Bluehost Review

Bluehost has consistently been the provider of choice for people looking to host WordPress websites. A part of the Endurance International Group (EiG), it is one of the most widely used and popular web hosts and allows you to get a website up and running within minutes. It has gained a glowing reputation and millions of subscribers who regularly use it to start businesses, host online projects, and create something refreshingly new. Today, it powers over two million websites, mostly out of its data center in Utah.

One of the greatest strengths of Bluehost is its ease of use; it is a good choice for beginners and is available at an affordable price. After signing up for about $10-15 per year, you will receive a free domain name and hosting costs as low as $2.95 per month. It is also equipped with plenty of cool features to help you get set up within no time. With Bluehost, you won’t ever have to worry about your website being slow even when the traffic is heavy.

In this review, I will present a comprehensive analysis of Bluehost and all of its important features and plans. I hope it will help you get a broad overview of this web hosting provider and decide whether you want to subscribe to it or not.

Who should use Bluehost?

If you’ve spent even a few minutes researching the best web hosting providers, Bluehost ought to have turned up on your radar almost instantaneously. Yes, it is indeed that popular and widely used. However, the question arises – what does Bluehost have that sets it apart from its peers? Does it have what you need, or is it better for you to seek another provider?

Bluehost is a highly dependable hosting provider by virtue of its strong uptime, affordable beginner plans, and efficient customer support. It is an excellent choice for beginners who are starting a website for the first or second time. For example, if you are a blogger getting started in your niche, Bluehost allows you to get a comfortable start without worrying about all the technicalities.

By virtue of its easy-to-navigate cPanel and reliable customer support features, Bluehost makes sure that your learning curve is as small as possible. It gets your website publicly available to the world with an abundance of uptime.

Why should you choose Bluehost?

Ever since it came onto the scene in 2003, Bluehost has grown to become one of the leading providers of web hosting services. However, the harsh truth is that every web hosting service out there has its own strengths and weaknesses. Let us begin by taking a look at Bluehost’s salient good features.

1. Excellent security

Most people would agree that Bluehost comes with one of the most robust security measures in the market. It is highly efficient and helps you avoid spending hours tweaking your website. Most importantly, it gives you peace of mind – something that is absolutely essential for beginners. Bluehost’s plans universally come with resource protection, and you can avail of CodeGuard Backup Basic for an extra $2.99 per month fee. It helps you with daily backups and monitoring while informing you of any changes.

The most basic version of Bluehost’s security feature includes 1GB of storage space, three restorations per month, and daily backup and monitoring. The more expensive plans such as Choice Plus and Pro also offer free automatic backups for a year and 24/7 network monitoring.

2. Fast and efficient customer support

Customer support is a vital part of every web hosting service. However, it is quite challenging to find a service with genuinely good support. Bluehost excels in this regard; it is well-known for its fast and efficient customer support base. Most users have had a positive experience whenever they required immediate assistance. In fact, Bluehost’s Live Chat system is likely to respond within just five minutes of waiting.

Since Bluehost’s support base is readily available 24/7, you needn’t worry about figuring out time zones. It also offers email and phone support; however, the waiting times vary in those cases. Nevertheless, you can always check out its extensive knowledge base support forum for various detailed articles, videos, FAQs, and support resources on everything related to web hosting.

3. Very easy to use

 Apart from its remarkable features and products, another virtue responsible for Bluehost’s success is the fact that it is extremely easy to use. Many people tend to find web hosting quite perplexing, and it can be quite annoying if the onboarding process is difficult as well. Fortunately, Bluehost offers a straightforward onboarding process that you can complete within a few minites and get your website up and running.

With its well-organized interface, Bluehost will request you to fill up a form that includes your website goals, your name, your website’s tagline, and what you wish to add to your website.  Once you successfully answer these questions, you can select a theme from the Bluehost marketplace and watch it automatically install WordPress for your convenience. You simply need to handle the customization and leave all the technicalities to Bluehost.

