February 9th, 2008
Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo… I don’t even know where to begin. I could go on for hours. This merger would be a disaster of epic proportions and I would get to see it first hand from start to finish. I guess to express my viewpoint you need to understand my thoughts on each company individually.
First Microsoft - Microsoft is a run away success story with one chapter left. It was exciting for years, but they have CLEARLY lost their way. They are trying to do so much at the same time that they fail miserably across the board. Vista is a pile of garbage, MSN is technically inferior to both Yahoo and Google and is marketed so poorly that I can’t see anything I like about the direction its going. However, the one main thing that really defines Microsoft’s decline is that they no longer care about the small individual customer and ALL their offerings showcase this ignorance. For them its all about the dollar and nothing about whats best for the user. You can’t win going forward with leaders that have that attitude. So in my mind they have already lost, we all just have to sit around and continue to watch it happen for the next 20 years (Maybe 10 if we are lucky).
Next Yahoo - Yahoo is a company I respect and admire. Yahoo’s culture is one where they actually care about the client and the customer experience. They try and treat their employees with respect and in turn those employees treat users of their vast internet resources with the same level of courtesy they are shown within their own company. Yahoo’s slow but inevitable decline comes because their product is technically inferior to what Google has to offer. They have struggled mightily to change that perception, but in the end unless something drastic happens their market share will continue to diminish quarter over quarter.
The Merger - So Microsoft a company that can’t get its ducks in a row wants twice as many ducks. Lets get serious for a minute. Microsoft CAN’T win because their viewpoint is skewed from the want the customer wants to what it wants. Microsoft believes whole heartily that the ONLY reason that it isn’t where Google is now is because they were late to the game. They sincerely believe that if they started focusing on search a few years earlier that they would be where Google is now. Thats the problem. They don’t understand that when users truly have choice that Microsoft products rarely win. Microsoft does well because of the closed nature of its business.
In five years time if Microsoft were to buy Yahoo they would have piddled away what market share Yahoo still has and only have a 45 billion dollar hole in their pocket to show for it. Heck, if they want to do it go for it because I will be the first one in line to short Microsoft stock!!
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com / Hostmonster.com
Posted in Hosting Related Issues | 9 Comments »
February 9th, 2008
It drives me crazy when I see huge companies make stupid decisions over some extra money. Almost without exception the companies that fall into these “traps” are public companies. So many public companies make HORRIBLE decisions because they try to satisfy shareholder demands and drive stock price for the very short term (3-6 months). You can’t run a streamlined successful business if your outlook is 3-6 months in the future. You can’t. Are you listening? You CAN’T!
Bluehost being a private company, and me having the benefit of unbelievably good business partners and a general manager that is both very capable and very smart has let us avoid many of these pitfalls. We constantly are looking at what will be best in the future both for the short term and the very long term. Our decisions are made based on customer demand and satisfaction, market conditions, and profitability.
We are in business to make money! However, we have sacrificed profits on numerous occasions because we knew our customers wouldn’t like it if we went in a certain direction. We have that luxury because I am not beholden to anyone but myself and my business partners who think like I do. We make enough money that our decisions aren’t affected by corporate greed that puts profits over the customer experience. You may be a Bluehost or Hostmonster fan or you may hate us, but you can’t say that we don’t put our customers first.
In the end, if you put your customers first and worry over their experience FIRST rather than scheme how to grab the most dollars you can from your subscriber base then you end up making more money in the end. Happy customers stay and bring many more customers with them. I am starting to believe that no one REALLY believes that anymore but me. I guess thats a good thing - We’ll sit at the top by ourselves wondering why no one else is sitting next to us…
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com
Posted in Hosting Related Issues | 3 Comments »
January 28th, 2008
Bluehost.com and Hostmonster.com have a CPU quota limit in place to try and mitigate the server problems that a single user or a small set of users can create. This is custom software that we have written ourselves. I know of no other shared host that has this ability to limit cpu quota by user for Linux.
The problem has been that our software was written at a time when single or dual cpus were the norm. This was the case when Bluehost first started. However, our current servers have at least 8 cpu cores. Most of our cpu intensive software is also multi-threaded and can be effectively distributed across multiple cpus effeciently.
Because modern cpus in general have more cores, run at a lower frequency, and most of our hosting software is designed to run in this type of environment it has become VERY apparent that we needed to update the way we calculated “cpu usage”.
Effective immediately (Actually as of Friday January 25th) we have altered the way we calculate CPU usage. Each user’s cap is now approximately double what we had it set to previously. Many users have complained lately that our cpu quotas were overly restrictive. I believe these changes should reduce the number of people that run into this problem by about 90%. We will continue to tweak our settings to stop only the most abusive of users on the system. This was never meant as a way to limit functionality, but rather a way to guarantee resources for servers that are shared by many users.
This should make life MUCH better for those users that have been bumping up against this limitation.
