff keep it up:D

[redsox9]

Well, maybe in response to requests for improved support services, BlueHost now has 24/7 support for all users as of 03 April 2006! Way to go, Matt! :)

A copy of the email:


This is Matt Heaton with Bluehost.com. I am writing to you today to let you know that as of April 3rd we will now be offereing 24/7 support for all of our users.

We have been 24/6 support for a few weeks, and now that our new graveyard shift has been trained we are excited to finally offer full 24/7 support.

We have also bumped up our support staff to better serve our customers. This has made a dramatic improvement to our service levels. As an example, this past week our average hold time for customers on the phone for the entire week was less than 1 minute, with over 75% being answered in the first 30 seconds. Our average ticket response time for level 1 queries was also less than 50 mintues. That is exceptionally good! We hope we meet or exceed your expectations as a hosting company.

[joeyrenee]

I like bluehost.com. Everyone I have spoken to is friendly and they generally are able to answer my questions.

My dislikes:

If I create a PostgreSQL database I do not have the ability to alter the public schema in my database. I can understand not letting us use the postgres user, but if we ask for it, they should give our default login the privilege to alter things in our database.

Using perl is a bit cumbersome. While they have been great to install all the perl modules I have asked for, I wonder if there is a method that will allow us to install our own perl modules.

[BrushBuster]

no problems here. called on phone and was helped. was helped a bunch through email by Benjamin. not to crazy about the support tickets. but all of the problems i was experiencing was of my own lack of knowledge and not any fault of blue host.

[hofmax]

I found a post in the drupal forum by someone who claim she hit the CPU limit with normal blog that doesn´t get many visitors.
Is this at all possible??

go here http://drupal.org/node/46707#comment-106862 search for phoebe.

Don´t get me wrong, I´m not part of the bluehost police:p
I´m just interested in the CPU issue

Thanks

Max

[Sugar-Frosted]

I'm really happy with BlueHost, they have really good customer support, and not to mention friendly! Theres not a lot of downtime, but when there is, its only for about 5 seconds. They are really great!

[Dave]

Nice results so far! Those of you who have not voted, lets go! Cast you vote today!


ps. I wish there was a way to remove the names from the results. does admin have any way to do this to give voters more anonymity?

[corelogik]

I moved 3 websites over here from Fatcow in February. So far everytime I have had to call for something (2x), Bluehost answers the phone, and then answered my question,...

I recomend Bluehost now over Fatcow especially since it's less expensive. The service is vastly improved and the services they offer, I couldn't even dream of having from my old host.

I have 1 more website that I need to move over and I have no hesitation doing it.

[Early Out]

I've hesitated to cast a vote. I've been on Bluehost for less than a month, and got off to a very rocky start. Two days after signing up, and moving my webpages over, box92 seemed to have some sort of nervous breakdown, and gave me nothing but a flurry of 404s. That was followed shortly by the nameserver outage. Then, box92 was intermittently refusing to move any outgoing mail (Rando pulled his hair out over that one for a few days, but then cracked the problem, of course!).

Since then, things have been fine, so I suspect that I may just have been seeing some teething pains (perhaps box92 is the newest workhorse in the stable, and needed to be whipped into shape). Most of the time, the server coughs up my pages as quickly as my own C: drive, so I'm a happy camper. :)

[JCsDesignz]

I voted for "Dissatisfied but I'm not willing to switch just yet." Im not happy with either email response times or help given. Takes several emails to get a full answer. Which is a shame as they used to be pretty good. Will give it another couple of months before i make a finally decide what to do.

See no suck up vote from me LMAO :p

[Gizmo]

Well I have been on other servers when I used to run a forum for someone else and used to do the support tickets etc, so I ruled those out when I decided to set my own up.:(
I have been with BH since August 05 and apart from a bit of downtime which is sorted within a few minutes to max half an hour (which is nothing) then I have nothing but good to say about BH.

[solarnexus]

Its a bit of 60/40 with me. For the price, the features combined with service is extremely hard to beat.

