I’m looking at different hosts for a new website i have in development, in the past i have used 1and1, but i find that their hosting service is unreliable and their basic packages are featureless, not to mention they have terrible hosting, so anyway, i’m considering switching over to bluehost for my future sites, if you have any experience with this host please share, and if you have any other hosts i should look at please say so also, i should also mention that i need php5.4 support, mySQL support with phpmyadmin, pre-installed PEAR packages or easily instalable PEAR Packages (i couldn’t get this with my 1and1 package), SSL, SSH, ftp, email support, linux hosting and if possible an apache installation of php rather than CGI (if possible). This is basically my bare minimum and i would enjoy having a more feature rich host than what i just described, also price matters i think bluehost is $4, i would like something in that range is possible.
Okay, perhaps not quite that bad but it is a good sign that you’ve listed your specifications.
I’ve heard that there was some problem (bleeding edge?) with PHP 5.4 but that should be resolved by now and most hosts would keep up to date. PEAR, on the other hand, would likely have to be installed to your account’s files (which shouldn’t be a problem). There had been a hack attack at my last host (a VPS account) and the sysadmins changed to CGI (if I remember correctly) so this is a good choice for you, too.
Since I’ve just moved to a new account (my third) at WebHostingBuzz and they transferred the account for me without any problems at all (an outstanding experience - I’d expected problems but WHB anticipated everything so it was an amazingly smooth transition). They’ve got everything including great security features as well as US and UK servers so I recommend that you at least give them a try.
I’ve posted a ‘checklist when searching for a new host’ in several other threads here. If you can’t find it, I’ll repost for you (mods: or post to a new thread so you can make it sticky).
Hey dklynn, thanks for your response, i just wanted to clarify that i don’t want nor do i need a dedicated host, i would like to be paying around that price range for this site, i checked out WHB and i liked the gold plan that was offered, but my question is how it compares to bluehost in terms of price and features, they seemed to have the same features but WBH was $10 while bluehost was $4.
Thanks for the response and i will be sure to check out the checklist you posted.
Maxdream01
I also have a Joomla (specialized account) and an “unlimited” shared account. Both of those are functioning very well - all I need to do is ignore them! Okay, I’m really blown away by the support staff’s help in setting up my new account - does that show?
Something to keep in mind is that BlueHost was recently sold to EIG. While that may not be a bad thing, reviews from the past likely are not as valid as they once were.
I’ve been using Bluehost for about five years, and they’re the best you can find. There were some issues a couple months ago, but they got cleared up. I could count the number of times my site has been down on one hand. Plus, they’ve got very helpful live support with <5 minutes waiting time.
Both have a money back guarantee - don’t be afraid to use it
Depending on where you have your domain registered, often times they provide good DNS services, if you keep your DNS with your domain registrar you can promptly move your website if you have any issues.
With that said, I’ve used WHB and it’s great. Can’t speak to BlueHost without first-hand experience.
We may not be the cheapest around (for shared hosting) but that means we don’t cram too many accounts to one server and we don’t have overzealous resource usage policies to keep the revenues up.
You made a great point about limiting the number of accounts on a shared server. My concern with shared server accounts is more in having to share with unknown webmasters with various capabilities and interests. It’s those I’ve shared with who were spammers that poisoned my IP address in the past and I’m very thankful to be rid of that situation. The other half of the problem with shared servers (from a sysadmin’s perspective) is that most webmasters using shared servers have very limited coding training and, thus, are barely security conscious. That is a threat to their account, primarily, but can threaten everyone else on that shared server so, the fewer shared accounts on a server, the better chance you have for keeping “safe.”
