On the Wordpress.org hosting page, they list Bluehost at the top of recommended hosting providers. In fact, I’m 100% sure that’s a major reason why many WP users chose to bring their sites to that hosting company. Why would Matt Mullenweg and Wordpress, who have been nothing but upstanding web figures, tarnish their names by recommending a bad service, right?
Unfortunately for us who believed such a fantasy, we had to find out how crappy Bluehost actually is the hard way. Take a gander at Bluehost’s listing (the only one highlighted with a yellow background, by the way) over at the Wordpress hosting page:
“WordPress Auto-Install — new WordPress updates are made available within 24 hours! Unlimited disk storage, Unlimited monthly data transfer, host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name for as long as you host with BlueHost, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 24/7 network monitoring, 99% uptime guarantee, mirrored storage backups, no hidden fees, voted best support in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008!”
I’ll lead you through my three favorite idiotic portions of that pitch.
First, they do allow you to create up to 2500 POP/Webmail addresses on one account. However, you can only send 50 outgoing emails per hour for that the whole account. That means if you’re using the hosting account to create an email each for 100 members of your forum, only 50 of them can send an email every hour. The rest will have to wait for 60 minutes before sending out their communication.
Next, I take serious issue with the 99% uptime. My site, for one, was deactivated 17 times last month alone due to “CPU quota” problems even though I was running Wordpress with NO plugins, with traffic averaging at around 400 uniques per day. Worse, though, I’ve had two extended downtimes the five months I hosted with them – one lasted close to 72 hours while another lasted around 36 hours.
Lastly, they were “voted best support in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008″???? Who the hell voted them, their employees? Bluehost support staff are among the rudest and laziest CSRs I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Bluehost, you should be ashamed. Same with Wordpress who are probably banking serious cash with their “relationship!”
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
I have 2 different Drupal sites both running CiviCRM. One is at BlueHost and the other at HotDrupal. Both sites have similar configurations. I can say, with absolute certainty, the site at HotDrupal runs significantly faster. The reason I’m at this blog today is that I am getting tired of having poor performing sites and am ready to exit BlueHost. I think BlueHost is fine for simple sites. CiviCRM adds some load that BlueHost doesn’t handle it well.
I’ve created over 10+ websites on Blue Hose with abolutely no problem. Go Daddy is the real site that sucks! Blue Host has great customer service, and works great!
This is very subjective; if you are a right wing, republican loving, fake Christian that think it’s okay for a grown man to marry a 12 year old girl? You will love bluehost. If you are a normal human being, you might have problems with that organization. Everyone over there seems to be dancing to the same tune, even recovering meth addicts. Bluehost pays WordPress $50,000 per month by the way, give that some thought.
our wordpress got hacked and blue host tech support was little to no help whatsoever. super lame. i literally had to research security settings, configs, sql, permissions, etc, (all the things that server admins NORMALLY do) and learn it myself just to get us un-blacklisted from google’s malware blocks. Super duper lame.
A few years ago I took some “seasoned advice” and started my “internet empire”.
I wil never, ever again use Bluehost- nor will I let my clients. I will not do any work on any site that is already hosted on Bluehost, nor will I re-register any of the domain names (many) that I had with them.
I advise clients on a daily basis on using Wordpress. Where would the advantage be for me? Put up a Wordpress site on Bluehost and you can expect nothing but account suspensions for CPU usage or any other poor excuse that they can think of. If you need some help – forget it, all you will get is some rude redneck treating you with utter contempt.
May they and all their ilk in Utah rot in the fires of hell for eternity!
I find that the speed of Bluehost’s servers is pretty fast compared to many other web hosting providers.
I have a couple of qualms with the information given here.
First, the limit of emails per hour is 150, and they will increase it up to 750 upon request … no questions asked.
Downtime varies at any shared hosting company, on any server. A site may be up for many months at a time, and then go down for a day suddenly… It just happens. 99% uptime during a calendar year allows for nearly 4 days of downtime. Personally, I’ve had even better than that from them.
As far as support goes, I have only ever received great support from them, but then, I always treat them courteously as well. Perhaps your approach to them affects their responses back to you? … Just a thought.
← Previous Comments