Bluehost is one of the oldest hosting services providers. It started in 1996 and now it has become one of the largest brand names when it comes to WordPress hosting. In fact, Bluehost is now an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers great help and support, their services are very affordable and they provide strong uptime performance. In this Bluehost review, we’ll cover pros and cons, features and pricing, customer reviews, and much more to help you make a decision whether they’re the right choice for you.
We’ll cover the following things every blogger looks for in a web hosting provider in our dedicated Bluehost review:
- Reliability: Will there be downtime or your website will be available 24/7/365
- Pricing: Are the services affordable, do they have any deals that can save you money?
- Customer Support: If you have technical issues can they resolve them on time.
- Features: Do they have all the features that you’ll need to develop your website?
- Hardware: Is it top-notch
Bluehost hosting overview:
Bluehost offers a number of hosting packages including VPS hosting, shared hosting, Managed WordPress web hosting, and dedicated hosting. The most popular package is their shared hosting package and it comes in 3 different packages. Bluehost’s shared hosting is the best choice for your new blog.
WordPress enables you to develop and customize your website in a matter of minutes. A reliable hosting provider is required to use WordPress to avoid your website getting hacked or crashing. As a WordPress blogger, every time I assess a hosting service provider I look at a number of parameters like the ones below:
- Pricing
- Managed and Optimised WordPress web hosting
- Reputation
- Security
- Disk space
- Bandwidth
- Ease of use
- Support
We will dive into the details below in this Bluehost review.
Bluehost is Endorsed by WordPress but is it reliable
As a blogger, one thing I can tell you is that speed is very important for providing the best user experience and improving your search engine rankings. When it comes to speed though Bluehost isn’t top of the class, but it can easily handle traffic up to 20000/day without any issues.
Bluehost features and Hosting Plans
6 different types of hosting:
- Shared: Several users are allowed to share space on a single server
- Shared WordPress: Designed for WordPress sites
- WooCommerce: For hosting an online store with WordPress
- VPS: virtual server is divided into separate sections, with resources shared between websites.
- Managed WordPress: This plan is optimized for a WordPress site
- Dedicated: the most expensive, your website has a whole server to itself
Shared Hosting Plans
Bluehost has four shared hosting plans the features and pricing of each is shown below;
| Features | Basic | Plus | Choice Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | 1 | |||
| Disk space | 50GB | |||
| Bandwidth | ||||
| Office 365 Mailbox | x | |||
| Domain Privacy | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated Backup | x | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated IP | x | x | x | ✓ |
| Monthly price | $2.95 | $5.45 | $5.45 | $13.95 |
| Renewal price | $7.99 | $10.99 | $14.99 | $23.99 |
The common features to the shared plans are shown below;
- Free Domain for the first year
- Free CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Free SSL certificate
- Free marketing credits worth $100
- Scalability
- Custom theme
- 24/7 customer support
Shared WordPress Hosting plans
Bluehost has four shared WordPress hosting plans the features and pricing of each is shown below;
| Features | Basic | Plus | Choice Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Disk Space | 50GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 25K monthly visits | 100K monthly visits | Unlimited visits |
| Parked domains | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Subdomains | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Microsoft 365 Mailbox | x | Free 30 days | Free 30 days |
| Monthly price | $2.95 | $5.45 | $5.45 |
| Renewal price | $7.99 | $10.99 | $14.99 |
The common features to the shared WordPress hosting plans are shown below;
- Free SSL certificate
- Automatic WordPress installation
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Microsoft 365 available
- Secure configuration of login credentials
- Get verified on Google My Business
- Free domain for the first year
WooCommerce Hosting
Bluehost has three WooCommerce hosting plans the features and pricing of each is shown below;
| Features | Starter | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online store(s) | 1 | ||
| SSD Storage | 100GB | ||
| CodeGuard Backup Basic | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly Price | $6.95 | $8.95 | $12.95 |
| Renewal Price | $13.99 | $17.99 | $31.99 |
The common features to the WooCommerce hosting plans are shown below
- Storefront theme installed
- Free SSL certificate
- 1 free domain
- WooCommerce auto-install
- Domain privacy and protection
- Free setup call
- 1 Microsoft 365 Mailbox
The common features to the WooCommerce hosting plans are shown below
- Free domain for the first year
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- 24/7 support
- Multi-server management
- Access control
- File management
Managed WordPress Hosting
