I currently own over 10 WordPress-managed websites that are hosted by Bluehost and as of the publication of this review, I have been a happy paying customer for over 5 years. This gives me a good authority to speak of the good, the bad and to give the most objective review. We also featured Bluehost as our overall best web hosting provider in 2021 owing to its inexpensive plans and several freebies that they offer such as free emails, free SSL, free domain in the first year, and free website back-up.
This post is a complete review of Bluehost as a hosting services provider and will cover details of their other services, other than the popular Bluehost Shared Hosting plan.
Below are other hosting packages we will also cover in this review:
- Bluehost Shared Hosting and Managed WordPress Hosting: This is the most popular plan being used by over 80% of Bluehost’s customers. It’s ideal for any small website and its cheapest plan costs $3.95/month but you can use our discount code to activate it at $2.95/month.
- Bluehost VPS Hosting: This package is ideal if you expect to receive a lot of visitors on your site and need to have dedicated services. With VPS hosting by Bluehost, the RAM, and CPU are dedicated to your account and Bluehost virtualizes a dedicated server by splitting resources among users of that dedicated server. Its cheapest plan starts at $19.99/month.
- Bluehost Dedicated Hosting: This is their most expensive plan with its introductory price costing $79.99/month. Read more about this hosting plan here.
Let’s start with the basics:
Table of Contents
About Bluehost
Where is Bluehost located and where are Bluehost servers located?
Bluehost is a private American company founded that was founded in 2003 and is currently ranked among the 20 largest web hosting companies in the world. It is owned by a NASDAQ-listed company called Endurance International Group that is based in Boston, MA. The parent company also owns a number of other hosting companies and domain registrars such as Domain.com, HostMonster.com Fatcow.com, among a list of over 80 others. Endurance has over 4.2 M customers worldwide with Bluehost having a junk of their customers.
Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton and is currently headed by Suhaib Zaheer who took over from James in 2017 and who currently sits at the head office in Salt-Lake City, Utah. Bluehost servers are hosted in a facility just outside Salt Lake City in another town called Provo. The company employs 700 staff.
Bluehost Pricing Plans for Shared Hosting Plan
Bluehost has different features and pricing for the four plans in the shared hosting package and described in detail below:
Bluehost Basic Hosting Plan, Pricing & Features:
If you are been designed in a group to create a website for an event and are sure you will only need one site or blog, this is the ideal plan for you. I remember purchasing this plan back in 2012 when I was in college.
I like this plan because it is cheap, costing just $2.65 as of this publication. It works great if you are sure you won’t need to create more websites as it limits you. You can only host one active website and limit your SSD storage to 50GB. That said
Below is a snapshot showing the four Bluehost pricing plans:
Basic Plan: If you want to see if building some simple website, perhaps a WordPress, Drupal, Wix, or trial free CMS based website, this is a great option for you. This plan costs $3.99
Bluehost plus hosting
What is Bluehost Plus Hosting? Bluehost Plus Hosting is their most popular hosting package (to ask) and it costs just $4.45/m. I honestly think this Bluehost plus hosting price is among the lowest when you consider the value you get.
The Plus plan is ideal if you plan on developing a number of sites. If you have spent a lot of time trying to learn skills such as SEO and think you’re going to develop one site, think again. Most bloggers who start out with one site end up with several websites or blogs and this is the main reason I recommend this plan. While the price differential is small, you are allowed to host an unlimited number of active domains, parked domains, and sub-domains.
