An Overview of Bluehost
Endurance International Group owns the Bluehost web hosting firm. This firm is among the twenty biggest web hosts, and collectively hosts in excess of 1.9 million domains, along with its' partner firms FastDomain and HostMonster. Bluehost was one of the firms studied in an assessment of internet based hosting packages for interactive online learning platforms. With Bluehost's standard hosting package, Open SSL version 0.9.8e and Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.26 is the server software.
On the 12th June 2011, Matt Heaton, Bluehost's founder, announced that he was retiring as CEO to concentrate on designing the firm's hosting platform. Dan Handy, the firm's COO, took over as CEO. As of 2013, Bluehost offers dedicated server hosting and VPS.
Hosting Account Prices
Bluehost provides pro web hosting and standard web hosting packages. Either package can be supplemented with additional features. The standard Bluehost web hosting package has three pricing tiers, based on the contract period. Each of these has to be fully paid upon registration, and it includes one complimentary domain registration coupon, with no set up charges. The cheapest price is $6.99 per month for a thirty-six month account (so $251.64 upon registration). The price is $7.99 per month for a twenty-four month account (so $191.76 upon registration). Also, the price is $8.99 per month for a twelve month account (so $107.88 upon registration).
Pro Bluehost web hosting packages combine normal hosting with several other features. Bluehost claims that these features save customers more than $200.00 per year, compared to buying them individually. Therefore, if you are considering add ons, you might want to opt for this route, as opposed to separately registering for them. Pro hosting accounts, which cost $24.95 per month, include domain name registration for one domain, Postini email filters, a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) address, privacy protection for a single domain, positive SSL certificate and site backup pro.
Disputes
In March of 2009, Bluehost web hosting featured in an article on Newsweek, which criticized the firm for censoring the websites of their clients, who were thought to come from countries that had been blacklisted as rogue states by the US government. In February of 2011, Bluehost deleted a religious website, which was being hosted on its' servers. This followed thousands of complaints that the site had posted content blaming lesbians and gays for a New Zealand earthquake.
Unlimited Services from Bluehost
Bluehost web hosting provides "unlimited" bandwidth and space, which means that there's no specified cap on the quantity of data transfer. No specific storage space limits are imposed either. Nonetheless, the firm does monitor the quantity of files linked to an account. This is because, while there is not a set limit, once the quantity of folders and files exceeds 50,000, it can start to impact on server performance.
The Bluehost terms and conditions do permit measures to be taken, once excessive numbers of files are used. However, typically, this does not occur and only becomes a problem when accounts use in the region of 200,000 folders and files. This is unless Bluehost thinks that the big number of files linked to an account is the result of backing up computer data -- i.e. using the account like a type of cloud storage facility. As this contravenes the terms and conditions, it would be immediately addressed and most probably result in you having your Bluehost account closed.
One solution for webmasters with large numbers of files is to upgrade to a pro hosting account. Although this is still shared hosting, there are a smaller quantity of accounts on every server. As a result, more resources are available to each account. Also, pro accounts include an increase in bandwidth from fifteen Mbps downloads (which is the bandwidth offered on standard accounts) to thirty Mbps.
On the 12th June 2011, Matt Heaton, Bluehost's founder, announced that he was retiring as CEO to concentrate on designing the firm's hosting platform. Dan Handy, the firm's COO, took over as CEO. As of 2013, Bluehost offers dedicated server hosting and VPS.
Hosting Account Prices
Bluehost provides pro web hosting and standard web hosting packages. Either package can be supplemented with additional features. The standard Bluehost web hosting package has three pricing tiers, based on the contract period. Each of these has to be fully paid upon registration, and it includes one complimentary domain registration coupon, with no set up charges. The cheapest price is $6.99 per month for a thirty-six month account (so $251.64 upon registration). The price is $7.99 per month for a twenty-four month account (so $191.76 upon registration). Also, the price is $8.99 per month for a twelve month account (so $107.88 upon registration).
Pro Bluehost web hosting packages combine normal hosting with several other features. Bluehost claims that these features save customers more than $200.00 per year, compared to buying them individually. Therefore, if you are considering add ons, you might want to opt for this route, as opposed to separately registering for them. Pro hosting accounts, which cost $24.95 per month, include domain name registration for one domain, Postini email filters, a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) address, privacy protection for a single domain, positive SSL certificate and site backup pro.
Disputes
In March of 2009, Bluehost web hosting featured in an article on Newsweek, which criticized the firm for censoring the websites of their clients, who were thought to come from countries that had been blacklisted as rogue states by the US government. In February of 2011, Bluehost deleted a religious website, which was being hosted on its' servers. This followed thousands of complaints that the site had posted content blaming lesbians and gays for a New Zealand earthquake.
Unlimited Services from Bluehost
Bluehost web hosting provides "unlimited" bandwidth and space, which means that there's no specified cap on the quantity of data transfer. No specific storage space limits are imposed either. Nonetheless, the firm does monitor the quantity of files linked to an account. This is because, while there is not a set limit, once the quantity of folders and files exceeds 50,000, it can start to impact on server performance.
The Bluehost terms and conditions do permit measures to be taken, once excessive numbers of files are used. However, typically, this does not occur and only becomes a problem when accounts use in the region of 200,000 folders and files. This is unless Bluehost thinks that the big number of files linked to an account is the result of backing up computer data -- i.e. using the account like a type of cloud storage facility. As this contravenes the terms and conditions, it would be immediately addressed and most probably result in you having your Bluehost account closed.
One solution for webmasters with large numbers of files is to upgrade to a pro hosting account. Although this is still shared hosting, there are a smaller quantity of accounts on every server. As a result, more resources are available to each account. Also, pro accounts include an increase in bandwidth from fifteen Mbps downloads (which is the bandwidth offered on standard accounts) to thirty Mbps.