Topic: Bluehost WARNING

[MesquiteWx]

It has been brought to my attention today without notice that Bluehost is now blocking sites with excessive FTP usage I.E. uploading clientraw file several times a min. I am completely appalled by this decision as I have been with them for 8+ years and been uploading to my site for 6 yrs without any issues but now all of the sudden a tiny kb file is now taxing Bluehosts "So called" award winning servers. It appears to me this is a ploy to have people upgrade to their new VPS and dedicated hosting plans as 7 count them 7 people I talked to today cared less about resolving my issue and would rather up sale me on something I do not need nor want but because of their new "restrictions" which were never in place when this company started nor has never been an issue for over 8 years and I have had techs tell me my site isn't even close to taxing that now all of a sudden it is a problem and I need to upgrade. Completely ludicrous to treat their customers much less long time customers and ones who have paid up for multiple years and have my money already and they want to press issues over tiny FTP file. So if you're on Bluehost BEWARE as if you are uploading the clientraw file several times a min you will be blocked and they will no let you do that anymore unless you pay at least $25 a month for for one of their VPS servers. Time to move, any suggestions? I need CRON, SSH, MySQL, PHP5 cPanel, and NO restrictions on FTP access.     

[ValentineWeather]

I've used ipower since 2003 and without issues lately, not perfect I would put them on par with godaddy maybe a little better actually. I won't recommend them but I'm also happy enough to stay.

[MesquiteWx]

So I disconnected all FTP applications sending data to the server. I had 1 FTP client connected which is Filezilla to download files for backups in addition to downloaded zipped files from their backup engine. Filezilla was constantly connected, wasn't uploading or going online or offline. THEY BANNED MY IP AGAIN FOR HAVE ONE FTP CONNECTED. I cannot access my site at all anymore and it was right in the middle of my file back up.

I don't know what happend to Bluehost. They use to be a very good host and I have never had problems with them and their customer support was top notch. The past couple of times I have had issues which has only been maybe 3-4 in 8 years with 2 within this year their support has been hideous, my site has ran like crap lately and they make changes and never tell anyone anything and they don't have answers for nothing. They are completely inexperienced.

[SlowModem]

I believe I'd just cancel and find another host.  Much less frustration that way.

[txweather.org]

I been using dreamhost.com for the past few months and have been very happy.
It's a bit of on the expensive side but well worth it.

Techs are knowledgeable and their control panel is in-house which makes it even better.

They have a blackfriday sale going on right now that is super cheap!

[ValentineWeather]

Bluehost, HostMonster, HostGator, JustHost are are all divisions of Endurance International Group so beware.

[racenet]

Bluehost started playing games like this years ago. That is exactly why I dumped them. Not to mention all of the hugh security holes in their servers. That is another thread all together.

I moved to HostRocket and have been very pleased with their service. They are fast at fixing any issues that may pop up.

Get away from Bluehost as fast as you can!


Bob

[MesquiteWx]

HostRocket looks promising. I wish they had a demo cPanel to see what all they offered. How do their back ups work? I do like some of the things Bluehost offers and the 24/7 chat but the other issues far out weight the positive. I use to be very happy with them but as of late and as you mentioned they have drastically gone downhill on many levels and are not the same company they use to be when I got on with them. It is like I told them. They have outgrown their britches and their customers are being punished for features and hosting they were founded on and they promise. Their support techs have zero knowledge about anything which use to not be the case. I am definitely move to another host. My only fear though is migrating to a new host and it cause problems with scripts or lack something I had before and don't have anymore.

To add insult to injury my site completely went down again at 2:30 CST this morning and when I got up it was still down. So I had to contact support. They started making .htaccess and php.ini and permission changes on my account without asking me first which pissed me off because as we all know. We have some scripts that have unconventional permissions among other things. He had to restore a backup to put it all back.

[ValentineWeather]

Here is the ipower control panel tour. http://www.ipower.com/about/cp_tour.bml
I'm on the pro plan@ 10.99 month

[racenet]

Their cpanel offers all you'll need to run your weather site. I only use a small fraction of what they have available.

As for their backups, I know they do them daily, but never had an issue where I needed them to restore anything. So, don't really know how long they hold them and the like.

[BigOkie]

Hmm..I use bluehost and while I don't have my weather site on them yet I was thinking about using them.  Guess that's a no-go now.  Like you, I require SSH access.  Hostrocket does look promising.

[MesquiteWx]

Yeah I don't use the backups very often ether but, it is nice to have. Since I work in IT myself and practice redundancy all the time. The piece of mind knowing you have them there if you need them ether daily, weekly, monthly and the ability to grab one or many files or any entire backup is really flexible. That feature alone would be enough to keep me at BH. You never know what is going to happen and when. I don't use a lot of the cPanel ether but I do need Zone Editor so I can create DNS records. I will most likely go with HostRocket since I am having so many issues especially FTP'ing. Nexstorm and NGX just simply won't connect to my server anymore and nothing changed in NGX.

[awilltx]

You got a lot more mileage from Bluehost than I ever did. My ISP (AT&T Uverse) blacklisted the server Bluehost put me on. I'm with Hosting Matters right now and so far, so good.

[Aardvark]

Bluehost, HostMonster, HostGator, JustHost are are all divisions of Endurance International Group so beware.

I have been using Hostmonster for 4 years now, no problems or trouble, so far.

[MesquiteWx]

As long as you keep it simple you shouldn't have any issues. It is when you start doing some pretty involved scripts and require a lot of demand from the server is where you will have issues. Not to mention having multiple connections from data sources and FTP going constantly 24/7.

I just had to contact them again because they didn't pull all their FTP blocks they said they were going to do.

[BigOkie]

As long as you keep it simple you shouldn't have any issues. It is when you start doing some pretty involved scripts and require a lot of demand from the server is where you will have issues. Not to mention having multiple connections from data sources and FTP going constantly 24/7.

I just had to contact them again because they didn't pull all their FTP blocks they said they were going to do.

A lot of this is why I do mine locally.  The only downside is that I have to limit access to it and externally I have to use a non-standard web port (8080).  I'll still continue to look.

[vomaretired]

I have Hostmonster since December 2006 and have had little problems until about a month ago when my site went down. I had just started using my new weather station and was using ftp to upload between once and twice a minute. The tech told me my uploads were too frequent and there was nothing for me to do but get another host. I called back after cooling off some, and talked to another tech who said that was crazy he had never heard of that before and reinstated my account. I immediately backed up my sites and do often now. No other problems since as I am still uploading at 30 second intervals. They tried to blame it on my ISP first.

[MesquiteWx]

Sounds about par for the course from them as HostMonster is Bluehost other alias.

[Garth Bock]

I have been using FastWebHost (formerly eHostpros) since 2004 with great service and no real problems. Yeah, it cost a bit more but I think it is worth it.