Bluehost Review — 9 Pros & Cons You Should Know in 2021
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Bluehost is part of a massive corporation, Endurance International Group (EiG), which owns various web hosting providers (e.g. HostGator or iPage) and has a colossal market share.
They obviously have the financial muscle to pour millions into marketing. That probably accounts for the huge amount of (overly) positive Bluehost web hosting reviews online.
I read several of those reviews and most talk about their fabulous customer support (really?), good prices, and scalability options. But in those reviews, there’s very little about their actual flaws.
Hey, even WordPress recommends Bluehost.
But does this mean that Bluehost is a reliable service and a good match for your project?
Check out this Bluehost video-review if you don’t feel like reading the whole article:
Let’s look around under Bluehost’s hood and intensively test their (shared) web hosting.
What Products Does Bluehost Offer?
This US-based web hosting provider offers loads of different hosting-related products, from domain names to dedicated servers. Let me quickly go over their large catalog.
- Domain names: Although they are not the cheapest domain name registrar, you can buy domain names directly from Bluehost. They start at $17.99 a year at renewal. A personal all-time favorite of mine for domain names is Namecheap as it’s cheaper and easier to manage.
- Shared hosting: Unless you are managing a really large project or you need to geek around with your server’s configuration, a shared hosting plan is the one you ought to consider. Think of this as sharing a flat; you’ll share a server (flat), but you’ll have your own hosting space (room) — cheaper but noisier. At Bluehost, their shared prices go from $9.99 to $28.99 per month.
- WordPress hosting: Bluehost has a WordPress-focused hosting service. It’s optimized for WordPress sites and comes with several perks like a staging area. It’s a bit pricey as it starts at $29.99 a month, more expensive than SiteGround’s ($14.99), and other cheap WordPress hosting services.
- VPS: A Virtual Private Server is something in between a shared hosting and a dedicated one (read below). You’ll share a server with other clients, but there’s a (virtual) wall between your projects and theirs. This type of hosting is recommended for those needing special server configurations (e.g. using a particular programming language). VPS hosting plans go from $29.99 to $119.99 a month at Bluehost.
- Dedicated servers: Adequate for those websites that generate tons of traffic and/or need a top-performing server. You can think of this as having your own house; no neighbors or roommates to bother you. Dedicated hosting plans start at $124.99 per month.
These are the most important hosting-related products that Bluehost offers. I was surprised to see that they don’t have cloud hosting services.
Note: This Bluehost review focuses on their shared hosting services, so from now on I’ll be sharing my own experience and knowledge about this Bluehost product.
Bluehost Pricing: What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
The first thing to notice about Bluehost prices is that they have enormous discounts during the first year. Bear in mind that the renewal costs are much higher and they may put you off. Here I mention both prices so you can compare them and decide.
* Integrated system that lets you create and restore your own backups.
The Basic plan is good if you are only going to have 1 website and 50 GB of storage is enough for your project. It also has a limitation on the email storage and accounts you can have, and the databases you can create.
With the Plus plan, you can have as many websites as you need and the storage is unmetered. It also comes with unlimited email accounts.
If you get the Choice Plus package, you’ll be awarded with all the Plus features, plus free domain privacy and better backup options (for 1 year).
The Pro tier is suitable for those looking for higher performances. The maximum files you can host with this plan jumps from 200,000 to 300,000. It also has permanent advanced backup options.
For more information about Bluehost’s products and prices, please check our guide to Bluehost pricing.
Bluehost Pros & Cons
Let me quickly tell you what I think are the most important advantages and disadvantages of Bluehost shared web hosting:
Bluehost Pros Bluehost Cons
- The first term is cheap: But be aware of the renewal rates, they are high.
- Solid uptime: Generally speaking, my uptime tests with Bluehost have always been good. But unlike other providers, they don’t offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that guarantees a minimum uptime.
- Generous storage: Their shared hosting plans offer loads of storage.
- Unmetered bandwidth: Bluehost won’t limit the traffic that your website(s) can get.
- Constant upsells: Their system is packed with continuous upsell pitches, which gets annoying.
- Speed could be better: In our tests, Bluehost’s speed didn’t exactly come out at the top of the table, the speed needs to be improved.
- Only US-servers: Unlike other providers, you only have the option to host your site in the US. If your readers come from other regions, they could face having a (very) slow site.
