Is Bluehost web hosting service still the best web hosting company? Although there’s some truth about Bluehost regarded as one of the most popular web hosting companies in the world. It offers a number of hosting plans perfect for beginners and large businesses alike.
If you want to start an affiliate marketing business, Bluehost has a very good affiliate program that pays well.
Due to some frequent outages the company experienced a few years back, the company came under heavy scrutiny. Since then Bluehost has made a lot of improvements in terms of products, infrastructure, and customer support. As a result, Bluehost earned its current reputation as one of the best web hosting providers on the market.
Read more on our comprehensive review of Bluehost to learn more about its pros and cons, hosting plans, pricing, security, and performance. Once you have all this information, you’ll be able to decide if Bluehost is the right web hosting service for you and your business.
Bluehost Web Hosting Review – Summary
PROS
99.98 percent uptime
Good loading speeds
$3.95 per month introductory rate for shared hosting
Great security features
Strong ease of use
Excellent customer support
30-day, money-back guarantee
CONS
$10.95 per month renewal rates for shared hosting
Limited free site transfers
Limited backup options
No Microsoft Windows™-based servers
No cloud hosting
What Is Bluehost?
Bluehost is one of the world’s most popular website hosting companies. Web hosting providers use their computer servers to store their clients’ website data, such as web pages, photos, and videos. Then, whenever people access their clients’ websites, the web host provides that data to those visitors.
As one of our top 5 web hosting providers, Bluehost offers a number of hosting plans to meet its clients’ needs.
Who Is Bluehost Best For?
Bluehost can make an excellent choice for small and medium-sized businesses. Bluehost works well for these businesses because it’s easy to use, it easily integrates with WordPress, and it provides a number of beneficial features and add-ons. Overall, Bluehost offers small businesses an excellent value for their money.
What Products Does Bluehost Offer?
Bluehost offers four primary types of hosting: shared, dedicated, virtual private server (VPS), and WordPress hosting. Each hosting type has a number of payment tiers and features that can benefit certain types of businesses.
Definitions of all industry terms are located in the Website Hosting Terms section at the bottom of this page.
Bluehost Hosting Plans
Shared Hosting
If you want an inexpensive hosting package and don’t expect to have more than 450,000 visitors to your site each month, then a Bluehost shared hosting plan probably is the right fit for you.
With shared hosting, your website effectively shares server (storage) space with other websites. Those website owners then share the costs associated with operating and maintaining that server.
Shared hosting packages come with all the features you’d expect: a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate, website themes, 24/7 customer support, and more. Bluehost offers Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro shared hosting packages. Learn more about the features and cost of each package in the Bluehost shared hosting prices section.
Dedicated Hosting
Bluehost also offers dedicated hosting packages for clients who don’t want to share server space or resources with other websites. Dedicated hosting plans are ideal for websites that expect to receive close to 14,500 visitors per day.
Bluehost’s dedicated hosting packages offer up to 1 terabyte (TB) of storage space, 16 gigabytes (GB) of random access memory (RAM), and 15 TB of bandwidth as well as a free SSL certificate. Learn more about the features and cost of each package in our Bluehost dedicated hosting prices section.
VPS Hosting
You may want to consider VPS hosting if you need more dedicated resources and server space than what shared hosting can offer, but can’t quite commit to the costs associated with dedicated hosting.
While you still share a server with other websites when using VPS hosting, you have allocated resources (e.g., RAM and bandwidth) on that server. VPS hosting often makes a great choice for small and medium-sized business websites that consistently use a decent amount of resources.
VPS hosting packages offer up to 120 GB of solid-state drive (SSD) storage space, 8 GB of RAM, and 3 TB of bandwidth as well as a free SSL certificate. Learn more about the features and cost of each package in our Bluehost VPS hosting prices section.
WordPress Hosting
If you plan to build a WordPress website for your business, you may want to consider WordPress hosting. Bluehost offers both shared WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting.
With shared WordPress hosting, you’ll share server space and resources with a number of other websites. Bluehost will not only install WordPress for you, but also automatically install all WordPress updates for your site in the future.
Managed WordPress hosting packages include a premium WordPress concierge service. With these packages, Bluehost will handle all WordPress updates, perform daily website backups, ensure your site remains secure, has fast page-loading speeds, and more.
The idea behind managed WordPress plans is that Bluehost will handle all the technical aspects of running your website, freeing you up to focus on designing your site and running your business.
Shared WordPress hosting packages start with 50 GB of storage space, a free SSL certificate, a $200 marketing credit, and more. Managed WordPress packages start with 20 GB of storage space, a free SSL certificate, a staging environment (to help you build your site), and more.
Learn more about the features and cost of each package in our Bluehost shared WordPress hosting prices and Bluehost managed WordPress hosting prices sections.
