Blue Host Hosting For Podcasters

by Cliff Ravenscraft on March 28, 2010

I Love BlueHost!I have made mention, in a few recent episodes of Podcast Answer Man, that I have become a true fan of working with Blue Host as a hosting provider for my clients. I’ve been using Godaddy.com for several years now and have been happy with them for the most part. I’ve always considered switching to another hosting provider to be too much of a hassle because of the number of websites that I host.

I also shared, in a recent episode, that I am about to launch a brand new sponsored show called Virtual Assistant Podcast. Since I’ve been in the market for trying new things, I decided that I would go ahead and set up this podcast on a hosting account with Blue Host.

There are a number of reasons why I wanted to do this. One is that they have an affiliate program that is out of this world. For each person who uses my Blue Host Affiliate Link, I earn $67. Since I’ve signed up and started to promote Blue Host, I’ve had several people sign up with them and I’ve seen the money coming in as a result. I have felt confident in recommending Blue Host because of the great support I have received when helping clients that launch their podcast on their hosting platform.  Of course, I feel there is something about saying, not only do I promote their product/service, I’m also a client.

Another reason I love Blue Host is because I’ve noticed that they have lightning fast ftp servers. I do a LOT of file transfers via ftp. I’ve been doing a large number of Video Tutorial Online Training Products which I store on my own hosting account. I thought it would be of benefit to me, by way of time savings, to have a Blue Host hosting account where the files would upload to my server in half the time it takes with GoDaddy.com.

Of course the price of BlueHost is pretty comparable to what you would pay with a lot of other web hosts out there. However, with Blue Host, you get a lot with the low price of $6.95 per month. They now offer UNLIMITED Hosting Space, UNLIMITED File Transfer (Note: See Note At The Bottom Regarding Putting Podcast Episodes In Your Hosting Account), the ability to host an UNLIMITED number of Domains with a total of 100 My SQL databases included. What this means is that I can run up to 100 WordPress Installations!!! Also, Blue Host gives you 2,500 POP/Imap Email Accounts whereas Godaddy charges extra for email accounts. There is also the Free Domain Forever feature that is pretty impressive. If you register a new domain with your new hosting account, that domain is free for as long as your hosting account is active through them.

Of course none of this means anything without great customer support. This is another reason i had stayed with GoDaddy for so long. Sure, my sites went down about once every 18 months. Sure, my ftp transfers were slower than snot running down your face on a cold winter’s day. Sure, it could take 15 minutes to an hour to process any type of change to my hosting account such as adding a new ftp user. However, I stayed with GoDaddy for so long because they had a support staff that I could reach by phone any time of day.

When I read that Blue Host advertised “24/7 Superb/Responsive Sales/Support,” I was a bit skeptical. However, over the course of working with them on a large number of client projects, I am convinced that their customer support is equal to, if not better than what I have had with Godaddy. Every time I have needed to call Blue Host support, I’ve got the answer I needed within just a few minutes of the first phone . They also have a convenient support IM/Chat service that is very convenient for those real quick questions.

So sure, I set up my Virtual Assistant Podcast website with Blue Host. Though it got me thinking. I’m doing all these digital training products, I should really switch this Podcast Answer Man website over to my new Blue Host hosting account. So I simply went into my hosting account dashboard with Blue Host and first installed a new instance of WordPress in a folder called /podcastanswerman. I quickly used my newly purchased Thesis Theme to create the new website. I then added an “Addon Domain” for PodcastAnswerMan.com that I mapped to the /podcastanswerman folder. Then, I simply went into Godaddy and forwarded my nameservers to my Blue Host account. (Note, I could have ported my old site over, but really wanted to play with the new theme.

End result? Yesterday, at this time, I was serving this website from GoDaddy and today I’m serving it off of BlueHost. I feel like the load times are slightly faster and the ftp upload transfers are a LOT faster. I’m a super happy camper!

Anyway, I know that you guys really enjoy it when I share this behind the scene stuff.  Those of you who listen to my podcast(s), you know that it takes a lot for me to dull out endorsements of other company’s products and/or services. I would fully recommend Blue Host for your hosting account needs.

For full disclosure reasons, I want to let you know that all the off site hyperlinks in this posts are “Affiliate Links.” If you do make a purchase after clicking the link, I do financially gain as the result of your purchase. This is not “WHY” I wrote this post. However, It sure is a great way to help support the content that I produce, in the event that you were looking for a hosting account to build your site with.

Very Important Note:
Many podcasters see all these hosting providers that advertise UNLIMITED file storage and UNLIMITED bandwidth. However, I would strongly advise against putting all your MP3 files on your website’s hosting account. Have a look at the following chat transcript that I had with a sales rep from Blue Host.

