Finding great web hosting is not an easy task. All web hosting providers market themselves as best, but how many of them meet your expectations?
Demand for web hosting is always high, especially after COVID-19. More people are starting their businesses.
In this Bluehost review, I will discuss whether you should buy their services or not.
Bluehost is one of the best hosting providers in the market. It powers more than 2.2 million websites on the Internet.
Bluehost comes up with a wide variety of plans for small to medium-large businesses with 24/7 customer support. You get a free domain for 1st year with excellent uptime, easy to use, free CDN and SSL certificate.
In this Bluehost review, we’ll discuss its features. We will look into the following areas-
1. Performance – How does it perform during peak hours?
2. Speed – How fast the page will load using tools to measure the page loading speed.
3. Reliability –Will your website be available 24 hours.
4. Customer Support – How helpful is Bluehost customer support?
5. Features – What features do they provide under different plans?
6. Pricing – Bluehost prices will be compared with other hosting providers in the industry.
Bottom line – I have found that Bluehost is a reliable hosting provider with friendly 24/7 customer support. That’s why I have chosen Bluehost as the best hosting provider.
Now, let’s dive deep into the review of Bluehost.
About Bluehost
Bluehost is one the oldest hosting providers in the market. It was founded in 1996. Currently, it has more than 2.3 million websites all over the world. Bluehost is also officially recommended by WordPress.
Bluehost is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. They were founded by Danny Ashworth & Matt Heaton in Provo, Utah, in 1996.
It is the number one hosting provider recommended by WordPress. Bluehost helps you install WordPress with one click.
They offer 24/7 support via email and live chat. It is recommended as the number one hosting provider for small businesses. Currently, Bluehost is a part of Endurance International Group.
Bluehost currently hosts 2 million websites all over the globe. It is known for its least expensive web hosting plans.
Now, let’s talk about the pros and cons of Bluehost.
Pros - Let’s first discuss about it’s advantages.
1. Pricing – Bluehost has affordable plans for people who are just starting.
2. No hidden charges – They don’t charge you hidden charges when you are signing up for an account.
3. Free domain name – They give you a free domain for 1st year.
4. Free CDN + SSL – If you buy a single website plan, you will get a free CDN and SSL certificate.
5. Money-back Guarantee – They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.
Cons of using Bluehost -
1. Add-Ons – Bluehost offers a lot of add-ons for you to pick from, but sometimes, you need to buy a lot of add-ons to get specific functionality, and you end up paying a lot of money.
2. Customer Service – Their customer service reviews are average. Some are positive reviews, and some are negative.
3. Aggressive upselling – They sell their add-on features aggressively.
This cannot be very pleasant to people on a budget.
4. Website Migration – They don’t offer free website migrations.
Bluehost Review Speed & Performance
Speed is one of the most important metrics you should look for. It affects your search engine ranking.
A study conducted by strangeloopnetwork.com shows that a 1-second drop in website speed decreases conversion by 7%.
Bluehost has a good uptime of 99.99%, which is a good uptime.
They also offer a 30-day money-back refund policy. Within 30 days of purchase, if something goes wrong, they refund all your money.
Now, let’s speed-test the Bluehost web server. For this test, I created a dummy website. I installed all essential WordPress plugins and pre-installed twenty-twenty themes on that website.
After that, I used the Pingdom tool to test the website speed. Here are the results.
From the graph, you can see that the page loads in less than 2 seconds. I wasn’t using any cache plugin and optimizing website pages precisely. This result is excellent.
Doing the speed test alone is not enough because the website didn’t have any traffic. To check how well the website loads under traffic, I used a tool called K6 to send virtual website visitors to the website.
Here are the results –
Bluehost hosting plans & features -
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans and features for all businesses, from small-business solutions to corporate/enterprise-level solutions.
Shared Hosting – In shared web hosting, your website shares resources and capabilities with other websites. If you are a beginner with no traffic, this plan is perfect for you.
WordPress hosting – Bluehost has created specific WordPress hosting plans to power websites. This web hosting plan is designed specifically to cater to the needs of WordPress users.
Cloud hosting – In cloud hosting, your website will be accessible using cloud resources. If your website traffic increases suddenly, your website will not crash.
WooCommerce hosting – WooCommerce also provides a WordPress tool named Ecommerce plugin for WordPress, which helps you to start an online store.
VPS hosting – It is an upgrade to shared WordPress hosting. VPS gives you a virtual dedicated space in a shared environment.
Dedicated web hosting – This means all its resources and server capabilities will be assigned to a specific website. The con of this hosting is that you have to manage a server on your own.
Bluehost customer service and support -
Having excellent customer service is the most critical aspect of a business. Problems will always come up.
Bluehost has an extensive library of resources, including articles, videos and comprehensive guides to help you out. You can read and watch videos to help you out with everyday issues, but sometimes, you need an individual to talk to get more help.
Sometimes, you need an individual to talk to get more help. Bluehost offers 24/7 support where you can speak to their representatives via live chat or phone support.
Bluehost recently decided to cancel their ticket-based support, which I think is wrong. There are a lot of customers whose issues don’t get resolved and need one-on-one live chat or phone sessions.
Bluehost Features
Bluehost offers several features to its users. These include E-commerce features, Refund policy, and Ease of use.
E-commerce features — it is straightforward to set up an online E-commerce store on Bluehost.
Bluehost gives free SSL certificates and GPG/OpenPGP encryption. Bluehost has tons of features that will help you sell online products.
2. Refund Policy — Some of the Bluehost plans give a 30-day money-back guarantee, which means if you get any issues and cancel your Bluehost subscription, you will get a refund amount.
After 30 days of a period, no refund is given.
3. Ease of use — Bluehost dashboard is straightforward to use. You can install WordPress on Bluehost in just one click. Bluehost Cpanel interface is excellent and impressive.
Applications, Integration and Many E-commerce features.
You can bring all of Google’s perks to your website by integrating Google Apps.
CDN is a free, popular content delivery network service that allows you to boost up your websites and data breaches.
Bluehost also provides e-commerce features, such as allowing customers to set up online store carts with endless options.
You can use MOJO marketplace to install shopping cart software easily.
Bluehost Security features
They also provide (an SSH) secure shell feature, which helps you to access configuration files and data safely and individually.
With a large number of DDOS attacks and cyber attacks increasing day by day, it’s essential to find a web host with good security options.
Website security is more critical now than before. Bluehost integrates several security layers into your website.
You can also activate two-factor authentication to increase website security.
Bluehost also gives token validation security; you can use this six-digit code to verify your identity and ownership before changing your passwords.
Customer Support
Bluehost has excellent customer support 24/7 to help you out.
Bluehost provides huge articles, guides, and step-by-step videos to fix your problems.
Recently, they removed their ticket-based support system, which is good if your issue is not resolved during a live chat or phone session.
Pricing & Plans
Bluehost offers various types of hosting, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and VPS hosting.
If you don’t understand the difference between these types of hosting, I recommend you read this article on different types of hosting.
Bluehost is not cheap compared to other web hosts, but its server response time and low price tags make it an excellent option for small business websites.
Shared hosting plans are cheap and best when starting a new website.
I recommend you go with Shared hosting if you are a beginner and don’t want to spend a lot of money.
Conclusion: Is Bluehost right choice or you?
They provide a free domain for one year, while other companies don’t.
Most importantly, if you are a beginner and just starting, I highly recommend Bluehost.
You will find a lot of negative reviews, but still, a majority of them are positive. If you are starting a new business, I would recommend going with Bluehost.
This company has been going strong for about 17 years, and I’ve personally used this web hosting.