Bluehost hosting review: Reviewed by Digimagg

Our Verdict

Our Verdict

While there are numerous web hosting services to choose from, Bluehost distinguishes itself in several ways. It provides competitive pricing, impressive WordPress hosting plans, and delivers significant value for your hosting investment.

Pros

• User-friendly
• Customer support
• Security features
• WordPress integration

Cons

• Renewal rates
• Limited storage
• Lots of upselling

4.8

Our ratings take into account a product's cost, features, ease of use, customer service and other category-specific attributes. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.

Starting price

$2.95

Free domain name

First year only

Contract lengths available

12 months and 36 months

Bluehost, a leading web hosting provider with nearly 20 years of experience, is owned by Newfold Digital (formerly Endurance International Group), which also operates other well-known hosting brands such as HostGator, iPage, Domain.com, and Web.com.

Bluehost's expertise surpasses that of most competitors. They don't just understand how to install WordPress and launch the dashboard; they employ developers who work on the platform full-time. Moreover, Bluehost has been directly recommended by WordPress.org since 2005.

Bluehost's strategy has led to significant success, as evidenced by Datanyze's Web Hosting Share report ranking the company 6th among business users. Only hosting giants like GoDaddy, Amazon, and Google ranked higher.

What hosting types does Bluehost provide?

Bluehost provides budget-friendly shared hosting, suitable for beginners and small websites. Their WordPress hosting plans cater to a wide range of needs, from personal blogs to complex business sites and e-commerce stores. For those requiring high performance, Bluehost offers dedicated and VPS hosting options. Additionally, they offer a variety of add-on services such as website design, domain registration, email hosting, and premium support.

Bluehost shared hosting

Choosing a shared hosting plan means your website shares a server with other accounts, reducing costs but potentially impacting performance due to shared resources like the processor, RAM, and network connection.

Bluehost's shared hosting starts at $2.95 per month on the annual plan ($9.99 on renewal). This plan supports a single site with 10GB storage. It includes a free domain, SSL, CDN (Content Delivery Network), automated WordPress installation, a website builder, and 24/7 support via live chat and telephone.

Upgrading to higher-tier shared plans increases resources for better speeds and includes additional features. The top Pro plan ($13.95 per month billed annually, $28.99 on renewal) offers 100GB storage, supports unlimited websites, automated backups, domain privacy, and a dedicated IP.

Bluehost provides high-quality management tools, including a well-designed custom control panel, quick WordPress installation with Softaculous, and cPanel for tasks like creating email accounts and managing files and domains. These tools are user-friendly, efficient, and suitable for personal and small business sites.

However, Bluehost's plans tend to be more expensive once introductory offers expire. The cheapest plans lack backups, and there may be additional costs elsewhere. While a free domain is offered, Bluehost's above-average annual renewal fees ($18.99 for .com, $27.99 for .co.uk) could result in higher long-term costs compared to competitors like Namecheap.

For those looking to save money, Hostinger's Premium shared hosting plan offers a similar price point to Bluehost's basic plans, at $2.99 per month on the annual plan and $11.99 on renewal. Hostinger may not offer cPanel or Softaculous, but its control panels are still better than most. Additionally, Hostinger provides weekly backups, 100GB storage, and support for 100 websites. Performance tests show that Hostinger and Bluehost offer similar speeds.

Bluehost WordPress hosting

WordPress is a widely-used website creation platform known for its user-friendly interface and powerful capabilities, suitable for both personal and business websites, including large e-commerce stores.

Bluehost offers a shared hosting plan starting at $2.75 a month, which includes automatic WordPress installation. While this plan is sufficient for basic WordPress websites, it lacks advanced WordPress features found in other hosting providers' plans at lower prices.

Bluehost's WP Pro range, starting from $19.95 a month for a three-year plan, enhances WordPress capabilities with premium themes, a staging environment for testing changes, and automatic updates. Additional features include unlimited storage, support for unlimited sites, malware detection, and daily backups. Business-friendly tools like marketing features, site analytics, SEO guidance, PayPal integration, and a high-speed search tool are also included in the best plans, making it appealing for small businesses.

For cost-conscious users not requiring Bluehost's business tools, HostGator offers managed WordPress tools starting from $5.95 a month for a three-year plan, which includes free migration, domain, backups, and malware scanning.

IONOS offers a variety of WordPress plans, with prices ranging from $0.50 a month for the Casual plan in the first year ($8 on renewal) to $120 for the Agency plan, which provides speedy VPS hosting for up to ten demanding business sites.

