Bluehost Review

Bluehost this name needs no introduction in the field of web hosting. If you know about web hosting it is highly likely that you are familiar with the name of web hosting giant Bluehost. It is one of the oldest web hosting providers that is still going strong. As a matter of fact, it is officially #1 recommended for web hosting from WordPress.org itself.

Bluehost has become the leading web hosting provider specifically when it comes to WordPress hosting. It offers a wide range of plans for novices to large businesses. That too with a 24*7 customer support. Bluehost provides you with expert support to get solution for your website issues through live chat, email, and phone support. Forget about your website ever being slow even during high traffic time if you have hosting with Bluehost.

Bluehost – Hosting and Features

Bluehost provides its users with 5 types of hosting services. These services are for everyone from beginners to large established businesses. Let’s learn about them in detail.

• Shared Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Dedicated Hosting
• WordPress Hosting
• E-commerce Hosting

Shared Hosting

If you are a novice looking for a value hosting service to start your business. Then look no further, shared hosting is perfect for you. It is cheap and best for beginners. The basic plan starts at 2.75$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 7.99$/month. It includes 1 website, 50GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, SSL certificate, standard performance, 1 included domain, 5 parked domains, and 25 sub-domains.

Whereas the plus plan has everything unlimited that was provided with the basic plan. Further, adding spam experts and 1 office 365 mailbox service to it. Shared hosting also provides users with choice plus and pro plans which are similar to plus plan but have a few extra features. These plans are backed with a 30-day moneyback guarantee and a 24*7 customer support. Check out best WordPress hosting providers.

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting is the middle man between shared and dedicated hosting. Physically it is shared hosting but virtually it provides dedicated hosting with a virtual operating system. Therefore, VPS hosting is best for people who are not sure whether they want shared hosting or dedicated hosting.

The standard plan starts at 18.99$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 29.99$/month. This plan provides 2 cores, 30GB SSD storage, 2GB RAM, 1TB bandwidth, and 1 IP address for hosting. On the other hand, it’s enhanced and ultimate plans provide 2 cores, 60GB SSD storage, 4GB RAM, 2TB bandwidth, 2 IP address, and 2cores,120GB SSD storage, 8GB RAM, 3TB bandwidth, and 2 IP address respectively. All these plans are backed with a moneyback guarantee and a 24*7 customer support service.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is the most expensive hosting of all. It is best suited for large commercial companies that wish to have more control over their resources. With dedicated hosting, you hire an entire server for yourself even physically. Thus making your hosting service more faster, efficient, and secure.

The standard plan starts at 79.99$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 119.99$/month. It also has enhanced and premium plans. With the standard plan, you are given 4 cores @ 2.3 GHz. Whereas with enhanced and premium plans users are provided with 4cores @ 2.5 GHz and 4cores @3.3 GHz respectively. Storage ranges from 500GB to 1TB mirrored. When it comes to RAM it starts at 4GB goes up to 16GB. Users get bandwidth from 5TB to 15TB depending on the plan that you opted for. Further, it provides 3-5 IP addresses on its various plans. All these plans are backed with a 30-day moneyback guarantee, a 1-year free domain, a free SSL certificate, and a 24*7 customer support service.

WordPress Hosting

When it comes to WordPress hosting, Bluehost clearly stands apart from others. It provides two hosting services for WordPress. One is a simple WordPress hosting service while the other is called WordPress Pro.

• WordPress Hosting

WordPress beginners love this hosting service as it is affordable for everyone. With this hosting Bluehost provides you with automatic WordPress installation and updates, Microsoft office 365, 1-year free domain name, WordPress staging environment, and secure configuration of login credentials.

The basic plan starts at 2.75$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 7.99$/month. Its plans are almost identical to shared hosting, as it also consists of plus and choice plus plans. The only thing that is added extra in these plans is a 200$ marketing credit and code guard basic backup. These plans also have a 24*7 customer support and a 3–day moneyback guarantee.

• WordPress Pro

WordPress Pro is a newly added service by Bluehost. It provides you with the best quality WordPress hosting service but its way expensive in comparison with simple WordPress hosting. This is the most popular service hosted by Bluehost. It has hosted over a million websites. Bluehost has core staff developers for WordPress Pro that troubleshoot unique and complex problems of WordPress and also offer high-quality customer support.

The build plan starts at 19.95$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 29.99$/month. Its build, grow, and scale plans have features like jetpack site analytics, marketing center, 100+ free WordPress themes, daily scheduled backups, malware detection and removal, free SSL, no traffic limits, domain privacy and protection, business review tools, SEO tools, unlimited websites, domain, subdomains, and web storage, video compression, blue sky ticket and chat support, elastic search, instant WordPress install, CDN enabled, spam protection, WordPress auto-updates, and PayPal integration. All these plans are backed with a 24*7 customer support service and a 30-day moneyback guarantee.

E-commerce Hosting

If you are thinking of setting up an online store. Bluehost can turn to be a very reliable hosting service for it. Setting up an online store on Bluehost is a piece of cake. Further, E-commerce hosting offers many shopping carts like OS Commerce, Agora, Zen, and Cube. Bluehost also provides features like one free domain name, auto WooCommerce installation, free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, dedicated IP address, and marketing credits in all its plans.

The starter plan starts at 6.95$/month for the first purchase whereas at the time of renewal regular price will be 13.99$/month. It includes 1 online store, 100GB SSD storage, storefront theme installed, domain privacy and protection, SSL certificate, 1 office 365 mailbox service 30days-free, and free setup call. Whereas the plus and pro plans have everything unlimited that was provided with the starter plan. Further, adding code guard backup basic, and Bluehost SEO tools to it.