The main difference between the basic and the Plus plans is that the basic plan only allows you one active domain and does not provide spam protection. On the other hand, the Plus plan has spam protection and you can register an unlimited number of domains. The table below has more:
| Basic | Plus |
| One active domain, 5 parked and 25 subdomains | Unlimited number of active and parked domains and unlimited subdomains as well |
| 50 GB SSD Storage | Unlimited SSD Storage |
| No spam expert | Spam Experts |
| 1 Office 365 Mailbox – Free 30 Days | |
| Cost: | Cost: |
As I mentioned above, both plans give you free SSL and because of this feature we included Bluehost in our list of 10 best web hosting providers with free SSL
Below is a video review of Bluehost Plus plan:
There is Bluehost Choice Plus and Pro
Bluehost Choice Plus:
Bluehost Choice Plus is a slight upgrade from the Bluehost Plus plan with two critical additions:
- Domain Privacy + Protection
- Site Backup – CodeGuard Basic
The Choice Plus is usually a few dollars more expensive than the Plus plan but as of this review in late 2019, they are on offer and each costing $4.45/m
Bluehost Pro
The Bluehost Pro plan is the most expensive shared hosting plan you can get and is really ideal if you need the following additional features:
- 2 Spam Experts instead of one offered by Bluehost Plus and Choice Plus
- Domain Privacy + Protection offered by Choice Plus plan
- Site Backup – CodeGuard Basic offered by Choice Plan
- Dedicated IP
Once you have decided on a plan, you can pick any of them but the first step to sign up and to create a Bluehost account is to find a domain name by searching your domain name as shown on the snapshot below:
If you don’t get a match, you can sign up for the hosting plan and claim your free domain name later. When Bluehost is running offers or have coupons during holidays or during special days such as Black Friday sale, Steve and I always encourage others in our various blogging forums to just get the hosting first.
Pros
- Free SSL
- Free Domain
- 24/7 support: On average, I have had to wait for less than 1 minute to get connected. You’ll be asked for a security token.
- If you cancel within 30-days you can get your money back on the actual service itself. You can get your refund via PayPal within 24 hours and can take up to 10 days if you want your refund via credit card. All you have to do is contact them and have your four-digit security code with you and the email associated with the account.
- It has the best uptime of Best Uptime (99.99%) according to test I conducted on the sites I currently host with Bluehost and according to tests done by other review sites such as HostingFacts.
- It loads very fast regardless of your location. When I checked on 12/3/2019, it is 25% faster than other hosts and the site took 1.5 seconds, compared to the average website load time of 6.9 seconds.
- It is very easy to sign up and use it as I’ll describe later the process of signing up. Literally, one-click install.
Bluehost is number #1 recommended host by WordPress and as you can see on wordpress.org/hosting page, they’ve listed them as the leading hosting that currently powers over 2 million websites. See the snapshot below:
It is important to note that Godaddy is not one of the hosting service providers recommended by WordPress.
Cons
- You can’t pay monthly. When I started blogging, I REALLY needed a monthly plan as I was super broke. I actually sent them an email titled, ‘ Bluehost Pay Monthly’ and I got a ‘No, No’ response. Bluehost allows you to only pay annually and can choose to pay for several years such as 3 years/36 months.
- They don’t offer free site migration. You will need to spend about $150 to transfer a domain that was not initially registered with Bluehost.
Bluehost Video Review for Shared Hosting Plan:
Bluehost VPS Hosting
Bluehost VPS Hosting: This package is ideal if you expect to receive a lot of visitors on your site and need to have dedicated services. With VPS hosting by Bluehost, the RAM, and CPU are dedicated to your account and Bluehost virtualizes a dedicated server by splitting resources among users of that dedicated server.
The standard for $19.99 or $14.99 (with discount)
- $14.99*/m
- 2 Cores
- 30 GB SSD Storage
- 2 GB RAM
- 1 TB Bandwidth
- 1 IP Address
Enhanced
- $24.99/mo*/m
- 2 Cores
- 60 GB SSD Storage
- 4 GB RAM
- 2 TB Bandwidth
- 2 IP Addresses
Ultimate
- $49.99/mo*
- 4 Cores
- 120 GB SSD Storage
- 8 GB RAM
- 3 TB Bandwidth
- 2 IP Addresses
When you compare Bluehost VPS vs Siteground, its other competitor, Siteground is charging more than $35 for its introductory plan. Bluehost is, therefore, cheaper by over $20 and Siteground does not offer the 30-day money-back guarantee as Bluehost does.