Thanks,
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com - Hostmonster.com
Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments »
January 28th, 2008
The web is many things to many people. For some it is email or chat, for others it is surfing all day, but for approximately 10% of internet users it is all about bittorrent. Bittorrent is file sharing technology that is amazing! It allows the distribution of small or often very large files to be divided among all the participating users.
This technology works better with more users participating. Where most technologies break down with an increase in user base bittorrent thrives. This technology works so well that many legit businesses use it as a means of content distribution. It also means that it is WIDELY abused for the distribution of illegal content such as movies, copyrighted music, and other media files.
Copyright issues aside I only have one big problem with bittorrent and similar technologies. They consume ENORMOUS amounts of bandwidth. When I say enormous let me explain - 5-10% of cable modem users consume more than 60% of the TOTAL bandwidth available from cable providers for Bittorrent and similar P2P file sharing technologies. Bittorrent is a pig!
This is what will happen in my opinion. First bittorrent will be ignored (Already happened), then ISPs will begin to de-prioritze bittorrent traffic in favor of more general protocols (HTTP,POP,IMAP,FTP, etc). Comcast and other ISPs are starting to do this now. Next, ISPs will try and block bittorrent all together which will fail miserably. Users will complain, content distribution companies will complain and push even more in favor of general net neutrality for all tcp protocols. Next, I believe some ISPs will try and offer internet service to customers at a discounted rate if their upload stream can’t be used with bittorrent and other p2p protocols. This will also fail miserably, but invariably some suit will sit in an office with a bunch of other suits and decide it makes sense not understanding that most internet users don’t know or care what bittorrent is, they just want their internet experience to be the same as its always been.
Finally, when everyone comes to their senses (ISPs) they will simply charge the customers for the bandwidth that they consume. If a user wants to participate in the bittorrent network they will use a lot of bandwidth and their internet bill goes up. If they don’t want to participate then they don’t have to and their base rate stays the same. This also will take away the free ride that so many companies get right now by distributing their content using bittorrent and having all the ISPs pay for their software to be distributed.
Pay for what you use? What a novel concept! I wish we could skip all the steps in between and just get to this point, but I have been around long enough to know that it simply won’t happen.
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com / Hostmonster.com
Posted in Hosting Related Issues | 7 Comments »
January 16th, 2008
So many of us are forced into making decisions at an early time in our life. These decisions vary from choice of employment, to who we marry, where we want to live, whether we want a family, and so forth.
For many these choices are easy to make and we are eager follow our chosen path, while others may find these more difficult. I see many people make the “easy” choice all the time because they are comfortable, or scared of the alternative, or just plain lazy.
The problem arises not when the choice is made, but when you are halfway down your chosen path. What do you do when you want to change your path 10 years after your choice? In most cases you can’t… Or, IF the option is available for you to change the direction you have chosen it is usually a painful and arduous process to successfully implement. It would require a new beginning, and a letting go of the familiarity of the past. It usually means leaving behind past successes (and failures) for the potential of future greatness in your new direction.
My advice - spend the time to choose the path you REALLY want before you start your journey. Know WHY you chose that path, and where you want it to go. If you don’t plan, then plan on failing.
Don’t find yourself on a road to x, when you wish you were on the road to y. You will only drive yourself crazy and put yourself in a situation that you can’t resolve.
Matt Heaton
Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments »
January 12th, 2008
There is no other way to put it. We have been having major problems since around December 20th. Bluehost and Hostmonster have been growing at an incredible rate. I believe we are now the fastest growing hosting company in the world. With that growth sometimes comes severe growing pains. In the past I have been able to mitigate much of these growing pains with a little forethought and a hard working dedicated team.
These past couple of weeks have been a perfect storm of problems for our company. First, we have never seen so many signups at one time. Many days we experienced more than 850 signups in a single day. That can wipe out even the best support departments! However, the real problem resulted from many forced upgrades that HAD to be done at this time. These upgrades were coupled with forced upgrades from Cpanel itself.
When you force 700,000+ domains to switch from PHP4 to PHP5, replace Apache 1.3x with 2.2x on all servers (The main web servers for all our clients), change every users php.ini file to work in the new environment, and throw on new versions of Cpanel (that HAD to be upgraded because of severe bugs in their software) then you know things are going to break. And break they did!!!
We had bad problems with outgoing emails being delayed (Sometimes as much as 24 hours), we had tens of thousands of users scripts break in a matter of hours, we turned many users addon domains into standalone domains for no reason except for Cpanel bugs.
We built Bluehost on the mantra that we provide the best support in the industry and that we actually CARE about the customer. We have fallen off the cliff in the last two weeks on meeting this goal. I have personally been preoccupied these last couple of weeks and haven’t given Bluehost and Hostmonster the attention they deserve. I give you my word that this will change starting today.
