Top 10 Web Hosting Providers : Reviews for Blue Host

BlueHost has provided the fastest setup time for any reviewed host thus far. From the time we landed on their website and clicked the sign up button, we had a fully functioning website with content management system, email accounts and website templates within 15 minutes. It's official, it's a record.


Signup
The signup process at BlueHost is very quick and well done. We had the option to receive a free domain or transfer our existing domain. After signup, we were delighted to find a fully integrated control panel with billing, domain management and cPanel access.

Support
Domain Monitoring was one of the first links we explored a from the signup email we recevied - this feature was met with big smiles; we were able to add our own server to be monitored right away. The system reports "Services: no known issues: status ok", everything is looking good. We haven't experienced any downtime with our BlueHost account, however we did take a moment to give them the 'late night call'. We spoke with several hosting support and sales staff; they were friendly, but there seemed to be some confusion about which account was ours. Overall, that doesn't give us the web hosting "warm-fuzzies", but the staff that we spoke to did seem competent.

Features
BlueHost has done a great job on their control panel - it has everything. Customers can easily access their control panel (cPanel), billing and access to support. BlueHost has done a nice job on their cPanel as well... customers can access the standard cPanel features, as well as Web design and Search Engine Optimization (via a partner), merchant accounts and shopping carts, Free Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft Ad Center and Miva credits, Ruby on Rails and more. The only drawback we saw to their control panel was that they did a fair bit of upselling, which is a little distracting.

Customers also have access to free scripts and programs to add functionality to their websites. Fantastico is included with each account (fantastico is a well known collection of free website add-ons). BlueHost also offers thousands of Ruby Gems and other free scripts - more than most hosts include. SSH access is available with PhotoID.

Experience
The overall experience with BlueHost was very good - we were particularly impressed by the their breadth of features. We were pleased with the availability of server monitoring, though there seems to be a slight lack of focus on customer communication.


PROs:
-Clients can access a very well done Customer Portal
-Lots of Free Marketing credits
-Tons of Free scripts (shopping carts, blogs, forums and more)
-A very good choice if you need to get up and running immediately

CONs:
-We weren't terribly thrilled with our first phone call to support
-BlueHost does a fair bit of up-selling to customers