Bluehost WordPress Hosting:
Basic
- $2.75/mo* – if you have a discount code
- 1 Website
- Free SSL Certificate
- 50 GB SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- 5 Parked Domains
- 25 Subdomains
- $200 Marketing Credit
Plus
- $4.45/mo* – if you have a discount code
- Unlimited Websites
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- Unlimited Parked Domains
- Unlimited Subdomains
- $200 Marketing Credit
- 1 Office 365 Mailbox – Free 30 Days
Choice Plus:
- $4.45/mo* – if you have a discount code
- Unlimited Websites
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered SSD Storage
- Free Domain for 1 Year
- Unlimited Parked Domains
- Unlimited Subdomains
- $200 Marketing Credit
- CodeGuard Basic Backup
- 1 Office 365 Mailbox – Free 30 Days
Hostgator vs Bluehost
I used Hostgator previously until last year, 2018 when I switched most of my hosting to other sites. We only have a tracking website registered with Hostgator for comparison purposes here at Hosting Hub. After a series of disappointing downtime periods and poor support, I no longer host my personal sites with Hostgator.
Worpress.org does not actually recommend Hostgator as a host for WordPress sites.
Similarities:
- They both offer free domain in the first year
- The introductory plan (Basic plan for Bluehost and Hatchling for Hostgator) have similar features; free domain, free SSL, single domain limitation and similar pricing
- The next plan after introductory (Plus for Bluehost and Baby plan for HostGator) is a bit more expensive for Hostgator. They also have similar features, the major one being unlimited domains to be hosted on this plan category.
Bluehost Login to Dashboard and WordPress
One of the features WordPress.Org mentions in their recommendation of Bluehost is their one-click install of a WordPress-powered site. I currently ran all my websites using the WordPress CMS and I must say it is quite easy installing WordPress and navigating through the Bluehost dashboard.
However, at one point or another, I experienced cases where:
- Bluehost can’t log in to WordPress
- Bluehost can’t log in to CPanel or access Cpanel and access files such as htaccess
Does Bluehost work with Wix, Squarespace, and other CMS?
When the former CEO was asked about this, this was his response:
WordPress is the staple of web builders in the ecosystem. A majority of new customers utilize a CMS for building their business. We have been a large supporter of the WordPress community and strive to make the self-hosted WordPress experience on Bluehost great. Many other site builders are good at what they do for the audience they attract. While we do have other builders available, our customers have shown WordPress serves their needs the best.
James Grierson, former CEO of Bluehost
Bluehost email hosting & Review
Unlike other hosting companies that offer 0 to 3 email addresses when you register and host your domain with them, Bluehost offers you up to 100 FREE email accounts. The basic plan offers this and should suffice for most bloggers or small businesses. However, you can upgrade to an unlimited number of accounts with the Plus or Business Pro plan. In addition, you can rely on Bluehost for Unlimited bandwidth which essentially means that if you were to send out a mass email and a lot of people visit your site, it will not crash as it does not limit the transfer of data to and from your Bluehost-hosted website.
