Are you looking to start and host your website in 2024, then BLUE is the color. it simply means that you need to consider Bluehost as your reliable web host to launch your online business.
From its 50K square feet mega facility in Orem, Utah, United States, and more than 750 employees, it has positioned itself as one of the most popular web hosts.
Serving for more than 18 years, the company has over 2 million websites hosted. Thanks to its affordability with a Free SSL certificate, this web hosting has everything you need to take your website from startup to viral hood.
Within a low budget, they offer excellent value, great performance metrics, and most significantly, they are newbie friendly.
It is also one of the only 3 web hosting companies along with DreamHost & SiteGround that are recommended by WordPress itself, and that's a huge deal.
But maybe you are sitting and thinking that it is an ideal choice to start and launch a website.
So, to answer your question here is the complete in-depth review of this web hosting, you will discover all the aspects that will empower you to decide and see whether you will get you what you need.
Alright, so let’s dive in.
Bluehost – Vital Characteristics
There are several other things that Bluehost brings to the table that make it a good value for every dime spent on it regardless of what subscription plan you finally settle for.
They all include:
1. Free Domain – You get a free domain for the first year, which means you save about $15.
It also allows you to choose the “Domain Name” later while signing up. Choosing a domain name can be a real stumbling block for beginners and stop them from getting started.
So, you can start building your website without any commitment to the name, and have the flexibility to set up the name later for your website.
2. Free Email Accounts – You will get 5 free email accounts per subscription, which means you have an official business email that has more credibility.
3. Free SSL Certificate – You get a free SSL certificate that makes your website more secure, guarantees your ownership, and will help you to boost your Google rankings.
4. SiteLock Security – SiteLock security protects your site from malicious attacks, spammers, and hackers, landing on search engine blacklists, detecting malware, and protecting you from costly downtime. You have to pay a little extra to get this feature.
5. CodeGuard – CodeGuard allows you to have automated daily backups for your site. So, if anything for some reason goes wrong with your site, this service always has a backup ready to rock.
That gives you the power to experiment freely while you're developing the site rather than just make a decision. However, if you want to use it, this amazing feature also costs you a little extra.
6. 1-Click WordPress Install – A 1-click WordPress install makes it really easy to set up a WordPress website.
7. Free Site Migration – The platform just recently added free site migration. This means that you can migrate or move your site from wherever it's currently hosted for free.
The platform will take care of all the technical work of relocating your site, getting all the files moved over et cetera and this is a pretty cool extra because this as a service normally can cost about $100 or more to do.
8. Blue Sky Support – If you need any guidance regarding WordPress, a dedicated Blue Sky support team is always there by your side to resolve the problems, help you build and grow your site and improve your WordPress skills.
Bluehost – Solutions
Bluehost provides a set of hosting solutions, that includes:
1. Shared Hosting
2. Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Hosting
3. Dedicated Hosting
4. WordPress Hosting
5. Domain Management
1. Shared Hosting
It is indeed the cheapest solution offered by Bluehost and which makes it easier to manage a website.
If the basic subscription will limit you a lot in terms of functionality (storage capacity limited to 50GB) the other shared hosting subscription plans may be worth it.
It can be interesting if you want to upgrade to a more complete hosting solution.
You will thus have no limits for storage, the number of sites to host, or the domain names to acquire.
With shared hosting solutions, bandwidth is always unlimited.
2. Dedicated Hosting
Bluehost offers several dedicated hosting options, based on Open-Source technology.
These servers are still significantly more expensive than VPS, but the performance and associated features are of a different caliber.
Concretely, with dedicated servers, you can benefit from a 4-core processor with a frequency ranging from 2.3 GHz to 3.3 GHz (premium subscription) or even 5 to 15 TB of bandwidth.
You will be able to host up to 5 dedicated IP addresses and also benefit from a maximum of 4TB of storage space, using a RAID hard drive mirroring for improved security and protection.
It should also be noted that each server is provisioned instantly and can be upgraded, in a few clicks, at any time.
➔ Check out the Dedicated Hosting Pricing Plans here.
3. Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Hosting
A VPS offers greater flexibility and security to website owners.
The virtual private servers developed by Bluehost must also guarantee you greater stability and optimal performance of your site.
Depending on the subscription chosen, the VPS includes:
- A Dual or Quad Core Processor
- From 2GB to 8GB of RAM
- From 1 to 3 TB of Bandwidth
- The Integration of SiteLock Protection to Better Secure Your Data.
➔ Check out the VPS Hosting Pricing Plans here.
4. WordPress Hosting
Bluehost's managed WordPress hosting ensures you have a quick and automated installation of the latest version of WordPress.
This is the least of things to expect, as are the automatic updates of the CMS and the ability to choose the theme of your WordPress site from a pre-defined selection (a feature actually coming directly from the CMS).
You will also be able to take advantage of the Microsoft 365 Business Basic tool in order to have a professional e-mail with your domain name.
If you are in e-commerce, you may be using WooCommerce, the flexible and open-source solution built on WordPress. You might then need optimized hosting and that's what this company offers.
In order to be able to accept payments and guarantee the security of transactions, you will have at your disposal a free SSL certificate but also a dedicated IP address.
5. Domain Management
The company obviously has a management service dedicated to domain names.
In addition to the purchase of domain names, Bluehost enables domain transfers, monitoring, and overall administration, such as automatic renewal and protection against any risk of unauthorized transfers, etc.
Additional Features Offered By Bluehost
Among the most essential features of the host, we can mention the presence of a content distribution network, in charge of improving the availability and loading speed of your site.
Bluehost has a fairly comprehensive security and firewall system in addition to integrating anti-spam solutions like Spam Hammer.
It also has a dashboard provided in applications, enabling you to integrate various services such as Google Apps and CloudFlare, directly within the cPanel.
