22BlueHost seems to be quite a reputable web hosting company. They are young (less than 3 years old). Their banners can be seen almost everywhere. 15Gb storage + 400Gb bandwidth for less than 7 bucks a month. Secure Shell is enabled (but probably jailed). Great service reviews, and even the sucks test did not bring up anything too disturbing. Moreover, their CEO Matt Heaton has a blog.
More and more often I am evaluating a hosting company by the fact that whether they have a blog. DreamHost has this official one (if you don’t count the unofficial one and their status log), all engineers in Site5 have their own blogs, and so are few other big players. By the way, web hosting companies, blog is a great PR tool and a great communication channel with your users, especially the loud ones. So start one today if you haven’t.
However I liked Matt Heaton’s blog because it is personal. It is more than just what is going on inside his web hosting company, what is happening around the industry, etc. There are blog entries that are about himself, where I learnt that Matt who has been a missionary to Taiwan (Mormon?), the little island where I was born. There is more to work and build an ultimate hosting empire — there’s life, family and spirituality.
Great stuff there.
* * *
If I don’t have my web hosting account with DreamHost, I might be tempted to sign up with BlueHost. Maybe not. I think I have enough headache with the crippled-control-panel, a.k.a. cPanel, that I will definite hesitate to join another web hosting company which builds on that platform.
They do have quite a generous affiliation program, which earns you $65 per lead. Except another affiliation program that I has just joined is providing the same BlueHost banner for $85 per lead. Now we know how much does each customer costs web hosting companies…
You are absolutely right. Nowadays a blog lets us see the “soul” of a company.
Long Story Short: Bluehost sucks.
As you can tell from the chat transcript I was trying to be as nice as possible for 2 reasons. I wanted a full refund, and the guy is just a peon in the company.
Richie: Welcome to our real-time support area, my name is Richie, how can I help you today?
andrew: Hi Richie, I need to cancel my account and get a refund. I should be entitled to a full refund seeing as how I did not recieve the service advertised as 99.9% uptime, my domain is *.
andrew: Unfortunately it was much much lower than that. I’ve had serious downtime these past 2 and a half months and it just isn’t acceptable.
Richie: i apologize for that. If your account is under 30 days then we do offer a full refund… after 30 days is a prorated refund
andrew: What about the 99.9% uptime guarantee as advertised here:
andrew: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/kb/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&root=15&id=234
andrew: I have been down for probably in the 40-50 hours since joining 2 months ago. You guaranteed only about 8 hours a year.
andrew: That is a serious violation of the contract I entered.
andrew: I am hoping we can resolve and give me my refund fully as good customer service so as not to sour this any more.
Richie: Unfortunately you do not qualify for a full refund, I apologize… I would be happy to cancel your account and give you a prorated refund of $63.44
andrew: Please explain why I do not qualify based on the 99.9% uptime guarantee, it is right there in black and white on your help pages.
andrew: Is it just a blatant lie that will force me to file complaints with the BBB and such.
Richie: We do not offer a SLA (Service level agreement) where you would qualify for a full refund or credit
Richie: I’m sorry.
andrew: So how can you have a guarantee if it is not guaranteed?
Richie: If you read the Terms of Service it makes that fact abundantly clear.
andrew: Bluehost has been in violation of the 99.9% uptime guarantee every month since I joined.
Richie: again, I apologize, and I can understand why you would want to cancel, however you only qualify for a refund of $63.44
andrew: Richie, can you honestly tell me that you would be happy if a company offered you a guarantee and didn’t follow through, then would not make good on it.
Richie: I understand your frustration, however, $63.44 is the amount you would get if you canceled your account today. I truly am sorry.
andrew: I was charged $95.40 for this. And $63.44 is just unacceptable based on the service I have recieved. You are customer service oriented and your company does wish to make good with their customers yes?
Richie: I am sorry that it is unnacceptable for you, I truly am, however, it is what you would receive at this time, and unfortunately this is something that is non-negotiable
andrew: Richie, could you please explain to me what the 99.9% uptime guarantee means if not that I will get 99.9% or you will refund me.
