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 |
|
---|---|
Segment |
|
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 |
---|---|
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 |
---|---|
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!
I like that bluehost is relatively simple in how to use it and the options it offers with formatting websites.
I am completely new to web design and even though it is made for newbies, it is hard for me to navigate.
It offers an affordable platform for my website which I appreciated. I think the cheapest option out there.
I really like their pricing, can’t really beat that. But other than that, there's really not much to like. Especially in the lower tier plans. I don't know about their higher plans, because their pricing for the higher tier plans isn't that competitive when compared to other companies.
Since they have switched me to new servers, my websites have been hacked twice. On two different accounts. And when I contacted their support about the malware problem that I face, I automatically get transferred to their Sucuri.net partner, which has no idea about my account, all they want to do is upsell me something.
I can host multiple websites that don't require very fast loading times. It's great with that.
Ir was easy to set up my domain and it was pretty simple to use. Also the site performance was very good. It was not as fast to load, but it worked pretty well.
Not very cheap. Also the terminology was not easy to understand. You would have to be technically inclined to use this domain hosting service. It also takes longer than for the domain to load.
It was more business oriented. The support is top notch in Bluehost. You can chat or email them at anytime and you will have a faster response. This is not so for many other hosting services.
Well, their prices for shared web hosting are considered to be one of the cheapest. unlimited space for hosting, emails and addon domains really helped me put few small websites I own together and manage them all under one account which was really cost effective.
I can't rely on Bluehost when it comes to building a website for a serious business, even the dedicated hosting package, as I had too many technical issues with them and their support didn't help much, specially when it comes to server down issue, they simply tell you we are doing our best and leave you alone banging your head against the wall. I will never forget the time when my dedicated server went down for a whole week due to a major hardware failure!
I'm a web-developer and I've been in the field for almost 10 years, and what I realized after using bluehost for almost 8 years s to use them only if I'm building a small and non critical website, specially if it was an ecommerce website.
For me Bluehost was quick and easy to use and has responsive and helpful support. Their hosting was easy to setup with enough features and options for my small site. When I first set up my site I needed help with MX record setup for my email and their support team was very knowledgeable and quick to respond. If nothing else, their support was well worth the price.
They may not be the best for large sites or complicated setups, so it depends what you are looking for. Their admin panel could definitely use some work as far as usability goes. It was a little hard to find where to edit name servers, for example. They could definitely make it a little more user-friendly and easy to navigate.
I wanted to spend as little time and effort getting my site's hosting setup and running at a decent price, and they were able to meet my needs. With their support, they were also very easy to work with and help me with any questions I had. For a decent price, they were able to put me on a good track to get up and running quickly.
It is really easy to set up- I had no problem getting up my first website up using their services. Since it was my first hosting company ( and currently my present ) I really didn't know how good I had it with their services until I tried out their competitors over the following 8 years. From Hostgator to godaddy it seems like a lot of webhosting companies you every little opportunity to suck an extra dime out of you. This is not the case with blue host. They are a true, no BS hosting platform.
They are slightly more expensive than many of their competitors. Also, their javascript ftp in-browser upload thing has a few issues in some browsers.
Not provided
When it is time to renew the domain the platform is very friendly.
Customer success somethings can't solve your problem. I lost many hours trying to solve problems with the customer's success. It's a high pain point for our team.
When we contract the service we believe that Bluehost was a great platform. But we feel disappointed. It's difficult to manage the WordPress with them. Customer success is not fast.
I have been a Bluehost customer for over 10 years. When I first switched to them from A Small Orange, I was pleased with their customer support and found their prices very competitive. But over the years - probably to cut costs, Bluehost's quality of customer support has diminished. Whenever I would log in to chat with a technical support person, I would be met by an automated chat window that would try to ascertain my needs. This was not always successful, and would often have to rephrase my issue several times before I was directed to a live person who could help me. Then, more often than not, the technical support person that I had wasted several minutes trying to reach would simply direct me to a knowledge base where I would have to work out my own solution. As someone who is not overly familiar with the technical aspects of managing a website, I found the "new and improved" Bluehost not much to my liking. They are just fine as a hosting company, but if you are the type of developer who finds him/herself needing technical support, I don't believe they are the best company for you.
