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!
First and foremost: the "all inclusive" deal. No space limitations, no bandwidth limitations, no limitations on number of websites handled (as far as I know for the latter). Framework is awesome and almost all types of small web apps can be hosted there. Everything is managed with a super simple control panel. Support is excellent. I moved around quite a bit from hosting provider to hosting provider before landing on IX.
I guess the strongest issue I encountered are prolonged down times, which are (a) rare and (b) not unique to IX as unfortunately all hosters are having those once in a while. Even the mighty Amazon. Still - my advice is to not host anything mission critical with IX (or any other hoster for that matter), and if you do - do take care for some CDNs/backups.
It's our one stop shop for everything that should be hosted on the web, and is non critical: company websites, small web apps and web services. The main benefit is having everything under one roof and under one price.
It's affordable, it's reliable, has an easy C-panel and love the 1-click installs. The features are all pretty standard for any of the lower-cost hosting options. I have multiple accounts with multiple sites underneath them and it suits me well. I use it to purchase domains as well since it is easier to have everything in one place.
The domain prices are a few bucks extra compared to what you might pay elsewhere but having domain registration and hosting in one place is worth it.
Need an affordable hosting solution for wordpress sites as well as to host sites that we use for landing pages for advertising campaigns. Easy to manage dns settings and no limit on the number of sites you can have within your hosting environment.
Inexpensive and easy to set up. One-click installs for WordPress sites make this a no brainer for clients.
MOJO Marketplace integration is annoying
WordPress hosting
The customer service folks are excellent. Every time I've had an issue or a question they have been quick to respond and very helpful. They are super knowledgeable and have fixed every issue quickly. The pricing is also excellent. Since we don't need a lot as far as server space goes, they have plans that fit our needs for a very low cost.
We get occasional slowdowns on our sites, presumably because we are sharing server space across a few different sites. Also, the user interface for the CPanel could be improved greatly. While it's not as bad as some other companies, that is only because other companies are so far behind. This is an issue that plagues the whole industry, but that doesn't excuse Bluehost from improving things.
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The prices are cheap and they have integrated environment with wordpress, making it extremely easy to customize your website. Also, their customer support is extremely helpful and available 24/7 adding a cherry on top.
As a first time user, thier dashboard seemed to be hard to navigate and understand, but you understand it with time. Cpanel could be more user freindly.
Cheap Wordpress Hosting. It has helped me save money by providing one of the lowest prices in market.And their customer support is really helpful with technical things, so I don't have to worry about that.
Ease of onboarding with WordPress site and quickly starting the site is the best feature.
Some DNS related functionalities like CDN is quite expensive compared to others.
Quick and easy way to setup and operate WordPress website is a great feature in Bluehost.
I like plan of hosting they provide in starting
There are virus problem many times in shared hosting
It provides hosting service. so it is useful for host my website
I like that there's always someone to help with any questions and I also like the variety of options they have.
I didn't like that some things were kind of complicated to figure out.
Bluehost is helping with my website and helping me get my business started.
The cost for Wordpress hosting is excellent.
Automated support is about all, except for level 2 and above.
I was looking for cost effective hosting since the others that I have used were expensive. I have experienced a 60% decrease in cost year over year.
Speed and server response of very fast. Website availability is very high, with less downtime. Various hosting plans they offered like WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated servers
Renewal charges are high. sometimes Customer support response time is very high. They have to improve their UI. Features should be improved that will be beneficial for the users.
My website got hosted with security. Building a website on WordPress with the help of Bluehost is really simple. Chep hosting provide more business-oriented. fast response time in such it good price.
They provide all most all the features required by daily users for web developing and web designing. They also provide good affiliate bonus to refer someone and bring them customers.
Actually there is not much to dislike, however they should really improve their UI. Because it is boring.
I have solved my hosting problem with bluehost. It provides good and cheap web hosting along with many features.
The first thing I liked the best about BlueHost was their Hosting service and the affiliate earnings. They provide the best in industry Affiliate rates. I have been using it for more than three years, and this is the best.
