The largest shared web hosting provider BlueHost has released VPS in recent days. We have worked out a review based on BlueHost VPS price, features, reliability, performance and technical support, aiming at help those who unfamiliar with this service know more about it.
We were lucky enough to get an account in the beginning of BlueHost VPS testing period. Up to now, we have more than 3 months' real hosting experience on BlueHost VPS hosting, so we promise that this review is backed by first-hand experience, honestly.
BlueHost VPS Price
At present, BlueHost has 4 VPS plans named Standard, Enhanced, Premium and Ultimate which are priced at $29.99/mo, $59.99/mo, $89.99/mo and $119.99/mo respectively. These plans are quite affordable compared to most other VPS plans in the market, but BlueHost still provides up to 50% discount for them. The detailed information of price is in the following table.
Billing Cycle
Standard
Enhanced
Premium
Ultimate
1 Month
$14.99/mo
$29.99/mo
$44.99/mo
$59.99/mo
3 Months
$23.99/mo
$46.99/mo
$69.99/mo
$94.99/mo
6 Months
$24.49/mo
$48.99/mo
$72.49/mo
$99.99/mo
12 Months
$23.74/mo
$47.49/mo
$71.24/mo
$94.99/mo
Regular Price
$29.99/mo
$59.99/mo
$89.99/mo
$119.99/mo
BlueHost VPS Promotional Link Activation
Personally, we recommend readers starting with the 1-month Standard plan if they simply need a VPS to cover the demand of a website that has outgrown the shared web hosting. This plan costs $14.99/mo only but comes with 1 free domain and 1 free dedicated IP which value over $20 in total.
Readers subscribing to any BlueHost VPS plan can choose to purchase via PayPal to increase the security. Besides, in any case that they are unhappy with the service, they can ask for a full refund in the first 30 days.
BlueHost VPS Features
BlueHost provides full managed VPS only. That is a piece of good news for people willing to concentrate on their business or not professional in the command line. BlueHost has installed all of the most needed things on the server, such as the operating system, Apache, control panel, PHP, etc. The company also takes responsibility for the security of the virtual servers. For customers, they only need to manage the installation and configuration of some custom software.
All of BlueHost VPS plans come with instant provisioning with which VPS users can get started in few seconds instead of waiting for hours or even days. Some other features included in the plans are listed in the following table.
Feature
Standard
Enhanced
Premium
Ultimate
OS
CentOS 6.4 (64-bit)
CentOS 6.4 (64-bit)
CentOS 6.4 (64-bit)
CentOS 6.4 (64-bit)
Core
Single Core
Dual Core
Triple Core
Quad Core
RAM
2 GB
4 GB
6 GB
8 GB
Disk Space
30 GB
60 GB
120 GB
240 GB
Bandwidth
1 TB/mo
2 TB/mo
3 TB/mo
4 TB/mo
Dedicated IP(s)
1
2
2
2
Control Panel
cPanel
cPanel
cPanel
cPanel
Root Access
Price
$14.99/mo
$29.99/mo
$44.99/mo
$59.99/mo
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BlueHost VPS Reliability & Performance
BlueHost is always a reliable web host. The 3 data centers in Provo, Utah, each of which is equipped with UPS power and diesel generator, are utilizing the first-rate high performance Dell servers to guarantee the real uptime. Even if a server-side issue arises, it can be solved properly by the system administrators before it comes to affect the users on the server.
We have kept monitoring BlueHost VPS uptime for 3 months. The statistics shows that BlueHost delivers 99.99% uptime on average. Read the following chart for the real uptime in the past 30 days.
As for speed, BlueHost VPS has exceeded most of its competitors by leveraging a large number of top-notch cloud technologies including OpenStack and KVM. As tested, the read speed and write speed of BlueHost VPS are both faster than 1.5 GB/s, and the server response time is less than 320ms. The monitored server response time in the past 30 days is as follows.
BlueHost VPS Technical Support
BlueHost offers 24x7 US based support via live chat, email and phone. The company guarantees that the average waiting time is less than 30 seconds, while in fact, the support staffs often make a response in much shorter time than that.
In BlueHost knowledgebase, there are 30+ articles concerning many aspects of VPS, including Minecraft server installation, dedicated IP assignment, OS reload, and so on. In the case that these articles haven't included the solution to a certain problem, customers can still search the getting started wizard, video tutorials or ask for help in the user forum.
Conclusion
Although BlueHost VPS is a new product, it has been proved to be trust-worthy. According to our hosting experience, the cheap price, rich features, outstanding reliability, performance and technical support are what BlueHost really provides to customers but not the tricks used to attract them.