As with all things commercial, there are service providers that are regarded as major players, if not giants, and those that are smaller yet still worth considering. The latter are always somewhat mysterious: the number of clients they have is not that large, but their offers may be quite alluring.
BlueDomino, the hosting provider we are going to review below, is one of those smaller businesses that are difficult to form an opinion of. What do people say about it? What about server performance? Let us take a closer look at it.
What is it?
BlueDomino was founded in 1996. Several years ago, it was acquired by the Endurance Group International, which is sometimes seen as a bad omen by some hosting experts – many smaller companies, when they become part of a larger owner, turn into something unstable and unreliable. It is difficult to say why the company, the history of which dates back to the mid-90s, did not evolve into a provider with a wide range of products and services. Their only specialisation is shared hosting, and while there are extra options, such as design and marketing services, it is still a small player hosting around 2,700 websites (as of February 2019).
What about server performance?
Server performance is sometimes mentioned in the feedback found online, but technical data is best evaluated with the help of special software, as it makes analysis more objective. HRANK statistics indicate that BlueDomino can be considered reliable.
In the past 30 days, its performance has been great: the average uptime is 99.995%, with a single drop to 99.843% on Jan 29, which means the websites it hosts have been up during all this time. Over the course of the past 7 months, the average uptime has been around 99.9%, with the worst result detected being 99.081% in September 2018. Such great uptime is indicative of server stability, and when this value is close to 100%, it is definitely an advantage.
As to response time, the average value for the past 30 days is 425 ms. Over the past 7 months, it has also been impressive, ranging from 313 to 565 ms.
Despite its good performance, BlueDomino’s audience has been shrinking steadily. In August 2018, they hosted around 2,900 websites, but the number has recently dropped to 2,700. For such a small company, the change is significant. Given the higher-than-average uptime and server response time, it is likely that some other factors come into play and prevent users from enjoying their services. What could they be? Let us analyse the feedback on BlueDomino available online.
What about feedback?
The reviews posted by users are not numerous, which is strange, as the company has been around for quite a long time and should have been reviewed more often. HostAdvice, one of the most popular hosting review websites, has only 2 user reviews about it, posted in 2017 and 2018. Both are negative, with one of them containing little to no details, and the other one mentioning downtime and a horrible support team.
Other sources provide mostly outdated reviews. For instance, at WHTop, there are 7 reviews, with 6 of them posted in 2010-2014, and all of them are negative. We have managed to find only one positive review, posted in 2016, which is kind of suspicious.
Since its performance has recently been very good, perhaps, it is customer support that is to blame. In reviews, users claimed that it is outsourced – which does not necessarily mean that it is of poor quality, though it is not uncommon. We have tried contacting their sales manager via BlueDomino’s live chat, and the response was quick. We asked them where their servers are located, and within a couple of minutes their sales assistant named Mahima answered that they are “at Boston and Waltham”. Of course, it cannot be considered a sign of their ability to help when some technical issue arises, but still, their live chat does work, and it is inhabited by at least one person who can speak intelligible English and provide the information you need.
Judging from the information about BlueDomino available online, it is reliable in terms of server performance, but it remains to be seen if the other aspects of its services are up to the mark. It cannot be considered the best option, as the feedback leaves much to be desired, but if you have a project that is not that demanding and does not require significant investments, it is still worth a try.