Bluehost MySQL limited to version 5.6

  • Hello,

    I’m asking for your support with Bluehost hosting provider.
    I chose the plan according to your recommendations: https://www.ads-software.com/hosting/

    However, their shared plans do not meet WordPress minimum requirements (MySQL of 5.7 or higher). this is not mentioned anywhere, you find out after the purchase

    I have spoken to Bluehost about this, they said the only way to have MySQL upgraded is to change my plan to VPS or dedicated. Those are way more expensive and way above my needs. Not to mention that running a website with MySQL 5.6 is not even safe anymore as it reached its end of life!

    Bluehost rejects my claims regarding WordPress minimum requirements saying they are ‘just recommendations’ and a lot of users run their websites with MySQL 5.6.

    Could you please confirm if MySQL 5.7 or higher is a necessary requirement or just a recommendation? What are the implications of running a website with MySQL 5.6?

    Thank you

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • I just logged into a friend’s Bluehost shared hosting account (I personally wouldn’t go a mile near this host or any of the 100+ hosting brands owned by the same parent company). And I’m finding a different story.

    This account, a PLUS shared hosting plan, clearly shows Percona 5.7.23-23 . Percona is one of a handful of forks/variants of the MySQL database server, and unlike other variants like MariaDB, Percona continued MySQL’s base versioning.

    So Percona 5.7 = MySQL 5.7

    Which leaves me dumbfounded why Bluehost support should say the only way to get MySQL 5.7 is to purchase an expensive VPS.

    I’ll just leave it here so as to not trigger any moderation ??

    Thread Starter novaturientca

    (@novaturientca)

    Hello George,

    Thank you so much for looking into it! This is very helpful!
    I spoke to a couple other Bluehost agents and here is what happened in a nutshell:

    1) Agent 1: shared hosting plans are limited to 5.6
    2) Agent 2 (after I opened a ticket with WordPress): shared hosting plans support 5.7 but only for NEW users, old users continue using 5.6
    3) Agent 3: the majority of the old users were migrated to 5.7 but “a few stragglers are still being upgraded to 5.7 but those are older type legacy style servers”

    So based on this my guess is the following:

    Bluehost updated MySQL for most of the users (I presume around 2 years ago at least, since 5.6 reached its end of life in February 2021) but some accounts were missed. At the moment they can’t do it manually because shared hosting plans don’t permit such intervention. this is why they are telling me to upgrade to VPS or dedicated (those allow you to upgrade your MySQL whenever you want)

    Do you have any suggestions on how this can be further escalated?

    Also, just to understand the full picture: how long has your friend had this plan for? did it come with 5.7 already or was it updated at some point?

    Thank you again and appreciate your help!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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