Bluehost Review from Our Experts
Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners to larger businesses with 24/7 customer support. See the complete Bluehost review by our experts to find out if Bluehost is the right choice for you.
In this complete Bluehost review, we will put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:
- Performance: How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will test their speed and server response time to assess that.
- Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime?
- Customer Support: Can you count on their technical support as a customer?
- Features: Do they offer all the features you will need to build your website?
- Pricing: Do they have the best pricing in the industry? Are there any Bluehost deals that can save you money?
Bottom line: Don’t want to read all the details? Let us give it to you straight. In our Bluehost review, we found them to be reliable, fast, and affordable with friendly 24/7 customer support.
That’s why we’ve chosen to recommend Bluehost as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.
Now let’s dive into our detailed Bluehost review so that you can decide for yourself.
Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners to larger businesses with 24/7 customer support. See the complete Bluehost review by our experts to find out if Bluehost is the right choice for you.
In this complete Bluehost review, we will put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:
- Performance: How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will test their speed and server response time to assess that.
- Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime?
- Customer Support: Can you count on their technical support as a customer?
- Features: Do they offer all the features you will need to build your website?
- Pricing: Do they have the best pricing in the industry? Are there any Bluehost deals that can save you money?
Bottom line: Don’t want to read all the details? Let us give it to you straight. In our Bluehost review, we found them to be reliable, fast, and affordable with friendly 24/7 customer support.
That’s why we’ve chosen to recommend Bluehost as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.
Now let’s dive into our detailed Bluehost review so that you can decide for yourself.
About Bluehost
First, let’s take a look at the company itself.
Bluehost started in 1996 and steadily grew to become one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. It now powers more than 2 million websites from all over the world.
Bluehost has a long-standing relationship with the WordPress community. They are an official WordPress recommended hosting company since 2006.
They pride themselves on their 24/7 customer support, great hosting infrastructure, and support for free open-source software like WordPress.
First, let’s take a look at the company itself.
Bluehost started in 1996 and steadily grew to become one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. It now powers more than 2 million websites from all over the world.
Bluehost has a long-standing relationship with the WordPress community. They are an official WordPress recommended hosting company since 2006.
They pride themselves on their 24/7 customer support, great hosting infrastructure, and support for free open-source software like WordPress.
What Products Does Bluehost Offer?
This US-based hosting provider offers loads of different hosting-related products, from domain names to dedicated servers. Let me quickly go over their large catalog.
- Domain names: Although they are not the cheapest domain name registrar, you can buy domain names directly from Bluehost. They start at $17.99 a year at renewal. A personal all-time favorite of mine for domain names is Namecheap as it’s cheaper and easier to manage.
- Shared hosting: Unless you are managing a really large project or you need to geek around with your server’s configuration, a shared hosting plan is the one you ought to consider. Think of this as sharing a flat; you’ll share a server (flat), but you’ll have your own hosting space (room) – cheaper but noisier. At Bluehost, their shared prices go from $8.99 to $25.99 per month.
- WordPress hosting: Bluehost has a WordPress focused hosting service. It’s optimized for WordPress sites and comes with several perks like a staging area. It’s a bit pricey as it starts at $29.99 a month, more expensive than SiteGround.
- VPS: A Virtual Private Server is something in between a shared hosting and a dedicated one (read below). You’ll share a server with other clients, but there’s a (virtual) wall between your projects and theirs. This type of hosting is recommended for those needing special server configurations (e.g. using a particular programming language). VPS hosting plans go from $29.99 to $119.99 a month at Bluehost.
- Dedicated servers: Adequate for those websites that generate tons of traffic and/or need a top-performing server. You can think of this as having your own house; no neighbors or roommates to bother you. Dedicated hosting plans start at $124.99 per month.
These are the most important hosting related products that Bluehost offers. I was surprised to see that they don’t have cloud hosting services.
Note: This Bluehost review focuses on their shared hosting services, so from now on I’ll be sharing my own experience and knowledge about this Bluehost product.
Bluehost Pricing: What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
The first thing to notice about Bluehost prices is that they have enormous discounts during the first year. Bear in mind that the renewal costs are much higher and they may put you off. Here I mention both prices so you can compare them and decide.
* Integrated system that lets you create and restore your own backups.
The Basic plan is good if you are only going to have 1 website and 50 GB of storage is enough for your project.
With the Plus plan, you can have as many websites as you need and the storage is unmetered. It also comes with unlimited email accounts.
If you get the Choice Plus package, you’ll be awarded the Plus features, plus free domain privacy and better backup options.
The Pro tier is suitable for those looking for higher performances. The maximum files you can host with this plan jumps from 200,000 to 300,000.
