Bluehost Review: Why Bluehost needs to pull up its socks.
The world of affiliate marketing can be brutal. This often leads to the spinning of total lies for the sake of a few cents. We, at Network Bees, have, however decided to be different. If we are going to lose a dollar here and there simply because we produced an honest review, then, so be it! So, you know right off the bat that this Bluehost Review is as genuine as they come!
The first thing that we need to set straight is that we are not current Bluehost customers. Neither have we ever had a website hosted by the company! At one point, we did seriously consider Bluehost as our host, before finally settling on InterServer our current host. (InterServer has, so far, proven to be great, by the way).
The thing that put us off were the negative sentiments that are floating around the internet about Bluehost. Now, we are not writing this Bluehost web hosting review in order to pull people away from the company. Heck, we are affiliates and acknowledge that the company did not grow to over 2 million customers by doing something wrong.
Get More Hosting Reviews
Need to learn more about Bluehost Hosting? Our friends at Hosting Review have gathered a large number of reviews from genuine Bluehost customers. Follow the provided link to learn more about this and other web hosting companies.
Negative Sentiments are almost universal when it comes to Web Hosting
Another thing that we need to acknowledge is that the web host that has zero negative reviews somewhere on the internet does not exist. That is hardly surprising, considering how big some of these web hosting services providers have become. Think your web host is great? Well, there is almost always someone out there who has something to complain about its services.
Why we urge our readers to approach Bluehost with caution
Bluehost feels like a premium quality web host, but does the company deliver on the potential? We mention in another article that there are a few, fundamental things on which a web host needs to deliver in order to make the grade.
Recommended By WordPress. Is that Still Important?
Despite the fact that this is a company that comes highly rated by none other than WordPress.org, we feel that we have to take a different tack, for the sake of our readers.
Our aim, at NetworkBees, is to provide you with only genuine reviews, and if our readers tell us that a product sucks, then we will tell it as it is.
If you think we are saying Bluehost sucks, then you need to think again. Suck is a…rather strong word. The hundreds of customers who have contacted us about the company have, instead, spoken about lethargy.
Bluehost is no longer Exciting
One of the complaints that you will hear constantly about Bluehost is that the company has become just another web host. It is just there, and there is nothing exciting about it. If you are one of the company’s over 2 million customers, then your site is probably just okay, in terms of speed, performance, security, reliability and all the other things that matter so much in web hosting. Nothing exciting…
Bluehost Review: Has the company grown too big?
Bluehost, as mentioned earlier, used to be a premium quality Web Hosting company. That is how it managed to grow so big, to over two million websites. From what we gathered while writing this Bluehost review, the company used to be great. That was several years back.
Most people allege that the Bluehost began to go downhill following its acquisition by EIG. Okay, we do have to admit that one thing may have nothing to do with the other, but it was around the time of acquisition that, according to some Bluehost customers, the company got derailed. So, what has so riled former and current Bluehost hosting clients?
1. Support “was Shifted to India” and Has Become Atrocious
The nature of web hosting is that things will, at some point, inevitably go wrong with almost every website at some point in its lifespan. The mark of a great host is, therefore, being able to resolve the issue as soon as possible. You do not, in this regard, want to have a web host whose support personnel are even less knowledgeable than you are.
That, as it turns out, has been the greatest complaint about Bluehost, as we found out during the course of this review. Support at the company appears to have been outsourced to India, which a good number of people apparently take exception to.
Well, we, at Network Bees, have nothing against India. Indeed, the majority of our readers are on the subcontinent. The main issue here is that the people concerned do not appear to have the knowledge that is needed to resolve customer problems.
In our view, it does not really matter where Support is based. It might even be based in Zimbabwe, for that matter! What matters is empowering Support personnel to be able to help clients, and Bluehost appears to have neglected that in this case.
Today, its fashionable to outsource support to India
Here is the thing, this website is hosted by InterServer, whose support is also apparently based in India or thereabouts. It only makes economic sense for companies to go this route (at least it did before Trump was elected to the presidency).
Labor is so cheap in that part of the world when compared to the US that a large number of companies have been clamoring to join the bandwagon.
Our own experience with the support personnel at InterServer is that they have, so far, been able to help us with all of our queries. Network Bees discovered during this Bluehost Review that InMotion Hosting is one of the few web hosting companies whose support is still actually based in the US.
2. Bluehost’s Servers Have Become Slow
Another major complaint, which we discovered while gathering material for this Bluehost review, is that the company’s servers have become rather slow. This is perhaps the price of having grown so big. Has the company made the infrastructure investments that are needed to keep up with this growth?
It does not, apparently, really matter whether one has a Standard or VPS hosting package. Speed has become a major issue for Bluehost customers. In fact, one customer who left a comment on this website complained that it did not really appear as if he had actually been moved to a VPS, because his site became even slower than it was before!
3. Up-selling
The issue of up-selling is a major complaint for people across the hosting world and Bluehost is no exception. For those that are not in the know, up-selling occurs when a company tries to get you to purchase products and services that are more expensive than the ones that you were looking for.
That has apparently become a major issue for Bluehost customers. A typical complaint in this regard is that whenever something goes wrong with one’s website, the Support Personnel at Bluehost try to sell you other products, which are supposedly better.
4. Security Comes at a Premium
There have also been reports of sites being arbitrarily taken down and people being forced to pay to have them cleaned of malware infections. Our gripe in this regard is that web hosting companies across the world have made website security an optional part of their packages (perhaps in a bid to reduce costs).
In our view, every website should be secured against viruses and other malware. That is why we would like to advise all our readers to make sure that their sites are secured, regardless of the extra costs. (They don’t usually amount to much anyway).
Fortunately for Network Bees, our own host, InterServer, offers free security and malware cleanup on every web hosting plan.
5. Reliability
Another major complaint, which came up during the course of writing this Bluehost Review, is that the company has steadily become unreliable.
Most of the complaints that we have noted are made by people whose sites have gone down, sometimes for as many as 3 days. Bluehost’s uptime has previously been reported as being slightly below average, which is not good for such a big company.
The Verdict: Bluehost needs to up its game
It has to be noted that experiences with web hosting companies vary from one customer to the other. There are some people out there who swear by Bluehost. However, from what we have been able to gather recently, the company needs to do something about the areas that we mentioned above in order to get back on track.
Smaller companies, such as InterServer, have already moved over to SSD storage and SSD caching, which makes a vast difference in terms of web hosting speeds. With the world now obsessed with the link between web hosting and SEO, Bluehost clearly needs to make SSD hosting universal for all its customers.
Network Bees Recommends InterServer
So, which web hosting company do we recommend to our readers at the moment? As mentioned several times above, Network Bees is Hosted by InterServer and we have been doing very well over the past few months. Feel free to try out InterServer by clicking on the banner below.