A web host is essential to blogging, especially with SEO and site speed.
If you look up "best web host" on Google, you'll find tons and tons of articles recommending Bluehost- in fact, even Wordpress.org recommends them.
Before you sign up though, read this:
BlueHost (along with Hostgator, iPage, and 80+ other brands) are owned by hosting giant EIG ()Endurance International Group). If you haven't heard of them before, they have a large reputation in the web hosting market of gobbling up and buying out small-medium sized web hosts "consolidating" their infrastructure into one data center, and outsourcing and combining all their support staff.
The result? Overloaded web servers, downtime, slow websites, and lots of support issues. You want to change hosts? Sure. Due to the sheer amount of companies they own, there a good chance you'll just move to another host they own. Gradually, many people start to assume all web hosts are the same and that the quality of EIG owned companies are the "norm"
"But XYZ Blogger/Website/Review Recommended BlueHost/HostGator as the #1 WebHost!"
Simple. Money. Bluehost pays at least $65 per person you refer that signs up. These rates can go up to hundreds per referral, which quickly adds up to a lot for blogs and even companies or non-profits like WP.org (sources say they pay WP $120-150 per signup?) that need the money. If you read them, you'll even find a lot of "reviews" aren't even reviews. They literally state what features a host offers and comments on their pricing.
Write something bad about an EIG host? They'll pay you to shut up. (Can't find the link right now, will update if I do, but there are documented cases of Bluehost reaching out to bloggers that right poor reviews and offer them extremely high affiliate rates to remove the review and promote them,)
"I've been using BlueHost for X Years. They work fine for me"
Not every plan is the same, and you might get a server that is less overloaded and get decent performance. But, the price to performance ratio you'll be getting will be far lower than what you get basically anywhere else.
As a developer, I've had many clients reach out to me saying "My WordPress website is slow! Why?" and the first question I ask is: "Who is your host?" 90% of the time its BlueHost or Godaddy or Hostgator. Not saying you can't get good performance with them (perfectly possible with the proper setup), but the time you spend trying to optimize will be far far more than what it takes to use any other web host.
"But they host over 2 million websites! Maybe you just had a bad experience?"
There are hundreds of thousands of other people who've been disgusted by BlueHost and move away. Yet, Bluehost still gets millions of customers because of a few reasons:
- They make you pay 3 years in advanced to get a "special" discounted rate
- Most don't know any better
- They switch to another EIG-owned WebHost and discover it's no better
I've also personally moved over a hundred people away from BlueHost, Hostgator, GoDaddy, iPage, A Small Orange, Site5, just to name a few because they weren't happy with the performance, security, or support and the difference is night and day.
Don't believe me?
Just look at the Trustpilot reviews for BlueHost. Or on Reddit, here and here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or Twitter.
GoDaddy and its parent company run a similar scheme though they don't own as many companies by far. They do, however, engage in practices like charging inordinate amounts for SSL (basically everyone provides it for free), attempting to upsell service to you at every corner, and also cramming a ton of site on one server, resulting in slow websites.
Want to start a blog? Do yourself, your visitors, and your web developer a favor and use any other web host besides EIG-owned ones and GoDaddy.
Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_International_Group
More about EIG:
https://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting/comments/8fnr2e/why_is_eig_looked_down_upon_in_this_community/
https://www.michaelcarusi.com/dump-eig/
https://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/4/bluehost
Or GoDaddy (though GoDaddy is slightly better and a lot less recommended):
Submitted August 28, 2020 at 02:32PM by liberalmonkeys https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/iiizbo/starting_a_blog_dont_host_with_bluehost_or_godaddy/?utm_source=ifttt
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