Why I left Bluehost

Last updated on July 5th, 2024 at 10:58 am

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Note: This was my user experience with Bluehost. Everyone’s experience may vary.

Late last year after six years of being a Bluehost customer I opted to leave the provider. My decision had been a long time coming. The services were no longer fitting my needs and quite frankly the overall customer experience has declined.

Cheaper hosting doesn’t always mean It’s better

When I finally decided to move Reviews and Savings Pal (now Life with Pal) from Tumblr to a real website I searched high and low for a reasonably priced hosting provider. I reviewed several sites sharing hosting provider reviews.

Back in 2017 I was strapped for cash and figured the appeal of a hosting provider for as low as $3 (USD) a month was a good deal. So I figured I’d give Bluehost a try. I was able to conduct a pre-sales live chat with an agent and shared my thoughts about what I was looking for in a provider. They gave me a price plan I figured I could work with.

At that time Bluehost still offered monthly billing or annually. I opted for the annual billing. I signed up for a 3-year contract and started on my site-building journey.

Here’s the thing you don’t always get told. As with any company they want to upsell extra features or add-ons.

After I set up my site I quickly learned that going with a cheaper hosting provider doesn’t always mean it’s better.

When my site was small things were great. But as my site grew I noticed slower loading times and other issues.

Granted I did the best I could because I was learning WordPress as I went along.

Customer support has changed

When I first started using Bluehost the customer support was great. The agents were helpful and very knowledgeable. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed this isn’t the case any longer. Some are helpful while others seem like they rush to get through a live chat and just point you to various articles.

Sometimes they even made my issues worse. Which I could have done on my own.

Phone support was good but again they can only do so much before they refer you to their tier two support which is all done via email.

That being said if you live in the US you get email support emails in the middle of the know. I’d have follow-up emails about my issues at 1 or 2 a.m. when I was sleeping. Some of the tech support agents were to the point and at times the support from the two focused on other issues that weren’t the main one.

I won’t even go into the time they restored my site to the wrong database. I had my site loading posts from 2 or 3 years before the actual year. That was a fun week.

upselling in live chats

There were a few times I had live chats with agents who wanted to sell me add-ons while they tried to address my support issue. I get this is how they make money but purchasing a longer contract wasn’t the issue I had at the time.

The new live chat doesn’t allow for ending a chat

The new live chat feature is good because it’s a chatbot It gives you prompts for support. The only drawback is if you start a live chat session and you click on the wrong support category you can’t end the chat. This is also true for a general chat with an agent. I had a chat circle until I left the site because no chat agent was available.

if you have malware get ready for a shock

During late 2020 and early 2021, my site was having issues. Well, I reached out to tech support via a live chat. They determined I had malware on my site.

The support agent told me I had to pay for Sitelock and clean my site or my site would be down until I did. The support agents assume you have a tech person who helps you. When I told them I was doing it all they told me I’d have an email sent with a list of infected files.

To be honest I think that was an issue from their end and not mine because I had a security plugin in place. That’s neither here nor there. But can you tell I’m still mad about it?

After nearly $300 later I was able to get my site up and running after I removed the infected files and signed up for Site Lock.

I never found out what the point of Site Lock was and quite frankly some of the support agents there were as lost as I was when I would have a live chat question. I don’t know if this is the case now but I used it for the time I signed up for it and canceled after that.

Hosting renewals are pricey

I left Bluehost because they made some changes to their plans and the renewal fee was outrageously expensive for the service I was getting. After six years I knew it was time to go.

They had sent out an email before my site renewal date requesting everyone renew to the Pro shared hosting plan because it would help reduce site issues. I was on the Choice Plus plan at the time so for me it was going to be a few dollars more for my annual renewal (more like a multi-year plan).

But I thought that having to pay over $500 for a few more years was a bit much. I also noticed that my site was having more service interruptions as well. It seemed like my site was as slow as could be even with a site optimizer plugin. I had some days that just trying to get a post done took two hours due to freezes and speed issues.

I also found that my backup plugin was starting to time out or even freeze up.

I would have upgraded to dedicated hosting but that was out of my price range as was VPS hosting.

When it’s time to go

I made a list of other hosting providers I could reach out to and see which ones would be right for me. So I started my search again.

Here’s what they don’t tell you. Once you cancel your account with Bluehost you can’t completely leave the site. I was surprised when I deactivated my renewal to have an email a month later stating my data would be deleted. Which was fine. However, I was surprised to see I could still sign in and access my account. Granted I don’t have anything linked there anyone in terms of domain names or websites.

I was told by a support agent that you can’t completely close your account via live chat and over the phone.

To top it all off you can’t even remove your information. You can remove payments but you can’t remove your phone number or address from the account.

I wasn’t thrilled about that. But I guess I’ll have to live with it because there isn’t anything I can do about it.

What I learned

If you are starting to create a website. Do your homework before signing up for a service. Cheaper hosting providers may look good but always ask around to see how good they are.

If you do decide on Bluehost I hope it works out for you.

Feel free to share your experience in the comments.

If you are looking for a hosting provider check out InMotion hosting.