When I started using WordPress, I needed a place to host the websites I was doing for myself, my friends, and some non-profits, but I didn’t know which hosting service to use. There were a lot of them.
Here are some things that I knew I wanted:
- Host that was available (always up).
- Host that had good performance (loaded pages fast).
- Host that let me host several sites with unlimited disk space.
- Host that provides lots of email accounts.
- Host that made hosting WordPress easy (has the required software and one-click install).
- Host that had good support.
- Host that didn’t cost very much.
I read about a several hosting services and looked at the recommended host list on WordPress. I talked to some friends that had used third party hosting. Did a Google search about problems with the hosts I was considering.
After all that I picked BlueHost.
After six months, I feel pretty satisfied, though not completely happy. In my experience, BlueHost has done well on six of my seven requirements: it is easy to use, it lets me easily host multiple WordPress installs, the sites are always available, and the few times I have had issues, I could get support on the phone or chat. The only disappointment I have had concerns performance. It seems that sometimes the performance of the sites is slow.
Website performance is a hard problem to diagnose and fix. From a problem solving perspective, it is difficult to get enough information to know why the site is slow. It is hard to get enough information because lots of places can cause a web site to slow down, including the software that generates the web site (WordPress), the underlying support software (PHP, MySQL, and the operating system), the hosting system hardware performance, the network connections from the hosting system, the Internet, and finally, the connection and software your computer uses to communicate with the Internet. On the one hand, I am always amazed that all those pieces actually work well most of the time. On the other, it is frustrating when your website does not perform well and you can’t tell why.
So for now, my sites work and perform well most of the time, and I have been around long enough to understand that some of the performance issues may not be BlueHost’s. I also know that if I change to a new hosting service I will likely have the same or new problems.
I recommend BlueHost. Six out of seven is not bad and better than most. I know many people have this same problem, because I see the question on Twitter all the time. They want to find a good place to host. For me, BlueHost works.
Click below to get a BlueHost account. Yes, if you sign up from this link I will get a few bucks. This is the Internet you know, and I need to pay for my hosting somehow. Thanks.
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I like to solve problems with technology. In this blog, I'd like to share some of my ideas and also tell you about solutions I am currently working on. Welcome, and please share your own ideas with me by leaving a comment.
how much do you get? i’m looking to sign up, if i do, i’ll do it through ur link.
The BlueHost Affiliate Program pays $65 per sign up. You can read about it here.
https://www.bluehost.com/cgi-bin/partner/
Hi David,
The article is good but as you have read my tweet, i am in no mood to spend even a penny on hosting. Currently i am on blogger and would prefer free ones ! Do you have any suggestions ?
totally agree with you. In august they implemented a very good feature avoiding CPU exceeding quota to a CPU throttling algorithm
Result no more outage. When they throttle the CPU, my site goes very slow, I get messages from an external monitory system (howsthe)
I have arount 3000 pages views per day, my blog works on wordpress, I implemented the wpcache plugin, but still receive alerts.
So bluehost is good once you have less than 3000 page views a day, and this means 600 views at peak hour.
1. Host that was available (always up).
6. Host that had good support.
Bluehost is not always up. My sites are down right now do to a the 2nd DDoS attack in the last two weeks. The first one lasted four days. Who knows how long this one will last?
Tech supports tells me to stand idly by while my sites are down because there is nothing they can do about it. What a joke.
Bye Bye Bluehost.
I have not had that experience with the sites I host on BlueHost, but I am sorry it has happend to you. I know that no hosting service is perfect. Just sharing my expereicne with BlueHost so far. Thanks for sharing yours.