I paid $35.40 via PayPal for a one year contract. The posted price was $2.95 a month, but you save 75%, off of
$11.99 a month. Salient features included 1 website, 10 gigs of storage, and chat support. Listed features
indcluded Free CDN, Free Domain for the first year, Free Trial of professional email, Custom WordPress themes,
and Free SSL for a year. Strangely, it said you can save more by signing up for a 36 month contract, but then
the monthly rate went up and the discount dropped. Obviously the other free stuff won't continue past the first
year, so I'm not doing that.
Sign up was pretty straight forward, a bunch of information about me and then we're off. They had a bunch of
add-ons that are automatically added to my purchase, so I had to turn all of those off. First push was for a
store-front service. Skip. They automatically pushed SiteLock and CodeGuard into my cart, which brings the total
up over $100. Remove those, keep going. I used PayPal which I think will make it easier to cancel. Receipt
emailed to me.
I got one webpage, and it's automatically set up as WordPress. No offense to them, but I didn't want to use it.
I tried to add another site, but it gave me a message that said I could either purchase more, or I could delete
one I already had. I couldn't find any way to delete the website. Not great UI.
There was a hosting tab that I eventually found after clicking through everything, and there was a file manager
option. That opened up a cPanel file manager, which was a familiar tool to me from using HostGator. It launched
in another tab, which gives the feeling that you are not on BlueHost's site any more, but honestly I'm ok with
that. I found a bunch of WordPress files. Select All, Delete. That broke a bunch of things on the BlueHost
interface, but nothing that I needed so far. I found the FTP manager tool, which was another cPanel interface
and moved all of my files over. They dumped into a user directory instead of the public-html directory, so I had
to move them manually, but that was only a Select All, click and drag. Surprisingly few confirmations to
overwrite a bunch of files when I did it the second time because I uploaded the wrong folder the first time.
It was less than a hour and already they sent me spam. It was a welcome email, encouraging me to use features on
the site. There was an Unsubscribe link, clicked.
This is my third iteration of this project and I was up and going in under an hour. I haven't had any outside
users test anything yet, but it looks good from my tests.
Upon logging in, I was asked to open an online store for $60 per year. Decline.
Upon logging in, I was asked to purchase a back-up service for $60 a year. Decline.
Upon logging in, I was asked again to purchase the same a back-up service for $60 a year. There doesn't need to be another step between logging in and using the admnistrator tool, but they have set this up so that I have to click an extra button every time before I can do what I want to do. If there is a way to permanently turn this off, I haven't found it yet.
I got an email that said my privacy protection is expiring, and that I would have to pay if I wanted it to continue. I don't really understand what the service is/was doing. I thought that I was registered as the domain owner. If that's the case, then great, I understand that. If someone else is the owner, what's this service? Why do I need it? And how can you mask the real owner of the domain? Unless you are fraudulently registering the domain, why won't it be me? Or is this a thing where you mask it from people who don't know the actual way to get the real information, but in reality, the information is available? At the end of the day, I'm not going to pay them more for a service I don't understand. I would be nice if I didn't get this vaguely threatening email extorting me for money in exchange for a vague promise of a threat they made up.
This isn't a new thing, but it occurred to me today that I should mention it, the log in page asks you to enter your domain name and password. It's not a problem, it's possible to save that information, it's just odd that it's not email address and password like 99% of other websites. Another offer to sell me a monthly cost service. I don't even read them any more.
Upon logging in, I'm presented with a message to "Give my Domain a boost!" For just $1.25 per month (billed annually, no information about cancellation or other fees), they are offering to keep my personal information secure. No indication what that entails, but they display all of the personal information they have on me on screen with a warning that "Your information is exposed!" It seems like a scare tactic to extract more money. There's a button to continue to the account manager. This popped up immediately after logging in, with no indication about how it could be avoided.