BlueHost Price

Although there are many web hosts that offer shared hosting and they can all seem pretty much the same, the features list is where the differences lie. It is very important to look at all the web hosting features you get, including the BlueHost features. In this article, you can learn all about BlueHost features so you can make an educated decision on whether or not this is the best web hosting for you.

About Web Hosting Features for Shared Hosting

First, some background on web hosting features for shared hosting. Many or most shared web hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited MySQL databases, and unlimited hosted domains. Most of them offer Linux hosting (unlike the proprietary Windows hosting, Linux is open source). Virtually all of them offer a control panel, one or more website builders, one or more shopping carts, some form of advertising credit, often from Google AdWords, and 1 click app installs. And most or all offer email support, knowledge bases, and video tutorials.

It’s the other areas including pricing where they vary. Let’s look at BlueHost section by section to see what it has that others may not.

Hosting Package

Here are some of the features that are basic to the BlueHost plans that not every one of the top shared hosting sites have. These features are still the same even when you save big money by using our BlueHost coupon banner links!

• Support for international domain names
• A choice of POP3 and IMAP email
• three different webmail solutions
• the cPanel account control panel, which many prefer to vDeck
• custom cron jobs
• shared SSL
• site statistics
• getting started wizard
• SimpleScripts with access to dozens of blogging, forum, wiki, content management, shopping cart, and image gallery software apps, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle, Vanilla Forums, PHPBB, AgoraCart, Zen Cart, CubeCart,
• 24/7 US phone support
• Dual Quad processor performance servers

Focus on Recent Upgrades

In the beginning, processors were developed with a single core each, but that was before multi-core processors were invented. A multi-core processor refers to two or more independent processors (cores) located within a single computing component. There are dual-core processors, which have two cores, quad-core processors, which have four cores, and processors with 6 or 8 cores or more cores, as well. BlueHost’s mention of dual quad processor refers to having two processors with four cores each. However, a technical support person at BlueHost reports that they are in the process of upgrading the servers to 32-core AMD Opterons, model 6274, which have 2 16-core processors, run at 2.6 GHz, and will have 32 GB of memory. While regular file storage will take place on regular drives with RAID 5 architecture with 7200 RPM (and a few Western Digital Raptor drives with 10,000 RPM), the MySQL databases will be run from solid state drives.

All BlueHost servers have battery and diesel power backups, as well as Internet backup connections using CentOS 6.

Other BlueHost upgrades in recent times include the addition of more search engine optimization experts to the BlueHost staff. These are people that you can call in and talk with, and they were brought onboard to address customers’ ongoing concerns with SEO.

BlueHost continually is making tweaks to the interfaces based on customer feedback. All customer calls are kept track of, and if a common theme develops in terms of customers reporting difficulty with any BlueHost interface feature, the interface is adjusted in a way that is meant to address the issue.

In addition to long-standing offerings of a variety of site builders through SimpleScripts including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others.  BlueHost now offers the Weebly drag-and-drop site builder. Weebly comes in three versions: a basic free version that allows for a 6-page website with custom HTML, a blog, a photo gallery, a contact form, support for Google maps and video, a twitter badge, and basic SEO support. The Pro version (available for $8.99 per month) includes all of that, but lifts the limit on the number of pages, and adds support for password-protected pages, a site favicon, Scribed doc embedding, audio players, file downloads, and the ability to edit themes, use custom themes, and import themes. With the Pro version, you can also add an e-commerce add-on.

BlueHost’s Unlimited Services

BlueHost offers “unlimited” space and bandwidth, but what does that really mean? According to the technical support staff, it means that there is not a hard cap on the amount of data transfer, or a cap of specific limit of storage space. There is, however, a watch kept on the number of files associated with an account because though there is not fixed limit, when the number of files and folders exceed 50,000, it can begin to affect server performance. Although the terms of service allow action to be taken with an excessive number of files, this generally does not happen and would not become a serious issue until an account reached in the neighborhood of 200,000 files and folders, unless BlueHost suspected that the large number of files associated with the account was due to backing up computer files to the account, using it as a sort of cloud storage. Since this is a violation of the terms of service, this would be addressed immediately and most likely cause you to lose the great deal that you got when you signed up using our BlueHost coupon discount banner links.

