Bluehost is a website building tool that is meant to help businesses create and manage WordPress websites from a single platform. Using the software allows companies to streamline numerous critical operations including migrating business files, streamlining shared web hosting operations, and managing domains.
Capabilities |
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Segment |
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Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based |
Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
Bluehost is famous for its cheap web hosting, especially for WordPress websites and WooCommerce stores. But hype aside, is Bluehost a good choice for your website or online store?
So buckle in, and let’s find out. Here, in this Bluehost review, we’re uncovering everything you need to know about the service.
Global Performance Grade | A |
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Uptime Guarantee | ✔ |
Free SSL | ✔ |
Hosting Types | Shared, Dedicated, WordPress, VPS |
Basic Plan Features | 1 Website, 50 GB SSD Storage, 24/7 Support |
Starting Price | $ 2.95 |
Learn more at Bluehost.com |
Bluehost is one of the largest web hosting providers in the world. At the time of writing, they host over two million web domains. The company was founded in 2003 in Utah. But, Bluehost really gained momentum in 2009 when the company introduced CPU throttling technology to increase the efficiency and speed of its servers.
Fast forward to 2010, and they joined a conglomerate of other web service providers under the Endurance International Group. Since then, Bluehost has become a significant player in the web hosting industry, with an estimated market share of 3.4%.
Now that we’ve covered a bit about who Bluehost is, let’s look closer at its features and functionality…
Bluehost’s easy-to-use interface is one of its many appeals.
In fact, there are two interface options available:
Within your Bluehost dashboard, you’ll find a one-click setup for WordPress. Installing WordPress is as simple as logging in, finding the website section on your dashboard, and hitting “Install WordPress.”
You’ll then be asked to choose your domain name. At this point, you also need to provide an email address and create a username and password for your new installation.
SEO or (AKA Search Engine Optimization) refers to how easily findable your website is on search engines. Bluehost analyze your website and provides you with an online marketing report that’s divided into easy-to-read sections:
Overall, Bluehost provides a wealth of information to help you improve your website’s SEO.
Using Microsoft 365, Bluehost lets you create a custom professional email address where your domain name is simply transferred to your new email. If you already own a web domain, you can add it to your Office 365 subscription through its management dashboard (which you can access via your Bluehost control panel).
There are three email hosting plans to choose from:
All plans include:
You’re free to upgrade or cancel your subscription whenever you want (with no cancellation fees). Before canceling your subscription, be sure to download any data you require; however, you can still access this up to 30 days after canceling.
Bluehost claims to always be on hand to support its customers. So regardless of your chosen pricing plan, you’re entitled to 24/7 telephone and live chat support. To utilize the latter, hit the “chat now” button on Bluehost’s website. You’ll be asked if you’re a new or existing customer and a way to identify you, such as your web domain, phone number, or email address.
Bluehost also offers a blog, online knowledge base, and resource center. Here you can find answers to questions, how-to guides, and gather more info on topics about business, creating a website, and marketing. An interesting feature in the resource center is that you can filter by skill level: basic, intermediate, or advanced to ensure access to the information you’ll actually understand.
CPanel (AKA Control Panel) is Bluehost’s website management platform. You can access this via the advanced section of your Bluehost dashboard. From here, you can manage integrations and access a range of applications where you can add useful scripts to your website, such as:
The Bluehost Marketplace is where you browse, purchase, install, and manage your WordPress plugins, add-ons, and themes. You can choose from over 900 themes and tons of plugins.
Simply log into your Bluehost account and locate the marketplace button on the left-hand side menu to access the marketplace. To give you an idea of the kinds of plugins on offer, let’s focus on WooCommerce specifically. There are 18 WooCommerce-related extensions (plugins) covering shipping, scheduling, and payment processing functionality.
More specifically:
…to name a few.
Performance is imperative when picking the right web hosting service.
The key metrics here are twofold:
BlueHost boasts an impressive 99.99% uptime. In theory, this means your website should only experience (roughly) less than an hour (52.56 minutes) of downtime per year, which is a pretty good standard.
When compared to other hosts, Bluehost’s uptime ranks pretty competitively:
(According to tooltester and uptime.is).
