Do Most Web Hosts do Backups?

[markw10]

My current web hosting service does a nightly backup and keeps 1 weeks worth of them. They also do a weekly backup that they keep a month's worth of plus a monthly backup that they keep 12 copies of for each month.
I had the idea that most web hosts do something similar or at least do backups. I do my own backups at least once a week and if I do major changes to my website much more often.
For several reasons though I'm changing to a new web host. I have done my research and BlueHost comes out very highly rated. I see this almost anywhere I look but I was shocked when I contacted them about backups. Their answer was that they sometimes do it as a courtesy but in general don't do many backups and if so just on a weekly basis and once your account goes over 5GB they no longer even offer to do it as a courtesy.
I'm disappointed because I really wanted to go with them and they seem to have great service. Plus everywhere I look they seem so highly rated. I'm just wondering if this is really that important and maybe is more common than I think. Any opinions?

[Website Rob]

It does seem odd that a Hosting company the size of BlueHost would not be doing Backups on a regular basis. Each Company has their own reasons for doing or not doing something and is part of one's decision to do business.

Backups, like Insurance, are setup to be there when you need them. Although personal backups of one's hosting account should be done on a regular basis, it is easier to be done by the Hoster and also easier for the Hoster to use, when needed.

Doing regular & frequent backups is the norm for most Hosters and they are important; for both site files and databases.

[mrtz]

Don't be disappoint that you can't go with Bluehost. If your site is pretty busy, you'd better go somewhere else. Bluehost has a policy that they will redirect your pages if your web are using more than their limit.

Bluehost uses hard limit while many other hosts uses soft limit. If, for some reason, you have so many customers at noon, if you are using Bluehost, it's like they shut down the electricity so that no one can do anything for a few minutes. (That means they will redirect all pages in your website to a webpage to let everyone knows that your web are using over their limit.) When it's back to normal, if that happen again, they do it again. That's pretty annoying.

Compare to some other hosts that they will allow your customers to continue shopping but things may go slower than normal since there are a lot of people. Only if there are so many customers all days all nights, then, they will do the same as Bluehost does.

[DrByte]

Don't be disappoint that you can't go with Bluehost. If your site is pretty busy, you'd better go somewhere else. ...

You've made some rather broad blanket statements.
I gather those are your opinions based on personal experiences?

[skipwater]

Backups, like Insurance, are setup to be there when you need them. Although personal backups of one's hosting account should be done on a regular basis, it is easier to be done by the Hoster and also easier for the Hoster to use, when needed.

What I have been seeing is that most hosting company's do backups nightly for no cost. But if you need a restore that is when you pay.

As Rob said personal backups are the cheapest unless you pay by data transfered

Skip.

[mrtz]

I gather those are your opinions based on personal experiences?

Yes, I did use their service for about 10 days and decided to leave. The same website worked fine with another well-known host company for almost a year before it grew up and I had to move to VPS. Oh, one thing is that it was not Zencart that I hosted on Bluehost. So, with Zencart, it might be another story.

I've also seen that annoying Bluehost redirect page from time to time on two websites that I've regularly visited. I know that one of them already moved to dedicate server (After using Bluehost for a while.) but I don't know about the other.

[jtellup]

I'll tell you what, I host domains, I'm kinda picky so I only host a few hundred, but I had a domain hosted on Blue host for two years, up until this very month, I wanted to move it over to one of my dedicated boxes and they wont release the domain, they claim that even though I owned this domain for years when I signed on with them it became the account name, so to keep the domain I have to subscribe for another year, they do the same thing as me set you up as a reseller account, and the boxes are so over loaded that the store lagged out terribly, I won't put more than 50 domains on a box, they put 1200, use them at your own risk, I just gave up and quit them. I do nightly backups, and you can access them through your account cpanel, that way you can restore at will, It's really quite a nice setup, but, we do only custom domains and cannot compete with those $15.00 a month accounts, we are just a touch higher, of course the boxes are all in Washinton D.C. and Chicago and are one router off the Savis net, your more than welcome to look us over http://tellox.net but I would for sure rethink about Blue Host.

Oh yeah, just this past few months or so they really cut there php and MySql accesses down very badly, the reason I moved that particular domain, It was a store for a charity. Kept crashing when two or three people would get on it.