BlueHost Vs Yahoo! Web Hosting

BlueHost (review) and Yahoo! Web Hosting (review) are two well-established hosting companies providing shared hosting services at a very low cost.

If you’re hesitating between these two hosts, it’s fairly understandable: they both offer similar features and they are in the same price range. At least at first glance.

• Bluehost Special Discounts
• Yahoo! Special Discounts

But when you’re having an in-depth look into them, are they really that similar?

Not at all.

Let’s see what makes them different and which one is the best host for your website.

BlueHost Overview

Founded in 1996, BlueHost has specialized in shared hosting. Serving over 650,000 domains, they have quickly gained a lot of customers, from personnal websites and blogs to small businesses.

They offer a single one-size-fits-all hosting plan based on Linux web servers with cPanel. BlueHost’s hosting packages offer the most standard and well-known features: PHP 5, Perl, CGI, Ruby on Rails, SSI and MySQL.

BlueHost’s support is available 24×7 and can be reached by phone, live chat or through their ticket system. They’ve also got a very active community of users on their forum which provides a nice source of information and help about BlueHost hosting.

Editor’s Rating: Users’ Rating:

Yahoo! Web Hosting Overview

The Internet giant added Website Hosting to their line of services for quite some time now. Their hosting service benefits from the same strong network infrastructure as their search engines.

All websites are spanned across multiple web servers (i.e.: clustering) preventing any downtime by switching to another server in case of hardware or software failure.

Support is provided 24 hours a day 7 days a week and they can be reached by phone through their toll-free number.

Editor’s Rating: Users’ Rating:

BlueHost Vs Yahoo! Web Hosting Comparison

Okay so they both offer unlimited hosting and they support the same scripting languages (PHP 5, Perl, CGI, etc). So what makes Yahoo! Web Hosting so different from BlueHost?

Well first of all, the control panel. Yahoo’s control panel is very confusing and its text-based menus remind me of the late 90’s hosting control panels. Their script installer has nothing but a handful of applications such as Wordpress, Gallery, phpBB and PhpNuke.

On the other hand, BlueHost provides you with the ever-popular cPanel. It is by far the best hosting control panel for Linux web servers. It has so many features yet it remains so easy to use. It’s graphical interface allows you to find quickly what you’re looking for.

Yahoo! Web Hosting Control Panel

BlueHost Control Panel

And like if it wasn’t enough, you also get Fantastico Deluxe. Now that’s a great script installer: blogs, helpdesks, CRM, shopping carts, photo galleries, just name it. Within a few clicks you have access to tens of the most popular web applications, ready to be installed with little to no knowledge of web hosting.

And then there’s support. Yahoo! Web Hosting can only be reached by phone. While this may be the preferred medium to some, email and live chat support would be a nice addition. I don’t always have the time to wait on the phone to solve a minor incident.

BlueHost’s support on the other end is excellent and you can reach them anyway you want. They’ve got a toll-free number, live chat and a support ticket system too.

Yahoo! Web Hosting Vs BlueHost – Conclusion

As much as I would’ve thought that Yahoo! could be a major web host, they just don’t cut it. I guess that developping an expertise in a single market is playing in BlueHost’s favor.

I found Yahoo’s control panel so unintuitive and forget about using the knowledgebase: it’s a total pain. If you find the answer to your question in there, bookmark it safely because you might not be able to find it again.

While BlueHost’s knowledgebase may not be their greatest asset neither, it is nowhere as bad as Yahoo’s. And take a look at BlueHost’s forums, you’ll be surprised at how people are kind and helpful over there. It’s just a great community.

So as you’ve probably guessed it, my advice to you is go with BlueHost, period.

Links

• BlueHost Website and Reviews
• BlueHost Coupons
• Yahoo! Web Hosting and Reviews