Can you believe this was taken with an iPhone 3gs camera?

The short answer: no. There is no such thing as a BlueHost coupon. Most people don’t know this, and the result is that a couple thousand people use Google search to try to find BlueHost coupons. Those searchers will find tons and tons of sites talking about BlueHost coupons as though they do exist, and none of them will ever actually have a BlueHost coupon code anywhere.

Don’t believe me? We asked BlueHost directly. By using their live online support, we asked them if there is any such thing as a BlueHost coupon or BlueHost coupon code. This is what they said:

Not only did BlueHost inform us that they don’t offer coupon codes, they warned us to be careful about scams. That’s a pretty big deal.

So, why are so many sites claiming they have a BlueHost coupon? It’s the same reason a lot of people do a lot of things. Money. BlueHost offers an affiliate program to anyone who has a website. They put a link to BlueHost, and every time that somebody clicks on that link and buys BlueHost hosting, the site owner will get some amount of money in exchange for the customer.

We’ve tested the BlueHost.com affiliate program for an extended period and found that the tracking is above average as compared with other Web Hosting affiliates and payments generally made on time.

Some of the less-then-honest sites will claim to have BlueHost coupons just to get you to visit their site and click on their link, all so that they can earn a quick buck.

The problem is that this confuses the consumer. They see so many sites offering a BlueHost coupon, and they become convinced that such a thing exists. Therefore, they keep looking for one. The result is that the problem perpetuates itself. There’s the thought that there might be a BlueHost coupon code out there, so someone searches it. Then, they see tons of sites offering BlueHost coupons. They then believe that it must exist, so they keep searching for one. It’s a waste of the consumer’s time, and a pretty gross one at that.

But not all is lost. There is a way to get a discount for BlueHost web hosting. Now, it’s not a coupon, but it does come from the affiliate accounts I mentioned before. Despite any potential ill intentions, there are some who offer this affiliate link with good intentions, and any of them can be used to get you a discount. As an addition to the affiliate program, anybody who signs up for BlueHost by clicking on one of those affiliate links gets a special price. Their hosting is usually $6.95 per month. By using an affiliate link, you can get prices as listed below:

• 12 months: $4.95 per month: $59.40 total
• 24 months: $3.95 per month: $94.80 total
• 36 months: $3.95 per month: $142.20 total

Make no mistake, though. This is not a BlueHost coupon code. This is a promotional price, and it only applies until the customer renews with BlueHost, at which point the price returns to $6.95 per month. However, there isn’t a huge rush to grab this promo until you are ready. This promo is available through affiliates only, but it doesn’t have any set end date. And it’s been going on for over a year now. We asked BlueHost about this as well, just to make sure, and this is what they said:

So, the definitive answer is that there is no such thing as a BlueHost coupon code, but they do have an ongoing promotional rate for new accounts that sign up through an affiliate link.

Hopefully, this has cleared up any confusion about whether or not a BlueHost coupon exists.

But, were you looking for a web host that does offer coupons? We can help there, as well as help you determine which ones are good hosts. You can visit our Web Host Reviews page to see which web hosts have proven to be a good value, then you can visit the CouponClaim.com Hosting Coupons page to see which ones offer coupons. For example, you can take a look at our IX Web Hosting Review, which has an excellent 20% off coupon on our coupons page.

Click here for the 3.95 BlueHost Discount Link

Thanks to Angela Hammond for sending in this montage of images from SMX West – Search Marketing Expo being held March 2-4, 2010. The conference included over 50 sessions on topics close to the heart of search marketers: SEO, PPC, social media, local and mobile search, real-time search, etc from all skill levels.

1. Fundamental URL changes

   If you are thinking about major technical feature changes for your website it might become necessary to change the URL structure of your website. In any case, this kind of SEO changes need to be very well-planned, especially if the website is big and complex. 301 redirects for any type of old URLs you already have in the Google index to the corresponding new ones are a must to avoid loosing link-juice and 404 errors.

