I have been a customer since 2008 and I see this company go through a lot of changes (both good and bad).

Up until recently, I have done my best to accept the changes that Bluehost has implemented. Everything from moving my server to another server over a course of a couple days to locking out my account due to a corrupt Wordpress theme (which in hind sight I was thankful for)...

But, I am quite fed up with the most recent "changes". Starting on January 1st, 2012, Bluehost raised their domain registrar rate to $11.95. In the past 3 1/2 years only spending $10.00 per domain per year is and was a reasonable rate and raising it to $11.95 is an acceptable increase and something I could pass along to my clients without any issues. But… since then, the rate has increase twice. Most recently in the two months. It has gone from $11.99 to $13.99. I understand that the cost of doing business requires a periodic rate increase; however, a $3.99 increase over the past six months is bit excessive. Don’t get me wrong, I will pay it and I believe it is an ok value; compared to some hosting/registrars like GoDaddy. Actually, the rate increase is not really my true beef with Bluehost… it is that they don’t even notify their customers. Nothing via email, on their website, nowhere! Companies both larger and smaller than Bluehost are better at communicating rate increases and changes within their environments. I don’t understand how or why it is so hard to send out an email or post something on their website that these types of changes are occurring.

Also, even their support/billing is told to say…

“Thank you for contacting the Billing Department! As a registrar, the cost per domain from the registry increases steadily each year--in fact, there's been a 35% increase in that cost over the last 5 years. When those increases were encountered in the past, we've simply chosen to not pass those down to the customer. Unfortunately the latest increase was significant enough that in order to keep the cost of our other hosting services competitive, and to prevent losing revenue for each domain sale, the price was necessarily adjusted to $13.99.

While higher than our previous $11.95 per domain, we're still among the most affordable domain registrars in the industry, with many of our competitors offering prices higher than $15.00 per domain.”

Is that the proper way to inform your customers that you’re raising your rates? When someone inquires about it via an email initiated by the customer?

Can someone give me some insight to this???