One of the oldest web hosts launched in 1996, Bluehost has become the biggest brand when it comes to WordPress® hosting. It is an official hosting provider recommended by 'WordPress®'. With Bluehost, you never have to worry about your website running slow, even when there's a lot of traffic. Their expert 24/7 support is always there to help you when you need it via phone, email or live chat. They are ranked #1 in web hosting for small businesses. On top of that, they offer WPBeginner users an exclusive 63% discount, free domain, free SSL, and free site builder with templates.
Bluehost is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners and for medium to large businesses with 24/7 customer support. Check out our experts' full Bluehost review to find out if Bluehost is the right choice for you.
In this comprehensive Bluehost review, we'll put their promises to the test with rigorous, in-depth analysis using industry-standard benchmarking tools.
Here are the areas we will be looking at:
- Speed: How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will be testing their speed and server response time to gauge this.
- Performance: How does Bluehost perform during traffic spikes? We will test this by performing the stress test and seeing how it performs under traffic.
- Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime?
- Customer Support: Can you count on Bluehost's customer support when you need help with your website right away?
- Features: Do they offer all the features you will need to build your website?
- Pricing: Do they have the best prices in the industry? Are there any Bluehost offers that can save you money?
This is our full Bluehost review and we will do an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of Bluehost. If you don't want to read the full review, here's Bluehost's quick scorecard with our verdict right below.
- Bottom line: In our Bluehost review, we found them to be reliable, fast, and affordable with friendly 24/7 customer support.
This is why we chose to recommend Bluehost as one of the best WordPress® hosting companies.
Now let's dive into our detailed Bluehost hosting review so you can decide for yourself.
About Bluehost
Let's first look at the company itself.
Bluehost started in 1996 and has steadily grown to become one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. It now powers over 2 million websites worldwide.
Bluehost has a long-standing relationship with the WordPress community. They have been an official web host recommended by WordPress.org since 2006.
They pride themselves on their 24/7 customer support, great hosting infrastructure, and support for free open source software like WordPress.
Bluehost lets you have a working website up and running in minutes. It is a reputable web host used by millions of people to host their online projects, start businesses and create something new.
What makes Bluehost so popular?
It's easy to use, even for beginners, and it's a great price.
You get a free domain name when you sign up (usually $10-15 per year) and hosting costs just $2.95 per month. Bluehost is also packed with features to help you get set up quickly.
Learn more about what you're getting and why I think Bluehost offers the best value.
Bluehost Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services
Bluehost offers shared hosting plans at an entry-level price. If you are creating a website for the first time, Bluehost is a safe and affordable option. Plus, as I mentioned before, you get a free domain name when you sign up. It's a nice perk that sets it apart from other budget options, along with its customer support options and affordable additional hosting tiers.
I couldn't name Bluehost as the hosting provider that gives you the best value for money without seeing how it compares to other providers in the market.
To figure out which hosting provider was really worth your time, I compared dozens of competitors and narrowed it down to the top seven picks. Check out all of my top cheap web hosting picks for a more in-depth look at each and a buying guide.
Who is Bluehost Best For?
Bluehost is great for beginners starting a website for the first or second time. Suppose you are a newbie blogger in your niche, Bluehost makes it easy for you to get started without sweating all the technical details.
Along with their customer support features and easy cPanel navigation, Bluehost ensures that your learning curve is as short as possible and makes your site accessible to audiences worldwide with plenty of uptime.
On the other hand, if you're looking to start an e-commerce business with tons of products and need the best site speed and dedicated hosting, you might want to look into it first. other options.
Bluehost: The Pros and Cons
Pros
- 24/7 Customer Support: Not every company can boast 24/7 customer support, especially at such a low entry-level price. Bluehost customer support is there for you when you start your site, and whenever you need additional support to resolve site errors that are unavoidable.
- One Year Free Domain: Perhaps one of Bluehost's most attractive features is the free domain name you get for an entire year. This eliminates the extra step of going through a third-party domain vendor or investing more money at the start of your site.
- Free SSL Certificate: An SSL certificate, also known as a Secure Sockets Layer certificate, guarantees authentication of your website identity and encrypts important site information. In other words, it's a must-have for any site you publish. Fortunately, Bluehost provides SSL certification for free.