WordPress Ecommerce Hosting
If you plan to build a WordPress website for your ecommerce business, you may want to consider Bluehost’s ecommerce hosting. Bluehost offers both standard WooCommerce hosting and premium WooCommerce hosting.
With standard WooCommerce hosting, you’ll automatically receive a website complete with an online store and blog that uses the storefront theme. It’ll come with several useful plug-ins already installed plus the ability to list an unlimited number of products.
In addition, your site will include an easy-to-install payment processing feature. You’ll also have the option to enter orders manually, if necessary.
With premium WooCommerce hosting, you’ll receive all the above features plus the ability to offer subscription packages, accept online bookings, access product customization features, and automatically calculate sales tax.
Learn more about the features and cost of each package in our Bluehost WordPress ecommerce hosting prices section.
Bluehost Pricing
Bluehost Shared Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s Basic shared hosting plan can offer the best package for blogs and smaller businesses that don’t expect to have more than 14,500 website visitors per day. If you pay for your hosting service with a three-year contract, it’ll cost you $3.95 per month for the first three years and then $8.99 per month for the next three years.
If you have multiple websites, need extra security, or want more advanced features, you might consider the Plus, Choice Plus, or Pro shared hosting plans.
Check out the Bluehost shared hosting plan for $3.95 per month.
Bluehost Dedicated Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s Standard dedicated hosting plan can provide the best package for small and medium-sized businesses that receive many online visitors every day. This package also can make a great choice if you want complete control over your website’s resource allocation and security measures. With an introductory rate of $79.99 per month, the Standard dedicated hosting package includes 500 GB of mirrored storage.
If you need more storage, bandwidth, or up to five internet protocol (IP) addresses, you may want to consider the Enhanced or Premium dedicated hosting plans.
Check out the Bluehost Standard dedicated hosting plan for $79.99 per month.
Bluehost VPS Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s Standard VPS hosting plan can provide the best package for small and medium-sized businesses seeking a hosting package that sits somewhere between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. With an introductory rate of $19.99 per month, the Standard VPS hosting package includes 30 GB of SSD storage and 1 TB of bandwidth.
If you need more storage, bandwidth, or up two IP addresses, you may want to consider the Enhanced or Ultimate VPS hosting plans.
Check out the Bluehost Standard VPS hosting plan for $19.99 per month.
Bluehost Shared WordPress Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s shared WordPress hosting plans can make great choices for businesses that want to build their websites on WordPress and need a little extra help from their hosting provider. With an introductory rate of $3.95 per month, the Basic shared WordPress hosting package includes 50 GB of SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, and a $200 marketing credit.
If you need more storage or unlimited domains — or if you want to build multiple WordPress websites — you may want to consider the Plus or Choice Plus shared WordPress hosting plans.
Check out Bluehost’s Basic shared WordPress hosting plan for $3.95 per month.
Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s managed WordPress hosting plans can provide an ideal option for small and medium-sized businesses seeking more technical support from their hosting provider. With an introductory rate of $19.95 per month, the Build managed WordPress hosting package includes 20 GB of web storage and supports up to 20,000 visitors per day.
If you need more storage, expect to have more than 20,000 daily visitors, or want advanced features like PayPal integration, you may want to consider the Grow or Scale managed WordPress hosting plans.
Check out Bluehost’s Build managed WordPress hosting plan for $19.95 per month.
Bluehost WordPress Ecommerce Hosting Prices
Bluehost’s Standard WordPress ecommerce hosting plan can offer the best option for small and medium-sized businesses that want to start selling online. With an introductory rate of $15.95 per month, the Standard WordPress ecommerce hosting plan supports approximately 14,000 visitors per day.
If you want more features, expect to have more than 14,000 daily visitors, or need scheduling and order customization options, you may want to consider the Premium WordPress ecommerce hosting plan.
Check out Bluehost’s Standard WordPress ecommerce hosting plan for $15.95 per month.
Bluehost Features and Add-Ons
Bluehost provides a number of standard and premium features that can benefit businesses and their websites. In addition, you can purchase a variety of add-ons to make your business website run even better. Read on for details about some of the most popular Bluehost features and add-ons.
Themes
Bluehost offers a variety of themes to help simplify the entire website design process. These themes serve as templates that business owners and web developers can use as a starting point to build a dynamic site. Access Bluehost’s theme marketplace to obtain one of its free or premium (paid) themes.
SSL Certificates
Bluehost offers new clients a free SSL certificate — an integral part of internet security. Installing an SSL certificate on your website will enable you to activate the hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS), which is an extension of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). Using HTTPS instead of HTTP will make your site much more secure. That’s essential because most customers won’t make purchases from online stores that don’t use HTTPS.
Domain Registration
Many of Bluehost’s hosting packages provide a free year of domain registration for your website’s URL. After that, Bluehost will charge you a fee to maintain your domain registration.
