Bluehost Review

At least attractive prices, a strong alliance with WordPress, and tons of positive reviews may lead you to one of the largest hosts in the world, Bluehost. This hosting company has all means to let you create and publish your website project. You won’t need to search for a side platform to connect a domain, ensure security, or plug in eCommerce tools to your site. All this and even more are available with Bluehost.

Why should you choose Bluehost when there exist other fitting solutions with a similar range of services? And should you? Only having a full picture of the host’s capacities, features, strengths, and weaknesses will let you make the right decision. This review will give this picture of Bluehost.

The Bluehost platform was launched in 2003. The company was and is headquartered in Utah, USA. Bluehost has been part of a giant holding, and this has enabled the host’s adequate development and advancement in accordance with the latest tech innovations.

Today, Bluehost is one of the largest hosting providers in the world. It renders services to over two million websites worldwide. On the list of the top-recommended hosts for WordPress sites made by WordPress itself, Bluehost has been taking the #1 position for over 10 years.

And this is for a good reason: Bluehost is a dedicated partner of WordPress. It offers a one-click setup, WordPress builder, migration, a range of WordPress plans, and all you need to maintain your WordPress website.

However, it doesn’t mean that Bluehost is a plain plugin for WordPress! Instead, the company offers a broad range of digital services, including domain registration, solutions for shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, professional emailing, and more.

Who Can Benefit from Bluehost the Most

Although Bluehost covers diverse hosting types, its key specification is shared hosting. The platform should extend the choice of VPS and dedicated server plans and make them more flexible to rank among the top providers of these hosting types. There’s no cloud hosting here as well. So, if shared hosting is what you need, opt for Bluehost.

Since this is partner #1 of WordPress, Bluehost will ideally suit individual users and small companies having or planning to launch a WordPress-based site and looking for fast and affordable hosting for it.

Finally, the platform enables the creation of online stores and supplies them with all the necessary functionality. Its eCommerce plans go with installed WooCommerce, Yoast, payments, and other plugins. So, Bluehost is one of the best solutions for small to medium-sized online shops.

Bluehost Pros

If a quick overview of the Bluehost advantages is needed, here is the list of the most significant of them:

• diverse services;
• eCommerce tools;
• WordPress site builder;
• WordPress-first products;
• beneficial prices for newcomers;
• convenient dashboard;
• responsive support.

You can also expect your Bluehost-hosted websites to load faster than with average competitors. The company offers site-building services, so you can order an entire website from it.

Bluehost Cons

Forewarned is forearmed, so the list of Bluehost’s downsides will come in handy as well:

• no uptime guarantee;
• insufficient options for VPS & dedicated hosting;
• less-compatible renewal prices.

Certain users will also consider it disadvantageous that there is no month-to-month pricing model on Bluehost.

How Expensive Bluehost Is

So, you can choose to pay for 12 or 36 months for your Bluehost plan, no matter which services you choose. There’s no month-to-month option, and the only plus here is that the company guarantees a refund requested within 30 days after your subscription.

As to Bluehost prices, let’s start with the shared hosting plans. At the moment, there are four of them on the platform:

• Basic. 1 site, 10 Gb of storage, 1-year free SSL, 1-year free domain. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $2.95/mo, renewal price – $10.99/mo.
• Plus. Unlimited sites, 20 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $5.45/mo, renewal price – $14.99/mo.
• Choice Plus. unlimited sites, 40 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $5.45/mo, renewal price – $19.99/mo.
• Pro. Unlimited sites, 100 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $13.95/mo, renewal price – $28.99/mo.

Although Bluehost doesn’t offer many unlimited options on its shared hosting plans, each plan can be a good value for money for you if you select it according to your needs. The same is true for the WordPress packages:

• Basic. 1 site, 10 Gb of storage, 1-year free SSL, 1-year free domain, free CDN. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $2.95/mo, renewal price – $10.99/mo.
• Choice Plus. Unlimited sites, 40 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain, free CDN. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $5.45/mo, renewal price – $19.99/mo.
• Online Store. Unlimited sites. 100 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain, free CDN. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $9.45/mo, renewal price – $24.95/mo.
• Pro. Unlimited sites, 100 Gb of storage, free SSL, 1-year free domain, free CDN. Introductory price, 12-month billing – $13.95/mo, renewal price – $28.99/mo.

These plans are similar to those offered for shared hosting. The main differences include WordPress theme packs, automatic updates, and daily backups on all plans except the Basic package and the pro version of Yoast.

Bluehost offers only three plans for VPS and dedicated server hosting. The prices start at $24.99 and $99.49 a month, respectively (12-month billing). The main drawback of these plans is that you haven’t enough freedom to configure them.

