One of the oldest web hosts started in 1996, Bluehost has become the largest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting. They are an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. With Bluehost, you never have to worry about your website being slow even when there is a lot of traffic. Their 24/7 expert support is always there to help when you need it by phone, email, or live chat. They are rated #1 in web hosting for small businesses. On top of that, they are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 75% discount, a Free Domain, Free SSL, and a free Site Builder with templates.
Is This Popular Web Hosting Company Any Good?
This Bluehost review relies heavily on data, also because of the overall experience with their hosting features and customer support.
In a nutshell, all Bluehost plans offer their customers 24/7 live chat, unmetered bandwidth, and five email accounts. Similarly to several other website hosting companies, they too offer their new users a free domain for the primary year. Their plans start from $3.95/mo and include improved security, backups, and a free SSL certificate. These help to stay your blog or website protected and safe.
Overall, their last 24-month performance has been good. Bluehost is clearly at the highest with its uptime (99.99%) and a quick load time of 405ms (0.4 seconds).
| OUR VERDICT: | Best Overall Shared Hosting |
| SPEED: | 405 ms (February 2019 to March 2020 average) |
| UPTIME: | 99.99% (February 2019 to March 2020 average) |
| SUPPORT: | 24/7 Live Chat |
| APPS: | WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and some website builders |
| FEATURES: | Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year |
| HOSTING PLANS: | Shared, Cloud, VPS, and Dedicated Servers |
| SITE TRANSFER: | Not free |
| PRICING: | Starting at $3.95/mo (renews at $7.99/mo) |
Pros of Using Bluehost Hosting
1. Best Uptime – 99.99% – Throughout the Year
Uptime is one the foremost important aspects when choosing a web host – on balance, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So consistently good uptime should be one among your top priorities.
After reviewing 30 web hosts, our benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.93%. which may seem pretty high, but it’s actually even slightly below average. Type those numbers into a calculator, and you’ll quickly see it translates into a minimum of 26 minutes of downtime monthly or simply over five hours over the course of a year.
So ideally, we don’t want to ascertain anything but that.
2. Top 5 Website “Load” Speed – 405ms
A report from Google last year found that the overwhelming majority of mobile websites are way too slow.
That’s a drag for 2 major reasons. Google’s mobile-first index can either elevate or hide your site in user searches supported its loading speeds. Studies show that slow websites nearly always translate into lower sales.
So, after uptime, your host’s page loading times are the second most significant thing which will literally make or break your site’s success.
3. Low Introductory Pricing ($3.95/mo)
However, if you were to go check out the starting prices, you’ll notice the lowest advertised price is $3.95/month. That’s a pretty good deal considering they’ve supposedly reduced it already from $7.99/month originally.
For that price, you get pretty much everything you need for a single website. That includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more.
So you’d be getting a pretty good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.
4. Good Security Options
Bluehost provides tons of excellent security options by default, including the free SSL certificate for every plan like we mentioned earlier.
All plans also include a website privacy feature which will help keep the private information you wont to check in for a website private. This prevents hackers from finding and using these personal details for phishing schemes to trick you or others into delivering sensitive information.
SiteLock is included to assist prevent malware attacks, which are unfortunately fairly common on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another form for protection, which also provides daily backups so you’ll roll back previous versions of a site if it does get hacked.
Postini, from Google, is that the final security tool worth noting. It provides spam protection for your email, so anything suspicious is prevented from getting into your inbox.
Altogether, this is often a reasonably decent security package to keep your site safe and sound.
5. Many Integrations, Apps, and eCommerce Features
Beyond the included security measures , Bluehost also provides access to an enormous number of various apps and integrations so you’ll use the foremost popular services on the web.
For example, they have a domain manager if you’d rather just purchase and manage multiple domains through them. you’ll set daily, weekly, or monthly backups just just in case .
You can install WordPress with one click (more thereon within the next section below). you’ll also install other popular content management systems (CMS) like Drupal, Joomla, run an e-commerce shop, and more.
Plus, Bluehost will even include access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). These host your images and enormous files, taking that work off your servers, to deliver them faster to users round the world and keep your site quick at an equivalent time.
6. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Getting the best deal on web hosting usually means prepaying for a few months, a year or several years at a time.
Bluehost is no different — more on that below. But they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on their plans.
You can try out the service to gauge their performance for yourself, and then still ask for a refund if you’re not completely satisfied. We have a few words of caution, though.
According to their terms, here’s what does and doesn’t fall under that guarantee:
- You can only get refunds on the web hosting cost, not any other products like domains or other add-ons.
- A $15.99 fee will be deducted if you received a free domain name in your plan.
- Any requests after 30 days will not be refunded.
It’s not exactly a no-questions-asked policy like we’ve seen from some hosts. So make sure you’re OK with those points before signing up.
7. Customer Support
Bluehost offers everything from a knowledge base, to live chat, email ticket support, and even phone support. We tried out the live chat and Vinutha from Bluehost connected within two minutes.
There were slight delays between each reply, but overall, Vinutha was extremely friendly and offered direct answers to each question. It was a painless experience, which is exactly what you want out of a host’s customer support.
Cons of Using Bluehost Hosting
1. Higher Renewal Rates (Common in the Web Hosting Industry)
The best way to get the lowest possible price for hosting is to prepay for one, two, or even three years upfront.
On the one hand, the monthly price is low, but on the other hand, prepaying for a longer period of time (between 12–36 months) means that you’re not just committing to a few dollars, but around a hundred dollars.
Another thing to consider is the higher renewal rates after your introductory period expires. In this case, prepaying for a full three years at $3.95 is a good deal because you’re locking in that low rate for as long as possible.
However, at the end of that term, the rates will jump back up to their “Normal” rates. These range from $7.99 – $8.99/month on the most basic shared plan depending on how long you prepay.
2. Site Migrations Are Not Free
Most web hosts we’ve reviewed will move your existing website over to their service for free. They see it as a friendly service that helps make new customers happy, so they’ll wave any fees.
Unfortunately, Bluehost doesn’t do free migrations.
They have a one-time fee of $149.99 that includes the migration of up to five websites, 20 email accounts, and any other database files for these sites.
They claim it’ll be quick and seamless, so you won’t experience any delays or downtime.
However, the fact that you have to pay for it, and pay so much, is a big “Con” to consider.
Bluehost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Bluehost’s Basic plan will cost you $3.95/mo.
The Plus plan increases to $5.95/mo — also the Choice Plus option for unlimited websites, SSD storage, and bandwidth. They also allow you to manage unlimited domains, parked domains, and subdomains on these plans, too.
The Pro plan starts at $13.95/month with all of these features and high performance from their servers.
In addition, Bluehost has all major web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data centers.
- Free domain? Yes for 1st year, then renews at $15.99.
- Ease of Sign-up: Easy two-page sign-up process.
- Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
- Upsells: Some Upsells. Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence in the web hosting industry and happens with a lot of different big-name hosting companies.
- Account Activation: Most users enjoy instant activation. If the information is inaccurate or there’s suspicion of fraud, activation might get delayed.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Simple and easy-to-use control panel.
- Installation of Apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy.
Do We Recommend Bluehost?
Yes, we do.
Bluehost has ranked at or near the top for both uptime and loading times for more than a year.
In addition, they offer strong security support, a money-back guarantee, and plenty of user-friendly apps, all for one of the lowest rates in the industry ($3.95/month).
They’re not perfect, though. Renewal rates will increase after the introductory pricing ends. Also, they charge extra for site migrations, which other hosts throw in for free.