Avoid Bluehost at all costs! I have been trying to cancel all my services and terminate my account for over a year. However, Bluehost deliberately kept a "free" add-on active (SiteLock Lite) in my backend without my consent, which completely glitched their system, bypassed my cancellation requests, and triggered an unauthorized renewal charge of… Read more
my hosting plan in September 2025.
I have not used their services for a year, yet they are holding my money hostage. When I contacted support, both the agents and the supervisor hid behind their "30-day refund policy," completely ignoring the fact that the only reason this is outside the 30 days is due to their own systemic and support failures a year ago!
They refuse to take responsibility for their broken system and terrible interface. I am now forced to recover my funds through a bank chargeback and file official complaints with the BBB and FTC. Terrible customer service and deceptive billing practices!
Terrible customer service, I am a client, unfortunately. Their people can care less if your website has problems or not. I called, spoke with a supervisor, sent email as it was requested, and after months still no resolution.
Avoid Bluehost if you need actual tech support I’ve been with Bluehost for years, but over the last four years—and especially now—their tech support has completely collapsed. My website has been down since mid-December. Every call or email references a case number, yet each time I contact support, they have no record of prior conversations and… Read more
force me to start from square one. When it finally feels like progress is being made, the case is closed, a new support agent takes over, and the entire process resets. I currently have 7+ case numbers for the same unresolved issue. No follow-through. No accountability. Nothing is ever actually done. My site is a static site. No changes were made. In mid-December, every ProPhoto site hosted with Bluehost went down, while ProPhoto sites hosted elsewhere remained unaffected. Bluehost has still failed to identify or resolve the issue. I asked how to report the complete breakdown of their case management and was told there is no one to escalate to. I paid for a full year of hosting and will lose at least six months due to their inability—or unwillingness—to provide basic technical support. Every single page of my site is down. If you need any real support, avoid Bluehost like the plague. Their service is a joke.
Reviews with attachments
Frankly - THIEVES – Charged twice for a domain SSL - refused to refund the second payment because "the term had already started". Absolute scammers. DO NOT USE THESE THIEVES - EVER
Great tech undermined by shocking admin! – I went with BlueHost in 2023 for ‘Basic hosting for 12 months 2023-2024’ at AU$52.45. SiteLock Security and Let's Encrypt SSL were both Free. Very attractive! I received a notice of renewal from BlueHost for 2024-2025 that listed Renewal of domain name AU$33.76; Renewal of Privacy + Protection AU$23.03; Renewal of BASIC HOSTING = AU$220.90.… Read more
That’s right. $220.90!
Now, stupidly, I paid the $322.33 – but I was really annoyed at the big hike in hosting. I decided to get onto the BlueHost Chat line to complain. After a long and stressful hour that began with various processes of authentication, then the back and forth of typing, I was offered a discount ‘by the billing team’ down to $154 for hosting – but the process of receiving the credit apparently involved BlueHost re-gaining access to my account…which already proved to be like giving a kid the keys to a candy store!
In the BlueHost interface you can set Auto-renewal. When renewal is due, BlueHost will go back into the bank account you originally paid from and withdraw the payment. I’m not comfortable having anyone else siphon funds out of my bank account so in the BlueHost renewal interface I set renewal at manual. As a further safeguard I used PayPal as the intermediary for the renewal, believing that this would give me another level of control. However without me being aware of it, BlueHost somehow ‘set themselves up’ on my PayPal account for AutoPay.
However, having paid the account total of AU$322.33 for the renewal via PayPaI, a day later I received an email from PayPal that I’d ‘made a further payment’ of $24.19 USD ($38.96 AUD). I logged in to PayPal and found that BlueHost had accessed my PayPal-linked account and taken the money…with no description nor indication of what it was for. We call that ‘theft’ in Australia. They probably call it ‘free enterprise’ in the States.
According to the Financial Rights Legal Centre (AU) ‘a merchant cannot deduct money from your account without a properly authorised Direct Debit Request.’ However that’s in Australia. When the company is based in the US, how is it enforceable? And regardless of a company being an offshore entity, should they not be required to operate according to the laws of the countries they choose to extend their services into?