One out for customers who do have a large number of files is upgrading to a Pro account. While still shared hosting, the pro account places fewer accounts on each server, so each account has more resources. It also includes a bandwidth increase from 15 Mbps downloads, the bandwidth for the standard account, to 30 Mbps.

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One of the key things to learn about a web host before signing up is their pricing scheme. A lot of cheap web hosting providers will trick you into their services by not fully explaining to you their price. This article explores the BlueHost price to help you consider all the angles before you sign up.

Shared Hosting

There are a number of different kinds of web hosting available, including eCommerce hosting packages, dedicated hosting, virtual private hosting, and shared hosting. Shared hosting is almost always the least expensive, and refers to web hosting in which multiple accounts share a single server. Although this means that any particular account on that server is somewhat subjected to any bad behavior on the part of the others (such as hogging bandwidth, uploading disruptive software to the server, or getting a reputation for spamming people), most web hosts try very hard to keep things running smoothly. Shared hosting is the type of web hosting option that BlueHost offers.

Pricing for Web Hosting Accounts

BlueHost offers Standard Web Hosting and a Pro Web Hosting package. Either one can be upgraded with optional features. Let’s start with the standard plan that you can get by using our BlueHost coupon with.

The standard plan at BlueHost has three pricing levels, depending on the length of the commitment. All of them must be paid in full at sign-up and includes 1 free domain registration coupon and no set-up fees. A 36-month account costs $6.99 per month (so $251.64 at sign-up). A 24-month account costs $7.99 per month (so $191.76 at sign-up). A 12-month account costs $8.99 per month (so $107.88 per month).

What we should mention to you is that when you use a BlueHost coupon like the one that we offer on the side of this article, you can get BlueHost for as low as $3.95 a month! That is a huge savings that you can only get by clicking on our BlueHost promo banners! Yes it is the same package that you would pay twice as much for without using these exclusive web hosting coupon banners!

The Pro Web hosting package is a combination of hosting plus features that BlueHost says saves customers over $200 per year over purchasing them separately, so if you’re thinking about add-ons, you may wish to consider this route, rather than signing up for them individually. The Pro Web hosting account, which costs $24.95 per month, includes privacy protection for one domain, one domain name registration, a dedicated IP address, site backup pro, positive SSL certificate, ad 10 Postini email filters.

Note that BlueHost has an anytime money-back guarantee. Cancellation within the first 3 days gets a full refund and release of the domain name. Domain names are only able to be cancelled and refunded in that timeframe. If you cancel an account in the first 30 days, you qualify for a full refund at the monthly rate. If you cancel after that, or otherwise downgrade your account to a term lasting less than a year, the free domain registration is forfeited, so BlueHost deducts $13.99 from the refund to cover the registration cost. Depending on your domain registration agreement, you may retain the ownership of the domain until its registration period ends.

Upgrades

Since not all web hosts offer the same upgrades, it’s important to know in advance what’s available, in case your site takes off, or you wish to expand. Here are the key products and services offered and current BlueHost pricing. It should be noted that BlueHost offers occasionally a BlueHost promo on these products so it is best to check your control panel for the current promos.

• Additional Domain Names. Whether you want another avenue to an existing website or to create a new site, a domain registration for .net, .org, .biz, .info, or .us costs $11.99 per year per domain.
• Dedicated IP. If you want a safer, more protected web hosting experience or if you are considering using SSL, you’ll need to look at having a Dedicated IP address, which also allows you to access your site by its IP address and access non-standard ports. The cost is $2.50 per month.
• Postini E-mail Filter. If spam is a concern, the Postini filters free you from spam, phishing messages, and other problematic email. The cost is $1.00 per month for each e-mail address.
• An SSL certificate  with 256-bit encryption  helps protect your customers. The cost is $49.00 per year.
• Site Backup Pro.  This service provides automatic backups and one-click restoration for $12.95 per year.
• SiteLock. Sitelock provides site scans and a verifiable trust seal for your website at $1.25 per month.

