Website hosting nowsadays is very competitive. Many web hosting companies offer tonnes of features at very competitive prices. With so many choices in mind, how do you choose the right host? I have tried many hosts over the years and finally landed on one that I feel has the most complete features that I need at the best possible price, ie BlueHost.

Features
BlueHost provides hosting features that surpass the needs of any large commercial websites:

10 Gigabyte Hosting Space
Host 6 Domains on 1 Account!!!
2,500 POP/Imap Email Accounts
250 GIGS of Transfer
SSL, FTP, Stats
CGI, PHP, MySQL
2000/2002/2003 Front Page Extensions
Free Domain Forever!
Superb/Responsive Support Engineers

They also provide SSH (Secure Shell) service which is a feature lacking in most host because it might post a security threat if not managed properly. If you need advance services such as unzipping files in the server, you will need to use SSH. SSH access is not terribly important but good to have in a long run.

Reliability and Performance
They have been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996. Many new hosting companies just come and go, but this one is able to withstand the test of time. So far, I have no problems with the speed and reliability of the server. Most of my sites hosted by them were never down. If you have google toolbar installed, just take a look at their page rank. Bluehost.com has a page rank of 8 which is rare for a web hosting company. The alexa ranking is about 2000 at the time of writing, indicating the amount of traffic they are getting for their website. This just shows how popular they are in the web. If you look at their awards page, you will see that they have a long history of awards. This is a plus point because it shows that they care about their customers and more importantly, their performance is consistent.

Support
One important criteria that I use to judge a good host is their refund policy. Hosting can be cheap but many company refuse to refund to unsatisfied customers because what they care is only about money. Bluehost rates their customer service higher than sales. Though the setup fees is unrefundable, they are quick to refund the hosting fee if you are unsatisfied within 30 days.

They have a good support section in the website. Based on my experience, most of their emails are answered within 2 working days. It is not the fastest around but their replies are honest and professional. Some hosts will answer you in such a way that you need to pay them more money to get your problems solved.

My research in many forums and friends shows that Bluehost has an extremely high percentage of happy customers.

Conclusion
In conclusion, BlueHost offers quality and reliable hosting for $6.95 a month with no hidden charges. With generous disk space and bandwidth, it is unlikely that you will exceed the quota every month. The many good reviews of bluehost in the web speaks for itself. If you are starting a new website or looking for a new host, I strongly recommend bluehost.

Visit bluehost at http://www.bluehost.com/track/sitecrit/CODE17