As we’ve already hinted, site speed refers to the number of seconds it takes for a web page to load. Needless to say, the quicker, the better. According to tooltester and Pingdom, here’s how Bluehost fares against its competitors:
As you can see, Bluehost takes a lower ranking for this mark as it needs c. 0.91s to fully load the website while the best tested host (iPage) needs just c. 0.30s. It’s not the worst, but it’s certainly not the best either. However, there are remedies to this issue. If you expect high traffic volumes, there’s a cache setting you can utilize to improve your website’s performance. Caching allows you to store assets in a temporary storage location to load your site faster. You can find this feature in your Bluehost portal under ‘My Site’ and then “Performance.”
We’re living in an age where digital fraud is rife, and, as such, secure web hosting is essential. With that in mind, let’s see what Bluehost offers:
WordPress website creation can be a daunting task, but Bluehost tries to make the process as easy and quick as possible:
For the uninitiated, web hosting refers to a website’s allotted space on a web server. The website’s files are stored here: code, images, etc. This enables your website to be accessible on the web.
In contrast, a web domain is simply your website’s URL address. The issue that many great domain names are already taken so you have to be quite creative when choosing one.
Give it a go and see if the domain name you like is available:
You need both web hosting and domain name to launch a website. To hit the ground running with this, click “Get Started” or “Start Building.” From there, choose the plan you want. Bluehost offers three pricing plans and makes it easy to understand what’s included in each.
But, in a nutshell:
Basic at $2.95 per month: This is “Perfect for bloggers and personal websites.”
Plus at $5.95 per month: is considered “Perfect for business sites.”
Online Store at $15.95 per month: as the name suggests, this is “perfect for online stores with product shipping.”
All plans include web hosting, unlimited websites (which means you can host as many websites as you need), and over 300 templates. You also have unlimited access to their image library, email marketing tools, and blog post management features.
The Plus and Online Store options unlock additional features, including extra premium template designs, domain privacy, and online selling features.
Once you’ve chosen your plan, if you already have a web domain name, enter it now. Or you can skip this step if you want to tackle this later. If you’re creating a new web domain, enter your desired URL, and Bluehost will tell you whether it’s available. If it is, then you can proceed. It’s worth noting that your web domain is free for only a year; after that, you’ll need to pay.
Next, you’ll be asked to enter your personal details and agree to their terms and conditions.
Bluehost wants to tailor the user experience as much as possible. So they’ll ask a few short questions about the type of website you intend to make, your goals, and how comfortable you are with website creation.
Bluehost automatically provides a default website design for you, which you can view by clicking “visit site.”
However, you’ll probably want to change this as it’s very simplistic. WordPress is pre-installed to save you the hassle of doing this yourself.
To create, edit, and design your website, head to your WordPress dashboard. First, you’ll most likely want to select a theme for your website. To do this, click on “Appearance,” then “Themes,” and finally, “Add a new theme.” From here, you can search for a theme. Scrolling through the vast array of options can seem overwhelming. But you can use the filters to help narrow down your search.
Some themes are free, while others have a price tag. The best theme for your website comes down to what you visualize your website looking like. You may find it worthwhile paying a little bit for the look you want, but the choice is yours. When you find a template you’re happy with, simply install it and then hit “Activate.”
After logging onto your Bluehost control panel, go to “My site” found on the left-hand menu, followed by the “manage site” button. This takes you to your WordPress dashboard, where you can click “website builder.”
From there, you can begin editing as you like. You can click on any web page and select the different elements you want to change. For example, you can edit text, text on buttons, images, color preferences, and background. You can also edit the pictures by searching through Bluehost’s vast library of images or uploading your own.
Whatever aesthetic you’re after, WordPress can help you achieve it. You can even change the headers and logos using the “customize” button.
To add new pages, simply click on the “pages” tab on the left menu and then locate “add new” by the “Pages” title.
Bluehost’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to edit your template and add features to your website. Overall, creating and editing your website with Bluehost is really that simple. What it really takes is a bit of exploration and an idea of what you want your finished product to look like.
Bluehost provides many different web hosting plans to choose from. We’ve made a short summary table so you can get your head around all of them.
Shared Hosting | Yes |
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WordPress Hosting | Yes |
Cloud Hosting | No |
VPS Hosting | Yes |
Dedicated Hosting | Yes |
Reseller Hosting | Yes |
Linux Servers | Yes |
Windows Servers | No |
In this review we will focus on three most popular options, namely:
Let’s take a look at what these mean:
In shared hosting you share server resources with other customers. It’s by far the most popular hosting plan thanks its affordability and it’s perfect for those creating a website or blog for the first time. When considering shared hosting, there are a further four 12 month plans to pick from:
Please note: All above presented prices are promotional for the first term only and renew at the regular rates.