Bluehost has three Managed WordPress hosting plans the features and pricing of each is shown below;
| Features | Build | Grow | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Storage | 20GB | 40GB | 80GB |
| Backups | Daily | Daily | |
| Business Review Tools | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO Tools | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Video Compression | x | 10GB | |
| PayPal Integration | x | x | ✓ |
| Elastic Search | x | x | ✓ |
| Blue Sky Live Chat Support | x | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly price | $9.95 | $29.95 | $49.95 |
| Renewal price | $29.99 | $39.99 | $59.95 |
The common features to the WooCommerce hosting plans are shown below
- 1 WP website
- 200+ Global Edge Servers
- Free SSL certificate
- Built-in high availability
- Staging environment
- Malware detection and removal
- Domain privacy and protection
- 30-day free trial – Microsoft Email
Dedicated Hosting Plans
Bluehost has three Dedicated hosting plans the features and pricing of each is shown below;
| Features | Standard | Enhanced | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 4 cores @ 2.3 GHz | 4 cores @ 2.5 GHz | 4 cores @ 3.3 GHz |
| RAM | 4GB | 8GB | 16GB |
| Disk Space | 500GB | 1TB | 1TB |
| Bandwidth | 5TB | 10TB | 15TB |
| IP Address | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Monthly price | $79.99 | $99.99 | $119.99 |
| Renewal price | $119.99 | $159.99 | $209.99 |
The common features of the Dedicated hosting plans are shown below;
- Free domain name for the first year
- Free SSL certificate
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- 24/7 support
Security
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate indicates a secure website. SSL certificates ensure that information that users share on your website is secure, and these certificates are shown by “https” and an icon of a padlock at the beginning of a URL or web address. Google is serious about security and an SSL certificate is one of the search engine ranking factors. So you definitely need an SSL certificate.
Fortunately, every Bluehost plan comes with a free SSL certificate. Bluehost automatically installs & configures an SSL certificate so you don’t have to worry about users getting a warning that your site is insecure. They are also premium SSL certificates that you can buy for $49.99/year for more advanced security. These are great for those sites where users enter sensitive information like credit card details for example eCommerce sites.
Bluehost has basically more than enough security measures to get a website off the ground.
How much bandwidth is offered by Bluehost?
Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth.
How easy is Bluehost?
For anyone, getting into website development and maintenance for the first time Bluehost is the ideal choice. The reason for this is that there isn’t a need for coding knowledge or advanced web management skills when setting up your site. The installation of WordPress is also a seamless process. The partnership with WordPress has definitely ensured this.
Bluehost Uptime:
Website uptime is very critical. Around 99% is the industry-standard uptime for hosting service providers. Even though this might seem great not all hosting providers will actually adhere to this standard.
Bluehost however does adhere to this standard and provides very high website uptime. Even for their basic shared hosting plans, the average uptime is around 99.9%. With a low uptime, you can end up losing clients and revenue as your users won’t be able to access your site.
This will definitely never be an issue with Bluehost.
Is Bluehost Customer support good?
You can get 24/7 support with Bluehost through email, live chat, or telephone. In a number of cases, the time for resolving issues is around 20-40 minutes. For any shared hosting plan this is the average support time.
They also have a vast knowledge base with a lot of answers to frequently asked questions and other useful information.
Which Bluehost shared hosting package should you choose?
- You should purchase the basic package if you want to create only one website.
- Purchase the “plus” package If you want to host several websites.
My recommendation for most users would be The “plus” package as it offers most of the features you require and is very affordable so my recommendation to most users is this package. If you are a business user I recommend you go for plans with a dedicated IP and SSL.
Bluehost is a reliable hosting service provider that is great for hosting a WordPress blog. You can host a site for a
Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all of their hosting plans, you can cancel your account within the first 30 days and get a full refund if you are not happy with their hosting.
Bluehost Review Summary
Getting a website up and running with Bluehost is quick and easy, the cPanel interface is easy-to-use and is great for beginners. They have a wide array of good features and provide reliable decent server speeds. Their hosting packages are affordable and suitable for different customers. They also offer free SSL certification as well as one free domain name for a year.
Please leave a Bluehost review below whether good or bad it will be helpful to our visitors.