4. High-end servers

Finally, Bluehost offers truly powerful and high-performance servers to everyone who subscribes to the Pro plan. While I’m not encouraging you to push yourself financially, it is definitely worth your money. For $14.95 per month, you will gain access to robust Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers that are sufficient to keep even the largest e-commerce websites up and running effectively.

It is an especially good option for bigger websites because Bluehost ensures that there are lesser users per server, with an individual file count of 300,000. Thus, you can be assured that there won’t be slowdowns for anyone involved. Nevertheless, if you’re unwilling to pay the hefty price for these servers, you can still go with the regular Bluehost servers that come with the other plans. They work pretty well and will get your job done just fine.

What are the negatives of Bluehost?

Now that we’ve looked at the important advantages of choosing Bluehost, let’s take a look at the cons of using this popular web-hosting service.

1. Lack of free website migration

As of now, Bluehost does not offer free website migration. This can be problematic for people who need to transfer their site from a different web hosting service. You will have to pay up an exorbitant price of $149.99 for Bluehost to migrate up to five websites and twenty email accounts.

Admittedly, this service comes with an uninterrupted transition, a complete review, and efficient 24/7 support. However, it undoubtedly remains very expensive for most users – especially considering that various other web hosting services will transfer your website free of cost.

Also, I must mention that this migration service doesn’t cover VPS, reseller, or dedicated server accounts. Moreover, it does not include domain registrations at all.

2. No uptime guaranteed

Unlike most other web hosting services on the market, Bluehost does not offer an uptime guarantee on any of its plans. It is a matter of genuine concern because website owners can be seriously affected by downtime. If your website goes down, you can lose out a lot of potential customers.

Thus, an uptime guarantee gives users an additional peace of mind and assures them that the provider will keep their website up and running in a highly efficient manner. Moreover, it shows that they are serious about the customer service experience while putting their customers’ needs first.

In spite of this issue, a lot of users have praised Bluehost for its excellent uptime. Data has shown that it has an uptime of 99.99% efficiency.

3. Lack of pre-installed features

Although Bluehost has a lot to offer, it does not come with pre-installed features. You will have to actively pick and choose the offerings you want on your website – often for an additional price.

Bluehost pricing and plans

Bluehost offers a number of pricing plans for individual website goals and requirements. Appreciably, it offers a wide range of options at a reasonable price. As of now, it offers three main business niches with different pricing plans according to each of them. These niches include shared hosting, online stores, and managed WordPress. Let’s now take a close look at each of them.

1. Shared hosting plan

This is, by far, the most popular and flexible plan that Bluehost presently offers. What you need to know here is that a 36-month plan is much more economical for you compared to a 12-month plan. To further understand this, let’s take a look at the four pricing options in this regard:

• Basic – $4.95 per month on a 12-month term, $2.95 per month on a 36-month term
• Plus – $7.45 per month on a 12-month term, $5.45 per month on a 36-month term
• Choice Plus – $7.45 per month on a 12-month term, $5.45 per month on a 36-month term
• Pro – $18.95 per month on a 12-month term, $13.95 per month on a 36-month term

You can clearly see that the pricing for 36-month terms is much cheaper than 12-month terms. Although Bluehost also offers a 24-month term, its price isn’t significantly cheaper than the 12-month one.

Also, all pricing plans come with a free SSL certificate, free domain for one year, free SSL, 24/7 support, and custom themes. Additionally, the Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro plans offer unlimited SSD storage, unlimited websites, and free Office 365 for 30 days.

2. Online store plan

Compared to Bluehost’s shared hosting plan, its online store plan is much less complicated. It is specifically intended for e-commerce stores, where you can build, promote, and begin selling through your store that is already loaded with WooCommerce tools. It comes with two pricing options for 12-month and 36-month terms, as shown below:

• Standard – $15.95 per month on a 12-month term, $12.95 per month on a 36-month term
• Premium – $32.95 per month on a 12-month term, $24.95 per month on a 36-month term

Both these plans come with WooCommerce installed, unlimited products, 24/7 customer support, CodeGuard Basic, and discount codes.

