Bluehost Unbiased Review

Most webmasters own more than one domain/website.

However, we do not need multiple hosting for those domains.

Most hosting plan available online enable webmaster to host multiple domain on a same hosting account – Bluehost for example, allows their clients to host unlimited addon domain on one single hosting account.

We’ll see how to add an ‘addon domain’ at Bluehost in this post. But first, we have to be very clear on the difference between an ‘addon domain’ and a ‘subdomain’.

Addon Domain vs Subdomain

What’s an ‘addon domain’?

An ‘addon domain’ is a new domain that’s added on top of your main domain.

For example if you purchase Bluehost hosting package now to host your website abcd.com; abcd.com is your main domain. 6 months later you decided to register another domain name with GoDaddy, say efgh.com, and wanted to host it on the same Bluehost account, then efgh.com is the ‘addon domain’ that’s added on top of abcd.com.

Setting up an ‘addon domain’ will not create you another cPanel (web hosting manager) at Bluehost. However, it will creates a sub directory in your main web hosting directory and the addon domain website will have it’s very own index files as well as cgi bin folder.

What’s a ‘subdomain’?

Quoting from Wikipedia, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. For example, “mail.example.com” and “calendar.example.com” are subdomains of the “example.com” domain, which in turn is a subdomain of the “com” top-level domain.

A very important point to keep in mind is that unlike addon domian, subdomains are free of charge at Bluehost. It can be created at will for any domain you already hosted with Bluehost. Like for our previous example, you can create a subdomain named ‘efgh.abcd.com’ without paying any registration or annual maintenance fees.

How to add an “addon domain” at Bluehost?

Go to the ‘Domain’ section and click ‘Addon Domains’ on your Bluehost cPanel page.

Note that you can as well register a new domain name, park a domain, add a subdomain, setup a redirect for your domain on the same section. But for our discussion, we’ll limit the topic within the addon domain.

You’ll be requested to login to Bluehost Domain Manager after that. Once you’re in, you’ll come to a setup page where you’ll need to keyin all the necessary info about your addon domain.

The input fields, like the domain name, the location of your website folder, and so on are pretty basics and I am sure you can handle it without my guidance.

However, one thing to be sure is that you MUST have your domain name server pointing to Bluehost’s server before you adding any addon domain in your hosting account. This is crucial for Bluehost to verify your ownership of the domain and Bluehost will not process your request (of adding an addon domain) without it.

Nowadays not only blogging are popular among individual Internet users.

With the help of cheap web hosting and open source, even forums owned by individual webmaster are getting more and more active.

Topics like computer, entertainment, science, technology, automobile and politics are brought into forum for open discussion among surfers and enthusiasts.

Are you interested in starting your own forum?

Hosting a successful forum is not as hard as it used to be – at least from the technical point of view, it’s very much achievable for individual webmaster to launch and maintain their own forums.

There are a lot of factors which making a forum to be well known and successful but we are here to focus on the key factor, which will be the web hosting.

This is why many web hosting companies were being set up to provide different services to people. It is a bit difficult for us to select which one will be the best in term of cost and features given. Details study and analysis on them are essential for make everything perfect!

Following are some of the key points which maybe helpful for you to make your choice:

Web Space

Web space is the storage capacity provided by web hosting company for you to store data in the internet. When we study on this point, of cause the bigger web space supplied, the more easier and flexible for us to manage and store our data.

Out of so many web hosting companies in the world, there are plenty of suppliers which can offering mass web space with affordable price. Bluehost, for example, provide unlimited hosting capacity (and bandwidth and addon domains) in their shared hosting plan. Such features allow website owners more flexibility in handling their forums.

Free web application software

Your choice with Bluehost allow you to host with adequate MySQL , DBs and phpMyAdmin. Further more, Bluehost latest featured on Simple Scripts allow webmasters to install forum software in just a few clicks. These are useful features as it minimize the technical knowledge requirement for hosting and managing a discussion board.

In fact, I believe that the reason behind forum hosting has turned much popular compare to before is because of the development of these open-sourced forum software.

Here’s a view on the forum scripts available at Bluehost.

Server uptime

It’s basic requirement for a web host to offer reliable hosting server. You do not want your forum member’s connection to the server cut off middle in a heated discussion, don’t you?

There are quite a log of web hosting companies claim that they are offering 99% uptime, but be careful – some of these are nothing more than marketing gimmic and they just can’t deliver such much of uptimeservice.

Server uptime, in fact, is the main reason why am I suggesting Bluehost. In case you followed my previous post about Bluehost server status, you should be aware that Bluehost provide respectable server uptime thru out the years I’m with them.

