Bluehost Review: Is Bluehost The Best Web Hosting?

Bluehost currently hosts more than 3 million websites and remains one the most sought-after host companies, it’s fast growth can be attributed to its flexibility coupled with its numerous mouth-watering features.

Their large customer base is clear evidence that they are doing something right. They maintain a reliable uptime and amazing server speeds and all of their hosting plans contain features that benefit both beginners and professionals. BlueHost is a web hosting provider that has been providing a hosting service since 1996, It is considered one of the oldest web hosting companies.

Even though many other host providers come and go in the very competitive web hosting industry, this company has managed to exist and thrive to this day. This is an indication that they are a company capable of providing high-quality hosting services to its clients and that is the primary reason for their continued success in the hosting sector. However, Bluehost is the official host partner recommended by WordPress, which alone shows how much confidence and trust WordPress has in them.

In this in-depth Bluehost review, we are going to investigate and analyze Blue hosts claims using industry-standard benchmarking tools and user comments.

Listed below are some of the areas being explored:

What is the average website speed when using a Bluehost host? This can only be determined by testing the response time and speed.

How does Bluehost fare when there is heavy traffic? We’ll analyze that by putting it through a stress test to determine how well it handles traffic.

We’ll equally find out whether Bluehost stays up round-the-clock and throughout the 7 days of the week, without any downtime?

How responsive is Bluehost’s customer service? Are they always there to help when you need help with your website?

Features: Do they offer all the features that are needed to build your website and keep it running?

Cost: what is the price of each Bluehost hosting plan and how affordable is it?

Now, let’s dive straight in with our complete Bluehost review and this is an in-depth analysis of Bluehost, the pros and cons.

This review can help you decide if you are ever contemplating which hosting is good for your planned website.

Bluehost Information

Let’s start with a look at the company itself.

Bluehost has been in business since 1996 and has evolved to become one of the top web hosting companies in the globe. Bluehost currently hosts over 3 million websites from all over the world.

Bluehost has a long-time liaison with the Press. WordPress adopted them as the official host company in 2006 and their partnership has waxed strong ever since, one of Bluehost’s strengths is its round-the-clock customer service, Exceptional hosting architecture, as well as support for open-source software like WordPress.

Benefits and Flaws of Bluehost hosting

All of the greatest web hosting providers have strengths and weaknesses and that is what everybody knows, it only depends on the swiftness to respond and fix flaws.

Here are some of the most significant benefits and drawbacks of Bluehost according to research.

Pros

Let’s quickly discuss what gives Bluehost an advantage among the hosts of other web host companies

Pricing: Their pricing is relatively low which makes their plans affordable for most users, especially those who are just planning to set up websites.

Reliability: They are reliable because they support a large number of websites while still maintaining a little downtime.

There are no hidden fees: what you see is what you pay, they don’t ask for extra charges other than the actual purchase fee.

On sign-up, a free domain name is given for the first year.

To stop malware and boost security, they also give you a free SSL certificate and a free Cloudflare CDN for each website purchased.

Money-Back Guarantee: They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all their plans in case you are not satisfied or feel the service didn’t meet up with what they promise then you can get your money back.

Cons

As earlier stated, every hosting business has its set of drawbacks. Some of the few drawbacks of Bluehost are listed here. When compared to other services, the cost of renewing a domain is relatively high. Their free domain renewal is more expensive than the industry norm.

Upselling Addons: They use an aggressive upsell strategy at enrollment. If you don’t require SiteLock or any of the other addons, you can uncheck them and continue with your preferred choices.

Bluehost Performance Tests

For performance, speed should be the only and topmost performance metric to focus on. It has an impact on your WordPress SEO rankings as well as the user experience on your site.

According to studies, a one-second delay in website speed can slash conversion rates by 7% while a three-second wait can cost you half of your traffic.

Let’s take a look at how long Bluehost takes to get your website up and running.

Bluehost has a near-perfect uptime of 99.99 percent, which is outstanding.

Following a major redesign, Bluehost has had near-perfect uptime and is performing better than before.

Bluehost’s outstanding uptime is much above the industry standard of 99.94 percent, with only 2 outages in the last 11 months, resulting in only 1 hour of downtime out of the 6354 hours of a thorough review.

Although Bluehost’s uptimes saw a significant drop in August 2017, the company asserts that the problems were caused by numerous DDoS attacks directed at their servers, and the numbers have been steadily increasing since then.