There are two plans for the Bluehost site builder, Online Store ($9.95/mo) and Online Store + Marketplace ($12.95/mo). Both plans are consistent and include enough features for business and commercial activities. The more expensive solution goes with 200 Gb storage and multi-channel inventory tools.

Finally, Bluehost sells domains of various types. Here, the prices range from $1.99/year (.website) to $27.99/year (.co).

Performance

You may dislike the fact that Bluehost has data centers in the US, China, and India. Moreover, the company doesn’t parade the facilities’ exact locations. Yet, Bluehost’s performance won’t disappoint you. At least, our experience with Bluehost shared hosting has shown very encouraging results.

Bear in mind that Bluehost does not guarantee any uptime percentages, and it’s also a downside. However, we experienced 99.99% uptime during 21 days on our Bluehost-powered website! Expect an average response time of 1.2s, while the average LCP (how fast your website’s content is downloaded) will be 608s.

Security and Protection

Bluehost is a sensible choice in terms of security. All plans from the company include SSL certificates, indispensable means of your website’s protection. Even if you opt for the cheapest Basic plan for shared hosting, Bluehost will grant you a one-year free SSL certificate. The other shared hosting plans go with a free SSL certificate valid during the whole subscription period. Bluehost also offers the following security tools:

• malware scanning;
• daily backups included in the Choice Plus and Pro plans;
• domain privacy tools (Choice Plus and Pro).

All WordPress hosting plans have a free SSL certificate and daily backups. These options will be included in the Basic plan’s price only for one year. Domain privacy tools and malware scans make up part of the security feature sets in all WordPress plans.

Control Panel

The Bluehost dashboard displays how easy-to-use the platform is. This is a common cPanel improved by the Bluehost developers. You can use the left-side menu to quickly access tools to manage your websites, office documents, email campaigns, domains, etc.

The dashboard starts with the Home page, through which you can easily log in to your WordPress site. This starting screen will let you customize your pages’ designs, create blogs, and update/connect/delete plugins with a single click. One more useful unit on the Home screen is the Tips & Tricks banner with links to how-to articles and other useful info.

Such sections as Marketplace and Marketing Tools will help you supply your website with plugins or extra services needed for your marketing activities.

Through the Advanced section, you can change your website’s settings. This menu is for techies – not for newbies to website maintenance. Here, you can manage databases, use file manager, change security options, and more.

The My Sites section is the fastest way to start creating a new website. You can use the Add Site button to proceed with the Bluehost site builder. One more option here is to move an existing website to Bluehost hosting.

Website Building Tools

Bluehost offers a top-notch website builder best fitting for creating WordPress online projects. You can opt for one of the two builder plans, each comprising the following common features:

• WordPress migration for free;
• WP automated updates;
• 1-year free SSL & domain;
• the CDN option for free;
• daily backup;
• Sitelock Free to scan malware;
• Yoast SEO (full);
• the Email Campaigns builder;
• the built-in WooCommerce plugin;
• payment tools;
• the customer account builder;
• shipping labels;
• gift cards;
• appointments;
• product search & filter tools, and more.

This long list of features for both plans also includes around-the-clock support. As to the differences between them, the more expensive Online Store + Marketplace package goes with two times larger SSD storage of 200 Gb and multi-channel inventory equipment necessary to tune up your connections to various marketplaces.

3 Ways to Create a Website with Bluehost

Building a WP website using Bluehost is one of the best solutions in the industry. The platform offers a one-click installation of the software and has everything you need to realize your WP project quickly and securely. Yet, you should know what to do or have an expert hired to implement your ideas into reality correctly.

But it doesn’t mean that being a coder or hiring a third-party professional is the only way to benefit from the Bluehost site builder. Besides DIY support, you can opt for the Building Guidance option. It’ll be helpful for users with basic or beginner-level coding knowledge. They will be able to create their site using the team’s assistance when it is necessary.

Finally, you can hire the Bluehost team of professional web developers who will build the very WP website you need for you. You won’t need to do anything! The details are to be found on the official site of Bluehost.

Customer and Tech Support

The Bluehost support team is one of the best in the industry. The hosting company enables 24/7 tech support for all its users, no matter which service they use or which plan they have subscribed to. The available contact means on Bluehost are as follows:

• Online Chat (24/7);
• Phone Number (7 AM – 12 AM EST);
• email support.

Customers also can use the Call Me Back form to submit a question. Bluehost is sure to call you back within 15 minutes. Our experience showed that the team responds within two or three minutes in most cases.

Is Bluehost Worth Trying?

The answer is yes. Bluehost is a reliable company offering fast and secure hosting. The company’s services will fit WordPress users the most. The platform will let you easily install WordPress and create a professional WP site with all the necessary instruments.

Bluehost offers a good choice of eCommerce and marketing tools. Its site builder is good for websites’ SEO and security. Its best options are WordPress hosting and shared hosting solutions.