web hosting
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...
company owned by
Endurance International Group
Endurance International Group (EIG) previously named BizLand was an IT services company specializing in web hosting. The company was founded in 1997 and was headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.
Bluehost was among those studied in the analysis of web-based hosting services in collaborative online learning programs.
Bluehost sells
shared hosting
A shared web hosting service is a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. The overall cost of server maintenance is spread over many customers. By using shared hosting, the website will share ...
,
WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architectu ...
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customiz ...
hosting as well as professional marketing services. Their servers are powered by PHP 7, HTTP/2, and
Nginx
Nginx (pronounced "engine x" ) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source softw ...
+ caching.
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.
In 2009, Bluehost introduced a new feature called
CPU throttling
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
. CPU throttling (at Bluehost and similar hosting services) refers to the process of reducing user's
CPU usage
CPU time (or process time) is the amount of time for which a central processing unit (CPU) was used for processing instructions of a computer program or operating system, as opposed to elapsed time, which includes for example, waiting for inp ...
in whenever the particular user is pulling "too much"
server
Server may refer to:
Computing
*Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients
Role
* Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...
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
Endurance International Group (EIG) previously named BizLand was an IT services company specializing in web hosting. The company was founded in 1997 and was headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
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 state
"Rogue state" (or sometimes "outlaw state") is a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace. These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian or totalitari ...
s.
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.
Security breach
In March 2015, Bluehost was hacked by
Syrian Electronic Army
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA; ar, الجيش السوري الإلكتروني) is a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defac ...
. Also hacked were Justhost,
Hostgator
HostGator is a Houston-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in Austin, Texas.
History
HostGator was founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at ...
, Hostmonster and Fastdomain, all owned by Endurance International Group. SEA claimed that these services were hosting terrorist websites. Syrian Electronic Army posted screenshots of the attack on Twitter.
In January 2019, the magazine WebsitePlanet uncovered client-side vulnerability in some of the largest hosting companies in the world: Bluehost,
DreamHost
DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is owned by New Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil, undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd Colleg ...
,
HostGator
HostGator is a Houston-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in Austin, Texas.
History
HostGator was founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at ...
,
iPage
iPage () is a web hosting company.
History
iPage was initially founded in 1998 as a full web service provider, but the company re-launched operations as a web hosting provider in 2009. It's currently owned by Endurance International Group. iPa ...