The Comprehensive Review Of Bluehost
Bluehost enables you to get a website up and running in
minutes. It’s a reputable web host used by millions to host their online
projects, start businesses, and create something new.
What makes Bluehost so popular?
It’s easy to use, even for first-timers, and it’s a great price.
You get a free domain name upon signing up (usually $10-15 per year) and hosting costs as little as $2.95 per month. Bluehost also comes loaded with features to help you get set up quickly.
Find out more about what you get, and why I think Bluehost provides the best value for your money.
Bluehost Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services
Bluehost offers shared hosting plans at an entry-level
price. If you’re creating a website as a first-timer, Bluehost is a safe and
affordable option. Plus, as I mentioned before, you get a free domain name when
you sign up. This is a nice perk that sets it apart from other budget options,
along with its customer support options and affordable additional hosting
tiers.
I couldn’t name Bluehost as the hosting provider that gives
you the best value for your money without seeing how it measured up to other
providers on the market.
To determine which hosting provider was genuinely worth your
time, I compared dozens of competitors and narrowed it down to the top seven
choices.
Who is Bluehost Best For?
Bluehost is ideal for beginners that are starting a website
for the first or second time. Say you’re a blogger getting started in your
niche, Bluehost enables you to get an easy start without sweating all the
technical details.
Along with their customer support features and easy to navigate cPanel, Bluehost ensures your learning curve is as small as possible and gets your site publicly available to the world with plenty of uptime.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to start an ecommerce business with tons of products and need the best site speed and dedicated hosting, you might want to look at other options first.
Bluehost: The Pros and Cons
Pros
24/7 customer support: Not every company can boast 24/7
customer support, especially at such a low entry-level price. Bluehost’s
customer support is there for you as you start your site, and anytime you need
extra support troubleshooting site errors that are bound to happen.
Cons
Charges for site migrations: Admittedly, when it comes to
migration perks, Bluehost isn’t necessarily your best bet. If you want help
migrating your site, Bluehost charges at least $149 to migrate your site to or
from another platform.
Bluehost Pricing
Bluehost offers several pricing tiers that are pretty clear
cut. But after going through them here, you’re still unsure which one can work
best for you, reach out to them for a free consultation.
It’s worth noting the price points for each shared hosting tier I review here are only if you purchase a 36-month hosting plan upfront. If you decide to go with a 12 or 24-month plan, the monthly amounts change accordingly.
Going with a month to month plan will also mean your monthly hosting fee will be a tad more expensive. Regardless, Bluehost still stands as the most affordable and value-filled plan you can choose, especially as a beginner.
Now, here’s how each shared hosting tier breaks down along with its value.
Shared hosting
A shared hosting Bluehost plan is hands down one of the easiest ways to get started building your site. You can start with the Basic plan for $2.95, which is good to create one site with 50 GBs of space. That’s generous when you consider they also include free CDN and a free SSL certificate.
You don’t even have to know what a CDN or SSL certificate
does–enable them with one click to get a faster, more secure site.
It doesn’t stop there. Are you running a few websites? Then
you’ll want to try the Plus tier at $5.45 per month. It includes everything in
the basic plan tier, plus the ability to host and manage an unlimited number of
sites, and you’ll get access to Microsoft 365 for 30 days.
Not bad. It’s the most convenient tier if you want to
reliably start more than one site from scratch without too much overhead cost.
Their most recommended tier, and the one that gets you the
most bang for your buck under the shared hosting plan, is the Choice Plus tier
at $5.45 per month with added security features.
You get everything in the first and second tier, plus free
domain privacy and free automated backup for a whole year. Since internet
security is a growing concern in the online world and the price for this tier
is the same as the Plus option, this is the clear winner in my book as far as
affordable shared hosting plans are concerned. Added security features can only
ever be a plus.
Finally, if you’re looking for a bit more than that,
consider the Pro tier, sitting at $13.95 a month. With this plan, you’ll get
additional CPU resources as well as a free dedicated IP.
As you can see, Bluehost goes out of their way to
personalize each tier, so they’re useful in covering what you need. I recommend
you take some time to comprehensively look through each tier and its offerings
to get the best deal according to your goals.
VPS Hosting
VPS, or virtual private server hosting, is when hosting is
within a shared server but acts as a dedicated virtual space for your site. VPS
hosting has become very popular, as it is less expensive than dedicated hosting
but gives you better security and potentially better performance than shared
hosting.
Guaranteed resources are the name of the game when it comes
to Bluehost’s VPS Hosting options. They stack up against competitors well, as
they charge you only $18.99 for the standard VPN feature. This includes 2 GB of
RAM and an additional 1 TB of bandwidth.
Guaranteed resources are the name of the game when it comes to Bluehost’s VPS Hosting options. They stack up against competitors well, as they charge you only $18.99 for the standard VPN feature. This includes 2 GB of RAM and an additional 1 TB of bandwidth.
Looking through each Bluehost offering, it’s clear they’ve positioned themselves as a beginner-friendly web host, but they also burn the candle at both ends by offering affordable dedicated and VPS hosting. That’s a double win as far as hosting you can rely on if you ask me.