Domain Transfers
If you registered your website’s domain with another provider (e.g., GoDaddy, Namecheap™, etc.), Bluehost offers a domain transfer service. This service will transfer the management of your domain registration to Bluehost, allowing you to manage your domain name and web hosting in one place.
Website Transfers
Many Bluehost packages offer free website transfers for businesses that already have a website hosted by another company, such as Doteasy or GoDaddy. With this feature, Bluehost will transfer all the data from your current hosting provider to Bluehost’s servers at no cost to you.
cPanel Access
cPanel is a popular, back-end control panel for websites. Although mainly used by intermediate-level website owners and developers, this great feature gives users access to a website’s files, email setup, and much more.
Jetpack Subscription
As one of the most popular WordPress plug-ins, Jetpack provides a variety of useful features. Several Bluehost packages include personal or premium Jetpack subscriptions.
The Pros and Cons of Bluehost
Bluehost Pros
99.98 Percent Uptime: Your website will rarely experience any downtime, and Bluehost has made a formal commitment to resolving most issues within 15 minutes.
Fast Loading Speeds: This is not only extremely important for your site’s user experience, but also crucial for your SEO efforts.
Low Introductory Rates: You can get started with the Basic shared hosting plan for as little as $3.95 per month for the first 36 months.
Great Security Features: Bluehost offers a number of standard and premium security options to safeguard your site at all times.
Strong Ease of Use:
Everyone from beginners to advanced developers find Bluehost’s system easy to use.
Excellent Customer Support: Bluehost’s customer support team is available 24/7.
Money-Back Guarantee: If you’re unhappy with Bluehost, you can cancel your plan within 30 days and get a full refund on your hosting service. This refund does not include domain registration fees or other add-on services.
Recommended by WordPress: WordPress.org lists Bluehost as one of its three recommended web hosting providers.
Bluehost Cons
Higher Renewal Rates: Before you enter into a contract with Bluehost, it’s important to understand the renewal rates for your chosen plan. Those renewal rates cost nearly twice as much as Bluehost’s introductory rates.
Limited Free Site Transfers: Only some of Bluehost’s plans offer free site transfers and those plans will only transfer one site for free. This can become costly for businesses with multiple websites.
Restrictions on Its Cheapest Plans: Bluehost’s least inexpensive plans often come with the most restrictions. For example, these plans will place limits on your site’s daily visitors, bandwidth usage, and storage space.
Limited Backup Options: Basic hosting plans offer limited backup options. This means website owners will need to make a point of backing up their sites, and storing the backups, themselves.
No Microsoft Windows-based servers: While this pertains to more advanced web developers, it’s good to keep in mind if you plan to hire someone to create your website. Bluehost only supports Linux-based servers. If your developer needs to run a Microsoft Windows server, you’ll need to find a different hosting provider.
No Cloud Hosting:
If you want a web hosting provider with cloud hosting plans, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Bluehost no longer offers cloud hosting.
Strong Upselling: Bluehost will make a number of additional features available to you. Savvy business owners should verify the necessity of these add-ons for their sites prior to purchase.
Bluehost Review: Do We Recommend Bluehost?
Despite some of the bad press Bluehost received in the past, it’s now one of the world’s leading web hosting providers. Bluehost has plans to meet every business owner’s needs and it’s committed to providing the best customer service in the business. If you need a quality web hosting provider for your business, Bluehost can offer a solid choice.
Alternatives
If you’re still not sure if Bluehost is the right hosting provider for you, check out some of our other hosting provider reviews to see if there’s one that will meet your needs.
Website Hosting Terms
All website hosting services use a number of industry-specific terms that may be unfamiliar to some business owners. These terms include:
Storage Space: This refers to the amount of storage your website will have. Think of storage space as a filing cabinet for your website’s files. Some hosting plans provide large filing cabinets while others provide a single drawer.
SSD: A solid state drive (SSD) is a type of modern storage device that’s faster and more efficient than its predecessors. Websites that store their files on SSDs will deliver content faster than websites that don’t use SSDs.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth refers to the amount of data your website can transfer to users at any given time. When you sign up for an internet service for your home or business, you’ll select the amount of bandwidth you prefer — usually referred to as megabits per second (MBS). When you sign up for a web hosting service, your package will include a specific amount of bandwidth.
IP Address: Think of an IP address as the address that describes where your website stores its information.
RAM: Random access memory (RAM) is a temporary storage space that serves information up to your website’s visitors. Think of RAM as a person delivering files from your filing cabinet to the people accessing your website. The amount of RAM your website has will determine how many files that person can hold at any given time.
FAQ
How much does it cost to host a website on Bluehost?
Bluehost offers a number of different hosting plans to meet its customers’ needs. Check out the Bluehost pricing section to learn more.
Does Bluehost offer cloud hosting?
No, Bluehost no longer offers cloud hosting.
Where are Bluehost servers located?
Bluehost houses its servers in Utah and other locations throughout the United States. It also has a number of other server facilities located in other countries.