2. Moving  to a new domain name

   If you really think you have to move your website to a new domain name, please make sure that you announce this to Google via Google Webmaster Tools to Google to avoid problems. You can find the form for domain changes in the “website configuration” folder of Google Webmaster Tools.

3. Changing features without thinking about duplicate content issues

   It is actually easier to produce duplicate content as it seems, especially if the updated features are dynamically generated. Well, a smaller % of duplicated content is not too bad, but if major parts of your website are basically duplicated you can get into trouble.

4. No proper testing after change

   So… finally, your super-important SEO fix is live and you are already dreaming of the results it will (hopefully) bring… So far so good, but don´t forget to test it! SEO-testing your website deeply after deploying an update is very important! Did you test for broken links? URL-structure is still ok? Website speed? etc. Well, maybe Testing is not the most exiting part of the job, but there lots of cool tools that you can use for more effective testing, like automatic link checkers, Selenium tests etc…

5. Introducing new product features without thinking about SEO

Whenever there gets a new feature introduced it should get reviewed by SEO, especially if it adds or changes the internal link-structure. Don´t get me wrong: not every feature needs to add SEO-value to your site, but you should avoid that it harms your SEO.

6. Thinking Google Webmaster Tools shows all SEO Problems

   GWT is a great help for webmasters and SEOs to check their site and reports all unwanted issues like for example error 500 or unreachable errors etc. But no errors reported in GWT does not necessarily mean that everything is fine. One example: You can´t tell if all 301 redirects work correctly. If a redirect goes to a wrong page it won´t get reported by GWT. Only if the incorrect redirect goes to an error page, then it will appear.

I hope this list was helpful for you! Feel free to add a comment and tell your experiences about SEO side effects.

A big thank you to Thomas Fuchs-Martin of Web Product Blog for this guest post!

Features and Pricing

Just Host offers two hosting plans: the JustPlan and JustPlan Premium. It appears that the only difference between the two plans is the number of free domains that are offered. JustPlan offers 1 and JustPlan Premium offers 3. The $4 extra per month (when billed monthly) hardly seems to be worth the extra two free domain names (in effect paying $24/year for each of those two extra domain names).

I wanted to confirm that this was the only difference between the two plans. Therefore, at about 6:30 PM one night, I initiated a chat conversation. The individual I chatted with was able to instantly concur with me that the only difference was the extra two free domain names.

Just Host offers a pretty standard feature-set including Linux-based servers running Apache, with the industry-standard cPanel control panel software.

For the JustPlan, they list the price available at their longest billing cycle. In order to keep the cheapest price per month, one would have to sign up for four years of hosting. So the $3.45/month turns into $7.95/month if billed monthly. Many hosts advertise the lowest price, but explain the billing cycles on their hosting pages. Just Host doesn’t disclose what the price is until a customer selects the hosting on the purchase page.

Free setup is advertised, yet those selecting a monthly billing cycle will be billed a $20 setup fee.

Unlike many hosts who simply offer a 30 day money-back guarantee, Just Host provides their guarantee at any time. Their policy seems very fair, as they refund the remainder of a customer’s term. Understandably, they cannot provide refunds on setup fees and domain name registrations, but they do release the domain name to the customer.

They also provide other nice guarantees such as 99.9% uptime. If that is not maintained, then they are willing to credit one’s account with the cost of a full month of hosting.

Just Host also offers a generous amount of free ad credits (about $150 worth at the time of writing).

Terms of Service

When I clicked to view the Just Host terms of service I was greeted by a message stating that their “terms of service are designed to be read by the average Joe” and that I could contact them if I had any questions.

For perhaps the first time, I discovered terms that were actually manageable to go through, and they were nice enough to compile them into one page. Many hosts have several documents that are tens of thousands of words each, while Just Host’s are entirely described in about five thousands words; which, if printed, would be about ten pages.