Jordan: [8:27:33 AM] Welcome to our real-time sales chat. How can I help you today?
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:27:33 AM] How many MySQL databases do I get with my hosting account? In other words, how many WordPress Installations can run? My domain is http://VirtualAssistantPodcast.com
Jordan: [8:27:57 AM] 100 databases
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:28:10 AM] Ah.. So what is the big deal about the UNLIMITED DOMAINS? DId you have a limit before ?
Jordan: [8:28:44 AM] yes
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:28:50 AM] What was the limit before?
Jordan: [8:28:56 AM] 5
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:29:46 AM] Okay… One other question
[8:30:01 AM] Unlimited File Transfer…..
[8:30:05 AM] This isn’t for real right?
Jordan: [8:31:10 AM] Yes as you can read on the features page the file transfer is unlimited
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:30:25 AM] I’m a podcast and new media consultant… I push for my clients to use services like Libsyn for the hosting of their mp3 files.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:31:16 AM] I always suggest that if their podcast becomes mega popular, they could run into issues with Bandwidth issues.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:31:32 AM] So they tell me about your UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:31:47 AM] So here is my question….. This is why I’m asking you….
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:32:12 AM] I have more than TWO THOUSAND podcast episodes and I have delivered well over 3 MILLION downloads.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:32:57 AM] So if I were to put my files onto your server, and I get about 60,000 downloads per week, of about 8-15 podcasts epsidoes, each about 50 megs…
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:33:10 AM] Will this acct cover that?
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:33:19 AM] Or is there an issue with CPU cycles?
Jordan: [8:34:13 AM] As you should know it takes more then bandwidth to run a podcast and we do not offer what is needed for that. So to answer your question no you can not even put one podcast on our hosting.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:34:38 AM] That’s exactly what I wanted to know.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:34:57 AM] I have no plans to do so… I’m just trying to confirm, for my clients, that they should not do so either.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:35:18 AM] Do you have any documentation that I can point my clients to, to help them understand this?
Jordan: [8:37:57 AM] no we do not provide documentation on that.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:39:37 AM] That’s a shame. I know of a great number of podcasters who are loading all their episodes on your servers. Sure, they have small audiences now. However, I fear the day that they get picked up on digg.com or, Heaven forbid, they get invited on to come on the Oprah show to talk about their business. I assume that if this were to happen, we’ll see many a Blue Host site go dark.
Cliff Ravenscra..: [8:40:49 AM] Just praying they won’t be on my shared hosting account server ;)

So there you have it. Blue Host doesn’t even want a single episode of an MP3 file on their site. Of course this is true of EVERY “website” hosting provider that I’ve ever had a similar conversation with.

Bottom line for podcasters: There is “no documentation” that says that you can’t or that you should’t host your mp3 files on your hosting account. If your show only has about a 100 subscribers or so, it should never really be a big deal. Though, if you ever get to the point where you have 50 or more episodes and then you get some sort of major publicity and people go back and download all your episodes, then you could run into some potential “billing issues” for CPU cycles, among other things. I started my Podcast Answer Man podcast as a hobby just over four years ago. Today, it’s turned into a main outlet for my full-time career in podcasting. Approximately 20 to 30 new people find this site in Google and download EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of this podcast, which as of the time that I’m writing this, is 152 episodes. Just something to think about.

ONE MORE THING: I think I should note that I still have my Godaddy hosting account. I have a lot of other websites, like gspn.tv, that I operate off of it. I could see me making the full transfer one of these days. However, for now, I’m content with just migrating sites over one at a time, as my free time allows.

  • Cliff, since you seem so happy about Blue Host I thought I would look into it a little more. I have been having a an issue with my current host where they say my sites all on the same account his a CPU limit. They say it has to do with plugins doing processes and when it hits that limit my sites go down.

    I'm curious to know if you have had any issues like this with Blue Host?
  • Kyle, Wow, sounds like such a typical website hosting company response. Listen, when you go with "shared hosting" you are bound to run into issues from time to time. It's just a fact of life.

    However, when they start happening frequently or without swift resolution, then it may be time to consider a switch.

    I have hosting with GoDaddy.com for gspn.tv and a few other sites and I DESPISE THEM. I run into a MAJOR issue with them about once every 18 months. Each time that I got to the point where I'm ready to switch those sites to a new provider (approximately a 40 hour job), they resolve the issue.

    When I launched http://VirtualAssistantPodcast.com, I decided that moving forward, I would use BlueHost. I went with them because I've worked with A TON OF HOSTING PROVIDERS with the vast number of consulting clients that I have. Each time I worked with BlueHost, I was EXTREMELY IMPRESSED! It was a total NO BRAINER for me to move to them.

    Today, Both http://VirtualAssistantPodcast.com & http://PodcastAnswerMan.com are both running on BlueHost. Eventually, I'll move everything over to them.

    Now, BlueHost is still "shared hosting." I will say that in the past several months, there was a 15 minute period of time that my site was not accessible. The database server on my hosted account simply needed to be reset. BlueHost had already fixed the issue and my site was working before I had a chance to pick up the phone and call them.

    Yes, hosting accounts, even the ones who say they have you on their UNLIMITED PLAN, do indeed, have a limit on the number of CPU cycles. But come on, saying that your WordPress site is maxing those cycles out seems a little far reaching to me.

    I can't promise you that you'll never experience an issue with BlueHost. However, I can tell you that I have personally set up more than 100 clients with them and they have all been as satisfied as I am with them.