I logged into PayPal and found all these BlueHost logos in an Automatic Payments section. (See the JPEG attached.) I usually only use the PayPal interface to pay something so I have no idea how these ‘autopay’ settings all ended up in there – but I cancelled them all. The settings seem to have provided some sort of portal that allowed BlueHost to dip their greedy little digits into my hard-earned cash without my knowledge nor authorisation.
Take-away One here is, if you’re with them, negotiate with them before you pay any ridiculously exorbitant amount. After pasting in my pre-typed complaint, providing the security pin, getting their emailed verification code from my registered email address, I got someone or something typing back and asking what I wanted. (Ironically there's a lot more security involved in them talking to a customer than there is in them accessing customer bank accounts!) I pasted in the pre-typed complaint again and eventually got their standard message “…completely understand your concern regarding pricing…value of our services…appreciate you hosting with us… renewal rates increased recently due to upgrades…better hosting…etc. etc.” I responded ‘Better to hold customers in the long term than give them reason to start shopping around for a better deal…as I will be.” That was when the discount was offered.
A day later I received an email from PayPal advising that BlueHost were refunding funds back onto my credit card. I engaged with Chat again and advised that I didn't want BlueHost accessing my account for any reason…and to halt the refund. The Chat response was that the refund was cancelled with the assurance my web site would remain posted. (I took screenshots of the conversation progressively.) A few days later the refund landed in my credit card account.
OK, being fair, BlueHost deserve five stars for providing a tremendously secure and stable hosting platform with a ton of add-ons and functionality. My website is a basic static site that serves as a portfolio for artwork. There's no ecommerce requirement. No bells and whistles. It just sits there. Most of the BlueHost interface is even too complicated for me to understand. However the heavy-hitter webmasters must love it!
The area of BlueHost operations that is dragging down the entire brand, generating reviews that are highly likely to be driving potential customers to other hosting companies, is THE BILLING SIDE of the business. That is compounded by the dubious veracity of Chat support. It's provided by apparently English Second Language speakers who seem to respond with anything that will reap positive 'consultant' feedback at the end of the 'chat.' Various of the pre-prepared paste-in Chat responses are repeated phrases that are grammatically incorrect.
BlueHost spends a lot of money on advertising, promotion and special deals to lure in new customers. As long as existing (and exiting) customers are posting reviews that reflect billing bungles and perceived fraud, the quality of their service is impacted. The credibility of the brand overall is tarnished in the most destructive way. All of the advertising and all of the effort and innovation of the tech-clever front-end is effectively being sabotaged by the most customer critical part of the business – dealing with our money! Any hint of lack of responsible, accurate, ethical and legal customer finance processes will drive anyone away.
BEWARE - THEY WILL AUTO RENEW DESPITE YOU SETTING IT UP NOT TO. AND NO REFUNDS DESPITE CONTACTING ABOUT IT – Here's a breakdown of Bluehost. Had website with them a bit. Then I realised they started to charge me weird sitelock and another code lock fee on top of that so I decided to cancel. These fees were exhorbitant too. It's a total rip. They decided to charge an extra $150/year on top of whatever you're paying anyhow. Its incredible. No idea this was… Read more
charged. I dont even think I ever got an email with an invoice about this fee.
Then I disabled "Autorenewal" on all services. and my credit card in their system had expired anyhow so I thought I'd be fine.
I kept getting emails about renewal but never did renew. And then shortly after another one of these emails - which I ignored. I was suddenly invoiced and billed. I contacted them RIGHT AWAY. They said they would refund and send an email and they have not. I just my banking details and its been more than 10 business days and nothing. I'll have to charge back with my bank now as they're charging me for sitelock and some other service for the new year when I would not even have any more hosting service with them.
You can see my exchange with their rep [Name Removed] or what have you. Be careful. Do not use them.
Latest follow-ups
This went on for 2½ hours, and in that 2½ hours I had to repeat myself no less than four times. I was sent links that wouldn’t open and ended up speaking to different people on the same thread who couldn’t even go back and see what I’d already… Read more
provided.
If they’re running my service and can’t get these basic fundamentals right, no wonder I’ve got problems. They couldn’t even understand the names of the people that were put forward, and then they passed me on to a manager.
Absolute waste of time. I’m taking my business elsewhere — I’d prefer to pay more.