We have worked out most of these pressing problems that our customers have had to deal with, but I am sure there are more issues to still be resolved. Thanks for your patience, and for those that weren’t so patient I don’t blame you 
We have taken our lumps and are back on track to being the best hosting company in the world.
Although there are many contributing factors to these problems the blame of course lies at my feet. As CEO the buck stops here and so do the excuses. I will make things right!!
Thanks,
Matt Heaton / President /CEO Bluehost Inc
Posted in Uncategorized | 49 Comments »
December 31st, 2007
We use Linux on all our servers (Currently around 750 servers). All of the servers we use on the shared hosting side of things are CentOS (Redhat Enterprise Linux). We don’t use Redhat’s paid brand of Linux because we simply don’t need it, and frankly their support isn’t that great. Their “custom” enterprise kernel is buggy beyond belief and new features are too slow to be added.
That being said, I do think Redhat has done a lot of positive things to push Linux ahead. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Redhat because it was the first Linux distro that I really played with seriously (Redhat 5.1).
Now on to why I actually mention Redhat. They have chosen to hire a new CEO. Who did they pick? The previous COO from Delta Airlines? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this. The COO of Delta Airlines? Delta Airlines is the WORST company on Earth. Their service is horrible. Operationally they are a joke. They consistently anger the customer in exchange for peanuts in savings (No pun intended). They are a study in what NOT to do. So of course it makes complete sense for Redhat to run out and hire him…
This hire is a mistake, and a big one at that. When there are problems in the future for Redhat remember that you read it here first!
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com
Posted in Hosting Related Issues | 11 Comments »
December 30th, 2007
We have just passed the 700,000 domains hosted for our organization. This includes Bluehost, Hostmonster, and Fastdomain. We are now in the top 2, if not number one, fastest growing shared hosting company in the world. We will very soon be hosting more than 1,000,000 domains.
Since the new year is fast approaching, let me give you some predictions for Bluehost and our other brands for 2008.
#1 - We will begin aggressively promoting individual domain name sales, especially through our fastdomain brand. We want to put the HURT on Godaddy. Godaddy’s incessant obstacles to transferring domains and extremely poor customer service will allow us to take a TON of their customers. My personal goal is to take more than 1 million of their customers in the next 24 months - Keep watching! I will make it happen!!
#2 - Fix our “CPU exceeded errors” that many of our customers have been experiencing. The one problem keeps me up at night more than anything else. We are working extensively through software and hardware means to virtually eliminate this problem for the “legitimate” user.
#3 - Finally get together a VPS option to sell to our customers that outgrow our setup. We have wanted to do this for a long time, but have never felt the products were good enough in the VPS space. My opinion of these products has changed as they have worked to make them better. I would like to implement VPS as a full fledged member of our product family.
2008 will be a defining year for us. We will either catapult ourselves to the front of all hosting companies or will falter and grow, but miss our chance to take the lead in this industry. Time will tell where our will and desire will take us during the next twelve months! Thanks for sticking around for the ride!
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
Posted in Hosting Related Issues | 23 Comments »
December 25th, 2007
Twas the night before Christmas (And incidentally my 36th birthday) and all the through the house, my five kids were sleeping… If you got to the part about the five kids you will know why my blog entry ends here
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!!!!!!!!
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com / Hostmonster.com
Posted in Personal Entries | 8 Comments »
December 4th, 2007
I was just checking out the stats from November 2007 on the main Bluehost.com site. We had just under 1,000,000 unique visitors to our site during that period. That is about our average lately so even though that is an impressive number what was far more interesting to me was the percentage of Mozilla Firefox users.
44.5% of the 1,000,000 unique visitors we had in November used Firefox!! That is amazing! In Europe Firefox usage is skyrocketing with many countries usage over 50%. Firefox usage in the US is less than in Europe, but is still noteworthy as it approaches the 20-25% mark.
Firefox is often associated with users “in the know”. Rarely do I find someone that I respect technically that uses Internet Explorer or Safari. While both of these browsers have improved they still have serious problems. Internet Explorer 7 is a security mess (STILL!!), and Safari simply doesn’t have the feature set to compete seriously with Firefox.
If you aren’t yet using Firefox you really ought to give it a try. The two main reasons that I personally use Firefox are because of its extensibility and its security. The “add ons” or Firefox extensions are GREAT! They allow you to install custom programs that will let you create a browser that is custom for you with just the features that you need. This one feature - the ability to use add ons is in my opinion the primary reason for Firefox’s success. Other browsers have similar functionality but fall short of how well Firefox implements this. My second reason is Firefox’s security record. They aren’t without security problems, but the difference is that they don’t try and hide their problems. They are very transparent and are quick to patch. The same can’t be said for IE which is a security nightmare.
Give Firefox a Try!!! DOWNLOAD FIREFOX
Thanks, Matt Heaton
Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments »