Room: Cloud

ideahost – rugge

If simplicity is what you’re searching for in a shared host, ideahost is a great choice. Using their drag-and-drop website builder, you can choose from thousands of pre-made templates to construct up to six webpages for free. Additional pages are available for purchase as add-ons. For the slightly-more-advanced user, their cPanel hosting allows you to easily install your choice of CMS, including WordPress.

What truly makes ideahost stand out, however, is the price factor. They offer three shared hosting packages to help you meet your website needs cost-effectively. Like most shared hosting providers, ideahost offers unlimited bandwidth for all plans, and their storage options range from 500GB to unlimited disk space. Users also receive an email address, 1GB of cloud storage, and domain name registration for the first year of service, for free.

With free online setup wizards for blogs and photo galleries, step-by-step tutorials, and 24/7 customer support, ideahost is a reliable, low-cost resource for stress-free shared hosting. If you need a basic website made easy, if free advertising sounds appealing, or if you’re new to the online scene and are looking to make your debut on the Internet, ideahost is certainly a web host you (and your wallet) should consider.

Free Domain, Email, and Unlimited Bandwidth

  • With any of ideahost’s shared plans, you’ll receive a free domain name for the first year. They also offer a courtesy transfer service within the first 30 days of signing up for their hosting.
  • Users receive a free email address, with emails supported by IMAP and POP3. Virus checking and options to set up auto-responders, email forwarding, and spam filters are also available.
  • All of their shared hosting packages include 500GB of storage, with two out of their three plans supporting unlimited disk space.

Free Site Builder and WordPress Install

  • A drag-and-drop, template-based website builder is included in all but their most basic package. The first six pages are free, with additional pages available for purchase.
  • All ideahost users are equipped with cPanel, a premier control panel in the hosting community. Plans also include 1GB of free Cloud storage.
  • For added flexibility, you can easily install your favorite CMS, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal and choose from thousands of free and paid templates.

Marketing and eCommerce Solutions

  • With ideahost, you can get up to $300-worth of credits towards Google AdWords offers, and paid advertising with Bing.
  • Users also receive a free Yellowpages.com listing and a US-based, toll-free phone number.
  • PayPal integration and your choice of shopping carts are also available for online retailers, as well as the online store available with cPanel.

Guides, Setup Wizards, and Support

  • Easily get your blog or photo gallery up and running with ideahost’s free setup wizards.
  • They offer step-by-step tutorials, an online help center, and free marketing guides.
  • Promising to answer your call in two minutes or less, ideahost offers customer support 24/7 via email and chat as well.

To recap, here’s a rundown of what ideahost has to offer

If you need a low-cost shared hosting provider to make setting up a site simple and stress-free, ideahost is a leading option to consider. They offer a free email address and domain name, with cPanel included. With their shared hosting plans, you can get up to unlimited storage, domains, and emails, and up to $300 towards marketing your site with Google and Bing. If it’s a simple website-building solution you’re after, ideahost is a cost-friendly host worth knowing.

To recap, here’s a rundown of what ideahost has to offer

If you need a low-cost shared hosting provider to make setting up a site simple and stress-free, ideahost is a leading option to consider. They offer a free email address and domain name, with cPanel included. With their shared hosting plans, you can get up to unlimited storage, domains, and emails, and up to $300 towards marketing your site with Google and Bing. If it’s a simple website-building solution you’re after, ideahost is a cost-friendly host worth knowing.

ideahost

BlueHost – rugge

Bluehost has their bells and whistles, they do offer simple, easy to use standard services for non-techies. People all over world are joining this program, of which Bluehost paid out over $5 million in commissions in 2015 according to the company’s affiliate page. With a generous program like that, who wouldn’t want to boast glowing reviews?

Like every company, Bluehost has their pros and cons. As being one of the largest hosting providers in the world, it proves many have faith in them. According to Consumer Rankings Bluehost review March 2017, Bluehost is ranked at 9.7 out of 10 by users.

Some highlights were that Bluehost is easy to use, easy to signup, and their cPanel makes it easy to install WordPress and is very well organized. The reviews make it seem like Bluehost is, well, easy.

With so many affiliates out there recommending Bluehost, it’s hard to find out the truth – meaning any negativity the company has. So below are more of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Bluehost.

Pros of using Bluehost

Bluehost has a couple of really good things going for them.

Really cheap hosting: Bluehost has some of the most inexpensive initial hosting plans around. Plans start at $2.95/month at the time of this writing. They’re a really cheap web host.

Endorsed by WordPress: One of the largest hosting platforms, WordPress, recommends Bluehost. It is, of course, a paid endorsement (at least indirectly as Bluehost sponsors lots of the WP conferences), but nonetheless it’s an endorsement.

Generous money back guarantee: Contrary to negative reviews, Bluehost is sticking behind their product and service by offering a 30-day full refund policy. Even after 30 days, you receive a prorated refund of your plan. Since this is a monthly plan, there are no term commitments. You also won’t find pesky penalties or hidden fees.

Good uptime: I’m monitoring the uptime of 5 random websites that are hosted with Bluehost. 4 out of 5 websites have had zero outage, i.e. a 100% uptime, over the last month. 1 out of 5 has had a 99.6% uptime (this would equate to an approx 4h outage during the month).

Cons of using Bluehost

Bluehost got loads of positives, but they do have their drawbacks as well.

No automatic backups: While Bluehost does offer backups, the backups are a courtesy so you can’t depend on your data to be backed up daily – so no guarantees here. You must set up and run your own backup via the cPanel and to your own local device. Another bad feature here is that any data Bluehost backs up within the past 30 days is overwritten. Bluehost’s Terms clearly state that they will hold no responsibility for this. Site Backup Pro is a paid add-on offered by Bluehost. It creates regular and automated backups of your site.

‘Unlimited’ really means ‘limited’: Bluehost’s Plus, Prime, and Business Pro plans boast of their unlimited number of websites, and “unmetered” storage, email accounts, email storage, and subdomains given to clients. However, their User Agreement, Clause 7 Usage Policies and Definitions, explain otherwise. It’s only unlimited up to a certain level. Their unlimited plan is comparable to most providers (i.e. Bluehost isn’t the only web host that promises “unlimited” web hosting).

Conclusion

Bluehost is a great web hosting option for personal and small business websites and blogs (i.e. for creating your own first website). Because Bluehost is cheap (very cheap), reliable, secure and comes with a free domain name. Plus Bluehost is endorsed by WordPress and Bluehost is very easy to get started with, which is great for beginners. Also their generous 30-day money back guarantee lets you “try before you buy” and extras such as a free domain name are are solid features worth considering.

Bluehost