One of the most vital requirements for a successful, profitable and high-traffic website is to have the least amount of downtime possible. For websites that deal in goods, depend on AdSense revenue, or simply want their website to be available as much as possible, having your page down for hours or days at a time can cost you a lot of money and frustration.
You’ll notice that Bluehost makes no uptime claims on their website; this can be either a good sign or a bad sign. It’s a good sign if you don’t like seeing companies lie about their 99.9999999% uptime, but it’s a bad sign because they don’t even have enough faith in themselves to give a number.
While no hosting company can provide 100% uptime, most have ways of minimizing your downtime to a very small percent. In our experience, Bluehost sucks in this regard. They cost us more money than any other hosting provider we’ve ever dealt with and our research has shown that we’re not the only ones tired of unexplained downtime.
Post your experiences with Bluehost’s downtime here. While it may be too late for us, there are others out there who might find it helpful.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
My main problem with BlueHost is not that they’re a bad host. In fact, when things are peachy, my sites run fast, even with several complex database functions a couple of my scripts are doing. It’s just that when they’re bad, they really have a way of sticking it in!
I work with other hosts and I keep regular local backups, so I can easily transfer my files at a different server when work needs to be done on their end. Is it too much to ask to inform me? A couple of day’s notice via email should be enough, yet, I just end up getting surprise calls from customers informing me that my site is down! Down, I tell you!
What BlueHost doesn’t seem to realize is that their clients – me included – are running real business that deal with real customers who pay real money for real service. My site being down for an hour before I hear about it (from someone else at that) is plain unacceptable.
I suffer from real consequences when that happens – lost money, lost clients, lost opportunities. Does BlueHost actually think all of their customers are running hobby blogs with Adsense all over their templates and trying to “make money online?” If these guys don’t shape up, I won’t be surprised if those are the only customers they do get stuck with.
A search around the web turns up plenty of positive things about BlueHost. In fact, it was one of those articles that prompted me to try hosting with them. I clicked on their Sign Up Page, looked at one of the basic plans (10 domains, 30 GB storage, if I remember correctly) and placed an order. One of the first things I noticed was how long it took them to get back to emails. Often, you’ll need to send two to three correspondences before receiving a response. Since my plan was so cheap, I figured I was just slotted in with the bottom rung in priority when it comes to getting answers – no problem, since I was using the server for some spare domains I was playing around with. As long as problems weren’t frequent and things eventually got handled, it wasn’t that big an issue. Around the second month of my hosting plan, I opened one of the sites I was hosting with them and got a 403 error. I tried the other domains and received the exact same screen. I fired up my email client and began composing a query letter when I received a message from BlueHost on my Inbox. Basically, it said that my account was being moved to a new server (without prior notice) and that they were doing it for my benefit. My control panel was down and the hosting was completely inaccessible. If that turned out to be a money-making site, I would have been throwing a fit. Yep, that would definitely benefit me. Along with the message were instructions to email customer support in case the account remained offline for two days…two freaking days. I couldn’t believe they had the gall to tell me that the hosting I paid for will be inaccessible for two days without informing me in advance!
Two days passed and the hosting remained down. I sent an email, got an answer after 32 hours that basically told me to open a ticket. I complied and waited three more days with absolutely no response. Pretty much resigned to the fact that the ticket will never be attended to, I tried the “Live Chat”, discussed what happened, got passed around and finally cut off abruptly after being told that they were “fixing the problem.” One more day passed with still no resolution so I called up customer service. I explained the problem and was basically told that “moving servers take time” and that I “should be patient.” Yep, BlueHost takes an entire week to move between servers. Apparently, none of the positive reviews I read about them before signing up bothered to mention that. Wow, just wow.
Bluehost screwed me royally. I was running a very profitable website on their servers when it started going down a lot. Then it went down for good. I called up the tech support at Bluehost (the only number I could find besides sales) and the guy asks for my username and password! I said, “You mean you want me to read my password over the phone to you? Is that really what you, professional tech people, are asking me to do?” That was pretty much the tone of the rest of the call.
