Founded in 2003, the Utah based hosting company Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. It was bought by the hosting behemoth Endurance International Group in 2010 and continues to host over one million websites every day.
The company offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, eCommerce hosting, and dedicated hosting.
Dedicated servers can be purchased from $79.99 per month, however BlueHost’s bread and butter is without doubt the competitive shared hosting and VPS hosting market.
BlueHost did not become one of the biggest hosting companies in the world through luck. They have always positioned themselves competitively in order to secure customers.
In this article I would like to talk about how this company was able to secure such a large customer base.
Affordable Hosting Packages
There are many things to consider to consider when selecting a hosting company such as support, features, and reliability. However, at the lower end of the market, price is what separates most companies.
BlueHost are very aggressive in their pricing. Their entry-level hosting plan costs only $2.95 per month. If you’re looking to host more than one website, you only have to jump up to their plus or choice plus packages at $5.45 per month.
Such a low entry point makes BlueHost an attractive option for new website owners.
BlueHost are pretty aggressive in their marketing efforts too. They regularly advise affiliates to offer potential customers coupons to encourage them to sign up.
Due to this, there are a ton of coupon websites for BlueHost too that give you discounts on all their hosting packages packages. These coupons are valid in UK as well as the US and India.
So before you sign up to BlueHost, be sure to check around and take advantage of a discount coupon.
A Host of Features (Excuse the Pun)
All BlueHost packages include a free SSL certificate and a free domain.
BlueHost servers are backed up daily so you can rollback your website to the previous checkpoint if you run into any problems.
Customers who opt for the choice plus package or above can get external backups through CodeGuard as well. That’s pretty impressive for a hosting plan that only costs $5.45 per month.
BlueHost’s managed WordPress packages start from just $3.95 per month. Yet for such a small monthly fee you also receive website staging and automatic WordPress updates.
Upgrading to their WP Pro hosting plan from $19.95 per month gives you access to 100 premium WordPress themes malware detection and removal, and no traffic limits.
Good Uptime
BlueHost have one of the largest hosting data centres in the world to ensure uptime and fast delivery of content.
HRank note that in the last 30 days their servers have been online 99.972% of the time. This puts them just outside of the top hosting services for hosting (according to HRank), but it is certainly acceptable for a shared hosting company.
Over the last six months their uptime has been better. For example, in August 2018 it was 99.983%, which made them one of the most reliable hosting companies available online.
HRank also note that BlueHost have an average response time of around 1,120 miliiseconds.
If you are an existing BlueHost customer, you can check the status of your BlueHost server at any time from their system alert page.
24 Hour Support
In addition to a large knowledgebase, BlueHost also has a chat support system and ticket support system.
Chat and ticket support are expected from a hosting company, but BlueHost offer telephone support too. There are multiple support numbers for sales, technical queries, and account queries.
Support is offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that many managed hosting services over $100 per month do not offer this.
Overview
BlueHost is not for everyone, but in the hosting world, one size does not fit all.
You need to find a hosting company that fits your needs and your budget.
Of course, it is easy to see why BlueHost is such a large company as they have a good uptime record and sell feature-rich hosting packages at bargain basement prices. This is why so many people continue to use them.
Check out the Bluehost website for more information about hosting with BlueHost.
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