Each account hosted on the platform can be backed up on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Enough to ensure a good restoration of your site in the event of a major failure.
Other features are also present, such as Hotlink protection which allows you to block other websites wishing to use your files (mainly images), or the possibility of creating a blacklist of unwanted IP addresses.
Speed & Uptime
Let’s talk about the first and most important feature when you buckle up to purchase any web hosting service and that is Speed & Uptime.
A. Speed
Speed is really important when it comes to web hosting and you surely don't want your website visitors grabbing bags of popcorn as they wait for your page to load each time they visit. I mean it's a website, not an amtrak train.
We ran a few tests to see how Bluehost performs in terms of speed and we got pretty decent results. On average the response time we got from websites was 2.8 seconds which is excellent.
With its current speed, it has one of the fastest loading times compared to other hosting services.
B. Uptime
Even it does better in the Uptime department based on the tests we carried out. It gives a near-perfect uptime which is very similar to that of Hostinger.
In other words, with Bluehost, you can be assured that your website is consistently running at maximum speed.
However, as a caveat to this, they do not offer any uptime guarantees on any of their subscription plans, which is an oddity in the web hosting space.
Ease Of Use
Bluehost promises an onboard experience that's so user-friendly that you can call it the ultimate user experience.
The hosting company features its own in-house & industry standard cPanel, which is both easy to use for beginners and inspiring for veteran website owners & that's one of the things that you should look for in a good web hosting company.
In addition to an easy-to-use Control Panel, they will send you beginner guides every day via your email for the first five days after you sign up.
They have a really intuitive customer portal that's clean, which means it's aesthetically pleasing in a way that doesn’t clutter your eyes and give you a headache when you look at it.
if you're going to start or already using WordPress, it's really easy to install. But if you don't want to use WordPress, they support Drupal, Joomla, Weebly, and the list goes on and on.
You can customize the template with the drag-and-drop elements on your page from there and if you're really advanced and you can write the code, well no worries their awesome Customer Support guys you covered.
Customer Support
Now let's move to the department that's sworn to treat you like a royal person.
Running a website can be demanding and should require you to refer critical questions to the customer support desk from time to time.
Bluehost has consistently provided premium service in terms of its customer support which is really integral and they make sure you're not wasting your time and money.
They have 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system.
Their knowledgeable representatives can answer all your questions and resolve all your queries quickly.
On top of that they have a really vast knowledge base that is really jam-packed with answers to all the frequently asked questions and other useful information you need to maybe navigate without having to talk to somebody.
For instance, if you want to use live chat, the waiting times will be no longer than 5 minutes, which is not bad in the world of waiting.
It isn't easy to find this kind of top-notch customer care.
Bluehost Plans & Pricing
For the level of service and performance that Bluehost offers the rates offered are really good.
While their services are slightly more expensive than some of the other hosts, it makes up for them in terms of features, reliability, and support.
The majority of customers are more than able to meet their needs with the lower-cost plans but the question is which one of them is right for you?
It Offers 4 Shared Hosting Plans:
1. Basic Plan
The Basic Plan is a great starting place, if:
- You’re looking to create just one smaller website like a new blog
- You really aren't going to expect a lot of traffic
- You're just on the hunt for the cheapest plan
Starting at $2.95/month, you get:
- 1 Free Domain For The First Year
- Free SSL For The 1st Year
- Free CDN Enabled
- 1 Website
- 15K Visits Per Month
- 10GB SSD Web Storage
- Standard Server Performance
2. Plus Plan
You can go with The Plus Plan, if:
You're looking to create and run multiple sites.
Starting at $5.45/month, you get:
- 1 Free Domain For The First Year
- Free SSL
- Free CDN Enabled
- Unlimited Websites
- 50K Visits Per Month
- 20GB SSD Web Storage
- Standard Server Performance
3. Choice Plus Plan (Recommended)
You need to look at The Choice Plus Plan, if:
You want added Privacy & Security Features
Starting at $5.45/month, you get:
- 1 Free Domain For The First Year
- Free SSL
- Free CDN Enabled
- Unlimited Websites
- 200K Visits Per Month
- 40GB SSD Web Storage
- Standard Server Performance
4. Pro Plan
While this plan is of great value but it is not recommended. You can consider The Pro Plan, if:
- You already have an established audience
- You’re going to expect a really heavy flow of traffic on your website
- You're migrating an already popular site
- You want to get more power with optimized web resources.
Starting at $13.95/month, you get:
- 1 Free Domain For The First Year
- Free SSL
- Free CDN Enabled
- Unlimited Websites
- 200K Visits Per Month
- 100GB SSD Web Storage
- High Server Performance
Unfortunately, you have to bind to 3 years to take benefit of the mentioned prices for their shared hosting plans.
The minimum term you can choose is 12 months but It will cost you a lot more.
You can learn more about the Pricing and Comparison of all Shared Hosting plans at their official website.
Bluehost Review – Conclusion & Recommendation
Depending on your needs, Bluehost may prove to be the right host, especially if you go for Shared Hosting.
It is a reliable hosting provider with a helpful support team and a very intuitive user interface with the presence of additional security options (SSL certificate, anti-spam solutions, etc.).
Configuring your WordPress site with fairly useful advanced features is super easy.
This is why it is not a bad choice for beginners looking to build small websites with low traffic volume. But if you're expecting to have more visitors or you have been building websites for a while there are much better options out there for you in a similar price range.
So, if you are looking for a successful web host, approved for 15 years by WordPress, do not hesitate to try one of the platform solutions.
In case you are not happy with services and want to cancel your subscription, you will be able to obtain a full refund, within 30 days.
➔ Also Read: Bluehost Website Builder – Create Websites Fast & Easy!
