1 Million Sites Hosted!
In the next 2-3 days we will surpass the 1 million sites/domains hosted mark across our network. That is a feat beyond all our original expectations and goals. I would like to have said that it was all in our original plan, but it wasn’t.
I clearly remember a “meeting” between Dan Ashworth (My business partner) and myself to discuss what we wanted out of Bluehost. I am a person that shoots high, but sets reasonable, attainable goals for myself. At the time we ran a free hosting company with a paid upgrade option. We had about 10,000 paying customers. We knew we wanted at least that many with Bluehost and hoped if we really worked hard that we could get up to 20,000 new customers on our (At the time) new platform – Bluehost.com.
Our previous hosting platform relied heavily on a single parter to generate about half of our business. A great day for us was 40 new hosting customers, and a terrible day was less than 20. The big partner (Bravenet.com) eventually started doing their own free hosting and that left us in a bind. In hindsight I am SO GLAD they left. It really was a major factor in the decision to start Bluehost – Thanks Bravenet! Now a terrible day is 650 signups and a great day is 850 signups. Its amazing how things can change in just a few short years.
Thanks of course go to the real people that make it happen day in and day out – The Bluehost/Hostmonster staff. You are all incredible! Our hosting family is what sets us apart from other hosting companies out there.
1 Million down – 10 million to go!!!
Thanks everyone who hosts with us – we appreciate every last one of you!
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
[...] According to Heaton, the initial goals of BlueHost were actually to reach only approximately 20,000 domains. You don’t need a calculator to tell you they’ve already well surpassed that goal, now getting something in the neighborhood of 850 signups per day – perhaps much more. [...]
Nice job Bluehost! Shoot for the stars. 10 million is on the way:)
1 million is fantastic. Could you also please scale up your LIVE CHAT employees so that we do get “live” chat and not an average delay of 3 minutes between responses.
you are very very good company
am one for million
http://www.amrzxc.com
You guys are the best hosting company.. Good job on the achievements and goodluck boss!
Hi Matt, Dan and the Staff
I have used several hosting companys over the past 12 years. In the old days (The early 90s I hosted from the office) but now it is not monitarily viable to have that much bandwidth piped into one office. Not at the speeds the average users have these days.
The last hosting company was a very large company I will not say the name but it is one EVERYONE has heard of. Man was that ever a mess when tech problems came up. And they did quite offten. You system is the best. You Staff our great and we certainly appreciate the reliability and the good support when we needed it and that is not very offten. The only problem I have is with Dada Mail. I know that is not your company but they are in my opinion terible to work with and I will not try again to use them. But the cool thing is that is the only thing I can find that is not tip top. And that is not a big problem as you have other solutions and we do not have to use it.
Good luck and it is inspiraring to see that your dream went way beyond what
you had origanaly Wanted.
Jim Davison
Great Work.. Now you should also include dedicated servers or semi-dedicated servers ..
I believe I’ve been with bluehost for maybe about 10 years or more (Zero-Catch was offering Free hosting at the time). Over this time they’ve been so easy to deal with. Pricing hasn’t changed much, and I’ve hardly had any issues over 10 years, maybe 5 issues which were resolved very easily and quickly. That’s a great reliable track record. What a nice success story for Bluehost to succeed their own expections and continuing to do so. Great work! I promote them as RELIABLE hosting for over 12 years I’ve been using Bluehost.
I have been with bluehost for 3 years and never been happier. In fact, I moved all my customers to bluehost. What most amazed me is the reliability and loading speed of the shared hosting. I am looking forward to see blue host offering dedicated hosting.
Mr. Heaton,
Today, your company dumped a good customer without warning or just cause. Out of the blue today, you made the decision to unplug all of Scott Johnson’s Frogpants network of podcasts, blogs and social media. It is difficult to estimate how many potential customers you have given error to today, but in iTunes alone, you have refused service to possibly 100,000+ people. Those people need to know who is suddenly preventing them from accessing what they’re looking for.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you – since it’s your job to know such things – but you have just dumped:
An entire network of podcasts and blogs, comprising a dozen very successful podcasters who have disparate audiences of thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of listeners.
A massive web of highly effective social media mavens, most of whom have thousands of followers in Twitter.
Media that has an unusually high international reach, with well above-average numbers of listeners outside of the United States.
One of the top 100 podcasts in the world, according to listeners in iTunes, The Instance.
A cursory glance at your own Twitter feed makes it clear that you don’t understand or value the power and utility of social media. Today’s bit of bad business by you was clearly the result of cold, hard calculation: you made an agreement with Scott Johnson that appears to be less profitable than breaking the agreement. So much for almost every claim on your website “guaranteeing” “unlimited” “reliable” hosting that is “better” and “professional”. The statement on your site, “we specialize in customer service” can now be considered laughable.
Of course, everyone involved with the Frogpants network will be henceforth opposed to patronizing your apparently fly-by-night operation. The Internet meme you might become aware of is this: Get out of the blue.
I encourage any and all customers of Bluehost.com to get out of the blue, before Bluehost.com suddenly leaves all of your content un-hosted. Get out of the blue as soon as it is feasible for you to stop paying a company that cannot be trusted with your blogs, forums, videos, podcasts and pictures. I am not suggesting that any customer stop payment if you owe Bluehost.com money. Don’t be like them, and break an established agreement. Just take the first, honest opportunity to get out of the blue and take your content to another host.
Mr. Heaton, I sincerely hope that this letter finds you well, and that you take the opportunity to comment below if you have anything to say here. Internet 2.0 is not a bum’s rush. Rather, it is an open and ever-expanding platform upon which those who speak have every opportunity to guide discourse, and those who remain silent increase the value of nothing.
Those who attempt to do any silencing will find such an attempt to be utterly impotent.
Thank you.