Bluehost was reliable as long as I stayed with them up until the end. I left BlueHost with all my 15 accounts as they just went ahead changing PHP 4 to PHP 5 without any notice.

The script I was using at that time was not PHP 5 ready and I asked beforehand if I can stick with PHP 4 on my box.

The tech person told me we don't change anything on the box in regards of the PHP version unless I requested it.

They went ahead and did a change to 5 without any notice rendering my websites running the script useless.

I asked why they did it, since they told me different. They said we upgraded to PHP 5 due to security issues with PHP 4. That action was enough for me to move all my 15 accounts over to a different host.

One bad experience practically ruined the nice run with Bluehost prior to that.

Support calls are answered quickly and support techs even have a sense of humor.

I am not very technically adept and went with Bluehost on a recommendation after weeks of trying to decide on a good host when I converted all my company websites to wordpress.

Exceptional service. Patient, courteous and good humoured responses to some VERY dumb questions on livechat - both pre- and post- sale. I am in the UK and didn't suffer being on the other side of the water from their support guys.

I would say the support was perfect other than one issue I never got resolved about data protection - Europe laws are different - but it was a legal Q, nothing to do with their service/support really - otherwise EXEMPLARY.

Stupidly (with hindsight) I was then wooed away to another host, who I won't name, for silly reasons and moved most of my sites - I have rued the day ever since... I still have 2 sites with bluehost and I am going to start moving the others back again!!!

"you don't know what you've got til it's gone"

Another point, when I requested to cancel my hosting some where only a few months into a 2-year deal and I received a pro-rata refund for the remaining term both quickly and without quibble.

If you understand that shared hosting perils will affect you whatever host you use, then you should definitely consider bluehost.

I run multiple sites and Dbs through bluehost for my new job, so when my wife wanted a domain, thought I'd switch from the host I have all my personal sites on to bluehost. Bad move. 2 days after setting it up and getting her and my daughter e-mails, they locked the account for "possible fraud". They said they had been unable to contact me, but apparently never tried. I called in and spoke to customer support, and they gave me a voice mail to "verify" that I exist.

Still no luck. Only the verification department can unlock my account, and they don't seem to take phone calls. Account is locked, c-panel is disabled, but I was able to unlock the domain name for possible transfer, which is what I'll do if they don't pull their heads out. Like many corporations, it seems that once they've made a decision (good or bad) they have no effective way of re-evaluating that decision. So luck becomes a part of the equation when you decide to host on bluehost. Do you feel lucky?

I have bee with Bluehost for a month so far, with a smallish, low traffic site. Sign-up was very fast and very easy, with none of the faxing of ID that others have reported. Just credit card, sign-up, and running in minutes.

I subsequently upgraded to a private IP, and that process was handled through cPanel, automatic, no issues, and the change propagated through the nameservers in less than an hour.

I had one minor support issue. It was handled in minutes via LiveChat. Again, no problems, and issue settled.

From this point, my experience has all been positive with Bluehost.

I have been with them for 3 months, and have had no downtime or real problems. Had to call tech support 4 times so far, and got a real live English speaking person who on the phone in under 1 minute every time. They fixed each problem right away.

I was with Bluehost for about a year and half until today. Last night they deactivated my account with no notice because they deemed some a directory of photos on my site to be a backup and against their Terms of Service. I called them and essentially got yelled at by their customer support. Someone else on here said it was like talking being busted by a state trooper, I couldn't agree more. She wouldn't even let me talk to a supervisor or even another customer service rep. I deleted the folder of photos and sent in a service ticket for reactivation but they didn't respond in 24 hours so I just cancelled. WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER.

I and the company I work for have used Bluehost since 2004-5. Initially the best thing about them was their service: you could phone up a tech and s/he would fix thing in real time on the phone.

About two years ago they oversold everything, hired some company to answer their phones, and just nosedived. Surly techs who have no idea what ssh is, hours of downtime a month, usually the result of a desperate attempt to shift accounts around, lost and corrupted dbs (we do medical records, so this is kind of important).

This Sunday AM they suspended one of our accounts -- between company and personal my boss and I have over a dozen accounts with them. They said the weekly backups of the site's db were "data storage" not webhosting and violated their tos. So they suspended and locked our account with no notice. Some 12 year old level one tech who had the aptitude of a State Trooper who'd just busted drug dealers demanded we remove our data from the account: which we were locked out of. Note please we never came anywhere near half our allotted server space or bandwidth in years of usage.

The stories are endless, but this was the final straw. My personal Drupal site suffered one db corruption after another over the course of a month in late 08: they broke it every time they moved bits around their overtaxed servers. No apology, when I asked for some warning next time, they said they couldn't do that.

