BlueHost reviews – Page 2

Not very pleasant experience with BlueHost

BlueHost was my web hosting provider for over a year and unfortunately my experience with them was not very pleasant. Initially, I thought they were a serious company with good support but I was soon mistaken when I had the first issue with my website and their support team could do nothing about it.

Every time I asked for help they simply replied with something along the lines of "we are not able to do that". One particular example I remember very well was when I wanted to remove an 'addon domain' that I had assigned inside BlueHost for one of my websites. I wanted to remove it and then assign it to the nameservers of a new hosting provider that I purchased a plan with, and I was looking for an expert to guide me through the process in order to do it correctly. I contacted the BlueHost live chat support team and after explaining to them exactly what I wanted to do they quickly replied with "that's not possible". Being a web developer and setting up websites for over 5 years I knew it was very well possible to de-assign a domain from any hosting provider so I knew that the support person had no idea what he was talking about. I decided to do it myself and I simply logged in to my domain provider and changed the nameservers my domain was pointing at, from BlueHost to 'my new hosting provider'. It literally took less than 5 minutes and my domain was freed from BlueHost.

This is just one example of when BlueHost has given me a hard time and provided terrible customer support.

Another reason I moved away from BlueHost was their hidden charges. Not only do they charge a lot of extra money for things that many other hosting providers include in their plans, they also have unexpected charges after renewing your hosting plan for the first time.

Honestly, I would recommend staying away from BlueHost. They are a very big company with terrible structure and very bad support. There are much better and more affordable options out there.

Biggest Pro: Uptime
Biggest Con: Customer Support

Let the buyer beware

I had bluehost bill me two years in a row after I cancelled my account. When my card was billed a second time, I disputed the issue through my bank. My bank asked me to contact the merchant and see if we could resolve this without them. I made the call. The customer service person noted that my domain had expired more than a year ago but that she couldn't refund the payment because I had filed an active dispute.

I figured I'd just let the dispute run its course - since customer service acknowledged the mistake, there shouldn't be an issue. I was wrong. Bluehost told my bank (USAA) that that I hadn't "properly cancelled my account within the agreed upon terms and conditions" and denied my refund.

Let the buyer beware. I do not recommend bluehost at all.

Very Poor Technical Support from Bluehost

I am the website manager for a small non-profit organization. We recently had a new site developed and moved it to Bluehost for hosting. The first thing I had to do was get an SSL certificate for the site so that donors could make donations securely. Bluehost put the certificate on the wrong domain. When I realized this I contacted their tech support. Things have gone steadily downhill from there. I was initially told that they would be able to transfer the SSL within a couple of hours. When that didn’t happen I was told it would be 24 more hours. After that all they would say is that, “it’s in the hands of our experts”, but that they could not give me an estimate of when it would be completed. Yesterday I communicated with a supervisor who told me that the problem was that their “reburn machine” is broken and that their tech development team is very busy and he would put a priority on my support request but he could not give me an estimate for when the site would be up. Our website has now been down for 8 days and I don’t want to think about how many potential donors we have lost. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give Bluehost a zero for technical support. I sent this review to Bluehost technical support before posting and they could care less.

Biggest Con: Very poor tech support and lack of interest in their customers

After 8 Years Time To Jump Ship. Site Down 7 Weeks in a Row!

I have been with BlueHost for over 8 years. Mainly because of their support. This last year it's gotten so bad I am looking to jump ship and find a new host.

It first came to my attention when I was having a client's site speed optimized. After weeks of work, we came to the conclusion the slow speed was BlueHost servers. We mirrored the sites (there were two sites) on a different server and tested. I showed BlueHost support, and they still claimed it wasn't their servers causing the slow speeds. Thier response did not make logical sense because it was clearly their servers.

On my main site for my nonprofit, for the last 7 weeks in a row, at the very same time each week, my database has crashed. The first couple of weeks I did everything BlueHost told me to do. I eventually hired a developer to optimize and fix any issues with the database. That was week 4 and 5. It's pretty clear something is triggering this crash on the BlueHost server. The developer I hired suspects their weekly backup. I believe it must be malware. I have heard their servers are filled with bugs.