Bluehost VPS hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting involves dividing a physical server into separate server environments, providing better performance compared to shared hosting as resources are not shared with other sites. Bluehost offers three VPS plans, ranging from a basic plan with 2 CPU cores, 2GB RAM, 30GB storage, and 1TB bandwidth for $19.99 a month over three years, $29.99 on renewal, to a high-end plan with 4 cores, 8GB RAM, 120GB storage, and 3TB bandwidth for $59.99 a month over three years, $119.99 on renewal.

While Bluehost's VPS plans offer decent performance for most small and mid-range sites, the limited selection of three plans may not suit everyone's needs. In comparison, some providers offer VPS plans with a wider range of CPU cores, from one to 24 or even 32 cores, providing more options for users with varying requirements. 

IONOS' VPS plans cater to a broader audience, with prices ranging from $2 billed monthly for a basic 1 core, 512MB server, up to $24 a month for the first six months, $45 on renewal, for an 8 core, 24GB RAM setup. 

For those unsure of their needs, Hostwinds offers VPS plans starting from $4.99 a month for a 1 core, 1GB setup, up to $395.24 for a powerful 16 core, 96GB system. Most plans allow for some customization to better suit individual needs, and Windows hosting is available if required.

Bluehost dedicated hosting

When you opt for dedicated hosting, you get exclusive access to an entire web server, eliminating the need to share resources with other users. Bluehost offers a limited selection of three dedicated hosting plans, all fairly similar in terms of features.

The Starter plan includes a 4 core, 2.3GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, 2x500GB storage, and 5TB bandwidth/month server for $79.99 a month over three years ($119.99 on renewal). On the other hand, the high-end Premium plan offers a 4 core, 3.3GHz CPU, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB storage, and 15TB bandwidth/month setup for $119.99 a month over three years ($209.99 on renewal.)

While these plans are reasonably priced and should deliver good performance for high-powered, speed-critical web projects, they cater to a small portion of the market, leaving many needs unaddressed by Bluehost.

For example, IONOS provides budget-friendly dedicated servers for experienced users starting at under $50. On the other hand, Liquid Web focuses on features and power, offering dedicated servers starting from $169 a month, which are more capable than Bluehost's best. Additionally, InMotion Hosting, though slightly more expensive than Bluehost, offers more plans, managed and unmanaged options, flexible billing (1, 3, 6, 12 months), and more, making it the top choice in our Best Dedicated Hosting guide.

Is a website builder offered by Bluehost?

Bluehost provides an affordable WordPress website builder, offering plans that cater to various needs, from personal blogs to medium-sized businesses and web stores. The starter plan, priced at $2.95 a month for the first year, $10.99 upon renewal, includes 300+ templates, drag-and-drop editing, and support for hosting unlimited websites. While backups are not included in the plan, they can be added for an additional $2.99 a month. Business-friendly features such as contact forms and social media integration are included, along with expert-level editing options like CSS editing. Higher-tier plans, priced from $9.95 to $12.95 in the first year and $14.99 to $24.95 upon renewal, include e-commerce options. Bluehost's website builder is a good choice for businesses or those seeking more configuration and editing options.

Is it possible to create an online store using Bluehost?

The Bluehost website builder offers an affordable and straightforward way to create an online store, as previously discussed. Additionally, Bluehost provides specialized WooCommerce hosting plans with enhanced features. WooCommerce is a robust WordPress plugin that offers a comprehensive set of e-commerce tools.

The Standard plan, priced at $12.95 per month in the first year and $24.95 upon renewal, includes payment processing and unlimited product listings.

The Premium plan stands out with additional features. For $24.95 per month ($39.95 on renewal), it offers more product listing options, supports reservations or appointments, enables subscription sales, automatically calculates sales tax by country, and includes a 'Plugin Bundle' providing access to over $200 worth of top WooCommerce plugins.

While Bluehost's WooCommerce plans are a solid choice for existing Bluehost customers, there may not be enough here to sway new users away from other providers' WooCommerce hosting offerings. For a wider range of WooCommerce plans with more features and performance optimizations, consider InMotion Hosting. A2 Hosting goes even further with optimized Magento and OpenCart software. If you're looking for a simpler option to learn the basics, HostGator's Gator website builder supports a 3-product web store starting at $3.84 per month.

How fast is Bluehost? 

Performance is crucial in web hosting, even for the most affordable plans. A slow or frequently offline site can be worse than having no site at all.