Besides the above mentioned key features all plans also include:
Considered perfect for expanding websites needing more control. There are three plans available: Standard, Enhanced and Ultimate.
All plans come with 24/7 customer support, and each program runs on a 36-month basis.
Please note: All above presented prices are promotional for the first term only and renew at the regular rates.
Aptly named, the Dedicated plan provides a dedicated server for just one individual, application, or organization. In other words, you won’t be sharing a server with anyone else. If you’re running a business or your website’s snowballing, you may want to consider this option. But, ultimately, you have to decide whether it makes sense for your budget and business plans.
There are three plans to choose from:
Please note: All above presented prices are promotional for the first term only and renew at the regular rates.
We’ve covered lots of information here, so let’s condense what we’ve discussed into a quick pro-cons list:
Bluehost also offers an affiliate program. You can find Bluehost’s affiliate program by scrolling to the bottom of their home page and clicking ‘Affiliates’. The affiliate scheme is free to join. You just have to sign up, and you’re immediately provided with a unique tracking code and affiliate links or custom banners (or both).
Then, for every visitor who clicks on the link and signs up to Bluehost, you receive a commission starting at $65 and increasing with a volume of referred customers. From there, you can earn an unlimited amount: the more people who sign up to Bluehost via your link, the more money you’ll make.
Overall, this affiliate marketing scheme is pretty decent and has one of the better payouts in the web hosting space. What’s more, Bluehost provides you with support and promotional resources to give you the best shot at earning as much as possible.
If you decide Bluehost isn’t for you, don’t fret. There are plenty of other great options to choose from:
Hostinger is a European-based web hosting company boasting decent website speeds and affordable hosting plans. Their shared hosting package starts at $1.99 a month (for a 12-month subscription and a renewal rate of $5.99). You can host up to 100 websites with this plan, and you’ll get a free web domain. Other freebies include an SSL certificate, Google Ad credit, and weekly site backups. On the downside, they have a lower uptime score than Bluehost, and they don’t have their own website builder.
Hostgator is a popular US-based web hosting solution. They’ve been around since 2002 and have made their mark, offering low, competitive prices. From $2.75 a month, you can expect to host one website, connect a custom domain, and have an SSL certificate. In addition, Hostgator boasts good uptime speed, so you can be sure of its reliability. You’ll also have access to an AI-fuelled website builder, so you can set up a WordPress site in just a few clicks.
Hostgator’s drawbacks lie in its poor customer service. For example, they have notoriously long waiting times for their support chats. In addition, customers have complained that their team didn’t have a good technical understanding of website management. Also, as noted above, they have one of the slowest website speeds of all the competitors listed here.
SiteGround is an excellent choice if you’re looking for quick website speeds and reliable uptime as they reign supreme in both areas. They’re another European-based provider gradually gaining popularity for their well-priced and fast hosting services.
Their Starter plan of $2.99 (per month) gives you one website, SSL, and CDN certificate. You also receive free daily backups, access to their website builder tool, and free firewall security built into your website. Finally, they also have WooCommerce integration options available.
On the downside, Siteground only offers shared hosting plans. They don’t provide VPS hosting or dedicated servers. Your resource space is also considerably limited (10 GB) compared to competitors. Moreover, it doesn’t offer a free domain name.
So, there you have it. This concludes our Bluehost review. We hope we’ve provided everything you need to decide whether they’re a good choice for your website. There are many aspects to consider, from security to functionality to ease of use. But, Bluehost is regarded as one of the best overall hosting providers on the market.
As we’ve discussed, it allows you to design, optimize and host your website for a reasonably low price. The price hike for renewing your subscription is still pretty reasonable for beginners looking to get their business off the ground.
All in all, Bluehost provides everything you need to kickstart your online business, from an intuitive website builder to web domains to helpful plugins – and tons more to boot!
Is Bluehost the right choice for your business? Tell us your thoughts in the comments box below!
We hope this review was useful. Click below to let us know what you think or leave a comment in the comment section!
We have a plan with unlimited sites, I like being able to add on a test site or two when I need to
Cheaper plans only allow one site, and they limit emails on cheaper plans
Attracting a lot of customers with our Wordpress site, it's so easy to maintain! The Bluehost control planel is great!
