BlueHost is much better than IXWebHosting for all the web hosting equipment, technology, features, performance, reliability, technical support and price.
This is a simple comparison data that can clearly reveal the huge difference between BlueHost and IXWebHosting. BlueHost was founded in 1996 and IXWebHosting was founded in 1999, but now, BlueHost has over 2 million users, but IXWebHosting only has approximately 80,000 users, and BlueHost is still fast growing with over 20,000 new customers added for each month, but IXWebHosting customers are dropping now that the decreasement started from 2009.
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Technology
When our editors in-depth research why BlueHost rocked and IXWebHosting dropped in the recent 5 years, we found BlueHost is a technology-oriented company indeed.
As we interviewed with the BlueHost founder Matt Heaton, compared to almost all the other shared web hosting providers simply renting more servers for the increasing users, BlueHost insisted on taking the technology as the most important part rather than the profit in the short term from the beginning. E.G. BlueHost has invested over a million USD for customizing Linux kernel to prevent the heavy users and bad neighbors of shared servers since 2009, a million USD for developing SimpleScripts that allows users to 1-Click install more than 150 applications in 30 seconds since 2007, 20+ million USD for building 3 dedicated data centers in Provo Utah by themselves utilizing the latest cutting-edge facilities and network equipment since 2010. This should the reason why BlueHost could make everything under the control, although they’re having over 20,000+ servers serving for over 2 million users.
Watch the following video learning more about the technology @ BlueHost
IXWebHosting does the web hosting business quite different to BlueHost. By now, IXWebHosting is still providing their customers with the web hosting control panel HSphere that was developed in 2000 without refactor and enhancement in the past 12 years. instead, to keep the competition ability in the marketplace, IXWebHosting chooses to offer web hosting extras like the free dedicated IP addresses, because with the customers lost, now IXWebHosting has more and more pending IP addresses.
Based on our evaluation, BlueHost web hosting technology is 5 year ahead IXWebHosting at least. Read more about the BlueHost hosting technology here.
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Price
BlueHost only provides a single all-in-one web hosting plan named BlueHost Professional starting at $6.95/mo regularly, but now they’re offering a special 44% discount for $3.95/mo for all visitors going through this promotional link. IXWebHosting has 3 web hosting packages named Expert Plan, Unlimited Pro Plan and Business Plus Plan. The essential difference of the 3 IXWebHosting plans is the number of dedicated IPs and free domain names, but not the performance (you will learn in the performance comparison chapter).
Billing Cycle | BlueHost | IX Expert | IX Unlimited Pro | IX Business Plus |
---|---|---|---|---|
3 years | $3.95/mo | $3.95/mo | $7.95/mo | $7.95/mo |
2 years | $4.95/mo | $3.95/mo | $7.95/mo | $7.95/mo |
1 year | $5.95/mo | $4.95/mo | $8.95/mo | $8.95/mo |
Free Domains | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
Free IPs | 0 | 2 | 15 | 3 |
Google AdWords Credits (Free) | $100 | No | No | No |
Go BlueHost | NOT Recommended | NOT Recommended | NOT Recommended |
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Technical Features
BlueHost supports cutting-edge technologies on Linux planform, including PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl, etc, but IXWebHosting only supports the PHP 5.2.x well, as the following table for the advantage of BlueHost at technical features.
Features | BlueHost | IXWebHosting |
---|---|---|
PHP | 5.2.x/5.3.x | 5.2.x |
Ruby on Rails | ||
Python | ||
Perl | ||
Shell Access (SSH) | ||
Custom PHP.ini | ||
Custom Cron Jobs | ||
Automated App Installer | ||
Go BlueHost | NOT Recommended |
Particularly, without the support for custom cron jobs, many famous open source applications cannot be run correctly with IXWebHosting. E.G. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal all need the custom crob jobs to automatically generate the Google-friendly sitemap. If you’re looking for a Linux-based web host that not only used for a 3-page website, IXWebHosting is not the choice and the BlueHost works the best.
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Performance
BlueHost uses 3 data centers with high performace edual quad processor servers. Therefore, our monitoring shows that the company has achieved really good results in uptime and speed.
IXWebHosting chooses a secondary data center located in Columbus. The performance is actually approximately 148% slower than BlueHost in our editors’ in-depth comparison for the same WordPress site hosted with BlueHost and IXWebHosting, seeing the performance statistics chart as below.
We also found there is no significantly difference between the cheap IXWebHosting Expert Plan and the expensive IXWebHosting Unlimited Pro Plan on the performance. Based on our editors’ analysis, this is caused by IXWebHosting not having an available technology which can strictly allocate and control the server resources for different account types. So, simply, choosing IXWebHosting Unlimited Pro Plan, you’re choosing the 3 domain names and 15 dedicated IPs with the hosting plan, but do you really need so many domains and IPs?
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Technical Support
The technical support of IXWebHosting makes people impatient. When there is a problem, even when you’re pulling the hair white for your site errors that are their fault, don’t expect to speak with a live person to help things quicker and easier. Their telephone is alway busy and the live chat is alway pending for over 10 minutes. The only way is that you have to create a ticket and wait for several hours whichever priority you set for the ticket.
BlueHost has over 400 well-trained technical support staffs. Choosing BlueHost, the customers never disappointed with the answers and resolutions. BlueHost has the terrific 24×7 US-based technical support via phone, live chat, email and the ticket system.
BlueHost VS IXWebHosting > Conclusion
IXWebHosting is not a right choice. Their hosting includes many extras for eyes, but they don’t make the website hosting service satisfied fundamentally. So, We highly recommend you going with BlueHost for personal and small businesses.
By the way, our sister site BestHostingSearch.NET, has received 151 BlueHost reviews from the verified customers that every review includes the rating for reliability, performance, control panel & software and technical support. Based the review statistics, the 99.2% of BlueHost customers were highly satisfied with their shared services.