- Quick Site Setup: With Bluehost, you can easily get your site up and running in no time with their intuitive, step-by-step guided setup. And if you run into any issues, you can access their real-time chat support feature.
- Beginner-Friendly: Bluehost is great for anyone venturing into a building and maintaining a website for the first time. Indeed, you don't need any advanced web management or coding knowledge when you set up your site through it. To sweeten the deal, they partnered with WordPress and ensured that installing WordPress was an integral part of the process.
Cons
- Fees for Site Migrations: Admittedly, when it comes to migration benefits, Bluehost isn't necessarily your best bet. If you want help migrating your site, Bluehost charges at least $149 to migrate your site to or from another platform.
- Not the best solution for high-traffic sites: If you want to scale an already high-traffic site and need hosting to meet those specific needs, an entry-level Bluehost plan won't suffice. You can always upgrade to their more expensive managed WordPress tiers, which we'll talk about below.
Bluehost Performance Tests
The most important performance metric you should look for is speed. This not only affects the user experience on your site but also your WordPress SEO ranking.
Studies show that a one-second dip in website speed can lower your conversion rate by 7%. A 3-second delay can cost you 50% of your traffic.
Let's see how fast your website will load on Bluehost.
Bluehost Speed Test Results
For a faster website, you will need to choose a fast website host. With that in mind, we've created a test site to see how fast Bluehost really is.
Our test site was created with WordPress with the default Twenty Twenty theme. We imported dummy content for theme development, including images. After that, we used Pingdom to test the website speed.
Here are our test results:
As you can see, our test site loads in less than two seconds. Considering the fact that our website didn't use any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this result is remarkable.
However, the speed test alone is not enough because this test site did not have much traffic.
To test the response of Bluehost servers to increased traffic, we used a test tool called K6 (formerly LoadImpact) to send virtual users (VUs) to our test site.
We used it to gradually build up to 100 visitors to see how the server would handle the increase in requests from multiple connections at once.
Here is a screenshot of our results.
The green line is the number of active virtual users on the site and the blue line is the server load time. As you can see, the server load remained stable throughout the test, even during peak traffic.
This test indicates that if you are looking for a very fast website, Bluehost may be the perfect fit for you.
It's also important to note that we didn't experience any downtime during our testing.
Many hosting companies promise a 99.99% uptime guarantee. We have configured an uptime monitoring alert for our test account. See the screenshot below for a detailed overview of Bluehost server availability.
Bluehost Server Response Time
When you test a live website using tools like Pingdom, you are essentially seeing how everything loads on your website. This also includes images, which take much longer to load than plain text.
In order to get a more accurate server response time, we used another tool called Bitcatcha. It allows you to test server response time without loading data.
As you can see, the Bluehost server in the United States worked in a fraction of a second. In other places, the response was a bit higher but still less than a second.
If your target audience is in the United States, it would benefit your website. However, if more users come from other parts of the world, you can change your server location.
Bluehost Hosting Plans and Features
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans for all budgets and sizes. This includes shared hosting, VPS, dedicated server, cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, managed WordPress hosting, etc.
Let's take a look at Bluehost hosting plans and their features.
- Shared Hosting: Shared hosting is the perfect way to start a new website with a low volume of traffic. In a shared hosting environment, your website shares server resources with other websites.
- Cloud Hosting: A more reliable upgrade from the shared hosting plan. It allows you to use multiple cloud servers, allowing your website to automatically switch to another server in the event of hardware failure or high traffic.
- WordPress Hosting: Their WordPress plans are designed specifically for WordPress-powered websites. It is optimized to run WordPress and can even protect your WordPress site against common threats.
- WooCommerce Hosting: WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, it allows you to easily start an online store with WordPress. WooCommerce hosting gives you all the essential features to launch your online store.
- VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting: An upgrade to shared WordPress hosting, VPS hosting allows you to virtualize dedicated resources in a shared environment.
- Dedicated Hosting Server: A dedicated hosting server for your website means that you will have all the resources of the dedicated server for yourself. The downside is that you will have to manage the server yourself.
All Bluehost hosting plans allow you to install WordPress with 1 click.
All plans come with an easy-to-use hosting control panel where you can manage your hosting, create databases, and more.
Bluehost has a custom control panel that improves ease of use for beginners. It also uses a customized version of the cPanel hosting dashboard for more advanced options.