I have had issues, but only small finickety ones, like the occasional inability to access my site, the rather long load times for some aspects of my website (whether this is a software issue or not, I have yet to sort out), the sometimes slow response for european visitors. As far as support goes, I guess if your have a mission critical website then bluehost is a bit of a gamble from the views of people on this forum. I personally havent had any trouble that I havent experienced or expected from other hosts. I think the servers are probably overcrowded, which is causing the cpu problems.

I would, and have, advised others to switch to bluehost, and I wouldnt change that opinion (yet). But I dont like, and seriously have problems with the 1yr purchase plan, most other hosts provide monthly options, at no setup fee. Considering the vast user base of bluehost, theres no reason they cant offer this also.

[angelletrieste]

Solar-

I don't think it matters about 1 yr plans since if you don't like it, you can cancel and get prorated refund.

Brinkster had a very strict contract where you can't leave even if you're extremely dissatisfied.

[alligosh]

I think the servers are probably overcrowded, which is causing the cpu problems.


Ok, people. One more time.


There are not any CPU issues on the servers. They are not overloaded. They do not have too many customers on them.


People (generally less than 3 out of every 600) get occationally restricted by a govenor process that is in place specifically to make a shared environment work for everyone. Let's do the math.

If you are someone who uses a lot of cpu (say, more than an entire 1.8 GHz Opteron CPU, by yourself) for more than a few minutes, you will get restricted. And yes, the harder you slam the box, the faster the restriction happens. But the MINIMUM to get restricted is to use an ENTIRE cpu by yourself.

Do you have any idea how much CPU that is? Especially for a web server? The ONLY ways to hit that much CPU is to have a poorly written or non-optimized site, unindexed databases, or a huge amount of traffic. Most people that get restricted are a bit of all three.

The issue is, no matter WHAT causes the restriction (and it is easy to fix, we give you the logs as to what is the CPU hog, put in your tmp directory), we CANNOT allow it to slow down other sites. One user's poorly written software should not affect other users.

How would you feel if one client on your server slammed the box enough that your site was too slow?

ok, end of rant.

[solarnexus]

we CANNOT allow it to slow down other sites. One user's poorly written software should not affect other users.I wouldnt expect it any other way. Perhaps wordpress is just slow, but from my end I often find the site slowing down. I might be imagining it, but for now it doesnt effect me anywhere enough to seriously consider switching.

now if only there was a way to sign up for hosting using the affiliate program that your signed up to... heh :)

[imchris]

I have an account with BlueHost for 2 years. Very happy with the overall product and service. I did try several other hosts over the years, but BlueHost seems to be the best.

As far as the price is concerned, BlueHost seems to offer an excellent deal(s) for a good low price. Whenever someone I knew asked me for recommendation, I told them to checkout BlueHost.

It's a good company, great (low) price and outstanding products!

[LarryVan]

I wouldnt expect it any other way. Perhaps wordpress is just slow, but from my end I often find the site slowing down. I might be imagining it, but for now it doesnt effect me anywhere enough to seriously consider switching.

now if only there was a way to sign up for hosting using the affiliate program that your signed up to... heh :)

You can speed up WordPress if you have many visitors by using the plugin wp-cache. it will cache pages and keep them available for a set time before the have to be re-created from database again.

And you can get another account using your affilite. I did. BlueHost encourages using affiliate for family and friends, etc

Larry

http://mrblogmeister.com

[annhawk]

Coming in a little late on this... have been out of country for a couple of months and still think bluehost is great.

[WazzoTheMartian]

I'm generally happy with the service so far.
The features offered are excellent.
The price is excellent.
:D
Support could be described as fair.
:)
I only have one problem which is my phpBB being taken down. Support deny that they have anything to do with it, but I'm working at resolving this issue.
:mad:
If it can be resolved then my vote will be a resounding approval.

[SessionDrummer]

Extremely happy with the service, and the support. They offer a wide array of options, including automated installs. Every issue regarding any problems, has been promptly taken care of.

S.D.