    Please do note, I do get an affiliate check from BlueHost each month. In fact, this month, I got a check for $375 from them. Just wanted to be up front and honest about my financial benefit should you choose to sign up with them using my links in this blog post. I am a salesman after all. With that said, I am an honest one who would never recommend them if I didn't believe everything I've said about them.

    Hope this helps!

    Cliff
  • Cliff, having listened to you over the past year, I trust what you have to say. Your response time is unbelievable, considering the amount you do and it very helpful.

    I guess another question I would have would be, will you put all you sites under on account? I think that is my current problem, I have upwards to 9 wordpress installs running under one account, which makes me more likely to hit the CPU limit. That being said they say they can support multiple wordpress installs...

    Thanks for you help, it is always valued.
  • Kyle, while BlueHost may tell you that you can put a TON of WordPress installs on one account. I really think there could be a limit to how many I would want to put on one "shared hosting" account.

    How many would be that limit? That's a good question. I'd say it depends on the amount of site traffic to each site and the type of data that each page pulls up and how many times that audience pulls up new pages.

    If it were simply 9 blogs that each have about 1,000 to 10,000 hits a month, you "should" be okay. However, if you have a few sites that are getting hit with 60,000 hits a month, you may want to split up the nine installs between two accounts.

    I assume that if you are podcasting, that you ARE NOT serving your .mp3 files off your shared hosting account. This could be a very big issue.

    Hope this helps!

    Cliff
  • Piscotikus
    Quick question about libsyn, the monthly storage feature is the amount of content that the POCASTER uploads per month, correct?

    Am I also correct in assuming there is unlimited DOWNLOADING by listeners?
  • You are correct that the downloads are TRULY UNLIMITED. Each file takes up that file's size in your allotted space on the server for 30 days. After each file is 30 days old, it automatically rolls over to the archived servers and frees that amount of space up again on your account.

    Hope this helps.

    Cliff
  • Jerry
    So as someone who plans to have his own website for his podcast in the future let me make sure I understand correctly. In addition to a web hosting service such as Blue Host, it's recommended that I also purchase a package at libsyn in order to store my podcast files. Is this correct?
  • It is not "required" that you have a separate media host for your .mp3 files. However, it is "recommended" if you think there is any chance that you are going to do more than 10 episodes and might one day gain more than 1,000 subscribers to your podcast.
  • Jerry
    Thank You Cliff. When I do set my web site up I'm going to go with Blue Host and will click on the link from this site so you get credit. If it weren't for reading this site I may not have learned about them to begin with, so thanks!
  • Jerry, Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. When you get a site up and going, let me know to check it out!
  • mhgl
    Cliff, I think that you will be very happy with Bluehost. I've been using them for about five years now and I've never had any major issues, and every minor issue was quickly and pleasantly resolved by their support staff.
  • Indeed, this has always been my experience with them as I have worked on many client websites. It's all been sunshine so far. ;)
  • Connie and Sheila
    Cliff:, I really appreciate your comments and have one of my own. If and when the sunshine does fade, remember it has to rain in order for us to have rainbows.

    Your willingness to share information is very much appreciated. The BlueHost account you set-up for us is awesome and we are having so much fun with our new podcast.
    THANKS CLIFF!
    Connie & Sheila
  • Thanks Connie & Sheila! You two are such a blessing to work with! I love working with clients who have both Vision and Passion! You both will go far!
  • Thanks for posting this Cliff, and thanks Andy and Justin for the great comments. I'll be checking back on this posting, not only to watch the Thesis modifications take place, but also to see more great comments.

    This whole WP Thesis theme seems to really be getting traction. I may use it for my wife's site's redesign. And I may use BlueHost as well!
  • Wayne, I'm extremely happy with both! Making my life easier day by day!
  • andytraub
    FYI for folks who want to handle their affiliate info in one place - www.CommissionJunction.com is where I handle mine. For instance - Bluehost pays about $65 for signing affiliates up through their system. Commission Junction pays $90. They pay monthly...I've made hundreds using Commission Junction.
  • Andy, Thanks for this additional insight. I'll look into changing that.
  • The site is looking good Cliff. Here's some code for your header if you're interested.


    /* Change the filename of your image to reflect the actual header's file name */
    .custom #header #logo a { display: block; height: 127px; width: 959px; background: url('http://www.coachradio.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/banner-opt6.jpg') no-repeat; outline: none; }

    /* This line gets rid of the site title & tagline by casting them out to far left field */
    .custom #header #logo, .custom #header #tagline { text-indent: -9999px; }

    /* This is a bit of a kludge, but it seems to work. */
    .custom #header #tagline { height: 0; }

    /* This line removes the padding from the header so that the background image sits close to the nav menu, the bottom border of the header, and the sides of the content */
    .custom #header { padding: 0; margin-bottom:20px; }
  • Justin, I really appreciate your suggestions. It's a blessing to know those who have journeyed a ways down a path ahead of you and are willing to help show you the way.

    Thanks for being that type of friend!
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