Breakdown of Bluehost’s Shared Hosting Plans
Bluehost offers a shared hosting package suitable for starter websites. Their shared plan is available at four different levels.
Let's take a look at Bluehost's pricing and what's included in each plan.
- Basic: The Basic plan only allows you to host one website. It hosts one domain and 25 subdomains, 50GB SSD storage, 5 email accounts with 100MB disk space for each account. For the first quarter, you will pay $2.75 per month. When you renew the account, you will have to pay $8.99 per month.
- Plus: The Plus plan includes unlimited websites with unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth. You will also get unlimited email accounts. Pricing for the first term starts from $4.95 per month. When you renew the account, you will have to pay $11.99 per month.
- Choice Plus: The Choice Plus plan includes all the features of the Plus plan. You'll also get free domain privacy and automated daily backups powered by CodeGuard as extras worth over $80/year. Pricing for the first quarter is $5.45 per month. Upon renewal, you will need to pay $16.99 per month.
- Pro The Pro plan starts from $13.95 per month for the first term after that you’ll pay $23.99 per month. It includes all the features of the above plans + a dedicated IP address.
If you have just started your website, you can select one of these plans. You can easily upgrade your hosting plan as your website grows.
Bluehost Customer Support and Service
We all need help from time to time. It is very important that you choose a web hosting company that offers help and support when you need it.
Bluehost maintains a huge library of articles, step-by-step guides, and video tutorials as part of its extensive knowledge base. It's a great help for beginners and the most common problems can be solved quickly with a simple search.
However, sometimes you will need to talk to someone for more help.
Bluehost offers a 24/7 support system where you can talk to their support team representatives via live chat or phone. This is really useful when you need quick help from technical support staff and you know they are just a click away.
One thing that is missing is the ticket-based support system. Bluehost recently decided to phase out ticket-based support to focus on a personal approach to live chat support and phone support.
However, some users may still miss the ticket-based support system, which is especially useful if your issue cannot be resolved in a single live chat or phone session.
Conclusion: Is Bluehost the Right Choice for You?
After reading this review, you might be wondering if Bluehost is the right choice for your website?
Bluehost is often rated the #1 web hosting provider by many websites. They offer a wide range of hosting options with tons of features that help you build your website easily.
All of their hosting plans include expert 24/7 customer support from knowledgeable staff.
Most importantly, they offer affordable starter plans that meet all budget requirements.
If you're just starting out, you can't go wrong signing up for a Bluehost shared hosting plan. It's easy on your pocket and comes with all the right tools. As your site grows, you can easily upgrade your hosting plan accordingly.
Ready to start your website with Bluehost? Click here to select your Bluehost plan.
Bluehost Coupon
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 60% discount and a free domain with our Bluehost coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to buy. The discount will be applied automatically.
Remember you must use the link above to get the exclusive discount. If you visit the Bluehost website directly or use another link, you will not qualify for the special offer.
Bluehost Offerings
At this point, you have learned about Bluehost's hosting prices. But the fun doesn't stop there. In addition to hosting plans, Bluehost offers other services.
Hosting
Unsurprisingly, shared hosting is Bluehost's most popular hosting offering, as it allows you to get your foot in the door when it comes to getting your site up and running.
I would say the main reason Bluehost shared hosting ranks high when you compare it to other hosting providers is their free SSL certification and free domain name agreement. But when it comes to hosting your site on a server where you will be sharing space with other sites like yours, it does its job.
Now, while shared hosting might be the best affordable hosting option for beginners, it's not going to be what you'll want to keep as your site grows.
This is why there is dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. Dedicated hosting is a more robust and reliable hosting option for powerful site performance, and VPS hosting offers increased power, flexibility, and control.
Online Stores
If you've already decided to start your online store with WordPress and WooCommerce, it can be as simple as choosing between Standard or Premium store hosting tiers to get started.
For a store with a robust payment processing system with plenty of analytics and the ability to create basic store backups, go for the Standard plan at $15.95 per month.
Your store can be a bit more complex than just a storefront with your product listings. If you want to capture subscriptions or online bookings and appointments, it is better to use the Premium level as a very reliable e-commerce option.
I would say this is my top pick for a multi-faceted online store with lots of moving parts. I'd rather pay a little more for all the premium features than need them and not have them to save a few extra bucks.
