This BlueHost review is based on our tests and research and represents our opinion about the company. On this page you will find information about BlueHost pricing, renewals, features, online support, server performance, uptime and also about BlueHost pros and cons.
Lets see what are the types of shared web hosting plans Bluehost offers their customers.
HOSTING. WEBSITES. STORES.
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Free SSL Protection & CDN
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Free Domain for 1 Year
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24/7 Expert Support
Bluehost Shared Hosting Plans
Bluehost is a reliable and quality web hosting service provider.
The plans provided by bluehost are listed as below –
1. Basic
The base plan provided by Bluehost is named as ‘Basic’ and costs $2.95/month which increases to $7.99/month at the time of renewal.
It provides hosting for one website along with 50GB of storage space and unlimited bandwidth.
You also get one free domain with this plan along with 25 subdomains and a total of 5 email accounts with 100 Mb of storage space for each account.
2. Plus
The plus plans is an intermediate plan between the basic and the prime plan and comes with a price tag of $4.95/month and provides unlimited web storage space and bandwidth.
You can host unlimited websites with this plan and you also get a free domain to register.
Unlimited email accounts with unlimited email storage are also included in this plan.
You also get $200 worth marketing offers included in the plan.
3. Choice Plus
The third plan is named as prime and offers the best features.
It costs $5.45/month and provides unlimited bandwidth along with unlimited storage space and you can host unlimited websites with this plan.
One free domain name is also included in this plan.
Free unlimited email accounts with unlimited space in each account with a total $200 worth marketing credits are also included.
You also get free 1 year domain privacy included in this plan.
If you are just starting out, you may choose the Basic plan as it is the best value for money for small scale websites, and even when your website grows you can easily upgrade to a better plan.
4. Pro
This plan features support for unlimited websites. 100 GB SSD storage is provided with this plan.
Free CDN, SSL, Domain Privacy and automated backup has been provided.
Performance test -
Performance is a very important aspect of any web hosting service provider.
The better the performance of the service providers the better it is for the websites hosted on them.
Here we will perform a performance test on a website hosted on the Bluehost servers to check the quality of hosting provided by Bluehost.
Our test website is not a standard WordPress installation. It is a production website, loaded with lots of images and content. Have Google Analytics installed and many plugins. That said, it loads in just 3 seconds on average according to UptimeRobot.
I’ve gone further with my tests and checked the website with Pingdom speed test tool. Pingdom also shows a 3.55 seconds load time, however the website received only a C performance grade. This is due to the big page size (almost 4MB) and several external files that are loaded on the website (jQuery, Google Analytics, ShareThis, AddThis, etc…).
This website could be optimized for speed, but let’s be honest, if a website seems fast enough for the user, who cares about spending a lot of time and effort to speed it up with 1-2 seconds? In my opinion, this website loads fast enough.
What’s Good About BlueHost?
Affordable Starting Plans: whatever you are a beginner or an advanced user, at BlueHost you will find the right plan for your needs. Their most basic, “starter” shared hosting plan starts at $3.95 per month rate; this allows hosting one website. Customers, who need more “room”, can opt for the unlimited “plus” plan for only $5.95 per month starting price, this plan allows hosting as many website you want.
Reliable and Trustworthy: the company has a very long history of almost two decades, that proves the fact that they have been doing a very good job if they managed to stay on the top for such a long time in this constantly changing and evolving hosting industry. BlueHost claims that today they are powering over 2 million website worldwide, which is a very positive aspect of a hosting company.
Using Latest Technology: was always a high priority at BlueHost. For instance, their shared hosting accounts are running on servers with 16-core ADM Opteron processors, 256GB DDR3 SDRAM, 64TB capacity SSD database storage, multiple Gigabit LAN ports and latest software version to ensure the best performance and the higher security for the hosted websites.
Support for Open Source: BlueHost is a big fan of open source software, their control panel offer one-click installation for a wide range of scripts such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and others. Since 2005, BlueHost is a great supporter of the WordPress.org project; recently they have launched managed WordPress hosting service that was created, optimized and customized especially for this software.
Option to Expand: at the start, when building your first website there is no need for more than a shared hosting plan, and you may not think of how beneficial is to be able to upgrade your hosting plan later on. BlueHost offers the option to upgrade your current hosting plan to a higher level without going through all the hassle that may come with this process. The company offers multiple virtual and dedicated server plans, you can choose from.
WordPress Hosting: BlueHost offers optimized WordPress hosting as well various packages for WooCommerce hosting.
What’s Bad About BlueHost?
Migration Service: although other hosting providers such as InMotion offers up to 3 website transfers for free, BlueHost is charching $99 for the migration service that includes up to 5 websites and not more than 20 email accounts. The transfer is only offered for shared plans.
Long Subscription Period: to get the lowest price for shared plans at BlueHost, you have to purchase their service for 3 years. No monthly subscription is available for shared hosting.
BlueHost Overview
The starting phase of any business, blog or website can be pretty daunting. There’s plenty of money to invest up front and you want to cut the corners wherever possible. BlueHost helps you do just that, if nothing else perfectly. It provides a steady hosting solution that performs well in all the core aspects but it isn’t perfect. There are plenty of services that are paid for, while other providers give it for free. Maybe you wouldn’t even use them, but things like these can be turnoffs.
Although, BlueHost makes up for it with the hand-holding it provides to beginners and WordPress users. Their services are cheap, let websites run smoothly and efficiently, while their customer support provides all the help you might need to get started. But it does indeed lack a couple of features that can be found at rival companies.
Bluehost Customer Support
The technical part is one important thing, but customer support is also a great aspect that should be kept in mind while choosing a web host.
Bluehost provides help and support via a lot of different methods such as support via their customer care number and online chat option.
You can also contact them via their social media handles on Twitter, Facebook, Google plus and many more.
If you need a reliable and quality web hosting for your blog or website, then Bluehost can be a very good option for you.
In many of our tests, we have found Bluehost better than Godaddy.
With its high quality hosting services and affordable plans, it offers a very good combination for the customers to avail reliable services with minimum investment.
Pros
- Uptime
- Free domain
- Pricing
- Money back guarantee
- No hidden charges
Cons
- High domain renewal prices
- Upselling Add-ons
- Only yearly plans
- No Monthly Plans
Bluehost provides affordable plans but there are no monthly plans available that you can buy.
The available plans are available only for a period of 1, 2 or 3 years.