So I gave up and gave it to them. They told me my website was causing performance problems. My tiny little database was causing their servers to fail. Right. It would have nothing to do with the fact that I was crammed on there with a thousand other websites, many of which I’m sure had tiny to enormous databases. God forbid I run a PHP script.
And if resources are such a problem, then I can’t understand for a minute why they wouldn’t run the SQLite module for Perl like every other host on the web does. I guess that’s just the logic of a company that does as little as possible to help its customers. If you like things in life to be difficult and frustrating, then Bluehost is the place for you.
Anyway, the money I lost due to Bluehost’s outages and eventual deletion of my site cost me over ten times as much as it would have cost to just get better hosting in the beginning. So I’m taking it as a life lesson: if you pay for crap, don’t be surprised when the product stinks! I cannot say it emphatically enough: Bluehost sucks!
You want to know what’s wrong with Bluehost? They have over a thousand websites on every server they own, and they act surprised when someone wants to run something that takes slightly more than 1/1000 of a CPU’s processing power. So if you’re running a nice little static site you can sneak by without any problems, but as soon as a database is involved forget about it. All the gazillion gigabytes of bandwidth and storage space don’t mean squat because you’ll never be able to smoothly run a website on their servers that come close to hitting that kind of demand.
If you’re not bothering with databases (MySQL, PHP, etc.) then chances are your website isn’t that big and is not generating a ton of traffic. In this case, you might be fine. But wait! What if you’re as small website that gets put on a server with a few huge database sites that cause it to crash all the time? You can see how it doesn’t really matter how demanding your own website is, it’s the luck of the draw whether you get put on a server that everyone is collectively causing to crash or not.
And if you think they’ll move you off a crappy server, I would consider doing a little research around the web on Bluehost’s tech support. I’d wager to guess that’s not a request they’ll entertain. So if you’re looking for hosting at basement prices and don’t mind the risk of your site crashing and staying down for long periods of time, then Bluehost will be just fine. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and get on a stable server, but it’s going to be a gamble and you’re not going to get moved once you’ve paid for the hosting.
But for me, I need uptime and I don’t gamble. So I don’t mind paying a little more for hosting that actually gives you what they advertise, and tech support that doesn’t act like they’d rather have their toenails ripped out than help me in any way. Stay away from Bluehost if uptime means anything to you.
I have two different accounts with Bluehost on two different servers. The first account is working just fine, but the second has been crashing with long periods of downtime ever since I signed up. So I called up tech support to ask to put both of my accounts on the server that worked. Now after reading around at some of the comments that have been made, I should have known what I was in for. But I had no idea, and it seemed a simple enough request at the time.
I was talking on their live chat support to a guy named Tom. Tom seemed to think it rather unimportant that my website was down for over six hours in the middle of the day. I tried explaining to him that I was in search of a more long term solution, and that I couldn’t stay with Bluehost if they couldn’t get their act together and put me on a server that works.
So Tom, apparently out to lunch over my problem and realizing that I wasn’t going away (even though it took him five minutes to respond every time), terminated the chat. It was probably a good thing that he did, as I was getting pretty miffed already. Anyway it’s no hair off my back anymore. I backed up both accounts, moved them to a new hosting provider, and sent an e-mail to Bluehost telling them if they wanted to know why I was cancelling, just ask Tom.
I feel bad for a lot of other people based on the stories that I’ve read; it seems the mere fact that I got out of Bluehost with all my data means I’m one of the lucky ones. It really baffles me how a company as well known as Bluehost can stay in business with the kind of (dis-)service they provide.
Anyway, if you’re with Bluehost and everything is cool, just know that there is a lot of sketchiness going on there and don’t be surprised if one day you start noticing problems too. I for one value my data and website’s uptime too much to take that risk.
“Cheap and shitty,” that’s how I always described it when people would ask me about my experience hosting with BlueHost. Regardless of the shittiness, though, I tolerated it. It’s cheap and my sites run for the most part.
I experience plenty of downtimes with BlueHost due to high occasional surges of traffic. Do I like it? Of course not. Do I tolerate it? Yes. In fact, I understand it. I fully expect low CPU load limits as part and parcel of paying for cheap hosting.
