Bluehost has been in business since 1996. They have hosted thousands of accounts and currently host over 175,000 domains according to their website. On the website, you can read the ceo's blog to get a feel of the personality of the owner and they also have a forum where you can read about other user's experiences.
This is always the first thing we test when reviewing a website. If your website is down constantly, nothing else matters. At first glance, I was concerned because on their homepage they do not give the promise of 99% uptime. I could not find any mention of it on the features page either.
That's not a great sign.
But our experience with them has been good and we had no problems with downtime. You always want the company you deal with to have an uptime guarantee in writing, but in this case we experienced no problems with them. Bluehost has denial of service protection and mirrored backups in place and that will limit any downtime you'll receive.
Remember, it's not whether or not you'll experience any downtime, it's how fast your hosting company will respond and get everything up and running again.
Score - 9/10
Bluehost's offer is pretty straightforward and it's a good one. You get professional webhosting for $6.95 a month. You get free set-up, no hidden fees and your domain name is included with purchase. I like the amount of hosting space they give for your account - 15 gigabytes. I've seen more, but this is more than enough for most people and companies. You also get 400 gigabytes of data transfer, which is impressive.
You can host 6 domain names with one account. All of the other standard features like frontpage, ftp, ssh, php, cgi support is there too. You get 2500 pop/imap email accounts, which should be more than enough for you to use.
All in all, I like the offer and I think you get a lot for the money.
Score - 9/10
People normally overlook this, but it's big in my book. When you have a problem or a question, you need to talk to a live human being to get it solved quickly. Otherwise, you end up playing email tag and a simple problem that should've been solved in 5 minutes, can end up taking days.
At Bluehost, you have 24/7 access via phone, which is great. Their staff is friendly and helpful and they are also knowledgeable, which helps when you have a technical question.
And if you need to open up a help ticket you can do so via their helpdesk. Response time was ok, but nothing great. I still like using the phone, because it's quicker, but if you're not in a rush, this is good option.
Overall, their customer service is good and you should have all of your questions answered and problems solved.
Score - 9/10
Everything was pretty easy to use at Bluehost. They have a live demo that you can try out before you ever purchase anything. I like that. It's always nice to sample before you buy.
I found that once you log in, you can pretty much control everything from the control panel. Domain management, email management and ftp were all pretty easy to use. After you've played around with the controls for a few minutes, you should have the hang of it.
Score - 9/10
Overall, I give Bluehost an A- and I recommend them as a good host. I wasn't impressed with them as much as I was with Jhost.com, the top webhosting company of 2007, but Bluehost is still in my top 3 for 2007.