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#2 Web Hosting - BlueHost Review "You can create unlimited add-on domains with each hosting account. This means you can actually host unlimited websites with just one account!"
Update:
$6.95/month
(24 month order)
or $7.95/month (12 month order)
Multiple Domain Hosting - BlueHost is the pioneer of multiple domain hosting. With each hosting
account, UNLIMITED This is a brilliant offer because most web hosts are offering incredible amounts of disk space and bandwidth, but the clients in most cases don't even use up 10% of the allocated resources. These web hosts just throw in the big offer as a marketing strategy to attract the consumers by exploiting the 'the more the better' mindset. Consumers don't realize that the 'large space' and 'large bandwidth' is practically useless, as they will probably never use most of the 'advertised' resources. BlueHost is the first genuine web host where the large disk space and
bandwidth offered is not a mere marketing gimmick. They are making sure
that you have the ability to exhaust the allocated resources by allowing you
to host UNLIMITED I respect their way of doing business because they truly care about their customers and are not just here to exploit them. The other web hosts expect you to open a new account for each website that you want to host even when you have plenty of resources remaining in the first account. This is simply ridiculous. I don't need to be an oracle to predict that sooner or later, most other web hosts, including those currently in our Top 10 chart will have to follow BlueHost's lead by offering multiple domain hosting accounts. It's the future of web hosting as domain names are very cheap nowadays and many webmasters will usually want to have more than one website. What are Add-on Domains, Multiple Domains, Domain Alias, Domain Parking, etc.? You can skip this section if you already understand what these terms mean. Despite the confusing terminology, they all refer to 1 of 2 cases which we will be looking at below. Now, let's say you are already hosting "George-Bush.com" with a web host and you also have another domain called "US-President.com". With domain alias/parking/pointing, US-President.com will be exactly the same as George-Bush.com. Both these domains will point to the SAME website. The alias itself will not contain any new content, it is merely a duplicate of the main site. The feature chart on your left and in our directory is referring to this. With add-on domains, George-Bush.com and US-President.com will be 2 totally different sites. For example, George-Bush.com might be a site dedicated to George Bush himself while US-President.com can be a site dedicated to all the presidents in the history of the United States. Your web host simply creates a subdirectory in your main account for the add-on domain and the add-on site will share all the resources (diskspace, bandwidth, MySQL...) of your main site. In this way you don't need to pay for another hosting account if you want to host another site. 'Multiple domains' shall refer to add-on domains, but be aware that many web hosts are actually referring to domain pointers. So the phrase 'multiple domains' alone is a misleading one. But since the future of the web hosting would be 'multiple domain hosting', the phrase will slowly evolve to mean add-on domains. BlueHost is providing unlimited domain pointers and unlimited add-on domains with each account. Sample Hosted Website I am using BlueHost to host a picture site (Visit). You can visit the site to experience the hosting speed and quality of BlueHost. The site was established in 1997 and receives a lot of traffic. It contains over 400 pictures with a total size of around 100 MB. Each day, it serves over 2,000 unique visitors and uses approximately 700 MB of bandwidth. Thus, it requires about 20 GB of bandwidth each month. Don't you think bandwidth and disk space are ridiculously large
nowadays? When I started this picture site few years ago, I only got 1GB of
bandwidth and I had to pay $24.90/month! Today, you get unlimited
Thus, don't focus on bandwidth and disk space amount when picking your host. Focus on customer support and server reliability. Bandwidth and disk space mean nothing if you web host is consistently slow or even down! And you don't want a web host that can't solve a simple technical issue in a week. Important Highlights of BlueHost
Host Unlimited Websites with 1 Hosting Account I've already taken the time to explain this in the previous section. This is the #1 reason why you should consider BlueHost as compared to the other web hosts. You will have the chance to fully utilize all of your disk space and bandwidth. I also want to add that you can fully control your add-on domains directly yourself. You do not need to send in any request to BlueHost support. You manage your add-on domains directly in your web hosting control panel. Some web host require you to email support every time you need to add or remove an add-on domain, making simple task complicated. Also, the add-on domains are absolutely free. No setup fee or monthly fee is required. The reason I need to mention this is that I have noticed iPowerWeb are also advertising 'host 6 domains with 1 account'. However, I find out that they are not free. You need to pay $10 setup fee for each add-on domain. You also need to pay an extra $2.95/month (payable 12 months in advance) for each add-on domain. CPanel Control Panel (Demo) They are also using our favorite CPanel control panel which we have introduced in our LunarPages review. CPanel beats the other control panels in terms of speed, features, and user friendliness. My advice to you is to always make the CPanel control panel your first choice (e.g. BlueHost, LunarPages, midPhase). Try to avoid Plesk and H-Sphere as based on my experience, they are extremely slow. Fantastico Library Fantastico is an add-on to the powerful CPanel control panel. It allows you to install 48 popular scripts with just a few clicks. These scripts include blogs, content management tools, forums, polls, guestbook, shopping-carts, picture galleries, mailing lists, Wikis, etc. With Fantastico, you no longer need to manually install each script yourself, which by the way, could be a nightmare for non-savvy users. To install a script the traditional way, you will usually need to download the script from the source website, unzip the files, edit the configuration file with a text editor, create a new directory in your site and upload all your files to it. You also need to set some permissions for the files and directories, create new databases and add user privileges to the databases for the scripts to be able to connect to the database... If you don't understand what I am saying, then Fantastico will be your best friend. It does all of this with just a few clicks of your mouse. Free 100 MySQL Databases You can create up to 100 MySQL databases! Even if you do not have an idea what is a MySQL database or you do not plan to use it, it is still very important that you have as many of them as possible. This is because most free scripts, including most of them in Fantastico, require a MySQL database to function properly! By having 100 MySQL databases, it means that you can install as many scripts as you want