Anyway, each week I call. Always a new person and you have to go through the history of the issue. Rarely a response unless I tweet to BlueHost. Via email they rarely respond to support tickets. Through this whole issue, they have never taken responsibility and keep claiming it's my database. This week we took my site and mirrored it on two other services. At the exact same time my site went down on BlueHost server, but the two mirrored sites did not. This proves with 100% certainty it's a BlueHost server problem! I have asked them the last three weeks to take action to troubleshoot the problem and not only have I seen zero actions on their part, it's rare to get a response except from their Twitter account!

I heard BlueHost was bought by a new company around a year ago, and that is right around when their support started to get worse! Being honest, I should have jumped ship after the 3rd week my site went down, but I am loyal and have been with BlueHost for years. Problems happen, but it's the companies that fix those problems that keep my business. BlueHost these days does little to fix problems to the point they will not even take responsibly for them - ever after it's proven that the problem is BlueHost servers!

Someone just shared a response on Facebook that BlueHost was bought by Edurance and their support is a mess! Don't be like me and find that out the hard way!

Beware money back guarantee

As has been noted on here previously, you need to beware of the Bluehost 30 day money back guarantee as even if you decide to cancel the day after opening you will NOT get a full refund. Also it is difficult to find the terms and conditions regarding the guarantee - I looked and am unable to find them. Pay careful attention to what contract you select as the billing process is deceptive and you will end up paying more than you thought - its not a transparent process by any means.

New polices, new pricing, new poor service

I have been with bluehost for over 5 years. Have sold numerous clients on their service. This last month my sites we're suspend due to new database usage rules. After proving to them my usage was not as stated (no where near) what the stated in policy. The still refused to unsuspend my accounts. After trying to talk to support about issue (they could not find issue), they still have not undos ended the accounts.

In short, they held my sites hostage to make me pay more for the same service.

Bluehost also has very poor security so unless you monitor your own site.

Biggest Pro: Quick to get sites up
Biggest Con: Poor service and support if you have any technical issues.

Breach of Privacy

I have been a customer for many years and have many domains with Bluehost. They recently violated my privacy by sending a third party private information without my permission or even knowledge! The third party did not have a valid subpoena yet Bluehost released them ALL my information including private email logs. I am considering taking legal action against them as a result of this breach. I am transferring my domain to another provider.

Biggest Con: if you don't care about your privacy, use bluehost!

Beware of 30 day policy timing & process

I had some issues with getting site hosting set up, and their technical support gave answers that were not valid (and later corrected by other updates to the ticket involved). Hosting seemed to be a mixed bag, servers were fine but getting good answers wasn't so reliable, so I opted to not continue. The cancellation was well within 30 days, and was acknowledged by them, but not processed and they charged my card. So I will have to contest it unless Bluehost honors their original commitment. Also note that they may not give full access until they validate your account, but they seem to consider that part of the 30 days. In any case I cancelled within the time limits and am not happy with the current situations.

Biggest Pro: server seemed reliable
Biggest Con: conflicting support answers

Large Company with Solid Hosting

As with all "unlimited" shared hosting, speed throttling does occur but is still usable. Online chat is useful for quick support. Pricing is good, not the rock bottom but I have never tried the cheapest companies so cannot compare. Features are limited compared to more expensive hosts and quite a few "partner offers" on the cpanel interface which can be off-putting and confusing to the beginner.

But seems to have very low downtime and is a well established organisation. Not the speediest shared hosting I have experienced but acceptable enough. Better for someone with some experience that want a straightforward hosting at a reasonable price.

Biggest Pro: "Unlimited" basic plan
Biggest Con: Usage throttling does occur

Bluehost is slow and Over Priced for Small Wordpress Blogsite.

Bluehost claims to support Wordpress with lots of data base capacity for wordpress. It is slow slow slow. I have 2 blogsites hosted by Bluehost and most of the time they are very slow connecting to them. My blogs do not have a lot of activity so should be fast. They are very small blogs with not a lot of followers. When my contract is up I will probably not renew. The price for established customers is not worth it. I can move my blogs to a cheaper host and get just as good of performance for half the price or less. I gave blue host a 5 for most items because to me a 5 is average which I find most shared hosting to be. Reliability I gave a 9 because uptime was better than average. price I gave a 3 because I feel it is overpriced for the speed and what little band width and space I use. less than 300 Mb of space. Although things have improved somewhat with the speed I will be looking else where when my contract is up in February unless things really improve and I get a better price. Seems to me they should give their present customers a break on the price they charge instead of giving it to new customers.

Biggest Pro: Uptime is good
Biggest Con: servers are very slow on most days