Bluehost's technical support has an unhealthy reliance on their knowledge base rather than live technical support people who can actually assist you. I did not realize the difference in technical support service until I switched to Host Armada.
I have actually switched hosting companies. A web developer associate of mine referred me to a company called Host Armada. I explained my allegiance to Bluehost over the years, but they told me I would not be disappointed. So far, I have been blown out of the water by Host Armada's technical support. They really set the standard in customer support. So I am now using Bluehost solely for domain registration. I may eventually transfer my domains to Host Armada so I can deal with a single invoice. Time will tell.
I love companies that specialize in one product - and they do it well. I know iXWebHosting has been around for about 20 years. Their expertise shows in their years of experience. Their prices were quite cheap, they had the type of service I needed, and setup was quick and painless.
I had a few times where my websites went down without any notice and it took me about an hour to get them back up. They discontinued their service and I was left scrambling to sign up with other companies to retrieve access to my websites!
I own quite a few websites and I was in need of a cheap website hosting service to display them. I needed a reliable service and at the time, this was a suggested company from a colleague of mine to use.
Bluehost is a an affordable solution if you have a new site, and just want to get the framework up. Once you get any sort of real traffic, you're going to want to switch to a better platform.
Bluehost is riddled with upsells. They try to charge you for everything, and there are still charges made to my account, even though I switched away from the service over a year ago. Customer support is not what it used to be, and you'll often find yourself in lengthy discussions over sensitive issues. However, the technical team is still fairly good and was able to address most of my issues. Bluehost is also slow. Sure you can get web hosting for a few bucks a month, and that's great, but your site will crawl. It's not realistic to use one of their cheaper plans if you plan on growing your site. In addition, Wordpress runs very slowly with Bluehost, which will slow down your workflow.
They solved my budget problem when I was first starting out. I was enabled to build my website at an affordable rate. They also have some decent tutorials on web servers and hosting, which is something that I didn't know much about heading in. Also, the technical team was able to teach me a thing or two about what goes on behind the scenes.
Not much that is really helpful with BlueHost
Everything from cheap shared servers to the horrible customer service
BlueHost caused more problems than it solved
The price is not bad. Has some of the same features as other hosts I have tried.
Does not offer use of cpanel in shared hosting. Their control panel is limited. Shared hosting limitations. PHP is not updated regularly. They do not offer refunds for years/months unused if you cancel. They changed their support to no longer be based in the US.
Domain registration and website hosting
BlueHost's core functionality is good. I've never had a problem with speed or uptime.
The user interface is pretty messy which makes it difficult to find what you want and get things done. What's worse though, is the fact that the functionality is oddly limited. For example, I had some staging installations of WordPress that I wanted to delete. After trying every possible thing I could think of, I contacted support and they told me that you need Support to do that for you. What made me decide to leave BlueHost though, was their "staging" feature. I was excited to give it a test drive but found that it was just a way to contact Support and request a migration to and from a Staging site. To make matters worse, they ended up botching the job and the site was down for about half an hour!
Hosting websites for clients.
Bluehost is great for small websites or businesses that are just starting out and can't afford to pay for a better hosting service. They are very affordable, easy to set up, and offer the basics to get a website up and running. The admin area is pretty straightforward and it's very easy to use. Though I'd only recommend them as a last resort if other more reliable hosts aren't affordable for the client at this point in time.
Websites often run very slowly on Bluehost servers, where they ran very quickly on our local and live development servers. I've had numerous clients complain that their website goes down frequently, or that they have email problems. We had a client recently switch to a more reliable host because their email problems became too much to handle. Frankly, the ups and downs of the servers and the headaches that come with that aren't worth the cheap price.
Bluehost is used to host websites, though I'd prefer for clients to use a different provider that's more reliable. After using hosts like Bluehost, I've come to realize that you get what you pay for; if you're paying pennies for hosting, you aren't going to get a reliable service.
