Bluehost is one of the leaders in website hosting and powers more than two million websites. One reason it’s so popular is how well Bluehost does at demystifying the process of setting up a website for the first time. This is especially true if you plan to use WordPress to build your website.
Plus, all Bluehost plans include a free domain for the first year, as well as reliably great uptime (based on real-life data), a free CDN, an easy-to-use website builder, and a free SSL certificate. This hosting service provides you with everything you need in one place. But is it the right hosting service for you? Let’s find out.
Bluehost Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services
Bluehost is a strong contender when compared to the other best web hosting services. But, some of the other options in this category make a compelling argument for different needs or use cases. Take a look at our four favorite alternatives to Bluehost below.
Hostinger works fantastically for the majority of people looking for web hosting, as it offers impressive versatility at a low price. Start using Hostinger risk-free with their 30-day money-back guarantee.
DreamHost offers the best month-to-month hosting rates while constantly backing up your data to protect against data losses. Sign up for DreamHost today.
SiteGround continuously outranks its peers in terms of its ability to keep your site up and running. Get this unfailing uptime when you subscribe to any SiteGround plan.
HostGator is a great choice for starting on one plan and easily scaling to another as your site grows in popularity. Receive a free year of your preferred domain when you sign up for a HostGator plan.
Bluehost: The Good and the Bad
Every web hosting service has its flaws, even the most exclusive. Here’s an in-depth look into Bluehost’s top good and bad features.
What Bluehost Is Good At
Bluehost is a very well-rounded hosting provider, offers a blend of superlative support, security, and reliability at a easy-to-stomach price point.
Great security: Bluehost has some of the best website security measures on the market to give you peace of mind. All plans come with resource protection, and CodeGuard Backup Basic can be added for an additional $2.99 per month fee. CodeGuard will help you with daily backups and monitoring while notifying you of any changes. On more expensive plans, you can also unlock automatic backups and 24/7 network monitoring.
Fast support: We love Bluehost’s extensive and swift customer support portal. Quality support is paramount for any web hosting service to have, but finding a service that has fast and efficient support can be tougher than you might think. Most users rave that Bluehost’s customer support is very helpful when you need immediate resolution of issues.
Live chat support is available to you 24/7, and Bluehost also offers phone and email support. On top of that, you always have the option to browse the extensive knowledge base and forum for getting answers to FAQs and finding videos, in-depth articles, and resources on everything related to web hosting.
Easy to setup: Not only is Bluehost one of the most popular web hosting services on the market, it’s also incredibly easy to get the hang of managing. Bluehost has an easy onboarding process that takes just a few minutes to complete and an intuitive interface.
If you utilize its site builder in addition to the web hosting service, Bluehost’s setup wizard will ask you to fill out a form that includes your website goals, what you want to add to your site, and what you want the name and tagline of your site to be. After answering these questions, you get to choose a theme of your choice from the Bluehost Marketplace, and then it automatically installs WordPress for you. All you have to worry about is customization, while Bluehost takes care of the backend and the technical nitty-gritty.
High-performing servers: With Bluehost, you’re getting access to high-performance servers on the Pro plan and higher. Although it’s not always ideal for every user to fork over more money, we think you get what you pay for in this case, because it unlocks servers that utilize dual quad-core processors for swift loading speeds.
This is an excellent option for larger, more media-heavy websites because Bluehost makes sure there are fewer users per server—with an individual file count of 300,000—so there are no slowdowns for anyone hosting their sites on them.
Reasonable pricing: The monthly price for most Bluehost plans is relatively low compared to their peers. You also receive a free domain name for the first year if you are a new customer, as well as a 30-day money back guarantee so you don’t have to worry about the risk if Bluehost doesn’t meet your needs right away.
What Bluehost Is Lacking
Here’s where we’ll dip into some downsides of Bluehost. Some of these may not affect your hosting provider decision much, but others may find one or more of these flaws to be a deal-breaker.
No free migrations: Bluehost does not offer free site migration, which can be an issue for users transferring from a different web hosting service. You can expect to pay a hefty $149.99 for Bluehost to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts.
Although this service comes with 24/7 support, a complete review, and an uninterrupted transition, it’s still quite expensive for most users—especially when many other web hosting services will transfer your website for free. What’s also not ideal is that this migration service does not cover higher-octane hosting options like VPS or dedicated.
No uptime guarantee: Unlike most other web hosting services, Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee on any of its plans. Downtime can be quite costly for website owners, as you can lose potential customers if your website is experiencing this.
An uptime guarantee gives users that extra peace of mind and shows them that the provider will keep your website up and running in the most efficient way possible—and that they’re serious about meeting their customers’ needs. Even though this may be an issue for some folks, many users have still applauded Bluehost for its uptime, regardless of the lack of guarantee.
Constant upsells: This just really annoys our team. Once you select a pricing plan from Bluehost, you’ll get constant reminders of other features that you can buy during the checkout process. And it doesn’t end there, with popups and other marketing communications that try to convince you to subscribe to a more expensive package. We found this to be incredibly annoying, but these pitches for upselling ultimately don’t affect the quality of hosting and service you get in other facets.
Bluehost Pricing and Options
Bluehost offers quite a few different hosting packages, like most other providers. We’ll break down a few of the most popular options below, with their benefits and pricing.
