vinesites.com

Dear diary, I recently switched hosting companies to HostGator. Goodbye BlueHost, I will always remember you as my first. I was shy, but you encouraged me to explore your CPanel and discover the wonders that lay within - Fantastico De Luxe, Mail Forwarding, Sub-Domains, Awstats - your shiny icons like stars in the sky...
But now we have grown distant. It's not you, it's me. New influences have come into my life and I need my space. Add-on domains are smothering my independence, I've met new sites who need their own Cpanel so we can have relationships that are discrete, unknown to the others. So farewell, I know you will be Blue but don't be sad, it was wonderful while it lasted...

In all seriousness, I thought Bluehost on the whole was a very decent host and the only time I had a big problem (which may have been my fault), I received friendly and efficient support over the phone that got me up running pretty quick. There were just a few factors that instigated the switch:

- I built a website for someone else that I provided hosting for and needed them to have access to their own Cpanel and I hope to do some WordPress sites for some other local businesses.
- With the upgrade to version 3.0 my WordPress niche stores using phpBay Pro need the correct version of Ioncube running on my servers. Supposedly this should not be a problem on Bluehost but I kept running into issues and I would rather spend my time optimizing my eBay niche stores than pulling my hair out over Fatal Errors. HostGator ran the new plugin without a hiccup.
- Lastly some strongly worded encouragement (and a coupon) from BloggerUnleashed.com.

The HostGator reseller account was payable by the month which was nice for getting rolling without a big outlay for 6 months or a years contract. There is certainly a bit more to learn to use a Webhost Manager interface (WHM) but it is not that hard and there is still the old familiar Cpanel for my separate sites. So from now on hopefully I am in a long term relationship for a while and my webhost affiliate links will reflect my commitment.