Dedicated Hosting
The standout benefits of dedicated hosting are security,
privacy, and even more control all around. If you know you’ll want the best of
the best to host your site for scale and reliability, then a Bluehost dedicated
hosting plan is the way to go.
Is your site growing rapidly? Do you see more traffic coming in day after day? Here’s where you’ll want to look into dedicated hosting, yet another reliable Bluehost plan.
To illustrate the power of a dedicated hosting plan, they start you off at a whopping 500 GB of storage space, 4 GB of RAM, and 5 TB of bandwidth for only $79.99 a month. This puts Bluehost as a premium contender in the market, even for their pricier hosting tiers.
Managed WordPress Hosting
This is an all-in-one managed platform that scales to any demand your website has. All pricing plans for managed WordPress hosting
through Bluehost include incredibly fast speeds, marketing tools, and
multi-tiered security features.
The most dynamic hosting tier Bluehost offers is it’s
managed WordPress option. You can either go with the Build, Grow, or Scale
option. Each one offers a different hosting package to fit what you’re looking
for. To make the best choice if you decide to go with a managed WordPress
option, you’ll want to base your decision on the amount of traffic they’re each
appropriate for.
Each plan comes equipped with plenty of helpful features built to help your site grow. This means storage space starting at 20 GBs, access to over 200 global servers, scheduled backups, staging environments, and free SSL certification, just to name a few.
What differentiates each managed tier is ultimately their traffic capacity. Here’s a quick overview:
Build – $19.95 a month, best for 50,000 monthly visitors
Grow – $29.95 a month, best for 150,000 monthly visitors
Scale – $49.95 a month, best for 500,000 monthly visitors
Breaking it down by traffic makes it easy to choose a
managed WordPress hosting plan that’ll give you peace of mind and plenty of
site uptime.
Bluehost Offerings
At this point, you’ve learned about Bluehost’s hosting
pricing. But the fun doesn’t stop there. In addition to the hosting plans,
Bluehost has other services.
Hosting
Unsurprisingly, shared hosting is Bluehost’s most popular
hosting deal because it lets you get your foot in the door as far as getting
your site up and running goes.
I’d say the number one reason Bluehost’s shared hosting stacks up high when you’re comparing it to other hosting providers is their free SSL certification and their free domain name deal. But as far as hosting your site on a server where you’ll share space with other sites like yours, it does its job.
Now, while shared hosting might be the best affordable hosting option for beginners, it won’t be what you want to stick with as your site grows.
That’s why there’s dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. Dedicated hosting is a more robust and reliable hosting option for powerful site performance, and VPS hosting offers increased power, flexibility, and control.
Online Stores
If you’ve already decided you’re going to start your online
store with WordPress and WooCommerce, it can be as easy as choosing from the
Standard or the Premium store hosting tiers to get started.
For a store with a robust payment processing system that
comes equipped with plenty of analytics and the ability to create basic store
backups, then go with the Standard deal at $15.95 a month.
Your store might be a bit more complex than a simple storefront with your product listings. If you’re going to capture subscriptions or online booking and appointment scheduling, you’re better off with the Premium tier as a very reliable ecommerce option.
I’d say this is my top pick for a multifaceted online store with a lot of moving parts. I’d rather pay a bit more for all the Premium features than need them and not have them for the sake of saving a few extra bucks.
Live WordPress Support
Bluehost offers Blue Sky, a service to teach users how to
build, grow, and maintain any WordPress website through individual training and
guidance. Live WordPress Support starts at $29 per month for on-demand ticket
support and backup assistance and goes as high as $149 per month for SEO tools,
help with content optimization and mobile optimization, and access to Constant
Contact.
Professional Marketing Services
In addition to hosting services, Bluehost has an offering to
assist your business with design and marketing strategies to give you more time
to focus on revenue-generating activities and running your business.
The four primary services offered by Bluehost in this realm
are:
* Full-service website support with design, marketing, and
content help
* SEO services to optimize your website and target keywords
* PPC services to assist with pay-per-click campaigns and best
practices to get more customers
* Website migration assistance, including one-on-one
consultations to review your website before and after any migration
The cost for these services is not listed on the Bluehost
website. You’ll need to contact them to discuss pricing and support options.
The Best Web Hosting Services
It’s never a good idea to make your decision based on only
one piece of information. I recommend you to check out my list of the top cheap
web hosting providers to make sure you’re making the best choice for your
specific needs. Here’s a quick overview of all my recommendations:
Hostinger — Best web hosting plan under $1.50
Dreamhost — The lowest spend on day one
Bluehost — Best for new sites (especially WordPress)
A2 Hosting — Best web hosting under $3 for online stores
HostGator — The best way to host your existing site for
cheaper
iPage — Best if you have multiple sites
GreenGeeks — Best price for managed WooCommerce hosting
All in all, Bluehost is a reliable web hosting service that
gives you the best value for your money. It offers a great entry-level shared
hosting plan for as little as $2.75 a month, one free domain name for a year,
as well as free SSL certification, and plenty of customer support you can tap
into at a moment’s notice.
Any comments on Bluehost as a great hosting service for
beginner websites? Let me know in the comments.
Otherwise, get started with Bluehost here.