Overall, it’s the best uptime we’ve seen over the past 11 months of monitoring more than 40 hosts:

• The average uptime in September 2017 was 99.98 percent.
• The average uptime in October 2017 was 99.86 percent.
• The average uptime in November 2017 was 100 percent.
• The average uptime in December 2017 was 100 percent.
• The average uptime in January 2018 was 99.99 percent.
• The average uptime in February 2018 was 100 percent.
• The average uptime in March 2018 was 100 percent.
• The average uptime in April 2018 was 100 percent.
• The average uptime in May 2019 was 100 percent.
• Average uptime in June 2020: 99.99 percent
• Average uptime in July 2021: 100 percent

Bluehost Server Response Time

After carrying out an intensive Server test, Bluehost performs quite better and the server load time was impressive.

The Bluehost server in the United States response is awesome as it loads in a split second. But in different locations, there is a significant increase in response time, but still less than a second.

If your target audience is in the United States, you enjoy a comparative advantage with superfast response time. However, on the other hand, you can easily modify your server location if more of your users are from other parts of the world.

Plans and Features of Bluehost Hosting

Bluehost has a broad expanse of hosting selections to fit all budgets and needs. Ranging from shared hosting, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, VPS, WooCommerce hosting to managed WordPress hosting, and other services are available.

Let’s take a look at some of Bluehost’s hosting plans and what they have to offer.

Shared hosting: when planning to start a new website that has a modest traffic level, shared hosting is highly recommended at their considerably low influx of traffic. In this scenario, your website shares server resources with other websites in the same hosting environment.

Cloud hosting: This is a notch apart from shared hosting as it is more stable. Here you have access to many cloud servers, allowing your website to automatically switch to a different server in the event of a hardware breakdown.

WordPress hosting: This is more akin to a custom host designed particularly for WordPress-powered sites. It’s WordPress-friendly, and it can even protect your WordPress site from common intrusions.

WooCommerce hosting: This particular hosting type is quite popular among e-commerce sites since it provides for the quick and easy setup of an online store. WooCommerce hosting has all of the features required to get an online store up and operating.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a step up from ordinary shared WordPress hosting in that it allows you to have virtual dedicated resources inside a shared hosting environment.

Dedicated hosting server: If you choose a dedicated hosting server for your website, you will have complete control over all of the server’s resources. The main disadvantage is that you will be fully responsible for server management.

On every Bluehost hosting plan, WordPress can be installed with a single click. All plans consist of an easy-to-use hosting control panel that lets you manage your hosting, create databases, and more.

Bluehost’s control panel has been updated to make it easier to use for newcomers. It uses a customized version of the cPanel hosting interface for more advanced features.

Bluehost shared hosting plans are of various types.

Below is an insight into what each of the plans contains:

Basic Plan:

This type of plan allows you to host only one website. It has 50GB of SSD storage and five email accounts with 100 MB of disk space each, as well as one domain and 25 subdomains. When buying for the first time, you’ll pay $2.95 per month. Renewal plans go for $7.99 per month.

Unlimited Email Addresses Storage capacity

50,000 Gb network bandwidth, unlimited file count Hosting for an unlimited number of domains:

Access to a free domain for 1 year period

SubDomains Unlimited

There is only one free domain with privacy, however, there is no free dedicated IP. There are no free SSL certificates available, and there are no MySQL database Tables, 1,000

Bluehost Plus plan:

This package offers an unlimited number of servers, as well as unlimited storage and bandwidth. It equally gives access to an unlimited number of email addresses. The first term’s price starts at $5.45 per month. You’ll have to pay $10.99 each month to renew the account.

All of the benefits of the Plus plan are included in the Choice Plus plan. It comes with bonuses worth more than a total of $80 a year, you’ll also get free domain privacy and automated daily backups provided by CodeGuard. The first term will cost $5.99 per month. You’ll have to pay $14.99 per month to renew.

Pro plan:

This costs $13.95 per month for the first term, then $23.99 per month on renewal. It has all of the features of the other versions with the addition of a dedicated server.

You can choose any of these plans if you are just getting started with your website and as your website expands, you can easily upgrade your hosting package.

Bluehost Customer Service & Support

We all require assistance from time to time. You must select a web hosting provider that provides assistance and support whenever you require it.

Bluehost’s rich knowledge base includes a large library of articles, video tutorials, and explanatory guides. This is a big benefit for beginners, and most problems can be fixed quickly with a simple google search.

However, you may need to speak with people with more experience for additional assistance.