Ease of use. Its super easy in bluehost to manage multiple website and add any new services or plugins.
I am using bluehost for multiple website and didn't find anything in particular which I don;t like.
My Go-To Choice is Bluehost for Efficiently Managing Multiple WordPress Websites, Thanks to its Budget-Friendly Hosting Space Sharing Amongst Various Clients.
Bluehost is one of the leading web hosting service providers made it very affordable for general people to start their own website or blog. They are serving the world of internet with their wide range of services for more than 2 decades now. Therefore, Bluehost is trusted by many people for their consistency in what they do and loved because of the low cost of their services. I loved their web hosting services because of low cost, excellent service and ease of managing a Wordpress blog from their cPanel. To make their shared hosting attractive, they offer many attractive addons such as free domain name, free SSL, website builders etc. Bluehost also have plans for dedicated hosting, VPS and online store. Online store seems to be a very popular plan as it is a complete package of themes, plugins and tools that are required to build, deploy, and manage an online store of any kind.
I have used Bluehost shared hosting for a year to manage few blogs for my spouse before moving onto another provider. I loved Bluehost for their low cost for shared hosting, 24x7 support and worldwide data centers. I should appreciate their response time for support tickets. Lately there are other new service providers came into competition providing even cheer services. I moved to a different service provider for my spouse’s blogs because of the cost factor only.
Bluehost is pioneer in providing low-cost web hosting service providers, never compromised with quality of the service. I recommend you to try Bluehost if you are looking for cheaper web hosting services.
The best part about Bluehost is that it provides all the necessary stuff like SSL, subdomains, custom email, etc absolutely free of cost. It also offers a free domain for 1 year along with a free CDN service with a yearly hosting plan for your website. Bluehost also provides other useful tools for free like – a free website migration service, stock image library, drag and drop website builder, WordPress themes, and free security for websites.
It should also provide free automatic backup and free domain privacy for websites without any addon fee. Everything else is very good in Bluehost.
I am using it for our company website. It has all the tools like security, SEO, analytics tools, and email tools and features that help running my company website.
This is the best hosting domain provider with ssl certificate
Need to upgrade security and the speed of processing.
All good ni problem found
I have found it much easier to use and navigate to what you want as compared to other hosting services I have used
I have had to chat with customer service more than once to try and resolve the same issue. Hopefully, it was an isolated event.
Domain and DNS settings for my website.
immediate action by support and 100% online server
i dont dislike anything about bluehost, am a current customer
as you can see the website provides server and data centers for various websites, i run my own
It's not just a hosting service provider. However, designed beautifully to host WordPress websites. It also provides free domain names and SSL for a year. The best part is the WordPress feature.
I wouldn't say I like the price and offers they came up in the last few months. The company should offer competitive prices. They should come up with innovative ideas and prices.
Bluehost is solving the website hosting issue. It offers many services that help set up any business web presence. We are technology experts. It's easy for us, like Bluehost
Bluehost was quick to help me move my website over from a previous hosting platform. Customer service was excellent.
Currently I have enjoyed all aspects of Bluehost but worry about my monthly sessions growing and creating issues on my website.
I'm able to almost completely control my website without interruptions due to the hosting platform controlling what I want to do.
Bluehost stays on top of most of the current needs for servers, programming and other web-related items. The pricing is competitive and often lower than the pricing at other popular web hosting providers. Bluehost has what seems like a large support team that can handle anything we need, whether it's our account or billing issues. The technical support team is helpful and knowledgeable enough to help me deal with most problems I run into.
Bluehost will often not be able to address certain needs for projects that are more complex.
Bluehost is a dependable hosting provider with great performance. They allow us to upload web media to be presented publicly for business and marketing activities. The server loading speeds are often fast enough for standard web loading processes. We have never had major service outages. There are automated tools that allow us to keep our Bluehost account and server settings updated when needed.
Bluehost hosting is really an incredible platform that offers different types of hosting including Shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting. I am personally using Shared hosting for my business website and I am really satisfied with the services of Bluehost.
I think so there should be a monthly plan available for people instead of a yearly plan. Because if some people can't afford the yearly plan they can proceed with the monthly plan. All other features are awesome without cons.