Bluehost cloud hosting vs VPS
| Cloud hosting | Virtual Private Server(VPS) |
| 1. Cloud hosting incorporates the use of multiple servers: If one server has a problem, you can simply migrate your site to another, eliminating downtime. | 1. Entails dividing a physical server into different partitions or slices: while you technically still share a server, you get a dedicated slice of it that’s just for you. |
| 2. Options for 2-4 CPU cores and up to 8GB of RAM | 2. Redundant SSD storage with 2-8GB of RAM |
| 3. Owing to cloud hosting’s complexity, it may require more technical expertise to configure, especially to gain the full advantages of the cloud network. | 3. It has enhanced the cPanel environment with full root access to CentOS. |
| 4. Increased redundancy and the ability to move data between server resources provide better up-time than conventional hosting platforms. | 4. With KVM hypervisor virtualization the resources bought are guaranteed to always be available. |
| 5. Cloud hosting allows the scale-up of CPU and RAM resources in the future as a brand grows and generates more traffic. | 5. VPS hosting offers scalability so that if you start with a VPS, you can migrate slowly without breaking the bank on a dedicated server, which you may not need for quite some time. |
Bluehost vs A2 Hosting
| Bluehost | A2 Hosting |
| 1. Both provide the easy to use cPanel for accounts management. | 1. For Windows hosting with A2 Hosting, you get access to Plesk for managing your web hosting account. |
| 2. The cheapest price for any Bluehost hosting plan is $2.95 p/m + free domain name for the Starter shared hosting plan on a three-year subscription. Generally, Bluehost provides more affordable hosting services, especially for starters. | 2. It provides affordable hosting plans for shared, WordPress, and dedicated server including free site transfer with every web hosting plan. VPS and managed WordPress plans are cheaper than those of Bluehost. They also provide a pro-rated refund for unused hosting services. |
3. 24/7 support via live chat and phone, they’ve discontinued email-based support. | 3. It provides 24/7 support via 3 modes: live chat, phone, and email. |
Bluehost vs GoDaddy hosting
| Bluehost | Godaddy |
| 1. Bluehost utilizes accredited open-source technologies, such as KVM and OpenStack, to uphold performance. It runs on AMD power centers and uses CPU segregation technology that allows it to intelligently control the CPU and protect your website against viruses and spam attacks. | 1. Runs on Intel Core i7 processors and you can choose between Windows OS or Linux OS when you sign up for their services. |
| 2. Bluehost integrates with Weebly and WordPress.org. | 2. GoDaddy has its own drag-and-drop website builder. |
| 3. It offers the industry-standard cPanel as the control panel for hosting. | 3. offers the industry-standard cPanel too: additionally, it avails Plesk panel, as it even supports Windows hosting. |
| 4. 24/7 support via live chat, email, and ticketing system or toll-free telephone number for phone support. | 4. 24/7 support via live chat, email but lacks phone support. Poor customer service with long delays for feedback on queries. |
| 5. Bluehost allows you to manage multiple sites easily with access to unlimited MySQL databases: offers automatic backups from cPanel, unlike Godaddy. | 5. GoDaddy too offers access to limited MySQL databases with its shared hosting plans. |
| 6. Bluehost offers only Linux hosting. | 6. GoDaddy provides plans for Linux and Windows hosting. |
| 7. With Bluehost, you have not the flexibility to subscribe to any of their shared hosting plans for the short term. You can use the subscription options for one, two or three years only. | 7. GoDaddy allows shorter term subscriptions such as for three months or even one month (except for the GoDaddy Economy plan). |
Bluehost hosting with GoDaddy domain
Bluehost vs Inmotion hosting
| Bluehost | InMotion |
| 1. They offer a wide variety of hosting options, including shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress hosting, etc. | 1. Offering a wider range of services — including shared, dedicated, VPS, and even WordPress-specific plans. |
| 2. It utilizes the easy to use cPanel, suitable for beginners as well as advanced users. | 2. Use a secure and common control panel, cPanel. |
| 3. Bluehost adds the price of SSD storage into the overall cost of its VPS hosting plan. | 3. InMotion offers free solid-state drive (SSD) storage. |
| 4. Free SSD drives come included on all shared hosting plans: however, there are no free automatic backups. | 4. InMotion also offers free disk space and backup even on its core plans. |
