Bluehost

Overview

Bluehost was a small hosting company started by Matt Heaton in 1996. It quickly became a respected provider of services from the beginning, and did not start up with any capital or investors to back it. It was a dream project of Matt Heaton – a lover of Linux and Mac – and later became one of the 20 largest domain providers. The company is headquartered in Provo, Utah with 2 secondary data centers, which are equipped with 10 GB fiber-optic cable and the latest in server technology. They are also well known for not outsourcing any of their IT, and all services are in-house. This is a model that Matt Heaton has had from the beginning.

Usability

Bluehost.com is primarily a web hosting company that also offers domain registration, cloud sites services, and other related hosting services (shared, vps, Wordpress). When using Bluehost as host, setting up an account, accessing sub-menus will be easy and only minimally tax. The site’s design and interface is one of the best-looking control panels around and requires almost no expertise in website and domains management.

Budding website owners who opt to use BlueHost’s hosting services will find great ease in setting up their websites, even with very little to no coding knowledge. Its dashboard runs on the standard cPanel, which is acknowledged by many users as a very user-friendly control panel.

Domain Privacy

Bluehost provides an in-house private registration and therefore uses details under the Bluehost name. Registering a domain means having your name, mailing address, administrative contact which is essentially also the registrant, technical contact, email address and phone number. With Bluehost private registration, these get replaced with its own details. Note that .us domains are expressly not allowed to use domain privacy. Otherwise, Bluehost does offer private registration for many other extensions.

As of 2015, domain privacy is at $0.88 per month or $11.88 per year, available for domains hosted under them. Registrants, with the exception of those using a .us domain, get to keep their info private through the same hosting provider which offers a bit of convenience for the account owner.

Bulk Registrations and Management

Bulk registration is a recent enhancement in the Bluehost control panel that permits up to 500 domain search in a single session. While some users might not have an immediate need for this feature, it might prove to be an unexpectedly convenient way to look for a number of domain names at once when the need arises. This tool can be accessed in the domain manager tab (‘Domains’) in the back-end, and clicking on the Bulk Register Domain button on the right. This can only be done for those who already have a Bluehost account. As previously mentioned Bluehost offers a user-friendly control panel, so managing multiple domains under one account.

Access Level and Delegating

As with most web hosting providers, Bluehost.com allows account owners to create several FTP accounts for a number of users. The same goes for domains management. It can be a bit tricky to find out how to do assign technical access to other users but it can be done. As Bluehost is a web hosting company, getting help in granting rights to another user could also be a bit confusing.

Pricing and Coupons

Bluehost.com is known for being one of the cheapest registrars to obtain a top level domain (TLD) with their $6.95 a month hosting plan, which is often on sale, or you can readily find coupons for. With the famous plan clients get a free domain and a free site builder. There are a number of other features with Bluehost, and they as well have SSL certification. The renewal price, however, is a difference pricing structure and might be unusually expensive compared to equally large but not as high-priced web host/registrar.

Note: To create an account, you must enter your personal and payment information (credit card) which you are allowed to enter thrice.

Customer Service

Bluehost provides round-the-clock support that is in-house which should explain why customer service quality at Bluehost is mostly satisfying. On live chat, support technicians do provide in-depth resolutions for problems on the control panel, transfers, bulk management, or any other issue that requires a thorough explanation. Most users will maintain a Bluehost account and never need to contact support, but for those who would, support is reliable. Customer service can be obtained through chat which doesn’t frequently experience long queues, phone and email. There is also a support community (forums) which can provide a wealth of knowledge from users themselves. The forums aren’t always actively participated but some of the issues raised could be answered from previous entries.

Management Summary

Bluehost is one of the largest domain providers, and has hosted millions of sites. It has only 175 employees, which by internet technologies standards, is a relatively small company. They are in addition avidly against the SOPA act in congress, and even went as far as to go on strike in January of 2012. They have actively spoken out against the SOPA act, which is an act in congress to combat online piracy, but they have as well stated that they in no way support online piracy.

To sum, Bluehost is a very decent choice for hosting with very reasonable pricing. Although it isn’t exactly a domain registrar, top-notch usability features and complete product line-up make it a safe, intelligent choice for website building and domain registration.