Just appalling. And if you want mailinglists (which they tout), forget it. We had one list (of the dozens offered) with fewer than 100 recipients. They couldn't get the replies out more than once every 24 hours.

Hi,

after trying few different hosting, I decided to steak to Blue host.

I have purchased three hosting plan and I'm running more than 6 websites design by e107 on their space.

It's quite reliable and highly recommended

After bouncing from hosting company to hosting company for years I settled in with Bluehost. I've now been with them for almost half a decade and have had nothing but a satisfying experience.

Great service, great features...all around greatness.

Having used about 8 different hosting companies, I was very happy to have a professional recommendation for this company that could properly host a Drupal CMS. However, at the time I started with them – just over a year ago now – I was rather concerned that I’d committed myself by prepaying for 2 years (trying to get a better rate). There were large delays in saving changes to the Drupal CMS – not good at all since I was working online as opposed to my previous experience with Dreamweaver off line. I complained several times with not such successful outcome. However they were renewing their system (apparently) and would improve. Fortunately that proved to be the case and for the last 6 months I’ve been moderately happy with them.

In a nutshell, I would approach them with caution – don’t take a long term plan. I’m not recommending them to my friends.

Very reliable,fast and packed with features for any type of hosting. Easy setup for any type of web site even for the inexperienced user. Automatic setup of eshops forums photo albums etc in 2 clicks. They keep track of updates on each package they offer. Very pleased with doing business with them. Regards.

Very inexpensive and unlimited bandwidth and file space. Everytime I call to talk to a tech I get some one with 0 wait. I have never experienced and note worthy down time.

I recently signed up with Bluehost to create a lightweight webpage featuring hosting for MMORPG Guild related usage. I was impressed with the pricing, the unlimited bandwidth and disk space, as well as the generous allowance of subdomains, emails, SQL databases, and more.

The signup process was lightning fast; my site was up and running within a minute or two of submitting my PayPal payable account. I later had to scan and send a copy of my driver's license to attain SSH access, but once I had sent the email with the attached scanned image, it took mere minutes for them to respond with my shell account information.

I went to them for support when I was having troubles allowing port access, and had to pay an additional (fair and modest) fee for a dedicated IP address. The service rep was very helpful, and had my site migrated to the new IP within a matter of minutes also.

The only reason I am even writing this review is that I was distraught to see all these negative reviews on this site! For those looking for a low to medium traffic site with maximum features at a fair price, Bluehost is for you! I have been happy 100% through my hosted time, and will continue to use them for my hosting needs until I encounter a serious issue.

I was very naive when I started looking for a new host. I did what most of other people do in such situation: googled for "best host" then inquired be email if "best hosts" offer packages I need. I did not know that most hosting reviews are no more than advertizing exercises.

The result was that I chose Bluehost. They offered what I need and their pre-sales answered my e-mails in minutes.

But when I paid the money, the picture changed completely. Their support team answered my e-mails after 6 or 8 hours, often incompetently. Control panel showed cryptic messages they were unnable to explain. To authorize a payment using absolutely valid Visa card I was forced to send them a scanned copy of my passport (!).

My patience quickly came to an end I immediately demanded my money back. Because of this I cannot comment other aspects of their package, only customer support.

Beware of that company. They do not care of their customers at all. Also beware of HostMonster and FastDomain. These hosting providers are owned by the same company as Bluehost and share the same customer support infrastructure.

You guys at hostjury.com are doing very good job. It's pity that I did not find this site earlier - it would spare me many hours of frustration.

I don't really get much downtime, but their servers just seem too overloaded. I frequently get disconnected on a VERY regular basis when I'm connected to the server via SSH or FTP. Sometimes scripts/pages running on the server just stop responding for a few minutes and I'll have to wait for it to come back up. Overall, you get what you pay for, and there's a reason they're so cheap.

If you are looking for a low-budget host with a bunch of features, Bluehost might be acceptable.

However, in the few years I have been with them, the server uptime (reliability) has taken a huge nosedive, and now is around 90% or less. To be in the webhost game today, you need to keep three 9's or more (99.9%) uptime, which Bluehost can only dream of.

Server CPU use spikes frequently and randomly, making pages and databases slow or unavailable. Their support really is Tier 1, which means if you ask a question other than their name, they have to go ask someone else.

Their feature list is impressive, until you sign up and figure out things like FastCGI don't work and tend to crash HTTPd (web services) on the server on a random basis. Many features end up suffering from this malady of being implemented, but not working 100%.

If you'd asked me three years ago if I would recommend Bluehost, I would have said yes. They have truly hit the dregs now though, and their service for the price appears to be gutter quality. If you need even a semi-reliable host, don't bother with BH.

Their pricing is perfect.

But lately they went a little crazy offering "unlimited" space and bandwidth. Since they had this new offer, the service went weaker and weaker. Last month I've had 30-45mins./day outage, everyday... At least they were decent enough to let you see the server stats and the time remaining to solve the issue.