Richie: we guarantee 99.9% or you can cancel your account and recieve a prorated refund
Richie: or if you cancel within 30 days you can receive a full refund for web hosting
andrew: But that was guaranteed elsewhere in the fact that I never entered into a binding contract with you to begin with.
Richie: If you read out TOS you would know that we do not offer any additional compensation above the prorated refund if the uptime is not met
andrew: So your telling me that you won’t show me the great customer service of giving me a full refund(minus the domain of course), instead, you wish to sour me forever to bluehost, forcing me to tell everyone I know and meet not to use you in real life and the internet, resulting in alot of negative publicity for bluehost over, what $25.
andrew: I strongly urge you to check with your manager before deciding this.
Richie: I have. The prorated refund does stand, I am sorry.
**At this point he cleared the chat transcript so as I couldn’t post it(they aren’t very smart though, at the end of the session it asks if you want it e-mailed to you***
Richie: I can take care of it for you now, I only need you to verify the last 4 digits of the CC on the account.
andrew: Very well, that’s the beauty of it I suppose. Not your fault, but Bluehost. I’m sorry you have to work for such a company. I will unfortunately have to initiate a chargeback for the full amount, and post my experience to blogs all over the internet, and tell all my friends and acquaintances to steer clear of bluehost, all over $25. It’s sad really that a company would choose that.
andrew: It’s too bad it will cost bluehost so much more than it will cost me.
Richie: because of the planned chargeback, before we can delete the account you will need to speak with our billing department. They will need to confirm the chargeback before the account is deleted
Richie: our Billing department is here during standard business hours, M-F 9am-5pm (MST)
Richie: you can call 1-888-401-HOST to speak with the billing department
andrew: Is there an e-mail address I should e-mail them at at.
andrew: Or is it live chat.
Richie: You can call, and speak with a billing representative
andrew: No, I don’t believe I will be calling. Not worth the effort to talk to them, this was draining enough. :) Is there an e-mail address?
Richie: billing@bluehost.com
Richie: I am sorry it has been so draining for you…
andrew: It’s ok Richie, not your fault. I did make sure I saved the chat script as we talked so as to post it elsewhere on the internet. Anyway, I honestly wish you have a good night. Like I said, I know companies have policies and all, not the fault of the employee if he does as he’s told.
Richie: Well, I thank you for your understanding
andrew: Good Night! And hey you got paid for 35 minutes without having to work too hard. ;)
Richie: I wish, I get to take phone calls during this time as well. Busy night. Have a good night! :)
andrew: hahaha bye.
My reply from the CEO of bluehost when I posted the above to his blog:
No where does it say we will give you a full refund, and you most CERTAINLY were not down anywhere near 40 hours. Give me a break! Take your $$$ and go find a different host.
We never say anywhere we will give you your money back after 30 days, so for you to expect that is assinine.
Thanks,
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com
My reply back:
Check your facts Matt, a few days ago I was on box 126 which was down for over over 26 hours! Unacceptable! I did take my money elsewhere, to lunarpages!
I have been using both hostings for my websites already for half a year, nothing bad I’ve noticed. May be you speak about other hostings? I mean Blyehost and Dreamhost as well.
Blue host Sucks. They are just fucken bustared. I had 8 hosting with them and one fine morning they have deleted all my account without noticing me. I have never seen such a worse hosting company.
Yeah. Bluehost kinda sucks. Very unprofessional. A bunch of morons i believe.
I was considering switching to them as well. Then I found out a) it is a Mormon-owned company and morals/ethics forbid from dealing with bigots like Mormons (Prop8) and I also saw scattered reports of them censoring websites of their customers (non-adult content I might add) which does not sit well with me either.
You are quite correct. In my view, BlueHost (Aka Hostmonster, many other names) is a disreputable company. The too made a decision to discontinue my service. I was working on a project and a customer must have inserted a bad script. They flagged it and I removed it within 20 minutes. I had 2 other similar issues and each time fixed it within minutes of it being reported. I reviewed my site security and BlueHost support agreed that I had secured my site and could not explain how the script was making it on site. I offered to purchase my own IP so I would not impact others and did that. I thought we were working things out then one day they disabled everything and told me I had 15 days to remove my files and they would not continue my service no matter what I did. The so-called ‘abuse’ department was absolutely rude and ridiculed and insulted me the entire time I tried to work with them.