Follow-up · This company only gets worse. They don't deserve a star at all.
Recent reviews
Been with BH for 10 years. Unfortunately, their services have eroded over the last 3-4 years and getting progressively worse. I am actively looking to leave BH.
Two charges on my credit card for Bluehost. I have been in contact with them since the 6th November regarding $500 worth of charges. I have chased weekly, over and over and over again. They have no record of my email or account details and yet still havent looked into the charges. They emailed back today - 8 WEEKS LATER to ask for a screenshot of… Read more
the charges. I have sent these details to them four times. I have asked for a complants email - no response. I have asked for an update daily - no response, delay tactics by asking for screenshots again. FRAUD & THEFT!
The takeaway is the Bluehost migration team is incompetent, poorly trained and dishonest. Bluehost may want to rename themselves Blue Ghost. Shame on Bluehost for wasting my time, please do not hire Bluehost to migrate your website, they do not know what they are doing. Please refund my $149.99 for your failed website migration effort. I wanted to… Read more
get my website out of Ipage because Ipage does not answer phone calls or do chat, so when something goes wrong with your website or you have a question, you pay money to them with no service. I decided to migrate my small business website, which is a digital business card to Bluehost. I have a simple website for my accounting and tax practice that just shows who I am, where I am and what I can do. I called Bluehost and got a gentleman from North Carolina right away who sold me on Bluehost performing the website migration. Now down the rabbit hole. Within a few hours I got an automated message from Bluehost saying there were a lot of errors with the migration, but there was no explanation as to what that meant. I followed up with the sales guy who connected me with technical support, in the Philippines, still with no one explaining what was going on. This started 9/23/25 and they gave up helping me 10/3/25. My website showed as a bunch of code on the worldwide web for all of the world to see. I called the Bluehost sales guy in North Carolina many times and left many messages leading up to 10/3/25. He stopped answering the phone and did not return my calls. This left me trying to get Bluehost technical support in the Philippines. What I discovered in the process is that Bluehost does not know how to fix the migration errors and at the same time blamed me the customer for not having up to date Themes and Plug Ins. After I requested my money back for the migration of $149.99, they said they would not refund the money. One later discovery when talking with the Bluehost staff in the Philippines is that the sales guy in North Carolina failed to let me know that my domain needed to be migrated as well from Ipage. This was after he had me turn off the auto renew for the domain in Ipage which was set to expire soon. Sloppy! I had Bluehost migrate my domain over from Ipage to Bluehost which was easy, but I discovered that 10/3/25. During the domain migration process Bluehost failed to inform me that my email would go down and that I needed to redirect my email through a new IP address. I spent another week and a half looking for a website developer locally in Baltimore where I live and operate my business and found a nice small local business who was able to go into my website history that is saved online and restore my website within 2 days. My website was finally up and running without strange code 10/17/25. Shame on Bluehost for wasting my time, please do not hire Bluehost to migrate your website, they do not know what they are doing. Please refund my $149.99 for your failed website migration effort. The take away is the Bluehost migration team is incompetent, poorly trained and dishonest.
I've had a disappointing experience with Bluehost - after ending my website, months later, I get charged for my domain name by them - before the renewal date. When I contact them, to ask for a refund because we haven't even got to the renewal date and I don't have a need for any of their services any more, they say they can't refund it. Really frustrating to be paying for things I don't need or want before they are even up for renewal.
They suck. They made up an email address and started sending emails regarding my account info. How would I receive any documents if you made up an email that does not exist. Then the name of my business they added numbers to it so couldn't use that. Then a year later after not using the service for a year. They start charging my card. Um no. Your… Read more
reviews suck and you could care less. CS agent snotty and was chewing gum. Can we say sloppy? Just another company that shouldn't exist!
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They give you a great first time offer to host your site, then they jack up the price on renewal to the tune of 150%. They used to be affordable, now they want $1100 to host for 2 years. Extortionists.