If you want to host a more complex website which would be critical in a way or another, DO NOT go with Bluehost.

Affordable, but slow. Support not always great.

They deactivate (not suspend, deactivate!) accounts without notice if a script overloads their server, which can happen if too many people try to leave a comment on your blog at once. That means your whole site, including emails, is just gone without any prior warning.

OK for sites that aren't mission critical, but I couldn't use them for anything I relied upon.

I'm running severals mailing list, everything is great.

Support is the fastest support I ever run into.

The amount of bandwidth is largely enough for me.

Very reliable I'm with them since 2005.

Nothing but quality from this host. I have been with them since 2003 and i cant remember the last time i ever had downtime. I never call for customer service, i use the service tickets and i always get a response by the next day. Their easy to use and problem from, at least for me.

I have used and currently use Bluehost for one of my clients and I would say they're alright. They offer an unbelievable amount of bandwidth and diskspace for shared hosting, and it's just that unbelievable. I've had a few problems with maxing out the CPU while running a couple simple scripts too and problems connecting to the server sometimes. Overall the support is good, whenever I needed help I got it.

I've used Bluehost to host a client for about 2 years now, and overall it's been... not that great.

I was instantly surprised about the high level of support that I recieved. They were very attentive and normally got back to me within a decent timeframe.

On the other hand, their cpu quota thing completely drives me bonkers. I've had a little improvement with adjusting my scripts to be more efficient, but it still happens fairly frequently. The speed of the server seems sluggish on most days as well.

If you need a host that can support a lot of traffic and your site is database driven, somewhat rich internet application - do NOT go with Bluehost.

I have had nothing but problems at Bluehost. excesive downtime occurs on a regular basis. My experience with their email servers are also very bad. I have had many problems sending and receiving emails. Every time I had contacted tech support it seemed they could not solve my problems.

If you have a dynamic site I would avoid Bluehost like the plague. If you have a few static pages you want to host and don't mind downtime it may work for you.

Bluehost has been a very unreliable hosting company for my needs. I rank them as one of the worst hosting companies in the business.

I have been a customer of bluehost for about a year now, after moving to them from another hosting provider. In my experience, I am in LOVE with bluehost!

I have never experienced a downtime (at least...never noticed a downtime). And their customer service is amazing! I have called a few times, quite a bit, when I first migrated to them, and they were all very knowledgeable, and were all English. I have never experienced a wait time for customer service. Their features, space, bandwidth are all very satisfying and there is more available in the package I have signed up for than I would ever use.

Bluehost is a good host for a small site. With 10 domains, using over 10gig bandwidth per month, I was frequently getting the Exceeds CPU quota messages with them. I will be looking for a new host.

Their support is so-so. Often I have figured out problems myself before they were able to.

A customer since 2004. I currently have 10 personal sites hosted with them and several clients sites being hosted by Bluehost. They under went a much needed upgrade within the past year and they are running like a dream.

Their anti-spam tools are priceless! Support phenomenal!

I started my sites on Bluehost a year and a half ago, and they did have some reliability issues at that point; however, they upgraded their systems and I have not had a noticeable outage for over a year.

I appreciate how they communicate with me as a customer, and I rarely have to wait in a queue when I call tech support. Tech support is staffed by native English speakers (not outsourced overseas), and they have answered my questions with obvious technical expertise.

I've set up 2 accounts with them and find they're just so so. Downtime is unsatisfactory to me, and they like to point fingers at everything else, and like to use the "poorly written scripts" as their standby excuse. They can give you unlimited bandwidth, and tons of space, then restrict usage of the CPU and lock our your account as a penalty. For example, the "poorly written" script, phpMyAdmin, got one of my sites locked for exceeeding CPU usage while doing a simple backup. I think you get my point....

Great support and features. I moved here from the dreaded vizaweb and have had a very happy life since. They get my vote for fast responsive support who know their stuff. I have over 30 years IT experience in the trenches so I should know.

Simply the best.

I've had them for about a year and I'm totally happy. When they have had any issue they are quick to communicate. 24/7 PHONE tech support.

Bluehost has had numerous issues with there servers/boxes having too many accounts. This causes overload of processes which effects emails, speed, and all control panel usages. Their tools such as SSH is good and all other tools are standard. But if they could figure out a way to lessen the amount of account to one box, this would put there hosting service at the top.

Everyday their servers are overloading during peak hours. The community is starting to be aware of this issue but no action has been put into effect to remedy this by Bluehost.com. I give them a 2 rather than a 1 only because they offer SSH.

This host is great. Their support is the best of any host I have tried. I have called several times in to support, and I never wait for than 2 minutes. Give them a try if you haven't picked a host yet.