I would like to make a comparison between Dreamhost and Bluehost based on my personal experience of using them for my websites. I signed up for Dreamhost at price of less than $10 for first year of web hosting plan during the Independence Day promotion. However, I transferred to Bluehost after hosting my websites for one year at Dreamhost because the web hosting fee is high upon renewal.
Control panel
Dreamhost provides their in-house control panel while Bluehost is using CPanel. However, Dreamhost provides the function to import CPanel into your web hosting account. I would say control panel of both Dreamhost and Bluehost are user- friendly and you would be able to use them effortlessly in a short time frame.
Customer Support
I have to say that customer support of both Bluehost and Dreamhost are superb and fast. Their customer service officers are very patient in solving the problems of even the least experienced webmaster like me.
Price
The hosting fee of Dreamhost is $8.95 per month while Bluehost costs $6.95 per month. Lower price is the main reason why I moved from Dreamhost to Bluehost. In order to maintain a profitable online business, I need to keep my costs low. However, I am fully satisfied with the service of Dreamhost. I may move back to Dreamhost should I need a virtual private server in future. After moving from one web host to another, I found that it is not a difficult task at all especially with the assistance from web hosting companies.
Visit www.bluehost.com to find out more!
One plan vs multiple types of web hosting
Bluehost only concentrates on providing one and only kind of web hosting plan to the customers. On the other hand, Dreamhost provides shared web hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting. I would say Dreamhost is more convenient if you need to upgrade from shared hosting.
Green Hosting
Dreamhost is a green host that helps you to reduce your carbon footprint on this lovely Earth. Many web hosts are using the green concept as a selling point. However, Bluehost is not one of them.
Period of money back guarantee
The money back guarantee period of Bluehost and Dreamhost are 30 days and 97 days respectively. 30 days money back guarantee seems to be an industry standard in web hosting business. However, Dreamhost brings this standard to a higher level. Furthermore, a Dreamhost tries to gain a competitive edge by offering both two weeks free trial and 97 days money back guarantee.
Website Builder
Dreamhost does not provide a website builder like what Bluehost does. However, this will not be an issue to you if you are building your website using content management system such as WordPress.
Choosing a suitable web host can be a tough choice for most people. By focusing on the features you need and price you are willing to pay, you will be able to shortlist a couple of web hosting companies. From there, follow your feeling and choose one of them. Finally, create your websites and make use of the money back guarantee if you really need to.
How to transfer from Blogspot to WordPress
Many bloggers started off from Blogspot of Google because it is free, user- friendly and it does not have to be self- hosted. If you have reached another stage of blogging and have the budget, you can easily move from Blogger to WordPress. WordPress is another blogging platform that is used by thousands of bloggers. There is a large community backing the development of WordPress. Therefore, you can easily find solutions to wordpress-related problems. There are two basic types of WordPress, wordpress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is similar to blogspot as you do not have to buy web hosting in order to use them. WordPress.org is free but you need buy web hosting plan in order to host it. However, web hosting is cheap these days especially if you use a discount coupon code.
I will provide a tutorial on how to transfer your blog from Blogspot to Wordress.org.
1) Sign up for a web hosting plan. It is recommended to start from shared hosting as it is affordable and most web hosts provide wordpress installation in just a few clicks. Most plans provide free top level domain name forever as long as you use their web hosting plan.
To run WordPress, your web host just need to meet the following criterias:
- PHP version 4.3 or greater
- MySQL version 4.0 or greater
The following are a few recommended web hosting companies as they install WordPress in just a few clicks.
Bluehost. This blog that you are reading now is hosted by Bluehost and I am satisfied with their customer support.
Ipage offers web hosting plan that costs only $3.50 per month. It includes $125 worth of free Google, Yahoo! & Facebook Marketing Credits.
2) After signing up for a web hosting plan, go to the control panel where you manage every aspects of your web hosting account. If you are using CPanel, go to install the script of WordPress.
3) Choose the version of wordpress you want to install and the directory where you need to install wordpress. Click the install button and it’s done. It is as simple as that.
4) After you successfully installed WordPress on your web hosting account, go to Import under the Tools tab. On the import screen you will see a list of different blogging platforms you can import from (Blogger is top on the list). Choose to import from Blogger.
5) You will then be prompted to install the Blogger-importer plugin. This plugin is needed to automate the process of importing blog posts from Blogger. This is the power of WordPress.org as it has numerous plugins that simplify different tasks of blogging.
Then, click the Install Now button.
6) After installing the plugin, you need to authorize WordPress to access your blogger account. Thereafter, log into your Google Account where your Blogspot blog is located. You will then be transferred back to WordPress where you need to choose the blog that you need to import into WordPress.
After importing your blog from Blogspot, you will find your Blogspot posts in the posts section of WordPress. Everything is done.