Payment Information 

Unfortunately, affiliate credit cannot be used to purchase web hosting, renew web hosting accounts, or register or renew domain names. There are, however, a number of ways in which BlueHost does accept payment.

Online signup or renewal can be accomplished using all major credit cards, including American Express, Discover Card, Master Card, and Visa, as well as through PayPal. Payment can also be made using US checks and money orders in US Dollars, but these require special procedures.  This is the easiest way to sign up and fastest. Plus when you use our BlueHost coupon links you will save a ton of money!

To open a new account using a check or money order in US funds, the following information is required: your first and last name; optionally, your company name; your billing address and phone number; a valid email address; your domain name (either one you are registering via BlueHost or one you are transferring to BlueHost or the name of a site registered elsewhere that you are simply purchains ghosting for, the plan you are signing up for (12-month plan, 24-month plan, or 36-month plan), and the correct amount. Email is used to confirm payment receipt. Remember, that you can’t take advantage of any BlueHost discount price offers by doing this method.

To renew your account using a check or money order in US funds, the following information is required: the correct amount, the primary domain name, and the services to be renewed. Note that the renewal does not take effect until after both the payment has been received by BlueHost and it has been processed by the BlueHost billing department. Checks and money orders are not accepted for service plans lasting less than 1 year.

The mailing address to which checks and money order in US funds should be sent to:

Bluehost.com

1958 South 950 East

Provo, Utah, 84606

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If your website has a problem, you need immediate and expert help. No matter what level of experience you have you will always use your web hosting provider’s support. That’s why it’s important to know about webhost’s support services and how they can help you. In this article we are going to explain to you what the BlueHost support is and how you can access the BlueHost support.

BlueHost support is found on the menu tab ‘Help Center.’ Clicking this tab takes you to a page where a number of different resources are available. They are Resources, Contact Us, Helpdesk, Search, and Most Popular Help Content. Let’s review each section in turn.

BlueHost Support Resources

In this section of the BlueHost support page, one finds a listing of seven types of support resources that are standard in BlueHost when you use our BlueHost coupon to sign up. Let’s review each of them:

• Getting Started Wizard. The Getting Started Wizard provides an easy way to begin your account with Bluehost and get everything set up.  It has four sections, each of which including one or more subsections. They are arranged in order based on the order of the first tasks you would need to perform with a new account.
• First comes “Verifying Your Account,” which provides you with information about how you can validate the purchase of your account, including special information aimed at those who live either within the US and Canada or outside of the US and Canada, as well as based on payment type (credit card or PayPal), and verifying via phone or email.
• Next is “Managing Domains.” In this section, you can access more information about assigning a domain, purchasing a new domain, or transferring your domain name. Each of these topics has steps to take, a video “how-to,” or both written steps and a video.
• Third is “Email.” In this section, you can learn how to create an email account on BlueHost, as well as how to customize your email through BlueHost to work with major mail clients, including Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook 2010 and 2011, Thunderbird, iOS (for iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone), and Android.
• Fourth is “Build a Website.” In this section, you can find out how to upload your existing site to BlueHost, set up a site using WordPress including installation, changing themes and appearances, creating a static page, creating a blog post page, uploading a photo gallery, and uploading a résumé, and how to install Concrete5.
• Video “How-To” Tutorials. There are 43 video tutorials on a wide range of topics that focus on tasks that will assist beginners, those transferring a website, and those using some advanced options. Here are examples:
• Videos for Beginners: How to create an FTP account, How to Install WordPress, and Intro to Webmail.
• Videos for People Transferring: How to migrate from Fantastico to SimpleScripts, How to Migrate WordPress, and Transfer a Domain.
• Videos for Advanced Users: Redirecting Web Pages, How to setup a Cron job, How to create custom Name Servers, and How to Increase PHP Memory Limit.
• Knowledgebase Articles. Knowledgebase articles are sortable by relevance, most recent, most viewed, most helpful, most solutions, and resource type. Every article is tagged and lists how recently it was updated, as well as how many views it’s had. The Knowledgebase collection can be searched using the search function, and that’s when you find out how many resources there really are. So, for example, searching on “cPanel” yields 261 articles; searching on “email” pulls up 190 articles; searching on “domain” results in 317 articles; and searching on WordPress gets you 38 articles.
• Browse Issues by Topic. This section provides the 586 tags, which range from downtime to Cyberduck to Bing to Whitelist.
• Forum. The BlueHost forum includes announcements from staff, a section for general questions, a  section for advanced scripting and coding help, and a miscellaneous section for questions relating to developers and designers and “off topic” queries.  The page also provides information concerning the number of active users on the site, and the spam-o-matic statistics for the forum, as well as a key to forum icons.
• Support History. This refers to support tickets specific to your account.
• Search clears the article list and allows you to search without a lot of distraction.