I moved the site to anther hoster, no problems and everything is fine. I’m quite sure it was BlueHost.
Another thing that really is telling about BlueHost. Goto google and type in ‘Best Web Hosting’. At the top is a link for “www.Top-10-Web-Hosting.com”. Now, visit that site and you’ll see Bluehost right at the top along with their aka HostMonster. You are thinking you are looking at an objective review site but you are only being deceived by the evildoers at Bluehost. Now, go to whois and check out the registration of “Top-10-Web-Hosting.com” and look at the name server to which it is pointing…
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.BLUEHOST.COM
NS2.BLUEHOST.COM
These guys are setting up their own sites that masquerade as honest objective review sites to lure unsuspecting saps (like me) into their web.
You don’t want to do business these guys or their many aka’s. Be very wary of review sites. I’ve found that CNET does a good job but the ones that seem to float to the top of google lists are not trustworthy . They are shill sites setup by bad companies that will do anything and say anything to lure you into a bad business decision. I would go further to say that if your ISP is based in Orem, Utah, the chances are that they are BlueHost or Hostmonster or one of their many Akas. I would steer clear of Orem, Ut-based ISP’s.
I hope this review will help you avoid the very bad experience I (and many others) have had with this bad apple.
What a bigot you are, yourself. I have had trouble with Bluehost–and I will not use them because of failure in business practices. BUT, I find your comment more troubling.
1) To label one entire group as bigots, is in-fact the best description of bigotry I have seen.
2) To not be willing to do business with any group because of their political views is your choice, but I will choose the best individual or partner for the job.
I have worked with dozens of Mormons in my life and respect their collective willingness to stand for what they believe in…they have been extremely loyal and hard-working.
If Bluehost were able to fix their stupid business practices that inhibit me from growing with one provider as my business grows…I would use them again.
Bruce Decker, that was very smart “sounding” other than the fact that you are calling a WEB HOSTING company an ISP which as any network savvy person will tell you stands for INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER. just for some information isp’s are companies like comcast and verizon. Bluehost, hostgator, godaddy ARE NOT ISP’s THEY ARE WEB HOSTS
I would also like to make mention on how much Bluehost sucks. I have been a customer of theirs for 3 years without a problem. I wake up one morning to see all off my domains have been suspended. I contact technical support and they say I have exceeded my MySQL usage….. odd because I don’t use anything related to MySQL.
They say they are closing my accounts and I have 15 days to get all my files before they are deleted. They say I cannot have my account re-opened, nor can I be a customer of Bluehosts anymore… Really I have no idea what I did wrong and they won’t tell me.
F-U Blue Host… all I wanted was a reason WHY.
Everyone save your money and go with another hosting company don’t let the cheap price of $6.95 trick you!
While I enjoy reading Matt’s blog about web hosting and his personal life, it is still rather biased.
To see another side of Matt Heaton read his forum posts on webhostingtalk.com.
Long story short, I have been with Bluehost for about 3 years and am currently looking to switch hosts. BH has ticked me off one too many times and it is time for me to move on. Inconsiderate, incompetent, ignorant, dishonest, undermining, lying, rude, obnoxious and unprofessional are just a few words I use to describe them.
You are right, I was wrong. Hosting company is what I should have written. I’m assuming that the rest of the post sounded “Smart” enough for you.
I have been using Bluehost for 5 years and have been pretty happy with them so far…. Bluehost has never been a problem for me or my account.
Could that be because you happen to run a BlueHost affiliate site?
blue host is in my opinion a scam they took my money and suspended the account 12 hours later, they refuse to admit any fault and said read the terms, in short they are not liable for anything and even if they were the limit to damages to $1 , is it any wonder the world is in crisis when all they want to do is make a fast buck, ( financial crisis ring a bell ) what kind of contract is that ?