The fact that Bluehost is on the cheaper side of the Web hosting spectrum is what drew me to their services initially. That and they integrate well with the Wordpress.org dashboard and templates. Unfortunately, that's where my appreciation for the hosting service ends.
Bluehost seems to be extremely slow. My websites have a 1-2 second lag when loading, no matter what platform or web service I'm using. On the back end, when dealing with the Wordpress dashboard, the slow-down is even more prevalent. And there seems to be a hitch when accessing either the website or the dashboard through Safari (Google Chrome is slightly better). I've also not had much luck with their customer service. Like their Web speeds, they're slow.
Initially, I was maintaining a website on their servers quite cheaply, but the lag time in loading the site cost me traffic, so my initial benefit of saving money wasn't worth the price tag.
It's easy to use to some degree. I like how I can create folders and easily sort mail and quickly delete what I don't need.
I find it very wordy and it looks like it needs updated. Trying to set up my account to avoid junk mail was very difficult.
Nothing, I use it for our website and email. I think it's fairly easy to use and setup what we need on our webpage.
price, marketing, ads, and proposed ease of use, I used them for another site and it works.
Super Unhappy here. They can not get a DNS populated and their 2-factor authenticator code never works. DO NOT USE BLUEHOST EVER. This is the response I get every time in chat "I understand that this has caused you inconvenience. Please be assured that our specialists are relentlessly working to resolve our customers’ issues at the earliest."
They can not get a DNS populated and their 2 factor authenticator code never works. Two support tickets, daily chats excillated for 7 consecutive days and still having an issue. The site is not working and nor is my email. There server are not properly configured. This is the response I get every time in chat "I understand that this has caused you inconvenience. Please be assured that our specialists are relentlessly working to resolve our customers’ issues at the earliest."
I do not like anything about this company.
We have been unable to conduct commerce effectively this entire year due to inconsistencies with this service provider. The reliability of their services and poor customer support leaves much to be desired. Initially, it was authentication issues where the script would not authenticate appropriately and throw errors. After reaching out to customer support as well as the parent company regarding this matter and upon audit of our plugins, they have failed to meet their end of contractual agreement. Our plugins which were purchased through their portal are no longer visible; however, a few "new" ones, including Newfold email, are available which we did NOT consent to or desire. Now, our site is non-functioning during the busiest shopping season, our payment gateway is not configured, and our theme which also purchased is no where to be found. We have forwarded this correspondence chain, reviews, and logs of our attempted compliance with their company to our legal teams for review on how to proceed with the loss in potential revenue, ad spending which can't be utilized by customers, and Their company's failure to "maintain up-time" as stated in verifiable articles about Bluehost.
They have NOT solved ANY of our issues; only made it worse. Our ECommerce initiative has been stalled throughout the entire year due to inconsistencies with this company.
Used to be a good value and a strong Wordpress hosting service for agencies.
BlueHost initiated what their support referred to as an "Interface Upgrade". However during this upgrade, they accidentally converted my Wordpress Pro (multi-site) account into a Basic Hosting account. This in turn prevented me from adding any additional sites to my account, so I could not do what I had paid for. I contacted support through chat and after hours of waiting, they escalated it to the billing department. After several more days and several interactions with thei support team, it was escalated to engineering. Today, I found out that my account was suspended, so all of my sites are no longer working. And still there has been no resolution. BlueHost used to be a high-quality, good-value service. Now it sucks and it's no longer a trustworthy brand.
Multisite Wordpress hosting.
Nothning. I fell for the recomendadtion they have on WooCommerce website as trusted hosting. I think they have a good paying marketing and that's about it. Been their client for 3 years.
The only "Malware Free" hosting that automatically updates files with malware, and where customers have to do the job of technical support, as they are not allowed to touch the files. Their business model was to sell adons from other companies. But this year they switched to create the demand for adons by allowing malware and security issues to account who don't buy adons. Their technical support's offical policy is that they are now allowed to touch the files. They are really pushing for SiteLock products
Nothing different than other webhostings. Go Daddy's partner program