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 $2.99 (per month) gives you one website, SSL, and CDN certificate. You also receive free daily backups, access to their website builder tool, and free firewall security built into your website. Finally, they also have WooCommerce integration options available.
On the downside, Siteground only offers shared hosting plans. They don’t provide VPS hosting or dedicated servers. Your resource space is also considerably limited (10 GB) compared to competitors. Moreover, it doesn’t offer a free domain name.
So, there you have it. This concludes our Bluehost review. We hope we’ve provided everything you need to decide whether they’re a good choice for your website. There are many aspects to consider, from security to functionality to ease of use. But, Bluehost is regarded as one of the best overall hosting providers on the market.
As we’ve discussed, it allows you to design, optimize and host your website for a reasonably low price. The price hike for renewing your subscription is still pretty reasonable for beginners looking to get their business off the ground.
All in all, Bluehost provides everything you need to kickstart your online business, from an intuitive website builder to web domains to helpful plugins – and tons more to boot!
Is Bluehost the right choice for your business? Tell us your thoughts in the comments box below!
We hope this review was useful. Click below to let us know what you think or leave a comment in the comment section!
I don't like anything about Bluehost. I was automatically renewed to a plan of 19$ a month instead of 2,5 which was what I paid for 1 year. The client service is the worst I've seen. The people you talk to to solve your problem are not interested in helping at all, and they have a bad attitude.
Everything. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I only got it because some influencer had a coupon to start paying 2,5 instead of 5 the monthly plan. I was stupid to assume it was a honest recommendation.
I needed to build a website so I got bluehost.
I joined Bluehost many years ago when I didn't know any better. Their hosting service did what was expected. It hosted my site. That's it. There is nothing remarkable or outstanding about this company.
Terrible customer service. Abysmal support. Long circular bot processes before speaking to a person, followed by long waits. Problems were sometimes resolved, sometimes not. Very often, some clauses in the contract required an "upgrade' to access the support needed (I learned later that other hosting services offer many of these upgrades as standard). Year-on-year, the prices increased, and the service got worse. Upon trying to leave and take my services elsewhere, I was offered a significant discount (that had clearly been available all along). Not cool. The process of leaving Bluehost was painful.
It hosted my site.
Nothing, they were the only provider at the time when I used Wordpress. My developer did not provide me a choice at the moment of deciding.So, unfortunately, I did not really choose them.
I cancelled them 2 years ago, for terrible service. Today they charged me $800 out of nowhere and will not respond to messages or provide a refund. When I reached chat, I asked them what I am being charged for and they said it was for hosting services. When I ask them if I have anything hosted with them, they say no. Shady business practices as always.
At the time, they were not necessarily solving any problem for me. They made it very difficult to transfer over my domain to Google. I would not use them again.
Nothing. quick setup but it's a scam to get more money while providing terrible service
Customer service is terrible, no way to edit existing charges - only buy more
Website hosting (not good though)
Its a hosting just like any other company
Our ecommerce website was down for 3 days and their support was unable to expedite the issue. It cost us business big time as it was peak time for RV trailer sales.
Not with bluehost anymore. Switched to Kinsta
Their hosting service is easy to use and links seamlessly with Wordpress.
Their accounts and customer service is dire. The accounts duplicate bill and debit and then customer service state that they have no records of the duplicate transactions. After this happening repeatedly for three months, I cancelled the duplicate charge through my bank and Bluehost suspended my web sites, saying I had initiated a chargeback without consulting them. I lost hours of my time trying to sort this out. Customer service will keep you on the Chat going round in circles without a resolution.
None.
I can only say the price. Nothing else is likeable.
Their support is the worst in the industry
We just need a stable host with good support
CPanel and hosting options - its actually very easy on Bluehost.
Payments were set to expire but to my shock, they were changed without my consent to automatic and automatically deducted with a markup of 100%. When I raised this with customer service they responded with we auto changed this for you and will not be able to refund or do anything about violating my rights. Appaling customer service where it took over 50 prompts to get them to write up a formal complaint which I still have not received any email communication, to say the least.
Billing is a massive issue. Payments without authorization is the second and also acknowledgement with any communication from their end is non-existant.
When I started with Bluehost, it seemed like a good hosting service. I wasn't comfortable with using WordPress, but they had their own templatized, drag-and-drop tool (Bluehost Editor). I was able to get my site up and was initially pleased with how it looked. Then, one day I went to make a change to the page and the Bluehost Editor would just hang and not open the tool...see next item for what happened next.
One month later and I still cannot get into the tool. I have had multiple interactions with their tech support and every time get the exact same response: "we're working on it and will get back to you when it's fixed". Attempts to get in touch with someone who actually knows something have gone nowhere. Tech support also seems to be completely unknowledgeable about this tool...they say "just use WordPress to make page edits", even though that's not possible since the pages were created with the Bluehost Editor templates...WordPress makes me try to get back into that tool which then fails. Someone in tech support even told me to just re-build my site from scratch and then closed my case as being resolved by that proposal! Terrible support for their own tool. I also tried getting an answer through their Twitter support handle (which they claim to actively monitor) and got no response.