- Poor backup options: The entry-level plans don’t have a good backup solution.
- Entry-level plan limitations: The cheaper plan comes with a lot of limitation in the sites, database and email accounts you can create.
When to Use Bluehost Web Hosting?
If you are looking to host a small-medium project (e.g. a bakery site) and you won’t be getting tons of traffic, Bluehost can be an OK option.
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But being 100% honest, I think there are similar alternatives with better prices.
When Avoid Bluehost Web Hosting?
If you are managing a project that depends on your website, and you need the best performance, Bluehost isn’t for you. Check out our web hosting reliability tests to help you choose a better cheap web hosting provider if you own an ecommerce business, are a thriving blogger or provide Software as a Service.
Bluehost shared hosting won’t be for those looking for advanced hosting features like staging areas or Git repositories either.
Bluehost Shared Web Hosting Ratings
Bluehost Performance Tests
Is Bluehost a slow provider? Is their uptime OK?
To be able to answer all these questions, I’ve closely monitored Blueshot speed and uptime for months. Let me show you my findings.
Bluehost Speed Test
As a website owner, I don’t have to tell you how important speed is for providing the best user experience and improving your search engine rankings.
I compared Bluehost speed to the most popular (shared hosting) competitors. I used GTmetrix, Pingdom and Webpagetest to check their loading times.
Results in seconds 2021 These tests were carried out under the same circumstances (e.g. same page and content), spread out over almost 2 months.
As you can see, Bluehost isn’t top of the class when it comes to speed, in fact, they are bottom of the class. If you are concerned about speed, SiteGround and DreamHost are, in my experience, are much better-performing providers.
Is Bluehost’s Uptime Good?
Believe it or not, your web hosting service (most likely) won’t have a 100% uptime. Due to technical reasons (e.g. server maintenance), your site will be down for (hopefully) short instances of time.
A bad uptime is terrible as your visitors and search engines won’t be able to reach your site. Your goal should be to have an uptime higher than 99.95%.
To monitor uptime I use StatusCake, a tool that checks each website every 5 minutes.
As you can see, Bluehost offer solid uptime results. I am quite happy with Bluehost’s performance here. However, be aware that they don’t offer any uptime warranty, other hosting providers will compensate you (e.g. a free month) if their global uptime drops below certain levels (usually 99.9%).
Bluehost Review: Do I Recommend It?
You’ve probably noticed already that Bluehost is not my favorite provider. However, if you want a hosting service with unmetered storage and unlimited bandwidth, Bluehost could be a suitable option.
As you can see in the above tests, their speed wasn’t the best. However, I was impressed with their uptime scores as they got similar results to top providers like SiteGround and DreamHost ( compare it with Bluehost).
Their (first-year) pricing is remarkably cheap, but please consider the renewal prices as these sky-rocket.
> Try Bluehost 30 days for free
Bluehost Alternatives
Alright, if you go with Bluehost, your site is probably going to be OK, at least if your visitors are mainly located in North America.
However, it’s not the cheapest option out there, and I think for the same money you could get better performing web hosts that come with advanced options (e.g. backup or staging areas).
- If you are looking for a balanced hosting service (low price and good performance), I’d suggest you check out A2 Hosting or DreamHost. They are a bit cheaper and perform similarly or better than Bluehost.
- In my experience, you’ll find the best customer support at SiteGround, InMotion and (again) DreamHost.
- Without a doubt, the best (affordable) performing providers are SiteGround, A2 Hosting, GreenGeeks and DreamHost. In my opinion, SiteGround comes with a couple of features that make it slightly better (e.g. more backup options).
- You’ll be able to run WordPress in all these providers. However, SiteGround has the best system to empower WordPress site owners (e.g. built-in caching plugin and speed optimization options).
> But, if you still want to use Bluehost, remember that you can try Bluehost for free for 30 days
Note: I’ve created a Bluehost vs HostGator comparison so you know which EiG product is better for your project.
Review Updates
17 Sep 2021: Performance and General update. New rating.
23 Oct 2020: General and performance update
02 Jun 2020: Video review added
05 Sep 2019: New dashboard
27 Jun 2019: First review
Please note that we are using affiliate links in this review. Some of the companies mentioned in this text pay us a commission if you make a purchase. This doesn’t influence our ratings and we will never shy away from pointing out weak spots in a product.
Originally published at https://www.tooltester.com.