through Fantastico! Since Fantastico currently has only 48 scripts, you will still have plenty of MySQL databases left after installing and trying out half of them! Free Domain Name For Life You will get a free domain name if you sign-up as a user for 1 or 2 years. And this domain will be FREE FOR LIFE as long as you continue to host your website with them! If you choose to sign-up for 3 or 6 months only, you will need to pay $10 for a 1 year registration of your domain. If you have already registered your domain name somewhere else, transfer your domain name to BlueHost and get a 1 year renewal for free. All you need to do is sign-up under 'Transfer Clients' and they will assist you in transferring your domain name. No coupon code or promo code is needed for this offer. Even if you do not wish to transfer your domain name, you are still entitled to the FREE domain. Instead of signing up for your hosting account with the existing domain name, sign-up with a brand new domain name. Since you can host unlimited websites with the hosting account, you can then add your existing domain by utilizing one of the add-on domains. :) Free Private Whois Service for Your Domain Name Every domain that is registered requires for some contact information to be made available to the public. This is called the domain 'whois' information. This information allows others to contact the domain owner easily. However, marketing companies and spammers have abused the whois information by harvesting email addresses and making use of them. Although this is illegal, it still happens as it is hard to control. One way to fight this is to have the information of a third party show up in the whois information, like a 'trust'. So, in order to reach the real domain owner, they have to go through the 'trust' and if it is a legitimate contact, the 'trust' will then forward the message to the real owner. It protects your email address from SPAM. BlueHost is providing a free private whois service where you can use them as the 'trust'. You will still own the full rights of your domain name and have full control over it. If at any time you wish to change the whois information or the DNS settings, you can do it via the domain control panel. Excellent Customer Support Personally, customer support is always my first criteria for picking a web host, it comes before price, size and everything else. This is because I have had very bad experiences with some hosts that offer a lot in terms of price and size but were unable to solve simple issues. The first thing I always do to test a web host is actually to mass-mail them with a lot of questions even before I buy! The host which deserves my money would be the host that will patiently reply to all my questions in a prompt and detailed manner. The most disgusting hosts are those which are unable to resolve simple issues for days, or are unable to keep track of the client's history and repeatedly request you to describe the same issue. Some even keep bouncing your requests between different departments. So far, the best customer support staff that I have met is the one from LunarPages. Honestly I haven't seen a host that is as dedicated as LunarPages when it comes to customer support. They have a very well trained support staff and I believe LunarPages invests a lot on customer support. Other web hosts which can provide me with good customer support are BlueHost, PowWeb and iPowerWeb. All the other hosts that I am recommending in my top 10 chart have also been very satisfactory in terms of customer support. PHP 4 And PHP 5 Ready If you are a PHP developer, you should already know that PHP has 2 major versions now, that's PHP 4 and the new PHP 5. PHP 5 is a big upgrade from PHP 4 with significant changes. Both versions cannot co-exist together in the same server. Thus all web host are still sticking to PHP 4 because they worry that upgrading to PHP 5 might affect some PHP 4 scripts. Although PHP 5 are made to be backward compatible with PHP 4, but the risk of pissing off customers that their scripts suddenly stop working doesn't justify the upgrade. This is a BIG challenge for all the web host and PHP developer. The good news is that BlueHost has both PHP 4 servers and PHP 5 servers! Depending on the customer request, they can choose to host on a PHP 4 server or a PHP 5 server. Initially when you sign up, you will be place to a PHP 4 server. Anytime after you sign up, no matter 5 minutes or 5 months later, you can simply write an email to request your whole site to be moved to a PHP 5 server. So as a PHP developer, you can easily switch to a PHP 5 server later when you think the time is right. BlueHost's Promise to Our Visitors I have been communicating with BlueHost's President Matt Heaton for sometime now and I know he is very committed in giving the best to his customers. If there are any issues arising from our visitors, he has promised to give first priority to resolving them. Signup Process The one experience that I will never forget is BlueHost's signup process. I have signed up with more than 20 web hosts and all of them take the manual verification approach. What that means is that I will have to select a domain name, enter my billing information and click the 'submit' button. Then I will have to wait a few hours and even at times up to a few days before I can start using my account. This is because their billing team needs to verify and process my payment manually. But with Blue Host, the experience is both refreshing and enlightening! As usual, I will have to pick a domain name, enter my billing info and click 'submit'. The next page contains a thank you note along with the 'Login to the Control Panel' button (screen captured below). This means my account is created instantly and I can start using it immediately! This is simply amazing.
You will get what you pay for instantly. You won't need to repeatedly check your inbox and wonder when your account will be created. You will also receive your 'welcome email' immediately. This contains a lot of precious information about your hosting account. However, my welcome email was delivered to my JUNK mail folder. So you might want to check that folder too if it doesn't show up in your inbox. :) What Should You Do? Well, you should always try to stay ahead of the pack if you can. Since multiple domain hosting will be the trend of the future, you should pick a host that provides this service. I am transferring many of my sites to BlueHost myself because it will be saving me a lot of money. With a Blue Host hosting account, I can also create smaller websites such as mini blogs without the need to pay for a new hosting account. When the traditional '1 domain per account' web hosts are not getting the same amount of sales they are getting today, they will have to follow BlueHost in offering multiple domain hosting accounts. If you already have an existing hosting account, write to them and tell them that you are looking forward for them to offer multiple domain hosting. If they don't keep up with the trend, they will be eliminated. BlueHost has set a new standard for all other web hosts! At last you may want to check out Matt Heaton's blog to learn more about the person behind BlueHost! About The Editor (That's Me!) |
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