Bluehost customer is responsive and available always, which allows anyone to communicate with their customer service representatives either via live chat or phone. This is useful when you require immediate assistance from technical support personnel and know that they are only a click away.

Though they no longer offer ticket-based assistance. Bluehost recently discontinued the use of a ticket-based support system and replaced it with a more personalized method that includes live chat and phone support.

Many users who find the ticket-based support system helpful, may find it challenging to cope with the current system, however, the ticket-based help system has proven to be very useful especially if your problem cannot be resolved in a single live chat or phone session.

Is Bluehost your best web hosting option?

After reading this evaluation, you may have to conclude whether Bluehost is the right fit for your website or not.

Bluehost is regarded as the top web hosting company by many users and websites. Bluehost offers a diverse range of hosting options, each with its own set of unique features that make websites simple to set up.

All of their hosting plans include experienced professionals providing skilled customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Most importantly, they provide affordable entry-level plans that fit any budget.

If you are a novice looking for a good host plan to go with, I will recommend you start with Bluehost shared hosting package. It’s economical and comes with all of the essential tools. You may rapidly do the necessary upgrade by boosting your hosting plan as your website expands.

Frequently Asked Questions about Bluehost Hosting

In this in-depth Bluehost review, we attempted to cover all aspects of Bluehost’s hosting services. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about Bluehost, as submitted by users and potential users.

1. Can I create an online store with WooCommerce on Bluehost?

Yes, without a doubt. Bluehost is, without a doubt, one of the best WooCommerce hosting providers. Anyone wishing to start an online store can benefit from their starter package.

Keep in mind, though, that you’ll need to update your website as it increases in popularity. Hopefully, by then, you’ll have generated enough money to cover the upgrade.

2. Is Bluehost the right host for a beginner?

Emphatically, Yes. Bluehost has proven to be the most user-friendly WordPress hosting provider. They install WordPress for you as soon as you purchase a plan. They also include an easy-to-use control panel where you can manage your hosting account.

There is lots of help accessible in the form of thorough manuals, video guides, and articles. You may also reach out to their knowledgeable support team at any moment via live chat or phone.

3. Can Bluehost handle a high volume of traffic?

Small businesses and new websites will benefit from their shared hosting services. Their shared hosting plan handled 100 virtual users without stuttering, as demonstrated by a series of stress tests.

These solutions can deal with both known and unpredictable traffic quantities. However, they have a limited number of server resources. If you expect a lot of traffic, you’ll need to upgrade your hosting subscription.

4. Why should you host your WordPress site with Bluehost?

Bluehost is one of the most well-known hosting companies in the world, as well as a WordPress-approved host. They’ve been helping the WordPress community for a long time and are quite knowledgeable about the platform.

Their platform is optimized for WordPress websites and is built to run WordPress at peak performance. They also employ WordPress engineers, so you can rest certain that your site is in capable hands.

5. Is it compulsory to have a credit card to sign up with Bluehost?

Bluehost accepts credit cards, however, you can decide to explore other payment alternatives and pay with PayPal if that is your preferred method of payment.

6. What is the difference between Bluehost and GoDaddy?

When comparing Bluehost to GoDaddy, consumers say Bluehost’s customer support is far more responsive based on a few apparent metrics. Their onboarding and dashboard for My Sites are significantly more user-friendly. Bluehost also offers more economical plans for small businesses.

7. How does Bluehost compare to its competitors?

When compared to other hosting companies, it is evident that Bluehost offers better value for money. Their monthly plans start at $2.95 and include a free domain, whereas the cheapest plan offered elsewhere is $4.49 and does not include a domain.

8. Have you thought about comparing Bluehost and Hostgator?

Bluehost and HostGator are fairly similar in terms of hosting CPU resources, functionality, site migration tools, cost, and more.

Bluehost is also a lot like Dreamhost and Inmotion Hosting, which are also shared hosting providers. We believe Bluehost’s user experience is slightly superior because they’ve invested much in their WordPress website builder platform.

9. Where are Bluehost’s servers located?

Bluehost’s data center is located in Utah, United States. It’s a massive 50,000-square-foot data center that serves as the company’s primary data center.

10. What is the best Bluehost plan for a beginner?

If you’re a complete newbie looking for the best-shared hosting, the Basic package is the ideal choice because it includes a free domain name and a large 50GB of storage.

Conclusion:

We found Bluehost to be dependable, economical, and responsive, with courteous customer care available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, we’re recommending Bluehost as one of the top WordPress hosting providers that offer good value for money.