The terms seem pretty standard. Some things to note are as follows:

• Although Just Host backs up files in case of server failure, files over 40 MB are not backed up
• Backups are not necessarily maintained and it is the responsibility of the customer to keep sufficient backups
• Like other hosts, data must be linked to one’s hosting account, so the service may not be used for file storage purposes
• Any types of websites that are very resource intensive are generally not permitted; there is a list available of types deemed as such
• Making video/audio streaming and/or downloads available is not permitted
• No more than 50,000 inodes may be used (every file is an inode)
• For the money-back guarantee, account upgrades are non-refundable
• Just Host reserves the right to cancel an account with 72 hours notice if “a customer [is] exceptionally rude or vulgar in communications with [their] staff”
• If a customer becomes 60 days behind on payments, their data will be deleted

Through their terms of service, it is evident that Just Host is being quite fair. Unlike some hosts, there were no terms that stood out to me as being illogical or extreme.

Control Panel

Just Host utilizes the industry-standard cPanel control panel to allow customers to manage their web hosting. When logging into the control panel I was presented with a page trying to sell me various upgrades. It was almost as if I had found myself presented with one of those interstitial ad pages, something I wouldn’t expect to find on a service I was paying for. They were legitimate, relevant offers related to their hosting, but I didn’t think it was necessary for them to try to up-sell in this way. It may be enticing to some as they state that is in “today only.” Then I clicked to go straight to my control panel and was faced with an overlay box with an offer to submit my site to search engines. I didn’t really appreciate that much marketing; yet luckily I was only faced with it the first time I logged in.

Testing

cPanel includes the Fantastico library of applications that can easily be installed through its automatic installer. I was able to use this to easily install a WordPress blog within seconds on my site. The installation was just like I would get if I went through the process of manually downloading the WordPress package, uploading it to my site, and configuring the database, only a lot quicker to do.

Through my testing, I also noted that Just Host offers a “Priority Support” option for $20/year that provides customers with a guaranteed 30 minute response time on emails and an assigned personal representative. This added assurance might be worth it to some, but one would hope that their standard level of service would be satisfactory enough without having to pay extra.

In order to verify Just Host’s uptime guarantee, I utilized a service called Pingdom which checks a website’s availability and response time at set intervals and provides reports analyzing this data. It allows those who manage websites to effectively track the downtime of their sites from multiple locations around the world. Pingdom gives you nice looking reports displaying uptime and response time for any type of service: HTTP, FTP, Email, etc.

Within about the first 12 hours of monitoring, Pingdom recorded one instance of downtime: 10 minutes around 9:30 AM. The monitoring was performed at a resolution of 5 minutes, so the downtime could have lasted between five and ten minutes. During my time monitoring the service, it did seem to violate their 99.9% uptime guarantee, yet I didn’t run enough monitoring to see how the uptime was over the course of an entire month. They are willing to credit a full month’s worth of hosting, so one can imagine that downtime does not occur very often.

Customer Support

Just Host offers a few different channels for support. Just Host support is available via live chat, a ticketing system, and the phone. They also have a knowledge base system which I found to be fairly useful.

I decided to test all three. I first submitted a ticket acting like I was new to web hosting and wondering what the easiest way to track website statistics is. The ticket form stated that the average response time was 18 minutes. I submitted a ticket at 11:22 PM EST. At 11:50 PM (28 minutes later) I received a reply indicating an application that I could use (Awstats) and how to access it within cPanel.

I then wanted to know what the best way to maintain my own backups would be. I therefore initiated a live chat conversation to test out that medium of support. I started at position two in the chat queue. Within a few minutes, I was chatting with a representative.

The representative responded with a couple of minutes mentioning a Daily Back Up solution that costs $19.95 per year. I then asked if there were any other solutions, as I know there are functions built-in to cPanel for website backup. I then received a response a minute later requesting that I please wait while the representative researched the information for me.

A few minutes later I received a response with a link to a video in their tutorial series demonstrating the backup features available through cPanel. I then asked the chat representative where he was based and he informed me that he was in Chicago.

Then I decided to test out their phone support. It took me a couple of minutes to find their phone number (see why below). I had to search for it in their knowledge base system. So then at about 5 PM on a weekday I called their general phone number. This time I was going to ask about preventing others from stealing images by directly linking to them (hotlinking).

When calling Just Host customer support, I was presented with clear phone options. After selecting the third option for support, I waited for a few minutes as I listened to xylophonic music and a periodic voice reminding me that my call was very important to them (with intervals of about 45 seconds). After six minutes of this, a representative answered the call.

I presented my question and the representative understood what I wanted without hesitation. Unlike other hosts, he did not request my name and domain name before assisting me. This was helpful to save time with my general question. The individual did seem to have a rather thick accent, and this may be evidence of outsourced phone support, yet I was able to sufficiently understand his English; although, I can understand that some individuals may not have been able to.

At the end of my first month of hosting I received an email indicating that my account would be suspended if I did not pay it soon. I therefore paid it, but discovered that their system automatically charged me for it. I learned I had been double-billed. I contacted their billing department and I received a reply within 20 minutes indicating that I had been refunded for the extra payment. I was pretty satisfied with that.

One thing I noticed after searching for their phone number on the site was that it was at the top of the site originally, and then after I logged in as a customer this was replaced with a live chat link (they use a cookie to track this). I found this to be very interesting as I had never seen such a tactic before. I’m not sure if it is for a marketing purpose having customers sign up thinking phone support is readily accessible only to be presented with live chat later, or if they simply prefer that customers use the live chat functionality. I chatted with a live chat representative regarding this issue; they were willing to provide the number, but they were not able to provide a conclusive answer as to why this was.

Conclusion

Just Host is a reliable web hosting company providing good service with fast-responding support. They are backed by uptime guarantees and the freedom to cancel at anytime and be refunded for unused hosting. Their pricing is very competitive, especially when signing up for long-term billing cycles.

The only thing that I didn’t like was the extent of marketing for upgrades and extra services throughout the site. This can easily be annoying to some individuals. It also would have been nice if they had phone support that did not seem outsourced.

One more thing: as I was reading along the bottom of the page, I discovered a link called “(Secret Link)” that provides a 20% discount on the first term of hosting for those who find it.

Pros: Full-featured, fairly good support response time, fair and easy to read terms of service
Cons: Annoying marketing tactics, seemingly outsourced phone support, pricing is not explicitly clear prior to sign-up
Bottomline: Just Host is a solid web hosting company that should provide worry-free service
Rating:

Just Host 20% Discount Coupon: JHSL20

Features and Pricing
Since SiteGround provides “unlimited” web space and bandwidth, like some other hosts, they have chosen to provide a single, all-inclusive web hosting package with various billing cycles ranging from 1 month to 36 months.

They include all of the features that one would expect from a web host. Any features beyond the standard package can be added at extra cost. These add-ons include private SSL (for having a dedicated security certificate), the ability to host more than one website under the one account, a dedicated IP address, SSH access, among other things.

They provide certain e-commerce specific features including free shopping cart software, a shared SSL certificate, the ability to accept PayPal payments, and merchant accounts. This offering is very convenient. Sometimes it is necessary to obtain these services individually. This offering is consistent with many hosts, yet it is nice nonetheless.

SiteGround does provide a free domain name with their hosting. Also included is the allowance for the hosting of unlimited parked domains and subdomains, while add-on domains require an extra fee.

Like many hosts, SiteGround also provides numerous open-source scripts that can easily be installed for free.

At the time of writing, SiteGround was offering a 40% discount, reducing their “regular” price of $9.95/month to $5.95. This deal may very well be a consistent offering.

Terms of Service
There are several things that stand out within the SiteGround terms. One thing that presents itself after initial review is that legal actions must be handled within the court system of the Republic of Panama.

Like many web hosting companies, SiteGround maintains very large legal documents to govern the use of their services. This includes a 13,000 word Terms of Service document; a nearly 13,000 word Reseller Hosting Program terms of use document, and then several smaller documents covering their Acceptable Use Policy, promotions, affiliate program, templates, etc.

Like many web hosts, SiteGround does qualify the unlimited nature of their service. Similar to others, SiteGround specifies that “Unlimited use applies to your use of web pages only” and not the storage of other files (specifically movies, pictures, or mp3 files). Whether or not the use of the space and bandwidth is acceptable is really at the discretion of SiteGround. They are able to provide it as unlimited as they are well aware that webpages specifically do not require many resources. If your site’s purpose is to serve photos (likely in the range of several thousand) or video content, you very well may not be able to benefit from this “unlimited” nature. In that case, it may be necessary to purchase a dedicated hosting plan.

SiteGround states that although they back up data themselves once per week, this is for internal purposes (in case something were to happen on their end). It also appears that any movie, music, zip, among other file types, are not backed up. Therefore, even if something does happen with the SiteGround service, these files might not be restored. It is therefore important to maintain regular backups as a customer. They may provide backups to the customer as a service, but there may be a charge for this.

Regarding payment, it is stated that “invoice are due immediately upon receipt” and that an interest fee of 1.5% will be assessed on unpaid invoices, yet it is not explained how often this interest will be applied.

Renewal of shared hosted automatically takes place 15 days prior to the expiration date for terms of one year or longer, or on the date for terms less than one year.

If the credit card on file expires, SiteGround is no longer responsible for a customer’s data or domain name. If a card is declined, there will be a $1.00 service fee.

Customers should be very careful with a dedicated IP address in regards to spam email. If an IP address is blocked due to spam coming from that address, a $100 “block removal fee for each affected block” and an hourly fee of $100 will be assessed to this issue.

Billing disputes must be made in writing and must be received by SiteGround no later than five days after the invoice due date. There are also provisions in place that if a customer issues a chargeback against SiteGround before notifying them and after the “Dispute Deadline,” two $50 fees will be assessed, and a customer’s domain may be locked during this until the fees are paid.

For shared hosting there is a money back guarantee that allows customers to submit requests in writing to terminate hosting and be refunded all prepaid fees (except setup and domain fees).

SiteGround is willing to issue credits due to service interruptions, yet there are some limitations, including that a customer must request the credit within 3 days, can receive one credit per disruption, and can only receive it if the account is not past due.

If a customer chooses not to re-register their domain name, SiteGround reserves the right to register it for themselves and then sell it. SiteGround can also take ownership of unpaid domain names.

If SiteGround believes that a customer does not have “sufficient technical expertise” and requires “excessive ongoing technical support”, they reserve the right to terminate the account.

It is possible to terminate services through their website, and a customer must acknowledge an email verification for the termination to occur. It will then take five days to process and for any refund to be issued. Customers are apparently responsible for fees during this five day period.

Then they go on to state that termination of shared hosting must be requested within 30 days prior to the expiration of the current term and “before a renewal invoice is due”. Otherwise there will be a $24.95 “Early Termination Fee”.

There may very well be more issues with their terms, yet these are some that stood out.

Control Panel
SiteGround has a Customer Area component to their site that serves as a gateway for managing services. The presentation is very user-friendly and it links to areas providing account management, billing access, support, and the addition of services.

The industry standard cPanel is utilized by SiteGround to allow customers to effectively manage their websites. It is easily accessible via the My Account section of the Customer Area.

For those new to hosting, cPanel provides a setup wizard that guides individuals through the setup of their account settings (e.g. email account).