The one time I got a good amount of Diggs? Site got suspended temporarily. When I got 16 high-traffic gadget sites linking to me as the source of a story? My hosting account was turned off for a few minutes. A few months ago, Google, for some unknown reason, hoisted one of my pages as the number one result for a high-volume seasonal search query, which brought me several thousands of hits in the span of a few hours. The site went down as expected. All well and good, right?
Not exactly. The site conked out around noon with a different message than what I was used to. Instead of telling me to try again in few minutes, it decreed that the account was shut down “indefinitely.” As such, there will be no site, no email and no control panel for an unspecified length of time.
I called up customer support and asked for my account to be reinstated, explaining that I’m redirecting the offending page to a different site on another server. Simple enough, right? Apparently, not for BlueHost support, who kept telling me to “fix the script on your site” (which was impossible, since the account was inaccessible.) Having been through four phone calls and three live chats, I gave in, saying I have identified the buggy code and will be replacing it immediately once they reinstate my account.
After pandering to their stupid insistence to “fix my script,” my account was back online, allowing me to 301 the problem page elsewhere, where BlueHost is not involved. Do I still have sites with BlueHost? Yes, they’re too cheap not to use. Will I rely on them for anything critical or moderately profitable? Hell no.
Here’s the thing about Bluehost: they try to cram so many users onto one server that even if you are running a small low-traffic website you’ll still experience the slowdowns and crashes that everyone else is talking about. They are not isolated incidents, and it’s not just the bandwidth hogs that are being affected either. Bluehost simply does not have, or is not giving out, enough resources per user. They advertise unlimited bandwidth and storage space, but in reality you’d get much more of both with a competent hosting provider who don’t take on more users than their servers can handle.
At one point I had ten different websites on Bluehost, although I have since joined the exodus of old customers wondering what happened. All of those sites except one were simple Wordpress blogs. I always made sure the MySQL tables were optimized and the sites were as conservative with resources as possible. Then last year I started noticing the tics: not loading as fast, down for a bit here and there.
Now I realize 100% uptime is not guaranteed on any hosting provider but through the year it just got worse and worse. Then it just went down permanently. For a whole week all ten websites were down. Might as well have taken the year’s work and burned it. I scrambled all week trying to talk to their less-than enthusiastic tech support and the sales department would just put me on hold until I gave up and hung up the phone. Luckily I saw this coming and had a current backup of mostly everything. But I was shocked at how they just let the sites sit there, useless, shrugging their shoulders and acting like it wasn’t their problem.
Anyway, hosting with Bluehost is just asking for a world of trouble. Even if you are running a small, non-demanding website, most likely you will be crammed onto a server with a million other small non-demanding websites, none of which are given enough resources to operate properly. If you’re lucky your site will just go down frequently and they won’t just flat out lose it or delete it. But I have never been one for such gambles. I would much rather just have a hosting company that doesn’t blatantly blow me off when I call them.
BlueHost Uptime: 99% (according to their sales/landing pages). 99% uptime, on its own, means 87.6 hours of downtime a year. I would say that’s being generous because, right now, my site’s been down for 41 hours and counting since yesterday.
Let me begin by saying how disappointed I am to be writing this right now. Bluehost has served me well for years but just recently turned on me. The sheer amount of downtime has ruined a lot of my business that I have been working all those years to get. It’s hard to really quantify it at this stage, but I’d say I’ve lost at least a good 3 month’s work thanks to Bluehost’s server failures and subsequent backup server failures.
Luckily I had my own backups for a lot of my business but anything that I was trusting to their backup servers is now gone. Poof, vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. Of course it is infuriating to lose three months of work, but the thing that really frightens me is this: what if I had relied on their backup servers for all of my websites? I would be ruined. Over four years of building and I would have had to start all over again, or find a new occupation.
Even with all the grief they have caused me, I will still say that Bluehost USED TO BE cream of the crop. Up until sometime last year they were unrivaled. Then something happened with their servers and ever since they have been sketchy, unreliable, and unforthcoming about the problems they face. They treat tech support requests with carelessness and ambivalence, and seem to be losing more data than they are saving. Entire websites just disappear from their servers and longtime customers are being given the cold shoulder.
