BlueHost, as providers of web hosting solutions since 1996, have developed a strong reputation in the industry. They are currently one of the top-ranking hosting firms on the marketplace today. They are known throughout the web for excellent customer service and can be reached live on their customer support desk via toll-free telephone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Tested extensively, this truly is award-winning support.
You can also reach their support team via their sophisticated support ticket tracking system. This company offers reliable hosting with excellent disk space and bandwidth. Their shared hosting plan includes a free domain name, and their single plan offer of just $6.95/month for 300 GB of space and 3000 GB of bandwidth provides value that is hard to match!
You can now host unlimited domains on 1 account, and their management team continues to invest in upgrades to benefit their customers.
BlueHost has consistently achieved high standards in performance and support all year. Despite their exponential growth, BlueHost has maintained its excellent support response times and increased their already impressive package features. Against literally hundreds of web hosts, BlueHost provides top value to customers and is deserving of Hosting-Review's most prestigious award, the 2005 Host of the Year.
Hosting Ratings:
8.5 / 10
Price Value
8.5 / 10
Performance
9 / 10
Reliability
9.5 / 10
Customer Support
8 / 10
Control Panel
9/ 10
User Feedback
Overall Grade: 87%
2005 Host of the Year
Hosting Review Top Pick:
Best Customer Service 2005
Hosting Review proudly announces BlueHost as Winner, 2005 Best Customer Service Award. New BlueHost clients receive a welcome support call to ensure easy account setup, and average wait times on toll free support lines are tops in the business.
Price Value
When doing our BlueHost review, we found that they offer a high quality hosting plan for a great price. Their single coverage plan provides you with 300 GB of hosting space and 3000 GB of bandwidth. This is excellent coverage compared to most web hosting firms and provides good value to the consumer. You also receive many added features, including a domain name free of charge, 2500 POP3 web-based e-mail accounts, unlimited add-on domains, FTP, PHP, CGI, cPanel, Fantastico scripts, 50 MySQL databases, Agora Shopping Cart, PageBuilder drag-and-drop site builder, support for Ruby on Rails, and more. This is a very comprehensive feature package compared to most web hosting firms, and BlueHost is committed to continually finding new ways to make it even better.
Reliability
When something goes wrong, people tend to let you know. We have not received many notices about BlueHost, which is a good thing. Their quad processor Opteron servers are not only much faster than most competitors' servers, they are also extremely reliable. BlueHost provides standard uptime gurantees - no issues here.
Control Panel
BlueHost uses the Cpanel control panel, which comes loaded with many excellent features on its user interface. The navigation menus are easy to understand and use. Icons are created for each feature in the control panel and help information is easily accessible next to each feature. They have also integrated a number of billing features to make management of your account very simple and easy to configure.
Customer Support
This web hosting company is superb with respect to the quality of support offered. You can submit a question to their help desk via their online form, visit the extensive FAQ section of their website, or call their toll-free support desk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Staff are knowledgable and friendly and available around the clock.
Hosting Plans
Linux/UNIX Hosting Plan Shared: 300 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth @ $6.95/month (host unlimited domains)
Price Value
StartLogic's budget package has one of the lowest prices around for the value. For $4.95 you get 300 GB disk space and 3000 GB bandwidth for not 1 but 10 domains. Free bonuses like $50 Google AdWords credit and $50 Yahoo! Search Marketing credit pump up the value even more.
This basic package (and all subsequent packages) come feature-packed. You'll get unlimited email accounts, a choice of secure shopping carts (including PayPal's), Frontpage extensions, browser-based email and a web hosting control panel, plus log files, site stats, and MySQL, PHP, PerlScripts and CGI-BIN support.
Your account comes with free multimedia features included, like real audio and video, streaming audio, Macromedia Shockwave, MIDI File Support and MIME types. You'll get a complete FTP manager with backup and password protection, a website builder loaded with templates, plus a publisher and a logo and slogan editor. You'll get unlimited POP3 emails, forwards and autoresponders.
The promotional tools that come with StartLogic's hosting packages are among its greatest features. Get a 500+ page marketing manual, a search engine positioner and submitter, Meta Tags and Keywords Generators, a Link Checker, and $50 matching credit for advertising. In a way, it seems like StartLogic gives you everything but the computer.
Reliability
StartLogic has a no-questions-asked 30 day money back guarantee and stands behind a solid 99.9% uptime guarantee all the time. Their Los Angeles-based datacenter is a custom-designed facility that uses redundant optical fiber connections and multiple internet backbone providers.
Careful attention was paid to environmental controls, with HVAC temperature control systems, raised floors, redundant power, UPS backup and power conditioning systems and generators. They use state of the art video surveillance, motion sensors, biometric access controls, security breach alarms, and smoke detection and fire suppression methods.
Control Panel
Users will enjoy StartLogic's easy to use VDECK 2.0 control panel that, with large icon-based buttons, gives you versatility and control over all aspects of your account, from administrative to creative. All from its one crisp, clean, and powerful interface you can build, publish, and market your websites, set up shopping carts, install scripts, and manage your email account. Help information on all VDECK features are accessible directly from the control panel itself.
Customer Support
StartLogic has live web chat support, which is our hands-down favorite way to get help. Choose from 24/7 x 365 award-winning live chat, toll-free telephone, and email tech support. They run a comprehensive Support Center with a troubleshooting tour, an email query ticket system, a Getting Started guide, a Community Forum, an Announcement Board, and a categorized and searchable Knowledgebase/FAQ. They also run a convenient Additional Services page from where you can change your account domain name, add sub domain names, order SSL certificates, add disk space, databases and/or bandwidth, park domains and otherwise manage your account.
Hosting Plans
Linux/UNIX Hosting Plans
Prologic: 300 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth @ $4.95/month (up to 10 domains) Virtual Server: 20000 MB disk space, 1 TB bandwidth @ $29.95/month (multi-domain hosting) Dedicated Server: 40000 MB disk space, 500 GB bandwidth @ $99.00/month
Windows Hosting Plan Windows Hosting: 2000 MB disk space, 60 GB bandwidth, ASP, .net CGI-BIN Support, ACCESS database @ $8.95/month