I secured my domain and was able to get my site created, but that doesn't mean much when I can't make any changes.
The most basic tier of bluehost is okay, because you can host unlimited sites if you can tolerate 6-7 load times.
Everything else about bluehost is really terrible. Customer support is frustrating and being passed around for hour after hour. Their WP Pro package was a $400 mistake, now I'm hosted with SiteGround which actually works. They got me to hang on until the month guarantee expired, and then never fixed my problems: Backups don't work. Period. There is no value to the backup package that comes with Pro. Cloudfront could not be configured with SSL; in fact Cloudfront could not be configured at all. Whenever there is any change to make at all, they blame *everything* on a 72-hour DNS change when every mature web hosting company in the world can tell you how to stage your DNS change with minimal outage. They just don't *want* to. I finally got *one* rep (out of literally 20) to change a DNS TTL for me to 1 hour (instead of the default 6 hours), so I *know* they can do it. Then, to top it all, whenever your site is unavailable due to DNS, there is a Bluehost error message displayed that makes you look like you didn't pay your Bluehost bill. This service is not something you would ever provide to a customer; you will look terrible and you'll *still* end up paying for some other service.
For a while, it looked like Bluehost could be used to host a low-latency Wordpress installation. But that turned out not to be true. I have wasted hundreds and hundreds of hours with this terrible, terrible company.
The hosting uses cpanel and is fairly easy to set up.
The lack of customer service, the lack of motivation to solve problems (a CS rep accidentally canceled the wrong service and it ended up in my email and site going down and wasted advertising dollars as it was during a launch and heavy ad time) My experience with them is HANDS DOWN the worst experience I've had working with any company in the past decade.
None, they were great when I needed a basic website and non-reliable service and email, but once it became something I used and relied on, they cost more than they were worth.
The price is cheap, and we're able to manage our site without too much difficulty.
We've experienced numerous multi-day outages with Bluehost. We've also had many difficulties with their customer support in terms of solving any issue we might have.
Needed a cost effective place to host our business website, and they met those requirements. However, we were unprepared for the downtime we have experienced, and the difficulties with support. Both have cost our business thousands.
Not much. Once considered a good option for WordPress hosting, this is now a host to avoid.
Their low-price hosting options should be avoided. Their multi-tenant hosting options are VERY SLOW and poorly supported. My recommendation is to go with another host entirely.
WordPress hosting is the reason I recommended BlueHost to a client a couple years ago.
Pricing and Wordpres support were what got me to consider and sign up for Bluehost.
Once a customer, I had numerous downtime issues and was plagued with slow server response times.
Was looking for reasonably priced shared hosting for development and staging sites for my clients.
They have good deals and good customer service which is helpful if you need a lot of 1:1 time with them.
Basically the same deal as HostGator. Why would I use BlueHost when there are so many other options that are cheaper, faster, and more flexible.
Not provided
Included email server with unlimited accounts and unlimited storage
Verification of accounts (for ssh access) is unclear
Web hosting at an affordable rate Easy deployment of websites Easy purchase of web domains
Bluehost is easy to use for a beginner. The dashboard is very user-friendly. Bluehost is already famous in the business for being a highly reliable host with 99.99% uptime. They host your websites with breakneck speed, and that certainly helps with SEO. Not to mention, you can choose the 1-year hosting plan with unlimited websites and free SSL. It's a terrific deal if you have multiple websites to host.
Bluehost has an expensive starting price point for hosting websites, but I think it's worth it for the quality of services that they provide.
Fast and reliable hosting service means my websites perform better on SEO. Free SSL certificate that auto-renews every three months, saving me precious time to handle this recurring task.
Bluehost is very easy to use and setup in regards to their web hosting services. However, what truly separates them from the competition is their spectacular customer service.
Although they provide a great multitude of reference material, it can sometimes be overwhelming to find them. However, their excellent customer service offerings can help direct you right to the information you desire to find.
Web hosting is needed for websites. They also offer the opportunity to purchase domains and provide the user with access to email services. These emails utilize the domain on the account.
I love their customer support team! They are always so helpful and happy to assist you. At one point I didn't know how to work the txt file for Google search console and the customer support team helped me figure it out!
It's not as easy to login directly to Wordpress. I still haven't been able to figure it out as I go to bluehost, then go to login to Wordpress. When I hire a VA I'd love to be able to have them login directly to Wordpress.
I am able to build a website From scratch without hiring any developers. And not only I did I build it all myself, I think my website looks pretty darn good!
Low-cost service, no misunderstood fees, straightforward offerings, Office365 and Google Apps integration (or email forwarding) and unlimited domains (good for small agencies/consultants looking to host multiple SMB sites). Easy to get a website up and going, protect it and use WordPress.
Speeds. Managed hosting is expensive, and shared hosting can eat at speeds, affecting SEO. Speeds. The back end always feels like they are trying to upsell you on someting. Speeds - like using cable for internet - when everyone's on, it is sloooooooow.
I was looking for inexpensive hosting services for a SMB. The price difference returned an ROI within a month or two. Much easier to use that GoDaddy.