There were nothing much to write about Bluehost hosting service in February. There are no significant down time for the past one week but I can’t be sure that the database connection errors is settled. I’ll observer the server status and website’s uptime for a little longer before I can draw any conclusion.

Right now in case you wish to learn more about Bluehost hosting, check out: www.bluehost.com.

Bluehost vs Lunarpages in a glance

To save your time, I had highlighted several key hosting features of Bluehost and Lunarpages below.

From the table, you’ll see that there are indeed not much differences between the two. In fact, pricing is the only differences between Lunarpages and Bluehost (with LP slightly cheaper than BH).

In term of popularity, Bluehost is much welcomed among webmasters. Google Trend (refer to the diagram) shows that Bluehost is growing much faster when compare with Lunarpages.

To my wild guess I think this is due to Bluehost’s quality customer support as well as aggressive web marketing plans.

Guest Article: Comparison between Bluehost and Lunarpages

On top of my personal review, I’m glad to have experienced web writer – Justin Knights to share his view on the topic. Check out his view about Bluehost and Lunarpages in this guest post below.

Comparison Between BlueHost and Lunarpages

There are many hosting providers out there in the market today and 2 companies that are worth mentioning is BlueHost and Lunarpages. Both these companies have been around for quite some time and have a good reputation in the industry. However, which company is the better of the two? Lets us make a comparison to see which company excels in the different categories.

By comparing the packages provided, Lunarpages provides specific packages for blogs, small business or enterprises but BlueHost is not clear in their packages. So, to find out which package suits you if you want to choose BlueHost, you will need to spend s little time to do a research. Lunarpages also provides Window hosting while BlueHost do not. Even though this might not be big matter, it still proves that Lunarpages provide something that BlueHost do not provide.

Next, we take a look at the price for both companies. Lunarpages is the more cost effective choice but Bluehost are much welcomed among webmasters. Bluehost is hosting a lot more domain than Lunarpages at the moment and a check on both companies search popularity will show that Bluehost is way ahead of Lunarpages. From the customer’s point of view, both companies are satisfactory. In fact, many customers have websites hosted by both of these companies. Last but not least, both companies provide user friendly hosting panels. Different users prefer different panels like cpanel, Fantastico. Both companies provide the same stuff.

For a conclusion, the company that you will choose must be an effective business investment. Lunarpages provide more choices and is cheaper; while BlueHost, despite being more popular, offer less hosting choices and are slightly more expensive.

Bluehost vs Lunarpages: Who’s the best?

So who’s the best between Lunarpages and Bluehost? Well it seems that it’s pretty tough to choose between these two hosting companies. In case you’re looking for budget hosting, then Lunarpages is recommended; for those who don’t mind paying a little extra for the pop star, then Bluehost is very much your choice. All in all, both hosting companies are doing very good in their industry. In case you are still unsure with them, I suggest you to try both services yourself as they both offer 30 days free trial period.

Bluehost has recently (on mid Sept) updated their pricing structure.

You used to get the $6.95 rate if you signed up for 24 months of hosting (and paid for it in advance). That rate is now available only if you pay for 36 months. Official pricing info available at here.

Bluehost Pricing

For the ease to review, I had compiled the detail pricing info for Bluehost hosting services. Note that setup fees are totally $0 for hosting plan longer than 12 months; while hosting plan for 6 and 3 months will cost you $30 extra on the setup fees. All price listed below is shared hosting packages and websites are hosted on a shared IP.

36 Month Account $6.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fees [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.23 (23 cents) a day!
• $250.20 Total due at sign-up; [36 month account x $6.95 mo.]

24 Month Account $7.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fees [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.27 (27 cents) a day!
• $190.80 Total due at sign-up; [24 month account x $7.95 mo.]

12 Month Account: $8.95 a month

• 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
• No set up fee [$30 Savings]
• Less than $0.30 (30 cents) a day!
• $107.40 Total due at sign-up; [12 month account x $8.95 mo.]

6 Month Account: $99.70

• $9.95 A Month
• [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
• [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee

* $99.70 Total due at sign-up [6 mo. x $9.95 mo.($59.70) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

3 Month Account: $69.85

• $9.95 A Month
• [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
• [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee

* $69.85 Total due at sign-up [3 mo. x $9.95 mo.($29.85) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

Optional Features at Bluehost

After your Bluehost hosting account is registered, you’ll be given the choice of other optional features such as registering additional domain names, hosting your website on a dedeicated IP, registering a private SSL certificates, as well as Postini Mail Filtering (new).

Each of these features will be charged separately. Have a quick glance on these pricing below:

• Additional Domain Names = $10.00 each year
• Dedicated IP = $30.00 each year [$2.50 mo.]
• SSL Certificates = $45.00 each year
• Expired Account Reactivations = $30.00
• Postini Mail Filtering = $1.00/mo per e-mail address

Special pricing from ReviewBluehost.com

The good thing about shopping from ReviewBluehost.com is that you get to keep $6.95 as your 24 months hosting cost! The last time I checked, all order links from ReviewBluehost.com are still on the old pricing structures – thus this means you get to save $1/mo for 24 months hosting plan.

Anyhow, I wouldn’t stress too much about this as it’s not much different holding your account for 24 or 36 months with a good host. Further more, Bluehost allows pro-rated payback in their refund policy, this means you can signup with the 36 months hosting plan and simply cancel the services whenever you feels like stopping without losing much money.

Special Pricing: $6.95/mo for 24 months plan! Order Bluehost now.

Wonder how is Bluehost server performing?

Now there’s a better way than reading stranger’s blog about Bluehost’s servers – http://serverstatus.bluehost.com!

Bluehost Official Server Check

Bluehost currently run a server monitoring system that is designed to keep their customers informed of server outages. By simply typing in your domain name, you can check the web server (that you are hosting on) status and get updates about any planned or unplanned server maintenance work.

That’s a pretty cool feature that other hosting companies do not provide. Check out image below for the quick screen captured.

By the way, in case you’re not a Bluehost customer yet, you can learn more about Bluehost server performance on my previous post: Bluehost Server Status.

Listed below is the server uptime for BluehostReview.org at June which I believe is a very good reference for those who’re thinking of buying Bluehost.

Note that Bluehost server uptime achieved 99.731% for June and the server response time is well below 0.3 seconds – which both are pretty good results.