I didn't like their domain coonfiguration. As I was facing some problem by using it
I am using it for hosting purposes and once I purchased domain from them as well
Bluehost is one of the trustworthy online web hosting platforms as WordPress itself recommends it for its users. It provides an excellent user interface to start with your hosting. Website hosting became so easy and seamless with the help of Bluehost. It offers various plans suitable for you to start with your website hosting and provides the best service. Customer support response is rapid as it is available 24*7 for its users.
Bluehost charges a hefty amount for domain renewal compared to what you have paid while purchasing your domain. Some of the features are very complicated for beginners to understand; therefore, it would be more helpful if there is any learning video made available by bluehost.
We are hosting our website on Bluehost. It is speedy and trustworthy. It became so easy to access my site and emails with the help of Cpanel provided by the Bluehost. Our website came live just with one click. For any problems or queries resolution, the support team is available for you 24*7.
It's easy if you know your way around CPanel. I haven't had any significant issues, but I've only used it for smaller projects. I would assume a high-traffic website could hit snags. I have been a user for many years now and I hardly ever pay attention to it as it works well as a host for my purposes, haven't experienced outages.
There's some product push from affiliates and such. Support can be deficient because they may not understand the question or issue; I've been on chat for 40 minutes only to realize the person didn't seem to understand the problem and pretty much had to start over. Multisite has certificate issues (or maybe they couldn't figure out how to explain to me how to fix it)
I have been able to quickly and easily create multiple project websites. I find it sufficiently uncomplicated.
Bluehost is fast, reliable and secure. I am using Bluehost for 5 years now. My website www.techsandooq.com is hosted on Bluehost and I am happy with my decision.
Sometime the technical staff is not that technical. Sometime chat ends and we have to explain everything to new agent. This should be changed. I have noticed a change and I think it is implemented but can be improved.
I am using it for domain and hosting, SSL and backups.
I like that Bluehost integrates seamlessly with WordPress to provide a smooth user experience. I have had no issues with getting things completed that I need to with my website, as long as I'm willing to put in the time to learn how to do it. I manage my website myself.
There's not anything I can pinpoint that I dislike right now about Bluehost. It seems to be exactly what I was looking for, and I have yet to harness its full power.
Bluehost + Wordpress is what I use for my two freelancing websites, housing my blog and writing portfolio. It's helped me market my services more effectively, and serves that I'm a professional who's serious about my work.
Bluehost Wordpress Hosting keeps it simple when it comes to hosting and managing our Wordpress websites. We get far greater metrics that are connected to the performance of our Wordpress websites. We have an optimized hosting environment that not only loads pages more quickly than standard hosting accounts, but we can perform updates without having to jump through as many hoops.
Bluehost Wordpress Hosting isn't as flexible of a hosting environment as a standard hosting plan. Though it can be faster for Wordpress websites, it doesn't have compatibility with many other website structures and content management systems that we also use.
Bluehost Wordpress Hosting has been a quick and easy way for us to achieve faster loading times without having to compress too many images or perform other core website adjustments. We can focus more on designing and developing for looks and functionality rather than optimizing code, photos and video to be as small as possible for faster page loads. The management of our WordPress account is more smooth through the control panel since it's design specifically for Wordpress.
Bluehost has incredibly fast hosting. Once, I created a weight loss quiz and the page was loading in around 1.20 seconds on average. I love how Bluehost automatically integrates wordpress into websites becuase to there, all i have to do is login to Bluehost and press "log into wordpress" then, BAM i'm there! I have also used their support several times with fast responses on live chat and they always fix my issues.
I wish Bluehost gave you more than 1 free business email. It is really annoying to have to play for dozens of business emails.
I'm able to host my website and integrate it with wordpress.
Good cost for hosting and includes Wordpress. Also gives users ways to make money from using the site.
The advertising of $3.95 a month, but doesn’t say you have to pay 3 years worth for the deal.
Starting a website and it costs me less than what I used before l
Bluehost offered free domain registration, free SSL certification, and one-click WP installation - all promises it delivered on that were also easy for me to navigate. I wasn't a pro at WP or hosting software when I first tried Bluehost, but they made it so easy that I felt like one.
There's not much I dislike about Bluehost. Customer service is one area that can be improved. It's hard to get any one-on-one attention sometimes, but when you finally reach a representative they're very helpful.
I'm able to focus on my blog/business without worrying about any hosting issues. Bluehost is on top of all that, which brings me a lot of peace of mind.