BlueHost Support Contact Us

Contacting BlueHost can be done by e-mail, live chat, phone support, and postal mail. It doesn’t matter which BlueHost promo banner you used to sign up with, you contact them anyway you desire. The e-mail contact is another way of saying “submit a support ticket,” and when you click on it, you get an form email that allows you to choose a topic category, upload attachments, and specify the email address for the reply. A tool tip indicates that they generally respond within 24 hours.

Live chat is available 24/7, and the tool tip tells you the live approximate wait time which is usually under two minutes!

The postal mail address is available for legal requests, payments by check or money order, or to send documents.

Phone support is available toll-free within the US, and is available 24/7, although certain departments have designated hours:

• Customer service (ext. 10) is available 24/7.
• Billing Department (ext. 213) is available Monday through Saturday 6 am to 10 pm (MST) and Sunday 8 am to 10 pm (MST)
• Legal/ Terms of Service Department (ext 5) is available Monday through Sunday 6 am to 10 pm (MST)
• Verification Department (ext 4) is available Monday through Saturday 8 am to 9 pm (MST)

Like the Live Chat, the phone support provides a live average wait time.

BlueHost Support Helpdesk

This section has some overlap with the Resource list and Contact Us listing. Its sections are:

• Open a Ticket (same as clicking on ‘E-mail’ under Contact Us)
• Terms of Service
• Server Status (for your domain), which provides listings in Mountain Time.
• Video Tutorials (same as clicking on ‘Video “How-To” Tutorials’ under Resources)
• Support History (same as clicking on ‘Support History” under Resources)
• Browse Knowledgebase (same as clicking on ‘Knowledgebase Articles’ under Resources)
• Getting Started Wizard (same as clicking on ‘Getting Started Wizard’ under Resources)
• User Forum (same as clicking on ‘User Forum’ under Resources)

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Reseller web hosting is getting very popular these days. There are many companies offering reseller web hosting and BlueHost is one of them. They just joined this group in 2012. Even if you haven’t had a BlueHost website yourself in the past, you may have considered them as partners for your reseller activities because of how good their web hosting is. Read on for more about BlueHost Reseller opportunities.

What is Reseller Web Hosting?

Most things we purchase aren’t bought from the original producer: they are purchased from a so-called middleman, often one who brings a wide variety of items to market or provides them with some added service or benefit. For example, if you order a book from the publisher, you are likely to simply get the book, whereas if you order from a bookseller, you may have the option of gift wrap.

Web Host reselling involves supplying hosting services, resold from a web host to customers who are your customers. The original web host only supplies the server space for the hosting, the software, bandwidth, and other infrastructure. You, as the reseller, are the one who takes care of customer contact, customer service, and basic technical support, while the web host takes care of setting up the server and the network, and take care of all upkeep and maintenance. You can also supply yourself with a BlueHost coupon to offer your users such as the official one that BlueHost offers on our banners.