I just switched to hostgator.com after 2 weeks with bluehost.com
I doubt I will get my money back but they just suck. There were down for hours after I signed up. A complete waste. Steer clear.
I also have had some bad experienced with bluehost from them denying that my box was oversold and constantly down for months. But even worse are their password security policies http://yanpritzker.com/2008/07/10/bluehost-stores-your-password-in-plain-text/
Poor Choices: Bluehost/Hostmonster – same con artist
Here’s a transcript and as i type this I am still awaiting a reply…. (May 25th 2010)
R. Clayton: [1:51:56 PM] Welcome to our real-time live chat. Please have your domain, password, and a detailed description of your problem; please note that I am chatting with several other customers as well, so my responses may be delayed.
CCMurphy.com: [1:51:56 PM] phpmyadmin?????? whats up with the login for phpmyadmin when you click on the link from cpanel? No matter what PW is used – the database or the account, it will not login
[1:52:36 PM] we used to just click on that link from cpanel and go right into phpMyAdmin
[1:53:44 PM] also, went to setup a new hosting account soft-vision.com – said you already had soft-vision.com. Impossible, I own the domain and have since 1996
[1:59:59 PM] 7 min 50 seconds – no response?
[2:01:26 PM] 9.00 min no reply Arvixe is starting to look like a good choice for me and future referals
[2:03:43 PM] I will post this chat save on any site I setup that compares hosting accounts and service, along with other chat sessions I have saved to show this is not an isolated experience with Hostmonster.
[2:04:14 PM] 12 minutes and no reply…
[2:05:00 PM] Just took a screen shot
[2:07:12 PM] 15 minutes – no reply
[2:13:31 PM] 21 minutes
[2:16:57 PM] is Matt Heaton in?
[2:17:24 PM] 25 minutes and no reply?
[2:22:59 PM] 30 minutes I just emailed this transcript to Matt at bluehost.. I hope it’s a wakeup call and your sorry butt is canned.
[2:27:44 PM] 35 minutes
[2:42:36 PM] 50 plus minutes
[2:52:04 PM] Now monitoring “prabhareddy.com” (the primary domain for “hostmonster.com”).
[2:56:20 PM] 1 hour and 4 minutes
My biggest complaint against BlueHost is the customer service, especially when it comes to security issues. When I experience my first web site attack years ago and they shut my site down, they were actually hostile and accused me of being a hacker. After I “scolded” the individual for treating me like a criminal after I’d already been a customer for several years, and for being stupid enough to think I’d actually be using my real name and credit card info to host a phishing site, he finally acted like he had a clue. Today when I get hacked, they don’t treat you like a criminal but they still shut your site down AND YOUR EMAIL right away when they find it. And you usually have to call back several times to finally get someone who will give you some helpful information about the hacking so you know where to look to clean your site. Pray that Google or something finds the breach first and reports the link cause if Bluehost finds it first, there will be NO information about what they found except it was somewhere in “this folder” which has a ton of other folders ’cause its the root folder of an entire application.
That being said, it made capitalistic sense to me that since their customers are responsible for their own security that they would offer some extra paid service for security monitoring/clean up. But No! You are own your own. And I can’t tell you how many times I was told to upgrade something or do something by one of their support staff that screwed up the site or the application.
If you haven’t signed up yet, I recommend you shop around. I’ve not had any problems with server downtime except for once years ago when I think they did something really stupid like change servers or upgrade servers without saying anything. And that didn’t work out well. Honestly, the only thing that has really kept me there is that I HATE site moves.
Anonymous Cowardly Wrote:
“Bruce Decker, that was very smart “sounding” other than the fact that you are calling a WEB HOSTING company an ISP which as any network savvy person will tell you stands for INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER. just for some information isp’s are companies like comcast and verizon. Bluehost, hostgator, godaddy ARE NOT ISP’s THEY ARE WEB HOSTS”
My Reply:
Who would ignore the real issue and start a diatribe about a mis-chosen and irrelevant word rather than getting the real point; the ethics of BlueHost. It’s cowardly and pointless.