Stay away from Bluehost; the entire operation is collapsing under its own weight and these problems will likely only get worse. I honestly think that the original owners have abandoned the cause and like Bernie Madoff are just riding on the good reputation they spent years building to cover up the sham that they are running now. Trust me if you waste your time with these guys now you will be sorry. They are not in any way the same company they were in 2006.
TDS is totally dead-on accurate. I am experiencing the exact same issues, and I’m now on Day #3 of downtime. Contacting online “live chat” tech support was pathetic – when I asked if they could tell me when, after 6 hours of downtime, my sites would be back online – they could give me no estimate.
When I asked if it was possible that the sites could be down for 24 hours or longer, the tech support person replied with a simple “Yes.” As if this were common, and hey, no big deal.
Well, it IS a big deal. Shame on me for not really digging in and investigating them deeper before I put all my eggs in their decaying basket.
I’ve spent all day moving my sites to a new host, and as files have been uploading, I’ve had plenty of time to sit run Google searches for things like “Bluehost sucks,” and “Bluehost problems” and I’m seeing what I wished I saw about 9 months ago when I signed on with their pathetic service.
So, I’m down for 3 days now… and no email or alert or call or anything that could possibly explain anything. No respect for their customers at all. I think that’s what angers me most. They must be Rodney Dangerfield’s web host… no respect. No respect at all.
It’s amateur hour over there.
Are you guys insane:
They cost us more money than any other hosting provider we’ve ever dealt with and our research has shown that we’re not the only ones tired of unexplained downtime
this means that you guys are fucking stupid hahahaha
fucking makes me laugh. go get a VPS or and dedi then come complaining.
and i host over 200 domains and bluehost cause my 4 dedicated servers are full and i dont have 1 problem, this is cheap compared to proper hosting.
Wrote a lengthy feedback letter to their CEO..no response. It’s official. Bluehost has went under… get your files out of there FAST.
BluehostUser’s last blog post..Bluehost Horror Story of the Week – Wordpress Recommends….Crap Hosting
My complaints fall in ALL the categories! I and my small business have been with Bluehost for 4 years building websites for clients. The first year was great and then my business website was hacked. 3 months later we were hacked again. This seriously hurt my business both times. We then started having CPU errors, the site was down again. Into our 2 1/2 year we were hacked a third time. Bluehost tried to blame it on us but all our security was top notch and we knew it. We even have a server key code access anything. After some investigation we were able to trace the hack code that ‘mysteriously’ upload file and it came from inside bluehost. We pointed this out and sent the routing codes, log in times, IP addresses and so on…Bluehost denied it of course but we were never hacked again. Instead we had Database User names go bad, emails suspended, constant downtime and the final straw of our account being suspended because of abuse (bluehost claims)…Bluehost has single handedly ran me out of business online. They DO NO WANT your business if you intend to use E commerce, host medium to large sites, use photos. BLUEHOST IS DELIBERATELY TRYING TO GET RID OF ANY ACCOUNT THEY DON’T WANT. I believe they use unethical and possible unlawful practices to do so.
Wow, their own site has been off and on for like a week! Major fail.
I am looking for another host since now I am worried with bluehost.
Hi. I am thinking about leaving my present hosting provider. I may be a rookie but could someone please tell me if I am being unreasonable. The company I am currently with was helping me by creating an A name record for a new subdomain at a different hosting company. I simply asked the TECHNICIAN if it was ok to have the subdomain already created at the other hosting provider account. He said “I have done what you have requested! You need to ask the other hosting company.” I said, “you Mr. Technician can’t tell me if I need to keep or maintain the newly created subdomain at the other company’s server, for the propagation of the A record you just created?” He said “Like I said, you need to contact the other company about that”. I said “Excuse me!?…We will be leaving the service here shortly…”. Now the only thing is, the other hosting provider is BlueHost, and on DAY ONE, I get server errors when I would visit my homepage there. Their tech said, “No this doesn’t happen a lot”…..How is ThePlanet anyone?
Okay my site was down for 3 days (what I know) it could have been down longer. Turns out they managed to delete my database by mistake. It took them 3 days to fix it.
Do you think I get my money back – no
Do you think they offer to compensate me somehow – no
I’m moving.