GKauten Consultingv1.2

Update for November 2nd, 2009:

Well after a receiving a note from James C. today mentioning BlueHost has again changed their policy on the domain privacy offerings, I decided to stop over at the BlueHost website and check it out for myself. After looking at the product breakdown I noticed that domain privacy was yet again marked as included, as it previously was before my July 21st post below. Seeing this certainly put a smile on my face but I was still unsure just how far this carried over since the domains on my account did not reflect this same change. Opening up a quick Live Chat window had my questions answered in less than 2 minutes (unheard of with my experience elsewhere). The response I got as to what domains the free privacy did, and did not, apply to was this:

“We include one free domain privacy with our hosting. This privacy is free for the life of the account. Other domain privacy will renew at $4.95/year.”

All in all, I would say it is still quite the bargain since most of the other services I have seen still charge close to twice as much for their privacy services and if you only plan on having the one primary domain then you don’t even have to worry about the cost at all. Domain hogs like myself though will have to suck it up (gladly in my case) to keep our information just the way we like it, PRIVATE!

Originally Posted July 21st of 2009:

Well today is a sad day. Come to think of it, it might have been a sad last few days since I haven’t bought a domain for myself in a week or two. Anyways, BlueHost appears to be phasing out their free domain privacy services when you register domains with them. For any of you that currently have domains with them, there is no need to rush off to view your account as the privacy will simply expire when the domain’s current registration period expires. Those looking to renew their existing domains however, can expect to see a new option to go “au naturel” with their WHOIS information or scrape together the $4.95 / year for the BlueHost domain privacy services. It does appear that new customers can still take advantage of the offer for a limited time so if you haven’t done it yet, now might be a good time to get that first domain!

In the grand scheme of things this is not nearly as expensive as many others I have seen. It is just a very sad day for what appeared to be just the icing on top of a hosting company that offered it all. BlueHost still has many other amazing benefits to attract new comers and maintain the audience they have. I do not really feel the need to list them all off here when they have a wonderful page setup to show off all the benefits (you can find that here) but I will list some of the still more impressive items:

• Host Unlimited Domains
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Diskspace
• 100 MySQL Databases
• SSH (Shell Access)
• Custom Cronjobs

Anyways, there are plenty of others but like I said the aforementioned are just some of the more impressive ones I have seen. For all of you Windows based language lovers though I am sorry to say you will not find a Windows Server setup here. BlueHost boasts all Linux operating systems on their quad processor servers. If you want to dig in to BlueHost a little more and see what they are all about, feel free to check out their website.

Note: Unfortunately this post serves to correct and update my two previous posts – Domain Privacy? Do I need it? and Looking to buy your first domain? Both of these posts mention BlueHost’s previously free domain privacy service when you register a domain with them which has recently changed.