The experience with Bluehost is: Lots of problems when you have your website online; Problems that you drag out with your website, because they're never resolved; You never speak to the same person and the file doesn't follow up... some barely speak English. Then one day you decide to delete your website because you're shutting down your… Read more
business:
1: You haven't had a website online for over a year; 2: You canceled all your domain names for 2 years; 3: You wrote 3 times to their so-called experts (I have all the screenshots of the conversations), telling them that you weren't renewing their services and that you had turned off all your domain name renewals on your account, as well as your main name. 4: Your credit card has expired;
Well, guess what? These thieves keep forcing your credit card to charge for SSL, and they're still asking you to rate their service!
Bluehost is a nightmare! And I'm being polite.
They are working with a company named Free Website Guys to fraud people into paying for webhosting with them. And of course they are not real. Don't be fooled, they also offer affiliate programs, so dont refer your friends and if your friends refer you, inform them.
I registered my website with them. Then I cancelled it and used Crazy domain. Bluehost charged me US200 over next two years for SSL Certificate! I never used their service and I lost USD200. They are fraud.
Useless, signed up for hosting. Use the exact same platform as Crazy Domains (also avoid at all costs). Asked them to simply migrate a Wordpress Site, said they could do it, spent 1 hr 30m trying, turns out they couldn't do it. Asked for a refund.
Not good – Hosted my site without too much issue for a year - then when it became infected was given the absolute run around by support, told a bunch of conflicting things and refused refund. I have now paid for 12 months hosting of which I think I got 2 good months. Had to trash the site and start again . Do not go there.
Run away - Run fast – I've seen so many people recommending them and I never thought the service would be what it is. my experience has been appaling. THey are an absolute joke. their "24x7" service is an embarassement - the agents do several conversations at the same time, meaning you sometimes sit there waiting 5 minutes for an answer, the most of the time, is wrong.… Read more
They have no idea what they are talking about. You pay for a service but then get serve ads within your CMS which is a new level of low, and they don't give you what you buy. I but unlimited emails, however they are telling me each mail box is limited to 100mb (That's like 3 pictures) -
WORST SERVICE PROVIDERS AND SCAMMERS – DON'T EVEN CONSIDER THEM. This is a SCAMMING company as it is mostly the case with Indian Companies. They charge for services that you never even considered. After reviewing their charges, to host a website for 1 year with them (domain name and Hosting) has cost me over $260. A service that I usually get for 30 - 60 USD even when using GoDaddy. They use HOPELESS AND INEFFECTIVE people just to get you mad while trying to bring your issue across.
Total JOKE! – The worse experience I've had in my life dealing with a hosting provider. Use Siteground they're 100x easier and better. The sales rep that sold me the package told me he had purchased the domain and got everything setup on wordpress, and then everything just died and nothing was working, then the next customer service rep told me that the… Read more
domain name was not purchased and I had to purchase it externally . After 3 days of cocking around, I quit and just gave up and requested a refund! Total waste of time. If you don't believe me, the company probably has the recorded phone calls, listen to sales rep B++++++ who misled me 100%.
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Absolute thieves - DO NOT USE – I have had the absolute WORST experience with Bluehost. I set up a website 4 years ago and purchased a 1 year domain hosting. My website has been dormant for three years and I never ever use it, and all of a sudden I have been charged 350 GBP on 'auto-renewal'. I NEVER permitted them to do this and when I got in touch they gaslit me and said they… Read more
sent me warning emails which they categorically did not. I asked for a refund multiple times and was never even listened to. I actually cannot believe they are allowed to take so much money from my account FRAUDULENTLY and get away with it scot free. STAY AWAY from them!!!!!
Terrible Customer Service and Product Quality – I've been a Bluehost customer since 2010, but my experience with them—and their parent company, Newfold Digital—has gone from bad to worse over the years. Upgrading to a dedicated server was supposed to be a game-changer for performance and speed. Instead, it turned into a nightmare. After paying $100 per site for migration, my websites were down… Read more
for an entire week. Once they were finally back up, speed tests revealed my site was actually slower than before.
Twelve months into my expensive 3-year plan, things deteriorated even further. My site started experiencing major issues, and despite hours of troubleshooting with Bluehost's support team over a period of 3 months—alongside my own team of 4 web techs—they couldn’t resolve the problems. Their "solution" was to blame outdated hardware and pressure me to upgrade again.
When I requested to remain on the same dedicated server plan but simply move to updated hardware with better resources, they gave me two unacceptable options:
1. Forfeit the $1,100 remaining on my current plan and pay more for modest improvements. 2. Upgrade to an outrageously expensive plan, almost doubling my costs, and with no option to ever downgrade.