BlueHost Reseller Approach

There are several ways that reselling can work, and the BlueHost approach is to divide the relationship explicitly: “Your Brand Our Technology” says a headline on the reseller page. In this type of arrangement, when you resell the hosting, BlueHost, as the web hosting provider will have no contact with the customer at all. It is possible to find both dedicated reseller hosting opportunities and shared hosting reseller opportunities. BlueHost provides shared hosting.

With BlueHost taking care of the technology, resellers can focus on customer service and added value. Resellers often combine reselling with other services such as advertising, web site development, web site design, and marketing. Being able to offer customers hosting in addition to their other services, means resellers can bring in clients for one type of service, and gain a recurring income as well as the one-time fee.

BlueHost Reseller Hosting Features

All of the BlueHost reseller plans (there are three, and they are described below), include the following features:

• An admin control panel through which you administer the sites of your customers. This control panel is where you control WHM (WebHost Manager), cPanel, support for WHM clients, and billing information.
• Client control panels are customized versions of cPanel, which includes tools that allow clients to manage files, control email settings, and perform other site management functions.
• Full-service email that includes unlimited email accounts, free spam protection, free autoresponders and email forwarding, a free webmail interface, and unlimited email aliases.
• Access to BlueHost’s customer support including 24/7 U.S.-based tech support; toll-free telephone support, support offered on the web site via live chat, an automated helpdesk, and access to online video tutorials.

In addition, all domains have unlimited domains, subdomains, MySQL databases, FTP accounts, and email addresses.

Your customers will benefit from free website builders, private nameservers, free simple scripts, and multiple languages. SimpleScripts provides your customers with dozens of software applications, including shopping carts, forums, blogging software, content management systems, photo galleries, forms, wikis, and client management software.

Three Choices for BlueHost Reseller Program Participation

BlueHost offers three reseller programs that can be found by clicking on the reseller tab. They are referred to as ‘Sky Blue,’ ‘Electric Blue,” and ‘True Blue.’ You can find these easily by clicking on our BlueHost coupon banners and then following the instructions above!

1. Sky Blue is the entry level reseller program. It provides the reseller with 100 GB (gigabytes) of disk space, 15 Mbps (megabits per second) data transfer speeds, unlimited accounts, and a free domain, convenient for setting up your business and attracting customers to your reselling business. The cost of the Sky Blue program is $19.95 per month.
2. Electric Blue is the middle level reseller program. It provides the reseller with 250 GB of disk space, 25 Mbps data transfer speeds, unlimited accounts, and a free domain for you to use. The cost of the Electric Blue program is $49.95 per month.
3. The True Blue program is the highest level reseller program. It provides the reseller with 500 GB or disk space, 35 Mbps of data transfer speed, unlimited accounts, and a free domain. The cost of the True Blue program is $99.95 per month.

Scoping Out the Reseller Resources

If you go to the Help tab, and search on ‘reseller,’ you will see 21 help articles on key issues of interest to resellers including:

• How to use the Reseller Getting Started Wizard
• How to create a custom login page for your reseller account
• How to add new hosting accounts
• How to suspend, unsuspend, and terminate hosting accounts
• How to upgrade and downgrade features on a resold account
• How to perform various operations in WHM (Web Host Manager)

Reviewing these resources can help you get an idea of the kind of support available for you before you sign up.

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Every web host provides a control panel for customers to control their online presence.  Some hosts create their own control panel while others like BlueHost use an established control panel, cPanel.  In this tutorial we are going to provide details on not only the BlueHost control panel but give you some basic information on what control panels are.

What Is a Control Panel?

A control panel is the mechanism that your web host provides that allows you to control your web site or sites. By means of the control panel, you can manage your domain or domains, your email accounts, and your site backups. The control panel is also the mechanism for locating and installing paid and free software and managing the files and folders on your website.

There are two widely used control panels: vDeck control panel and cPanel. The control panel you will find on your BlueHost account is the cPanel. As of May, 2012, BlueHost sites were running cPanel 11.30.5 (build 6) (the latest stable release at the team was 11.30.6 (build 7), which was released on April 2, 2012. Although the cPanel company advises website owners to contact their web host for cPanel support, they do provide the cPanel user guide on their website.