| 5. With two to four cores and guaranteed resources, your virtual or dedicated server will be performant, powerful, and online virtually 24/7 | 5. Both have great up-time though has been proven to be better. |
6. Bluehost has a categorized online center for help and support; compromising of email and domains, FAQ, WordPress, video tutorials, departmental “chat now” button or related phone number. | 6. InMotion has a live chat, phone, Skype, and even a support center forum with articles written by the company. The support center also avails product guides, website and email tutorials, an education channel, Frequently Asked Questions, and a community forum area where you can ask questions. You can also subscribe to their YouTube channel. |
| 7. What makes Bluehost packages most appealing is the company’s reputation for affordability and usability: moreover, it offers a great 30-day-period money-back guarantee. | 7. InMotion’s prices are good value for money, but they’re noticeably higher since its more focused on business hosting; however, InMotion has an epic 90-day-period money-back guarantee. |
Bluehost vs Namecheap Hosting
| Bluehost | Namecheap |
| 1. BlueHost comes with a free domain and has significantly faster page-loading speeds. | 1. NameCheap’s main service is domain registration though it has many plan limitations, including caps across domains, disk space, databases, and email addresses. |
| 2. The cheapest shared hosting plan you can get with BlueHost costs $3.95/month although it evens out with the best performance and plans with massive memory and unlimited bandwidth. | 2. NameCheap has some of the cheapest hosting available. Their shared hosting can cost as low as $9.88/year, which translates to about $0.82/month: However, it has expensive renewal prices. |
| 3. It too avails free SSL/TLS certificate and automatic daily backups with your plan. Malware scanning with SiteLock isn’t included for free, unfortunately. | 3. It offers 50 free SSL/TLS certificates, meaning you can protect multiple domains and subdomains. Moreover, you have access to free daily backups and malware scanning. |
| 4. It offers Live Chat, phone, email, and Forum support including Video guides. | 4. No Phone Support but they do have a live chat option for urgent matters. |
| 5. Though technically faster, Bluehost does not guarantee up-time. | 5. As for up-time, Namecheap has a 99.9-percent uptime guarantee for re-seller and VPS plans, and a 100-percent guarantee for everything else. |
| 6. Bluehost doesn’t include free domain privacy across all plans. Only the Pro shared plan and a few others, for example, include domain privacy and a dedicated IP address. | 6. It includes domain privacy with every domain, meaning it replaces the data in your WHOIS record with dummy information. |
Bluehost vs Hostgator hosting
| Bluehost | Hostgator |
| 1. Bluehost offers a polished easy to use interface with cPanel as well as a free domain. | 1. HostGator is easy to use and beginner-friendly with a more customizable cPanel though they don’t offer a free domain name. |
| 2. All servers operating at Tier 3, up-time is projected to be around 99.982% with an average downtime of 1.6 hours per year | 2. HostGator utilizes several Tier 4 data centers located in Texas and Utah and has an excellent, industry-topping uptime score of 99.9%. |
| 3. Bluehost lacks the flexibility to allow short term subscriptions to any of their shared hosting plans: however, it offers a money-back guarantee of 30 days. Bluehost charges $149.99 to migrate your site. | 3. Offer free website migration: moreover, HostGator’s refund policy offers a longer period of 45 days. |
| 4. Bluehost runs on AMD power centers.
| 4. HostGator runs on Dual Xeon. |
| 5. Bluehost is also original and uses CPU segregation technology to maintain intelligent control over the CPU and to protect your hosted site from spammers. | 5. HostGator also cooperates with SiteLock like Bluehost to provide strong and reliable malware scans. |
| 6. Avails free shared SSL that is available to accounts that reside on a shared IP. | 6. Only the licensed SSL domain will be given free of charge. |
| 7. It has a help center and as well offers phone, ticketing, and live chat technical support 24/7 for all their hosting plans with fairly the shortest response time. | 7. 24/7 support via phone, live chat, a ticketing system, and a help center. |
| 8. It too avails free SSL/TLS certificate and automatic daily backups with your plan. Malware scanning with SiteLock isn’t included for free, unfortunately. | 8. HostGator doesn’t give the option of creating automatically generated backups: a paid upgrade called CodeGuard, it creates daily automated website backups for all your web files and databases with a 1-click restore. |
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]