BlueHost - Deal and Support - Non PHP

Hi

Just wanting to know if anyone uses Bluehost from the learnable deal and what support and hosting options you have found.

My concern is that I have contacted them twice but they seem to not have many answers if you don’t want to use a PHP based solution which I don’t.

Whilst some of my solutions will just be HTML5/CSS/JS I also will need to be able to produce Django/Flask solutions and am not really sure they can handle this.

If anyone is using Python based solutions or maybe a Ruby based solution like Sinatra and has any advice on how easy/hard it is to use i would appreciate your opinion and experiences.

I haven’t used the bluehost/learnable deal but I HAVE been a bluehost customer for years now. Well, I switched recently.

The issue I have is that their most recent PHP version if 5.3 (or 5.2 I forget. Think 5.3 though) and that’s far too out of date for me. I want password_hash along with all the other changes 5.6 brought (actually I think 5.5 brought it but 5.6 is hte current version which most hosts offer IIRC).

The PHP being oudated was a dealbreaker for myself (shared hosting). Other than that, no real issues to speak of. Decent customer support, and great service. I have coding requirements though and if they won’t update their servers to keep up-to-date versions, then why should I stay?

Just my 2 cents.

Same thing for me @RyanReese, was great deal until I saw that

I used to be with BlueHost - back then they let you choose between 4, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 (I think - it was a few years ago now). At that time I think 5.0 or 5.1 was the default if you dodn’t change it so if the default is now 5.3 i’d expect them to be offering 5.2 through 5.6.

Nope. I think the highest was 5.3 or something (and that wasn’t default - I upgraded).

I even asked their customer service and they said they don’t offer it. They admit they are a few versions behind.

I know my current host - DreamHost - staggers versions. That is, to allow sites time to upgrade they offer an older version and a newer version. This seems fair to me as it gives sites time to check their code before upgrading before the older version gets dropped.

I presumed other hosts did likewise, but maybe not.

Seems foolish to hold back on offering newer versions just to cater to holdoffs, but I guess that’s their business so what do I know.

So, I was wrong - https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/447

5.4 is their default, not 5.3 like I thought. That’s also their highest version available.

Still doesn’t allow for password_hash or any cool 5.5+ features (unless you use a PHP script as a polyfill).

It was bugging me so I asked their customer support. Still a bit behind the times, as I find it unacceptable to not offer the latest PHP version (especially since 5.6 has been around for a long time).

They offered 5.4 YEARS AGO? Still no ability to upgrade to 5.5 or 5.6 in those YEARS? C’mon Bluehost… :frowning:

I think this is because of catering to hold-backs. i.e. if I was a host and had a large number of hold-backs that didn’t want to refactor their antiquated code, I might decide it to be a wiser business decision to lose the few “cutting edge” sites and keep the others.

Not what I would do, but under$tandable

I’m not a host, so I don’t claim to know if this is accurate, but even installing the latest PHP version on the servers (i.e. offering the version for those who want) is too expensive to be considered? I mean, I can see that they have a lot of servers to install PHP on, if they ever actually would do it…But even offering it as a version (not default) is apparently not savvy business logic? Can someone tell me if this is the case?

So why not just add the extra versions to the range they provide to choose from - instead of offering four or five versions offer six or seven.

Would you be capable provisioning a server yourself? If so the most flexible option is cloud hosting with virtualized servers like that of aws (amazon web services). Sounds like you’re looking for a reliable environment to launch many projects. If so I would recommend going the cloud route. Not to mention with a automated provisioning process virtualized environments can be scaled at a touch of a button.

The Leanable/BlueHost offer doesn’t include that option.

Thanks for the replies and opinions it seems to confirm my initial suspicions, not to single them out but seems a common issue getting hosts to stay up to date.

Will have to give digitalocean a try was concerned about learning curve but then freedom usually only comes from learning.

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.