Hosting, shmosting!
Look. If you’ve been online for more than ten minutes or so, AND searching for a way to host your website, you’ve probably noticed that there’s very little distinction between one host or another.
Price is the biggest. Other than that, they all offer about the same thing at similar price points.
So, why pick Bluehost over another?
Glad you asked! Here’s the thing:
In my experience, as a solopreneur or partner in rather small web ventures (small meaning: “not as large as any brand name you may currently recognize”), you can pay varying amounts for all kinds of whiz bang options.
But unless you have a monstrous site, and/or monstrous traffic, it matters very little.
And by the time either of those two “problems” hits, you should be simultaneously earning enough from it all to affordably upgrade to a more powerful hosting solution.
So the two things, beyond price, that mattered most to me were:
- Responsive, helpful customer service
- And the ability to self maintain my site via a common sense back office
Add in dirt cheap prices and you get Bluehost
OK. That’s it for the pitchy-ness portion of this post.
On to the real word nitty gritty
I have built websites for myself and others going back about ten years now. I’ve enjoyed the challenge and I’ve become quite good at it but it was never “my thing”.
Due to my bootstrapping economic realities and my Jack-of-all-Tradesmanship, it was just one more area I was forced to address and then excel in.
I often (and still) enjoy the challenge of successfully building various aspects of a website.
And I can truly appreciate what goes into creating a site that’s way better than any I could ever build.
But I live for the day that someone else can do this for me.
Due to what I just shared, I can now admit that…
…I have dug me some deep holes while building sites
Could no longer see the Sun, I was so far down in the shit of a website build gone horribly awry:
- Multiple instances of the “White Screen of Death” – where my site is gone entirely
- WordPress plugin crashes
- Accidental deletions of content, sometimes up to the entire site itself
- Wrong “permissions” settings that kept me from changing what I just broke
- Site crashes due to my fumbling about with code
- Online banking integration nightmares
- Domain transfers gone awry
- Misplaced content
- Various third party designed, buggy themes causing all sorts of chaos
- Email problems galore
- Video and audio playback issues
- Teasing apart whether it was my computer causing the problem or something Bluehost had control over
- Split hosting, hidden third party server discoveries
- Simple graphics issues
Bluehost support techs dug me out of every single one
And there is a limit to what they can do within the range of your hosting fee coverage but I never seemed to butt up against that limit.
And the few times I may have, they coached me enough at the level they were allowed to that I was able to fill in the blanks.
Sometimes, the techs would admit that they simply wanted to get to the bottom of something that they technically should be charging me for. And they should stop working but the pain had become personal.
(Obviously, that’s a “just between you and me” kind of thing, but it proves a point.)
They also (albeit it sometimes unintentionally) tutored me
Often, they’d explain enough of the situation that it taught me code, and how the cPanel works (the machine at the web host’s that makes everything go) and all other sorts of arcane intelligences.
I learned more than I can remember or relay here. About a third or more of all I know was, one way or another, taught to me by working with Bluehost support staff for almost ten years.
Will you do as well or get as good treatment as I seemingly did?
Without getting too specific, I’d guess “yes”.
I’ve led complete neophytes to Bluehost and these people have returned to tell me that the Bluehost staff was very helpful and always made things easy to understand.
I hate to seem gushing here, but this kind of care is remarkable
The frustration you might encounter as you learn can be nerve shattering.
It’s compounded by the fact that you may have no choice, due to budgetary constraints, but to slug it out with yourself and keep learning.
If you end up using Rainmaker instead, or have your web needs otherwise handled by knowledgeable folk, then none of this will matter to you.
The rest of you? Take heed.
You NEED to know someone’s got your back long enough to help you through your learning curve. It gives you the freedom to screw up.