The cPanel Set-Up

The cPanel has a thin left-hand column and a wide right-hand column. A space above both columns is where the user can find important update notices, such as those for SimpleScripts. In addition you can sometimes find a BlueHost coupon for services they are offering at a discounted rate.

In the left-hand column, the top section is ‘Notices.’ This is for non-urgent notices, such as software the user might wish to take advantage of. This is followed by ‘Find’ where you can search for an item that doesn’t appear at once. Third is ‘Frequently Accessed Areas,’ which can help you avoid searching through the wide right-hand column. ‘Stats,’ the final area, provides important information about your account including:

• your main domain and username
• your home directory
• your monthly bandwidth transfer usage and file count
• the number of email accounts, subdomains, parked domains, addon domains, FTP accounts, SQL databases, and mailing lists you have
• a count –down, in days, until your account expires
• the name of your hosting package and your host name
• the versions of the key software, which as of May 2012 were:
• Apache version 2.2.22
• PHP version 5.2.17
• MySQL version 5.1.63-community-log
• the operating system (Linux)
• the shared IP address
• the paths to send mail and Perl
• the Kernel version
• and the cPanel Pro version

The right-hand column of cPanel is divided into sections to help you locate various items easily. the order is as follows:

• ‘Partners,’ which include free partners, including a free ShopSite cart and free phone system and free search submissions, and some paid partners such as SiteLock and Professional web design.
• ‘Promotional’ brings you $100 free AdWords credit from Google, a free Yellowpages listing, a $25 credit from Bing and Yahoo! Search.
• ‘SimpleScripts Installations’ allows you to quickly get to SimpleScripts or to software you’ve already downloaded.
• ‘Preferences’ allows you to use a wizard to get started with web hosting, change the language on your site, update your password, renew your account, update your contact or billing information, and quickly access how-to videos.
• ‘Site Builders’ include WordPress, Weebly Website Builder, and other site builders accessible through Simple Scripts.
• ‘Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools’ gives you tools for a Google Maps Listing, a Google Score Card, and Link Building.
• ‘Mail’ lets you access various types of email as well as email functions (import address, user level filtering, auto responders, email delivery route,) and trials/offers from Postini Premium Anti-Spam, Send Big Files, and eMail marketing from eMailBrain.
• ‘Files’ give you access to backup and restore services, information about disk space usage and FTP control
• ‘Logs’ keeps track of errors, visitors, bandwidth, and CPU throttling.
• ‘Security’ gives you access to password protect directories and SSH/Shell access, for example.
• ‘Domains’ allow you to perform domain-related functions, such as register domains and transfer domains, and manage subdomains, add-on domains, parked domains, and redirects.
• ‘Databases’ gives you access to MySQL and other databases.
• ‘Software/Services’ is another place you can access SimpleScripts, as well as PHP Config, Perl Modules, and Ruby on Rails.
• ‘Advanced’ is your access to 404 Settings, Apache Handlers, Cron Jobs, Error Pages, Server Status, and your Image and Index Managers.
• ‘Follow BlueHost on Social Media’ allow you to easily follow BlueHost on Facebook, YouTube, Google Plus, and/or Twitter.

SimpleScripts is worth a bit deeper coverage. SimpleScripts gives you one-click access to between 70 and 80 software applications, including very popular site builders like WordPress, Moodle, Joomla, Drupal, and more, a number of eCommerce options, including iPayment, Magento, CubeCart, OSCommerce, Zen Cart, AgoraCart, OpenCart, and TomatoCart, and photo galleries, project management software, wikis, forums, forms, and client management.  This is a great program to have access to and should be accessed only after you sign up with our BlueHost coupon banner links that will save you some serious money with BlueHost. Who doesn’t want a BlueHost discount price?

Accessing Your Control Panel

There are two main ways that you can access your BlueHost control panel:

• Visit the main BlueHost website and on their home page you will a button to click that allows you to log into your control panel.
• You can type the following address into the URL bar of your browser, substituting your domain name for the words IP address: https://IPaddress:2083

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