[blind-eddie]

This is my first time ever renting website space anywhere,I have never encountered any problems with your service and support.Hats off to you
for providing myself and many many others with with a service you stand
behind 100%,I will stay with BlueHost for a very long time.
www.outerzone.us

[goochs]

I use to be with ipowerweb and let me tell you since joning bluehost I have moved 6 sites here and can't wait to get the rest off ipower. What really sold me was the first time I joined my account was ready in about 4 minutes.. ipower would take 4 days at least. The I screwed up and paid too much (2years as verses 1) I immediately call and bluehost credited me back instantly and sent a followup email.

Last month I installed 68classifieds on my site and had trouble getting it going.. after a day with 68classifieds support and another with ioncube I decided to ask bluehost support even though it was a third party program.. wow they had an answer for me within 2 hours..

I would highly recoomend bluehost to anyone.

[nonikwe@gmail.com]

From sunny west australia got to tell you i researched hosters worldwide - in Aussie hosting is waaaaayyyyyy to expensive. I liked bluehost for a 'HOST' of reasons (scuse pun) and have not regretted my decision for a second. All those with complaints tell me of a host thaT IS AS FEATURE RICH AT THE PRICE and supplies the support offered allowing you to host 5 site with the space bandwidth and traffic allowances. For me and our needs i say
GGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOO BLUEHOST
Those suggesting improved services etc. I say thanks they when introduced will advantage me.
Create a great day every day
Kindest regards to all
nonikwe

[impactnoise]

My last host (maxipointservers) started out a few years ago as a great host but rapidly fell into ruins throughout the past year, making frequent "mistakes" with billing, providing slow, incomplete support and a LOT of downtime.

Bluehost is really amazing in comparison to anyone I've used before. I was stunned by how fantastic their support was when I had problems switching from my old host. I have used bluehost for a few months now and everything has been running beautifully.

[areidmtm]

My last host (maxipointservers)
Yeah I'd probably not want to go with a host that has "maxi" in their name.:D

[John]

After over 2 years of being with BluHost, I can honestly say that I have been happy until about 2-3 months ago.

The hosting really stinks now, it's so un-reliable that it's almost laughable. Almost daily, my BlueHost hosted sites load up slowly or give me a "page cannot be displayed" error. FTP may or maynot work, MySQL may or maynot be up, Apache may or may not be restarted etc etc etc...

Somedays this forum, or the BlueHost.com site won't even load up, just 15 minutes ago I went to send a support ticket, and the BlueHost.com site wouldn't load.

Customer service is fine, but what good is customer service if the hosting downright stinks. I understand servers being re-booted, and all that, but DAILY interuptions is bordering on a sueable offence, Bluehost has become just another run-of-the-mill hosting service that stacks millions of peoples hosting accounts on one box, then makes up lame excuses on a daily basis for there crappy, un-reliable, pathetic hosting service.

BlueHost was bar none, the most reliable service on the planet up until 2-4 months ago. Now I have to make the decision of where the heck I'm going to move all of my sites too, cause I can't take it any more. I almost want to just quit having any web sites at all, cause it's such a hassle to move hosts every year or two.

[grantgarvey]

On my server top reports up time of 28 days. I don't have any speed issues either. My last host wiped out my entire site and didn't keep backups, so I switched here, and they even charge less.

[magpie2419]

Well reading some of the complaints you would think Bluehost is responsible for the end of the world, To the complainers if your not happy move, there are thousands of hosting companies out there.

However I will tell you one thing not one of them will offer you the deal Bluehost do, not with regards to price or facilities. Before Bluehost I tried quite a few other hosts, and none ever came near to Bluehost.

And yes I have experienced some problems with down time but to me its acceptable, and is over very quickly, support has been knowledgeable and response time is good and Im in North Africa.

If you need a host you could do a lot worse than Bluehost.

[Dbusau]

I voted: Satisfied but I have some issues I wish to resolve.

I have only been a short time (less than a week) I haven't been able to move my site over yet as I am still going through the rotten transfer process.

My biggest *issue* is the amount of time sitting back and waiting on ticket responses to the point that I ended up phoning from Australia to get it sorted (which was immediate). If I have to do that too often I won't be a happy customer, otherwise so far - good, will know for sure after I transfer site though ;) (cross fingers)