This level of greed and inflexibility was the final straw. Rather than throw more money at a company with such poor customer service and hosting quality, I walked away and ate the $1,100 loss.
I would not recommend Bluehost or Newfold Digital to anyone. Their upselling tactics, lack of transparency, and inability to deliver on promises make them one of the worst hosting providers I’ve ever dealt with. Stay away.
Stay away from this company – Absolutely useless customer service, AI crashes and doesn’t work, no as user friendly as they sell it to you. Shamble of a business, avoid at all costs
no australian Customer support – after reading the reviews and attempting to contact Bluehost, I am glad that new did not as it appears that there is NO customer service at all
WORST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EVER!!! – WORST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EVER!!! I'm only leaving 1 star because I can't leave a zero!! Absolute thieves, they advertise "cheap" hosting, but come renewal time you pay over what the service is worth. STAY AWAY!! I'm in the process of migrating to an Australian ISP and I made a mistake by not migrating all of data before my renewal date and now… Read more
they will not allow me access or retrieve my remaining data unless I "renew". That is the whole point of moving so I don't have to renew. I'm unwilling to renew because that would mean sharing my credit card details with them again and I've already been "stung" by them with an exorbitant auto-renew. I feel like I am being held to ransom.
Do not purchase from BlueHost – Terrible service. Three days after purchase I am still chasing up an invoice to be issued, and I was charged for the 'free' 1st year domain. The chat communication system is very poor. I would like to know where to make a complain further and have this company reviewed for lack of invoicing.
Mysterious renewals, no refund after cancelling, unable to contact – Mysterious renewal of SSL even after I cancelled it about a year ago. Said I would be refunded but almost two weeks later nothing yet. Customer service is atrocious - their 'Chat now' buttons do not work. It would seem they want you to call but since it can get expensive (especially since you might be calling an international number AND they will put you on hold) they probably hope you won't.
Bluehost are thieves! – Bluehost are thieves! My recent experience with Bluehost was disappointing for several reasons. I had difficulty getting my domains returned when needed, even after I purchased them for a year, causing delays and complications for my business. They essentially locked my account, then deleted it without any warning or notice, without telling me the… Read more
reason why, and then afterwards kept my purchased domains for themselves. They essentially stole the domains that I bought. Which, in turn, caused me to lose a lot of money. The customer support team was unprofessional and inefficient, often providing delayed responses and lacking actionable solutions. Additionally, there was inconsistency in the knowledge and advice provided by the support agents, leading to wasted time and frustration. I would speak with a different agent each morning, and they would always promise the issue would be resolved at the end of the day, but it never gets resolved, even with the constant reassurance. Overall, Bluehost showed a considerable gap in customer service, technical support, and professionalism. Bluehost claims they care the most about their customers, but I found that to be a complete lie after dealing with their support team for weeks. I would advise caution to those considering Bluehost for their hosting needs and suggest looking into alternative providers. Case number is:S-2587982
Terrible service – Horrible experience. I want to downgrade my plan, as I don't need unlimited hosting. But I am told that the only way to do this is to start a new plan and transfer everything manually. How stupid.
BlueRoast – The rage. Oh my goddd these people will make even the most patient wanna slam their forehead into their desk. They took our whole website down because english isn't their first language and their misunderstood something. It was a mission to get them to put it back up and we had to pay a fee before they would. Now we are moving swiftly over to… Read more
VentraIP and bluehost is making every step (as usual) so difficult. It's like they are trying to trap us with them. Ask a question, they will send automated messages back saying they can't help, then try again the next day with a different representative and get what you need in a few minutes. Stay away at all costs, this company will make you feel scammed constantly.
Bluehost - Avoid at all costs! – Two weeks ago Blue Host automatically billed me for $900.00 Australian for web hosting even though I removed my websites from their hosting in 2023. To dispute this charge I have to be able to access my account. This I have tried but they tell me my admin email address is wrong, they say my account email address is a Gmail account - I've never… Read more
owned a Gmail account! Ive now spent 10 days trying to change my account email address so I can dispute this charge and appear to be getting nowhere.
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