I never found any problem during the use of this hosting platform. Easily I always manage my emails, control panel, and domain names. Because dashboard of Bluehost is really easy to understand and use.
Regarding functionality it is provides same as rest of the competitors like GoDaddy, 000webhost. But the maintenance of websites hosted using blue host are much performance oriented because if their fast servers, I never faced server down issue till yet. Personally I like it's customer service team dedication. They also provides wordpress website creation and sell domains too.
Nothing found yet. But the domains that customer can buy are limited l. Like, we can't buy .co.in domain as it is not in their bucket list.
I have used bluehost for hosting static websites mostly sites that uses only html, css, js, with no js frameworks like react, angular.
Bluehost is among the 3 best hosting companies to be recommended officially by WordPress. Bluehost is very intuitive to use and easy to navigate from page to page. It has the best uptime with easy to use interface. It has a prolific web migration service and excellent WordPress hosting.
Bluehost lacks cloud hosting and no shared plan
Reliable speed and uptime of my website and packed with security options
I use Bluehost for their hosting services. I like the fact that they have customer support where you can talk to a real person. Each time I have contacted them, I was pretty satisfied with their help. I called them once for a technical issue and then for an upgrade. In both instances, their customer reps were helpful and knowledgeable. Even if you are a beginner, it takes only a couple of hours to have your site up and running with all the necessary stuff. They are, I think, the best hosting service for a small website. Their plans are not expensive. I use Bluehost with WordPress for my website. The two are compatible. The navigation panel is straightforward. I used the Bluehost help section to get around as it's all new to me. Overall, I did not have a lot of trouble finding my way. The menu on their website is straightforward.
I think the hosting service depending on the plan, can impact the speed of your website. Overall, I am satisfied, though. When I started my website, I did not know if it will be something I would do in the long term. So it's important to me to have a good price/quality relationship. I find Bluehost was perfect for me.
I was able to start my website thanks to their hosting service. I like the fact that they accept WordPress-based websites. I have a plan where I can create additional sites at no charge. It's great to have this feature. Their hosting service is very reliable. You can easily create subdomains or folders. The process to do so is straightforward.
The best thing about Bluehost to me is the many capabilities to connect it with Wordpress to make your website even better. Bluehost is also very helpful with getting the site up and running step by step.
The only thing that I dislike about Bluehost is the multiple ways to upgrade your sites software that isn't always the most user friendly.
BLuehost solves the issue of finding a reliable website host that will also maintenance your site for you as well. The benefits that I have realized from this would be the ability for my site to run its own maintenance and security protocols even when I can not be logged in.
I like the fast response from chat and by being a new website owner I was completely confused about what I should do first and what should happen next but Bluehost has step by step guide on how to get your website up and functioning. The layout also makes it easy to use and navigate. I also was happy to be able to purchase my business email account through Bluehost.
I haven't experienced any dislikes while using Bluehost.
I realized it's best to do the recommended steps first because it keeps you on track with the things your website need. I also like how I can purchase add-ons and have multiple sites all easily accessible through Bluehost.
You get fast, reliable hosting without the higher costs of services like SSL (secure hosting with https). SSL is included in the hosting at no additional cost.
This is a very minor downside. Bluehost will occasionally ask you to use their Wordpress features. I just ignore them. You do NOT need to make a Wordpress site in order to use Bluehost.
I am solving, mainly, the high costs that I was experiencing with my previous hosting services, to get an SSL (https) certificate. There is no additional cost with Bluehost for SSL.
Ease of the dashboard. cpanel has everything you need to get to on one page
I'd like for the cpan to highlight what features are currently in use, vs those not purchased/utilized. It will make for an easier onboarding and training for support staff.
Outsourcing hosting.
I chose Bluehost because their services integrate with Wordpress.org, and I was able to easily host my site with them. Their sign-up process is fairly quick and setup does not take previous knowledge in website hosting. If I did not know the answer to a question, I was able to quickly search the question and answer forums and find the answer. This made for a customer-friendly atmosphere that made me comfortable setting up my first website.
I quite honestly do not have any dislikes about Bluehost. Website hosting is pretty straight-forward, and Bluehost has a great product.
Like I mentioned, I am able to host my site with Bluehost and integrate it with Wordpress.org. Their prices are competitive (and actually cheaper in my case) with other companies in the industry. I pay a one-time fee annually to keep my service running, and even that is affordable. So the overall benefits are simplicity and affordability.