Bluehost Shared Hosting
The Bluehost shared hosting plan offers a great starting price point and is the most popular among first-time Bluehost users. This specific package is best for blogging, hobbies, or small business websites.
The best feature you won’t find everywhere else is that Bluehost manages and monitors their shared servers, so users can get solid performance from a budget hosting plan.
Some other features of their shared hosting packages include:
- Domain manager
- Resource protection
- SSL certificates
- Google Ads
Interestingly, Bluehost is currently running better introdcutory rates on its 12-month pricing terms (as opposed to the longest contract term of 36 months). Let’s compare the pricing for those two contract terms across the three shared hosting plans:
- Basic: $2.75 per month on a 12-month term; $4.95 per month on a 36-month term
- Choice Plus: $4.95 per month on a 12-month term; $7.45 per month on a 36-month term
- Pro: $13.95 per month on a 12-month term; $18.95 per month on a 36-month term
Each successive plan adds extra benefits, such as daily website backups, malware scanning, and access to Yoast SEO.
With that said, all pricing plans include a free domain for one year, a free CDN, a free SSL certificate, custom themes, and 24/7 support.
Bluehost Online Store
Bluehost’s specific shared hosting plan for online stores comes in one simple flavor, but packs a bunch of key features into it.
You can unlock access to Bluehost’s web store theme, ecommerce analytics, gift cards, unlimited product listings, a boatload of unique WordPress plugins, and a whole lot more.
Pricing for this plan starts at $9.95 per month for a 12-month contract, or $12.95 per month on a 36-month term.
Bluehost WordPress Hosting
Bluehost and WordPress go hand-in-hand, and there’s no better way to run your website than with its official WordPress hosting. Bluehost crafted this specific hosting package to boost your website, with resources and tools that seamlessly integrate with WordPress.
With maximum compatibility with any WordPress website, this hosting plan will work best for starting a blog, a website, or a new online store. You can choose from a unique range of themes and templates from the Bluehost Marketplace, specifically tailored to WordPress.
Pricing here is identical to the shared hosting packages we discussed a little bit earlier. To recap, here’s how those plans’ pricing breaks down on tow different contract lengths:
- Basic: $2.75 per month on a 12-month term; $4.95 per month on a 36-month term
- Choice Plus: $4.95 per month on a 12-month term; $7.45 per month on a 36-month term
- Pro: $13.95 per month on a 12-month term; $18.95 per month on a 36-month term
Bluehost Managed WordPress
Let Bluehost take care of the nuts and bolts of keeping your WordPress site humming. These powerful plans include key features like automatic WordPress updates, site analytics, Bluehost’s Marketing Center tool, daily scheduled backups, and even special ad, payment, and SEO tools on higher-priced plans.
Bluehost’s managed WordPress hosting has three pricing options. Here are what each would cost you on a 36-month contract:
- Build: $19.95/month
- Grow: $29.95/month
- Scale: $49.95/month
Not only do you get Bluehost handling the backend and maintenance of your WordPress site, but you get so much extra support if you’re running an ecommerce business on it.
Bluehost Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is an excellent package for large businesses that need a massive increase in storage, power, and control from their hosting plan.
A dedicated hosting server provides the highest level of protection, security, and control to its users. These servers are separate from one another, so each user gets full access to the server without being affected or affecting another user’s experience.
With Bluehost dedicated hosting, it guarantees every user stable and predictable website performance, with full control and privacy.
This package is best for users that have high traffic websites, as you will need the full spectrum of RAM and CPU to run your website efficiently—which is exactly what dedicated hosting does.
Some additional features and benefits you get on dedicated hosting include:
- Extreme speed
- Fast provisioning
- RAID storage
- Root access
- Dedicated support
- Storage upgrades
- Free domain for one year
This package is on the high-end side of web hosting, so it focuses on performance and security while coming at a steeper price than the previous options:
- Standard: $79.99 per month with 1 TB storage, 2.3 GHz CPU, and 4 GB RAM
- Enhanced: $99.99 per month with 2 TB storage, 2.5 GHz CPU, and 8 GB RAM
- Premium: $119.99 per month with 2 TB storage, 3.3 GHz CPU, and 16 GB RAM
All the prices above apply when you commit to a 36-month contract term.
Comparing the Best Web Hosting Services
We spent hours reviewing different web hosting services. You can check out our comparison guide here.
- Hostinger – Best web hosting for most
- SiteGround – Best for keeping uptime above 99.99%
- HostGator – Best for scaling your small business easily
- DreamHost – Best for pay-as-you-go web hosting
- Bluehost – Best drag-and-drop page builder for beginners
- Inmotion – Best price for hosting two websites on one plan
- Nexcess – Best for experienced WordPress users
- A2 Hosting – Most dependable web hosting for European and Asian audiences
Overall, Bluehost is an excellent choice for beginners since it comes with everything you need to get started with WordPress, from a free domain name and automatic WordPress installation to a free drag-and-drop page builder and thorough step-by-step instructions for every step of the way.
With extensive product offerings like WordPress hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and multi-tiered pricing plans, we think most users will enjoy the Bluehost experience.
The good outweighs the bad, and it’s definitely a web hosting service worth looking into—especially for WordPress users.
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