Bluehost Sucks

Bluehost Horror Story of the Week – Wordpress Recommends….Crap Hosting

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:50:40 +0000

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!”

Bluehost Downtime

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:37:50 +0000

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.

Bluehost Customer Support

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:25:47 +0000

Here you can voice your experience with Bluehost’s Customer Support. While most companies have lapses from time to time, in our opinion, Bluehost’s Customer Support falls way below the line of tolerable. Whether it be a problem with our databases, downtime, or excessive MySQL queries, we usually heard the same thing; it’s not our problem. This kind of Customer Support is in stark contrast to what we’ve received from every other hosting provider.

Post your experiences here and let others know why you think Bluehost’s Customer Support sucks!

Excessive CPU Usage

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:29:28 +0000

One of the most common complaints about Bluehost is the constant “excessive CPU usage” errors that occur with their hosting service. The reason that Bluehost sucks in this regard is that they oftentimes don’t provide you any ways to reduce your CPU usage or give you any warning before putting your site offline. For a personal blog, that isn’t such a big deal. But for a site that actually makes money, it can cost you a lot.

It’s not uncommon for Bluehost to kick you off of their servers and force you to find a new host with no warning, and without giving you even an hour to fix what’s causing the problem. This is one of the biggest reasons that Bluehost sucks.

If you’ve experienced these “excessive CPU usage” errors while hosting your sites with Bluehost, post your experiences here.

Cancelled Accounts

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:36:20 +0000

We’ve all heard the horror stories; cancelled accounts without any warning, leaving your websites in a state of Purgatory. Most hosting companies will give you the opportunity to correct what’s wrong with your account, whether it be excessive CPU cycles or causing a heavy load on their oversold servers. Bluehost, on the other hand, is known for their arbitrary and capricious applications of their Terms and Services.

If you’ve ever had your websites taken down without a warning or a notice, or had your sites disappear, leaving you struggling to find a new host – this is the place to post your story. Let everyone know the risks they take when entrusting their valuable sites to Bluehost’s whims.

Bluehost E-mail Limit

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:30:12 +0000

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.

MySQL Problems

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:49:22 +0000

While MySQL problems are unavoidable with any host, Bluehost seems to relish the opportunity to prune their oversold servers at the first sign of too many MySQL queries. If you search the Internet, you’ll find multiple accounts of people having their accounts suspended and/or cancelled due to MySQL problems. You’ll also find that most hosts will offer help to remedy the situation, rather than boot you off their servers.

Bluehost’s “one strike and you’re out” attitude towards people who don’t even realize their websites were causing a problem is inexcusable. A respectable website hosting service would either assist you with the problem, steer you in the right direction towards fixing it or at least give you a certain amount of time to find a solution.

If you’ve been left saying “Bluehost sucks” from these kinds of MySQL issues, post your story here. Help others learn more about the hosting company they might be about to sign a contract with.