Bluehost

Bluehost is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It is one of the 20 largest[1] web hosts, collectively hosting well over 2 million domains.[2] The company operates its servers in-house in a 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) facility in Provo, Utah.[3] Bluehost employs over 750 people in its Utah facility.[4]

Bluehost
Private company
IndustryWeb hosting
Founded2003 (2003)
FounderMatt Heaton
HeadquartersProvo, Utah, USA
Key people
Matt Heaton
(Founder & CEO 2003-2011)
Dan Handy
(CEO 2011-2015)
Mike Olson
(CEO 2015-2016)
James Grierson
(CEO 2016-2017)
Suhaib Zaheer
(CEO 2017-present)
OwnerEndurance International Group
Websitebluehost.com

Bluehost was among those studied in the analysis of web-based hosting services in collaborative online learning programs.[5]

Bluehost offers services including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and WooCommerce hosting. Their servers are powered by PHP 7, HTTP/2, and NGINX+ caching.[6]

History

Matt Heaton first conceived Bluehost in 1996. However, he first created two other web hosts, 50megs.com and 0catch.com, before finally settling on Bluehost in 2003.[7]

In 2009, Bluehost introduced a new feature called CPU throttling. CPU throttling (at Bluehost and similar hosting services) refers to the process of reducing user's CPU usage in whenever the particular user is pulling "too much" server resources at one time. At that particular time, Bluehost would freeze (or drastically reduce) client sites' CPU usage substantially. This effectively shut down clients' websites hosted on the Bluehost server for several hours throughout the day.

In 2010, Bluehost was acquired by Endurance International Group. In June 2011, company founder Matt Heaton announced on his blog that he was stepping down as CEO to focus on the company hosting platform's design and technical structure, while COO Dan Handy took over as CEO.[8]

In 2013, Bluehost introduced VPS and dedicated server hosting.[9]

In January 2015, Endurance International Group appointed Mike Olson as CEO of Bluehost, while Dan Handy moved to enterprise-wide mobile development for small businesses.[10]

In January 2017, the company announced that it will lay off 440 Bluehost employees at Utah, in an effort to consolidate its business to improve customer support.[11]

Controversies

In March 2009, Bluehost appeared in a Newsweek article that condemned the hosting company for censoring the web pages of some of their customers who were believed to be citizens of countries that the United States government had listed as rogue states.[12]

In February 2011, Bluehost took down a religious website that they were hosting on its servers after receiving thousands of complaints when that website posted comments blaming gays and lesbians for an earthquake in New Zealand.[13]

Security breach

In March 2015, Bluehost was hacked by Syrian Electronic Army. Also hacked were Justhost, Hostgator, Hostmonster and Fastdomain, all owned by Endurance International Group. SEA claimed that these services were hosting terrorist websites.[14][15] Syrian Electronic Army posted screenshots of the attack on Twitter.[15][16]

In January 2019, the magazine WebsitePlanet uncovered client-side vulnerability in some of the largest hosting companies in the world: Bluehost, DreamHost, HostGator, iPage and OVH.[17]

gollark: > unless this would contradict with other clauses of this policy and/or cause harm to PotatOS or us.
gollark: That is not possible. You are wrong.
gollark: It says it was not, thus wrong.
gollark: > unless this would contradict with other clauses of this policy and/or cause harm to PotatOS or us.
gollark: (you may need to refresh and/or clear cæches)

References
  1. Visually (2015), The Worlds Largest Web Hosts, retrieved 19 April 2015
  2. "Top 100 Largest Web Hosting companies in the world – 20.6% Market Share « ManagedFTP – WebHost, ISP and SaaS Industry Blog". Archived from the original on 2018-08-26. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
  3. "Overview: Bluehost". HostingReviews. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  4. "Bluehost's Innovative Technology Solutions Position it as a Popular Web Host | HostAdvice". HostAdvice. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  5. M Rodriguez; HJ Huang; M Merrill, Analysis of web based hosting services in collaborative online learning programs
  6. Website Hosting Rating. "Bluehost Review".
  7. Heaton, Matt. "Genesis of Bluehost.com..."
  8. Heaton, Matt (12 June 2011). "It's been a blast!!! Now its time to move on..." MattHeaton.com. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
  9. "Introducing Next-Gen VPS and Dedicated Hosting". Bluehost.com. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  10. "Endurance Appoints Mike Olson as New CEO of Web Hosting Brand Bluehost". Hosting Journalist. January 28, 2015.
  11. Novet, Jordon (2017-01-25). "Bluehost owner Endurance is laying off 440 people in Utah". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2018-08-21.
  12. Morozov, Evgeny (6 March 2007). "U.S. Web Firms Practice Self-Censorship". News Week. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
  13. Lee, Justin (2011-02-28). "Web Host BlueHost Pulls Anti-Gay Website Following Complaints". Web Host Industry Review. iNET Interactive. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
  14. Khandelwal, Swati (2015-03-20). "5 Biggest Hosting Companies hacked by Syrian Electronic Army". The Hackers News. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
  15. SyrianElectronicArmy [@Official_SEA16] (2015-03-30). "Endurance Group(Bluehost, Justhost, Hostgator, Hostmonster) was hacked by #SEA for hosting terrorists websites" (Tweet). Retrieved 17 August 2020 – via Twitter.
  16. SyrianElectronicArmy [@Official_SEA16] (2015-03-30). "Next time... we will change the DNS. #SEA cc @Bluehost" (Tweet). Retrieved 17 August 2020 – via Twitter.
  17. "Report: We Tested 5 Popular Web Hosting Companies & All Were Easily Hacked". Website Planet. 15 January 2019. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
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