BlueHost

 BlueHost was founded in 1996 and is known for their inexpensive hosting plans. Actually, let me correct that, very inexpensive (might I say, cheap?) hosting plans.

BlueHost provides large amounts of storage capacity and bandwidth for the amount they charge, making their hosting solution a valuable commodity for those on a very tight allowance.

They offer several free script plug-ins such as, chat, blogs, polls, web auctions and bulletin boards. BlueHost packages also support multiple features like, CGI, PHP, Perl, Front Page, MySQL Databases, ecommerce tools with a free shopping cart and the ability to track website traffic, BlueHost makes an all-in-one deal.

Despite BlueHost’s great features and seemingly great prices, there’s a catch (which can be easily overcome). Their plans can cost more than some other companies when you purchase on a monthly basis. Their average package will run you $9.95/month plus a $30 setup fee. However, if you prepay for 24 months, you will get the setup fee waived and pay an average of $6.95 per month, or less, depending on the plan. From this perspective, it’s a real bargain!

Bluehost offers TOLL FREE telephone, chat and email support in their help section which includes FAQ’s; with the option of submitting your own questions with a ‘ticket’ number, that is used as a reference number for better organization. I’ve used the system myself and find it very efficient. However, it can sometimes be slower than other methods such as phone support.

BlueHost uses Cpanel, a popular control panel used by many hosts. Some functions accessible through the control panel include account, email and database management and web protection/security and statistics. These are the main functions and other would include password changing, billing info, web stats and more!

The only drawback is that this control panel only works on a Linux/Unix environment. Most of the time, this would not affect you, the user, but if you develop in the Microsoft environment, using Microsoft tools, you will need to use a windows based OS. If you are using Windows, this would not make a difference.

Overall, BlueHost is a solid choice. The occasional burp in their network, or the rare instance of data loss are to be expected. What matters is they stay on top of these things and keep the services up and running. For the prices they charge, you really can’t ask for more.

While I don’t personally have an account with BlueHost at the moment, they’re certainly on my list of potential candidates for when the time arises – so they should certainly be on yours!