Live WordPress Support
Bluehost offers Blue Sky, a service to teach users how to create, grow, and maintain any WordPress website through one-on-one training and guidance. WordPress live support starts at $29 per month for on-demand ticket support and backup assistance and goes up to $149 per month for SEO tools, content optimization assistance and mobile optimization, and access to Constant Contact.
Professional Marketing Services
In addition to hosting services, Bluehost offers an offering to help your business with design and marketing strategies to give you more time to focus on revenue-generating activities and running your business.
The four main services offered by Bluehost in this area are:
Full website support with design, marketing and content assistance
SEO services to optimize your website and target keywords
PPC services to help with pay per click campaigns and best practices to attract more customers
Website migration assistance, including one-on-one consultations to review your website before and after any migration
The cost of these services is not listed on the Bluehost website. You will need to contact them to discuss pricing and support options.
FAQs About Bluehost Hosting
In this detailed Bluehost review, we have tried to cover all aspects of their hosting services. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Bluehost that we hear from our users.
1. Can I make an online store using WooCommerce on Bluehost?
Yes, you can. In fact, Bluehost is one of the best WooCommerce hosting service providers. Their starter plan is perfect for starting an online store.
However, keep in mind that you will need to upgrade as your store starts getting more traffic. Hopefully, by then, you'll make enough money to justify the upgrade costs.
2. Is Bluehost good for beginners?
Yes. Bluehost is the most beginner-friendly WordPress hosting company on the market. They automatically install WordPress for you when you sign up. They also have an easy-to-use control panel that allows you to manage your hosting account yourself.
Plenty of help is available with step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and articles. You also have 24/7 access to their expert live chat and phone support.
3. Can Bluehost handle high traffic?
Their shared hosting plans are suitable for startup websites and small businesses. In our stress test, their shared hosting plan was able to handle 100 virtual users without any slowdowns.
These plans can handle reasonable and sudden traffic spikes. However, they are still quite limited in server resources. If you expect high traffic, you will need to upgrade your hosting plan.
4. Why use Bluehost for WordPress?
Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. They have been supporting the WordPress community for a very long time and are very knowledgeable about WordPress.
Their platform is highly optimized for WordPress websites and designed to run WordPress at peak performance. They also have WordPress engineers on their team so you know your website is in good hands.
5. Do I need a credit card to sign up with Bluehost?
Bluehost accepts credit cards but you can choose to show more payment options during checkout and select PayPal as the payment method if you wish.
6. Is Bluehost better than GoDaddy?
Bluehost is better than GoDaddy because we think Bluehost support is better. Their My Sites dashboard and overall onboarding experience are much more beginner-friendly. Not to mention that Bluehost offers better prices for small businesses.
7. How does Bluehost compare with SiteGround and HostGator?
When comparing Bluehost with SiteGround and HostGator, you should be aware of several pros and cons.
Bluehost offers more value for the price compared to SiteGround. Their plans start at $2.75 per month and include a free domain, while SiteGround plans start at $4.99 and don't include any free domain.
On the other hand, the SiteGround platform comes with better speed and security features. For more details, see our Bluehost vs SiteGround vs WP Engine comparison.
In terms of Bluehost vs HostGator, they are quite similar when it comes to hosting CPU resources, features, site migration tools, pricing, etc. Bluehost is also more comparable to shared hosting providers like Inmotion Hosting or Dreamhost. We find Bluehost's user experience to be slightly better because they've invested heavily in their WordPress website building platform.
8. Where are Bluehost servers located?
Bluehost operates its own in-house data center located in Utah, USA. It is a massive 50,000 square foot facility that serves as the main data center.
9. What Bluehost plan should I get?
If you've just started a brand new website, blog, or online store, we recommend starting with their basic plan. It's good enough for a starter website and you can always upgrade later.
Ready to start your website with Bluehost? Click here to select your Bluehost plan.
Bluehost Hosting Review Conclusion
Overall,
Bluehost
is a great choice for beginners as it comes with everything you need to
get started with WordPress, from a free domain name and automatic
WordPress install to a free drag-and-drop page builder. - drop and
detailed step-by-step instructions for each step of the way.
With extensive product offerings like
WordPress hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and tiered pricing plans, we think
most users will enjoy the Bluehost experience.
The good outweighs the bad, and it's definitely a web hosting service
worth looking into, especially for WordPress users.