Bluehost is a

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 web ho ...

and domain registration company owned by

Newfold Digital Endurance International Group, Inc. (EIG), previously named BizLand, now part of Newfold Digital, was an IT services company specializing in web hosting. The company was founded in 1997 and headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA. In 2021 ...

. 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 a ...

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and

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. Bluehost is the longest-running host on WordPress.org’s recommended list (since 2005). It has been one of the 20 largest web hosts for the last decade and was collectively hosting over 2 million domains in 2010.

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 primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

. CPU throttling (at Bluehost and similar hosting services) refers to the process of reducing a user's

CPU usage CPU time (or process time) is the amount of time that a central processing unit (CPU) was used for processing instructions of a computer program or operating system. CPU time is measured in clock ticks or seconds. Sometimes it is useful to con ...

whenever the particular user is pulling "too much"

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

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, Inc. (EIG), previously named BizLand, now part of Newfold Digital, was an IT services company specializing in web hosting. The company was founded in 1997 and headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA. In 20 ...

. In June 2011, company founder Matt Heaton announced on his blog that he was stepping down as CEO to focus on the company hosting platform's design and technical structure, while COO Dan Handy took over as CEO. In 2013, Bluehost introduced VPS and

dedicated server A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have ...

hosting. In January 2015, Endurance International Group appointed Mike Olson as CEO of Bluehost, while Dan Handy moved to enterprise-wide mobile development for small businesses. In January 2017, the company announced that it would lay off 440 Bluehost employees at Utah, in an effort to consolidate its business to improve customer support. In 2021 the parent company Endurance International Group, merged with Web.com forming a new company, Newfold Digital, hence Bluehost became a subsidiary of Newfold Digital. In July 2023, Bluehost launched WonderSuite product which offer an AI-powered site-building guide. During

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

’s Q2 2025

earnings call An earnings call is a teleconference or webcast in which a public company discusses its financial results for a reporting period, often providing earnings guidance for future performance. The term stems from earnings per share (EPS), calculated ...

on March 10, 2025, Chairman

Larry Ellison Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman and entrepreneur who co-founded software company Oracle Corporation. He was Oracle's chief executive officer from 1977 to 2014 and is now its chief technology officer a ...

announced that

, the parent company of Bluehost and HostGator, is transitioning to

Oracle Cloud Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows th ...

alongside several other companies to enhance security and performance. In May of 2025, Bluehost launched their VPS and Dedicated servers on Oracle Cloud.

Controversies

In March 2009, Bluehost appeared in a

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

article that condemned the hosting company for censoring the

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

s 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 totalitaria ...

s. In February 2011, Bluehost, citing its terms-of-service ‘hate or violence’ clause, 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 breaches

In March 2015, Bluehost was hacked by the

Syrian Electronic Army The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA; ) was a group of hacker (computer security), computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, ...

. Also hacked were Justhost, Hostgator, Hostmonster and Fastdomain, all owned by

. 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, HostGator, iPage and OVH. The company patched the flaw within 48 hours.

References

External links

* {{Provo, Utah Web design companies of the United States 2003 establishments in Utah Companies based in Provo, Utah Companies based in Orem, Utah Web hosting Endurance International Group WordPress