Recommended

By now you probably understand how important it is to have a good web hosting. In the next step you probably be building your website, right? You can build a good website either by using free or paid templates, or you can use a website builder. There should be no compromise with the quality of the website. Therefore, I will recommend you to create your website using a good website builder.

A good website builder is as important as a good web hosting. I have been using Template Toaster and Wix website builder for years and they have been phenomenal. Wix is an online website builder and provides its own hosting. Whereas Template Toaster is an offline website builder and gives you the freedom to choose your preference of web hosting provider. I highly recommend them, whether you are a newbie or an expert. As they come with tons of features. Thus helping you create picture-perfect websites.

Bluehost – Ease of Use

The management and setup of a website through Bluehost is way too easy. Given the fact that Bluehost has an enhanced cPanel interface, it can’t get any easier than that. Thus Bluehost has a simple and clean interface with the option of customization. To go to any specific area all you have to do is just click on its icon on the dashboard. Moreover, it also provides a quick WordPress setup and unlimited domain, email hosting.

Bluehost- Security

This is one area where Bluehost exceeds all its competitors. Bluehost provides a free SSL certificate with all its plans. SSL ensures that the transactions, usernames, passwords, and sensitive information shared are secured. Moreover, you can blacklist IP addresses if you want to stop access to your website through Bluehost. The secure shell (SSH) feature helps you access configuration files securely and individually.

Further, it provides 3 layers of anti-spam protection in addition to highly secure data centers. Those are spam experts, spam hammer, and apache spam hammer. It also provides filter protection for your inbox and password protection for your directories. Additionally, Bluehost also offers one-click Cloudflare integration which enhances the speed and security of your website.

Bluehost- Performance

Apart from security one of the must-have factor is performance. Bluehost is one of the most dependable hosting providers. Two important performance metrics for measuring reliability are uptime and website loading speed. And Bluehost excels in both fields. It has an average 99.99% uptime and average website loading speed is .406 milliseconds(ms). No hosting provider can provide 100% uptime. This shows how dependable Bluehost is for website hosting.

Bluehost- Customer Support

Now and then we need the help of customer support of our web hosting provider. Therefore, customer support quality becomes a very important factor while rating a web hosting provider. Bluehost has good customer support but sometimes it does get a few mixed reviews. It provides a variety of customer support options like 24/7 live chat, 24/7 phone support, and email support tickets.

Bluehost offers 3 types of technical customer support numbers depending on your needs. Those are general inquiries, VPS and dedicated hosting, and WordPress assistance. Further, it also offers direct answers to common questions or beginner’s queries through its knowledge base. Moreover, it also maintains a huge library of step by step guides, articles, and video tutorials as a part of its knowledge base. To get the fastest response you must know which Bluehost team to contact from the start.

Bluehost – Pros and Cons

Everything you come across in life has its pros and cons. The only question that matters is whether you can live with its cons or not. Let’s have a look at Bluehost’s pros and cons.

Pros

• The security features provided by Bluehost are extraordinary.
• It provides good E-commerce features with SSL security, SiteLock, and multiple shopping carts.
• A free domain name is given for a year with your purchase.
• Most plans provided by Bluehost have unlimited domain hosting, bandwidth, email addresses, and disk storage.
• Further, it provides you with an enhanced cPanel which makes the interface easy to use for novices.
• Bluehost powers a humongous number of websites with minimum downtime, good uptime, and site loading speed.
• Bluehost has a wide range of plans, thus it is available for everyone easily from beginners to big commercial firms.
• Moreover, it provides the availability of numerous databases like MySQL and a truckload of free website scripts
• Customer support is good and reliable.
• Additionally, it provides free anti-spam in cPanel and a 30-day moneyback guarantee.
• Setting up a WordPress site through Bluehost is easier as WordPress.org officially recommends Bluehost.

Cons

• The cost of renewing the free domain name provided after a year is expensive.
• With Bluehost, you are recommended to do daily backups on your own.
• Customer support service sometimes gets good and bad both kind of reviews.
• Site migration is not free of cost with Bluehost.
• Bluehost always tries to upsell to its customers.
• It provides its users with many handy addons but you need to install most of them to get full functionality.

Bluehost – Pricing

Bluehost provides its customers with good value for money plans. Its cheapest plan comes with shared hosting whereas its most expensive plan comes with dedicated hosting. Here is the list of plans offered by Bluehost.

Shared hosting plans – It comes in 4 plans basic, plus, choice plus, and pro.

VPS hosting plans – This service has 3 plans namely standard, enhanced, and ultimate.

Dedicated hosting plans – It consists of 3 plans such as standard, enhanced and premium.

WordPress hosting plans – This service comes in 3 plans basic, plus, and choice plus.

WordPress Pro hosting plans – It consists of 3 plans build, grow, and scale.

E-commerce hosting plans – This hosting has 3 plans starter, plus, and pro.

Bluehost – Conclusion

Bluehost is the ultimate killer in the field of web hosting providers. With its affordable plans, cPanel interface, 24*7 support, and tons of features, its a web hosting provider of its own class. It has been in the website hosting market for over 20 years like a rock and that speaks volumes for it. Given the fact that most of its customers are happy with it.

Bluehost is not perfect but its pros outweigh its cons. It is a web hosting service for everyone with its cheap plans and a rock-solid reputation. Bluehost is a good web hosting provider and I highly recommend it for beginners and WordPress users.

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