3. Managed WordPress plan

This is a powerful plan geared towards users building their website through WordPress. It lets you buy a plan that offers speed, security, scalability, and support for your professional WordPress website. It features three pricing options, all on 36-month terms:

• Build – $9.95 per month
• Grow – $14.95 per month
• Scale – $27.95 per month

All these plans come with high-end features such as 200+ global edge servers, one WordPress website, inbuilt high availability, free SSL, staging environment, and best for up to 50,000 visitors per month. You can also get access to domain privacy and protection, malware detection and removal, and daily scheduled backups.

What are the other products offered by Bluehost?

Bluehost offers a number of web hosting-related products that could be quite useful to most users. Given below are detailed descriptions of some important products from Bluehost.

1. WordPress hosting

Bluehost and WordPress are intricately linked to each other. Thus, running your website with its official WordPress hosting is undoubtedly the best option you have. In fact, the Bluehost team specifically designed this particular hosting package to boost your website, complete with tools and resources that smoothly integrate with WordPress.

Since this hosting plan has optimal compatibility with every WordPress site, it works best for online stores, blogs, and websites. Bluehost provides features such as automatic WordPress installation and updates, and Google My Business verification. You also get to choose from a wide range of special templates and themes specifically designed for WordPress from the Bluehost marketplace.

You will get complete design freedom with easy-to-install plugins and customization features. Other notable features of WordPress hosting are:

• 24/7 WordPress hosting support
• Free domain for one year
• Microsoft Office 365
• Secure login setup

Note that the pricing plans of this hosting package are different from those of the Managed WordPress plans. You can receive specific WordPress hosting under three different plans under 36-month terms, as shown:

• Basic – $2.95 per month
• Plus – $5.45 per month
• Choice Plus – $5.45 per month

2. Shared Hosting

As I mentioned before, most users show a preference for the shared hosting package because it is the most convenient way to get your website up and running at a reasonable price. It lets multiple users run their website on one server, and is a great option for small business websites, blogging, and hobbies.

Since Bluehost monitors and manages the server, you needn’t worry about platform patches or server management at all. Important features of this package include:

• Domain manager
• Google Ads
• Resource protection
• SSL certificates

Small businesses stand to gain the most from the advantages of a shared hosting plan by virtue of its simplicity and economical pricing. Since shared hosting does not guarantee CPU or RAM, it isn’t recommendable for larger businesses that require that extra space. However, it is a much lesser concern for smaller businesses.

3. Dedicated hosting

This is a great package for bigger businesses that require additional storage, control, and power. Being on the high-end side of web hosting, it lays emphasis on security and performance. Unlike shared hosting, a dedicated hosting server offers an optimal level of security, control, and protection to its users. Since these servers are all separate from each other, every user gets complete access to the server without being affected or affecting another user’s experience.

Bluehost’s dedicated hosting guarantees predictable and stable performance to every user and gives them complete privacy and control. It is an excellent option for users with high traffic websites who require the full spectrum of CPU and RAM to run their websites efficiently. Other supportive features of dedicated hosting are:

• Optimal speed
• RAID storage
• Dedicated support
• Root access
• Fast provisioning
• Storage upgrades
• Free domain for a year

That said, Bluehost’s dedicated hosting plan is quite expensive. There are three different pricing plans as shown below:

• Standard – $79.99 per month with 500GB of storage space and 4GB RAM
• Enhanced – $99.99 per month with 1TB of storage space and 8GB RAM
• Premium – $119.99 per month with 1TB of storage space and 16GB RAM

With each of these plans, you will receive a 30-day money-back guarantee as well.

Conclusion

Bluehost is undoubtedly an excellent option for beginners because it comes with everything one requires to get started with WordPress. Its features include everything from automatic WordPress installation and a free domain name to a free drag-and-drop page builder and extensive stepwise instructions for every part of the process. The starter plans are highly affordable, and all hosting plans come with 24/7 customer support from experienced staff members.

Its generous offerings such as shared hosting, WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, and multi-tiered pricing plans ensure that there is something for every user who chooses to subscribe to Bluehost. Its positives certainly far outweigh the negatives, and it remains the most highly recommended web hosting service for WordPress users.