Testing
I noticed that within cPanel, SiteGround links to a site builder application. It provides some very generic looking templates, almost tacky in nature. There are some site builders that generate very appealing pages, but this was not one of them.

Also integrated into the cPanel control panel interface is a “Google Apps Manager” allowing customers to easily setup a component of Google Apps under their domain name.

Customer Support
Upon signing up, I didn’t receive a welcome email. Often this includes important information regarding the account. I needed to setup my domain to point to the hosting so I needed to find out the nameservers.

There is no support number stated, but I thought perhaps that their sales number might have support options, which it does.

SiteGround has a very clear phone menu system that guided me through finding this information on the website.

I then wanted to obtain some information that may not have been so readily available, so I decided to ask about how to set up custom error pages (available through cPanel).

I placed another call around 2 PM on a Saturday. After dialing the option for Technical Support I waited as the subsequent options did not match my issue. The system then played some music as if it might be transferring me to a representative, but it just repeated the options and then disconnected me after I did not select one.

I tried calling again and dialing 0 to speak with a representative but that disconnected my call.

It appears that SiteGround does not offer technical support (other than guided prompts) by phone. That can be quite frustrating, especially when other options aren’t effective.

I went to the Contact Us page on the site, clicked to “Contact the Technical Support Team through our HelpDesk” only to be directed to the knowledge base system with no real option to contact the support team. The “HelpDesk” (self-serve knowledge base) provided me with several categories of issues. I tried searching for “custom error page” and I received no results. I tried picking the “Other Technical Issues” category and it didn’t provide me the option of contacting the support, even though issue specific categories did.

I ultimately found the SiteGround customer support to be completely inaccessible for my issue. I couldn’t even find an email option, let alone a live chat system.

In order to cancel an account, it appears as easy as clicking a button in the billing system. Upon doing so, it informed me that I would receive an email with a link to confirm this. The link then took me to a live sales chat (as there do not appear to be support chats) in which the representative questioned why I was canceling and if there was anything he could do for me.

The chat operator’s name appeared to be Eastern European. I have replaced it with “John” here. That may be evidence of outsourcing the live chat.

[START CHAT]

Kyle Summers: ?Question: Hosting account cancellation for example.com account?OID 123456?Immediate cancellation?Refund Due: No?Reason: I am not happy with the quality of service you offer.: Support is rather inaccessible.??———————
John: Hello Kyle
John: Welcome to SiteGround.com Hosting Services!
John: Allow me a moment to check your account please and I will gladly assist you further
John: As we strive to keep long-term relationships with all our customers and their feedback is of much importance to us, may I please ask for the difficulties you have encountered with our services and I will gladly assist you and find the best solution for you
Kyle Summers: I find support to be rather inaccessible and we have obtained a solution elsewhere. I would like to cancel the account please.
John: Fully understand you sir, and if you are still willing to elaborate your issues I will gladly give you a step-by-step walk to the correct category in the ticketing area to reach the Support Team
Kyle Summers: No, that is okay. Please cancel the account.
John: Sure, allow me just a moment
John: I can confirm that your account is fully canceled now
John: We are very sorry to lose you as a customer
John: Goodbye for now and I wish you all the best

[END CHAT]

I didn’t consider this to be a terrible hassle, but depending on the level of frustration the customer has gone through before this step, it may very well be pushing their tolerance.

Conclusion
SiteGround offers hosting for a very cost-effective price, yet they don’t support it very well. For any customer that is not 100% confident, they will never need to place a support call, it is likely the wrong choice.

The legal terms set forth in their myriad of documents seem a bit discouraging as well.

Pros: Cost-effective, functional service
Cons: No real customer support other than an ineffective knowledge base
Bottomline: Cost-effective, functional, yet with shady terms and lack of customer support, it’s likely not worth it.
Rating:

www.siteground.com (affiliate link)

Thanks to Brent Wheeler who contributed this pic from Adtech New York this month snapped from his iPhone.