For more information about Bluehost’s products and prices, please check our guide.
Bluehost Pros & Cons
Let me quickly tell you what I think are the most important advantages and disadvantages of Bluehost shared hosting:
When to Use Bluehost Hosting?
If you are looking to host a small-medium project (e.g. a bakery site) and you won’t be getting tons of traffic, Bluehost can be an OK alternative.
But being 100% honest, I think there are similar alternatives with better prices.
When Not to Use Bluehost?
If you are managing a project that depends on your website and you need the best performance, Bluehost isn’t for you. Look for alternatives if you own an eCommerce, are a thriving blogger or provide Software as a Service.
Bluehost shared hosting won’t be for those looking for advanced hosting features like staging areas or Git repositories either.
Bluehost Performance Tests
Is Bluehost a slow provider? Is their uptime OK?
To be able to answer all these questions, I’ve closely monitored Blueshot speed and uptime for months. Let me show you my findings.
Bluehost Speed Test
As a website owner, I don’t have to tell you how important speed is for providing the best user experience and improving your search engine rankings.
I compared Bluehost speed to the most popular (shared hosting) competitors. I used GTmetrix, Pingdom and Webpagetest to check their loading times.
Let me sum up the results.
These tests were carried out under the same circumstances (e.g. same page and content) spread out over almost 2 months.
As you can see, Bluehost isn’t top of the class when it comes to speed. Several providers outperformed them in our tests. If you are concerned about speed, SiteGround and DreamHost are, in my experience, are good performing providers.
Is Bluehost’s Uptime Good?
Believe it or not, your hosting provider (most likely) won’t have a 100% uptime. Due to technical reasons (e.g. server maintenance), your site will be down for (hopefully) short instances of time.
A bad uptime is terrible as your visitors and search engines won’t be able to reach your site. Your goal should be to have an uptime higher than 99.95%.
To monitor uptime I use StatusCake, a tool that checks each website every 5 minutes.
As you can see, Bluehost offers solid uptime results. I am quite happy with Bluehost’s performance here. However, be aware that they don’t offer any uptime warranty, other hosting providers will compensate you (e.g. a free month) if their global uptime drops below certain levels (usually 99.9%).
Bluehost Review: Do I Recommend It?
You’ve probably noticed already that Bluehost is not my favorite provider. However, if you want a hosting service with unmetered storage and unlimited bandwidth, Bluehost could be a suitable option.
As you can see in the above tests, their speed wasn’t the best. However, I was impressed with their uptime scores as they got similar results to top providers like SiteGround and DreamHost.
Their (first-year) pricing is remarkably cheap, but please consider the renewal prices as this sky-rocket.
I’m from the Philippines and I use Bluehost because it’s easy to use and affordable, There are plenty of exciting features and extras included at every price point, and the diversity of plans provides a lot of flexibility for every budget Bluehost is literally one of the top few that I would recommend to anyone and everyone.
I love using Bluehost for my web hosting service. They are easy to contact and provide excellent service. Can’t recommend enough.
Just over a year ago I decided to change my blog only site on WordPress to a WordPress/Woocommerce site. I looked at a few different hosts and ultimately chose Bluehost to be the host of my website. While I was building my website (which I hadn’t a clue how to do), they were very helpful, and anytime I have an issue (which is very VERY rare), they are very helpful. They have anything and everything you need to start from scratch with a website like I did, so don’t hesitate to go with them as your host!
The best Hosting company I met ever met in my online career. BlueHost played a big role in ranking my websites to the top google’s page.
Im so greatful for bluehost, i have read only positive reviews and recommandations. All navigation is super simple and eventhough i have always counted myself as PC illitarate with all the help and bluehost guidance im actually doing this. Even Beginner can build his website with bluehost. I have more ideas for websites and I will deffinitely be using bluehost again. Big thumbs up, 5 out of 5,
Bluehost support, whether via chat or call, is really great, supportive and timely. However, sometimes the cPanel has glitches when setting up hosting but it’s very rare. Usually, I use Shared Hosting but I recently bought VPS and am eager to see how the site performs. So far so good! Overall, Bluehost is dependable seeing as it hosts 90% of my sites.
I have been using Bluehost for my business site for the last twelve months, and recently renewed my plan with them.
Bluehost made it easy to get started online, and I appreciate their helpful emails. I would recommend them to other small business owners looking for a reliable host.
Great support. Feel very confident when I have any questions I look forward to speaking to customer support
I love using Blue host! It’s easy for me to use even with my very limited technical skills. I also appreciate that I can have several tools for my website in just one place. All of these benefits come together at an incredible price. Thank you Bluehost!