If you have a website with a forum or a mailing list, you could run into some serious problems if you host with Bluehost. Frankly, Bluehost sucks as an e-mail provider, as they limit the number of e-mails you can send an hour to 50. While it might be possible to get them to increase that number slightly, if you have a forum or mailing list with 500 or more members, it’s a huge hassle to have to stagger the notices or e-mails throughout the day. This limit applies to all websites on your account, so if you send 25 e-mails from one domain and 25 from another, you won’t be able to e-mail anyone through any other e-mail in your account for a whole hour.
Bluehost makes no mention of their e-mail limits on their Products page, leaving many people surprised to find that they can’t contact their members or subscribers how they wanted to. Leave your story here and tell us if you’ve had a problem with Bluehost’s e-mail limits.
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I just thought I’d throw this up as a warning to anyone looking to sign up with one of BlueHost’s “unlimited domains, unlimited everything” plans. If you’re planning to use an account in the domain to send newsletter to your mailing list, forget about it. While BlueHost boasts of up to 2500 pop accounts on a single hosting plan, you’re only allowed to send up to 50 emails per hour for the whole account. You go anywhere over that and your email will be shut down.
Like many BlueHost customers, I discovered this the hard way. After moving six domains to my new account and updating the contacts, I mapped out my schedule. I have opt-in mailing lists from two of those domains to whom I send out newsletters, updates and various communications about once or twice a week. Ten hours ago, I sent a newsletter to a 2000+ mailing list, the number of which that actually went out I’m not certain as customer support is less than credible during our conversations.
Anyway, after sending the email, I was immediately locked out of my email account. Called up support who informed me of the 50-email limit, which they say allows them to prevent spam from being sent through their servers. To be honest, I’ve never even encountered anything similar from my previous hosts – I guess you can say BlueHost is truly one of a kind in that respect.
Ten hours in, I’m still trying to resolve my email issue. Customer support said they can upgrade my email privileges to 400 per hour but no more than that. I was asked to open a ticket requesting for more, which I did. I just checked up on it 15 minutes ago – its status was RESOLVED, although I received absolutely no communication regarding it.
To verify if they gave me my requested email privileges (since they say it’s resolved), I tried re-sending the newsletter with a note apologizing to my recipients in case they receive it twice. Suffice to say, my email account is blocked again. I’d call BlueHost again but I’m really just too tired – I think I made a serious mistake signing up with these guys.
FYI…. By default Bluehost allows 150 outbound emails per hour. They have for a number of months. A simple phone call will allow you to get this increased to 750 outbound emails per hour. If you need more than that then you have to have a VERY GOOD REASON. Simple emailer programs like Dadamail which is FREE will allow you to batch you emails to keep you under that limit.
If you have a newsletter that is going out to a number of users (more than 200), then you should seriously look into using something like Dadamail to send it for you instead of BCCing everyone using Outlook. Dadamail has tons of features that Outlook cant even touch too.
yes, BlueHost sucks. Can hardly ever successfully send to CC and BCC (around 20). Even TO: is very very slow. Their support said I should move my web hosting busioess from POP3 mailer I use (Outlook) to Squirrel Mail!!! Guess whose moving his business to some other host…. ME!