To measure uptime, we set up a test WordPress site on a shared hosting plan and used the monitoring service Uptime.com to access it every five minutes over 14 days, logging the results. Bluehost achieved a perfect 100% uptime, which is impressive considering that not all providers manage this in our tests.

We also assess website performance using GTmetrix to load a test WordPress page and measure the time it takes to load the main content (known as Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP). Bluehost's LCP was only 0.603 seconds, ranking second in our last 15 tests and outperforming budget providers like Domain.com (1.5 seconds) and iPage (1.6 seconds).

While occasional download speed tests are important, they don't reflect a server's performance under load. To test this, we use k6 to simulate 20 users accessing our site simultaneously. Bluehost's performance was mid-range but acceptable, with our site handling an average of 15 requests per second.

These results position Bluehost near the top of our shared hosting performance rankings. However, it's important to note that these tests were conducted on a single shared hosting plan. Results may vary for VPS, dedicated hosting, or other types of plans.

How user-friendly is Bluehost?

Bluehost's account control panel is an attractive web interface that simplifies the process of getting started with your website.

For instance, WordPress comes preinstalled, eliminating the need for manual installation. Convenient shortcuts like 'Customize your design' or 'Write your first blog post' allow you to start working on your site immediately, even if you're new to WordPress. If you're more experienced, you can easily access the regular WordPress dashboard with a click.

By clicking 'Advanced' on the Bluehost sidebar, you can access cPanel. Here, you'll find tools for creating email accounts, uploading or managing files, working with databases, and checking your site's traffic for the month.

While Bluehost automatically installs WordPress, you're not limited to this platform. cPanel also includes Softaculous, an automated installer that can set up forums, e-commerce website builders, social networking platforms, wikis, and hundreds of other apps with just a few clicks.

Web hosting can be complex, even for experts. However, Bluehost's well-designed website and industry-standard tools excel at helping users find the features they need and providing the functionality required to complete their tasks.

How good is Bluehost's customer support?

Bluehost provides 24/7 support through its website, live chat, and telephone. However, it does not offer a ticket or email option, which could be problematic for ongoing issues as you might need to re-explain your problem with each support session. For example, we spent approximately six hours across seven support sessions trying to resolve a non-critical issue that was annoying but did not affect our website, and it still has not been fixed.

The Bluehost web knowledgebase contains a wide range of detailed and helpful articles, organized into categories such as WordPress, Domains, Email, and Control Panel. However, the presentation of these articles is not always ideal. For instance, when selecting the WordPress category, the first result is the release notes for WordPress 5.0, which was first released in 2018 and may not be relevant to many users.

You can use keywords to search the database, which slightly improves the results. However, finding what you need may require a bit more scrolling and clicking than preferred. Once you find the articles, they generally do a great job of explaining issues and providing solutions.

Bluehost's live chat support appears to be well staffed, as we've never waited more than a couple of minutes for an agent to join, often much less. The agents are friendly and helpful, willing to assist for as long as needed (we've had sessions lasting an hour or more). They typically offer good advice for common issues, although they may struggle with uncommon problems.

For instance, when we reported the issue of the dashboard displaying the same 'Setting Up Backups' message for three weeks, the agents focused solely on workarounds (e.g., accessing backups from a different menu) rather than addressing the root cause (an area of the dashboard not functioning correctly).

The absence of a ticket system can be problematic. On a few occasions, agents informed us they would escalate the "Setting Up Backups" issue to administrators for resolution. However, because there was no ticketing system, we had no convenient way to track the progress of the escalation or check its status.

Bluehost's telephone support is also user-friendly, connecting us to an agent within a few minutes. The agent demonstrated more expertise than the live chat team, effectively addressing the "Setting Up Backups" issue and guiding us through a complex troubleshooting task.

In general, Bluehost provides solid overall support in most scenarios. While the lack of a ticket system is a drawback, the current setup should help you resolve most common issues without much difficulty, which is better than what many competitors offer.

Final conclusion

While Bluehost's VPS and Dedicated plans are limited and may not meet the needs of the most demanding business users, the company continues to offer high-quality hosting that is faster, more reliable, and of better quality than many competitors.

Although Bluehost's VPS and dedicated hosting plans may not be suitable for the largest and most demanding business-critical websites, the company excels in other areas. It offers a range of feature-rich shared, WordPress, website-building, and e-commerce plans that enable users to create fast and reliable personal and small to medium-sized business websites.