Support

Almost every web hosting company does come with supports or more know as after sales services. As similar to the point 5, this can checked through forums too.

The better the supports provided the fewer headaches you will face. Thus, you can spend more time to develop your forum.

So is Bluehost recommended for forum hosting?

Well, the straight and direct answer is yes.

Listed above are just some of the opinions which may help you to select a web hosting company – which I would recommend Bluehost based on the listed requirements.

Interested to learn more on what Bluehost has to offer? Check out my detail reviews on Bluehost hosting features.

I was like “WOOW!” when I first saw Bluehost’s live chat features at their homepage.

With the live chat features, you’ll be connected to the live chat system every time once you reached Bluehost homepage! In other words, you are connected with the personnel in Bluehost directly every time you visit their website.

Don’t even bother browsing around their website to look for the information coz you can simply type in to ask for the necessary information and get an answer from a REAL person.

Now how good is that? Get all the necessary information cleared and get every doubts solved. No more unsure issues, no more unclear guidelines – all you need to do is ask.

This is what I call ‘responsive customer service’.

If you think United States hosting company, Bluehost, is only known within the States then you’re wrong.

Singaporean searched BlueHost the most!

Recent analysis shows that the demand outside U.S. for Bluehost is much greater than in U.S. A quick check on Google Trends reassure the statement as Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan are well above United States in Bluehost related search.

Usage of language

While Singapore/Vietnam/Taiwan are the top 3 countries that searched for Bluehost; English, however, remain as the dominant language on Bluehost related searches.

This is much understandable because the web hosting company’s running on an English-oriented websites. More over, most web marketers or bloggers affiliated to Bluehost are English speaking/writing.

These factors pretty much limit Bluehost to expand only in the English speaking/writing community.

However with Chinese and Spanish coming in second and third most used languages for Bluehost related searches, I suspect the hosting company will break the language barrel very soon.

Google Trends on Bluehost

More graphical trends for the nerds:

Point A:
BlueHost and HostMonster Surge Ahead with Q4 Growth Resulting in Over 700,000 Domains Hosted — FastDomain Announced

Point B:
BlueHost – Knocking on the Door of One-Million Domains

Point C:
BlueHost and HostMonster* – 1 Million Domains Hosted and Still Growing

*Do note that Hostmonster and Bluehost is run by the same management thus the stats are combined together during the press released.

What does this means to you as consumer?

Basically nothing except that the analysis shows Bluehost is trusted worldwide. And with million domains hosted with the company (Hostmonster and Bluehost), you can be assured that your web host is trusted by many other experienced webmasters from all around the world.

Thousands had chosen Bluehost, why shouldn’t you?

Back when I first started with Bluehost, the offer I got is not as good as current offer.

I was given a limited amount of disk storage space and bandwidth; plus I can only host up to 6 domains with the old account. If you’re an old customers with Bluehost, I bet you’re having the same limitation up till today as Bluehost did not upgrade our hosting plans automatically.

But hey, that’s not fair! Shouldn’t old customers like us should be rewarded with better (or at least, the same) deals, right?

Need more addon domains at Bluehost

For years I had been stick with the same offer at Bluehost and did not push for a better deal. First of all it’s because I am too lazy to do so; secondly, I am actually doing okay with the quota — after all I only have 6 websites in my pocket and I do not used up the bandwidth/disk storage given.

But then again, here comes site #7 which I wish to host it on Bluehost. The most frequent asked questions by Bluehost-existing-customer: I want to host more website but I have used up all my addon domain quota, what should I do?

How do get a free upgrades at Bluehost?

Answer: Ask for a free upgrades.

Without delay, I shot an e-mail at Bluehost support center. 15 minutes later (yes, that’s how fast you’ll get your response! And, I’m in a totally different timeline in United States) I got my e-mail replied:

As requested I have updated your account to allow for Unlimited GB of bandwidth per month as well as unlimited domains. Presently we are only upgrading the storage space for accounts that are using enough space to merit the upgrade. When your account is getting closer to using half of the allowed space, please let us know and we will be happy to upgrade you.

Thanks,
Joe C
Support Level 2
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678

And that’s how my problem solved, in less than 20 minutes. The folks at the support center worked so fast that I can’t believe my eyes when I check them at my BlueHost cPanel. The free upgrade is for real!

Brilliant!

In case it happened that you’re experience the same problem, my only suggestion for you is to go ask for an upgrade immediately. After all, it’s free and it can be done within minutes!

(Oh ya by the way, thanks Joe C at Bluehost for being such efficient!)