Bluehost Hosting Review 2021. Bluehost is one of the most popular and, at the same time, most affordable web hosts on the market. In this Bluehost hosting review, we take a look at what’s under the hood, how good the platform really is, and whether it’s the right solution for your next website project.
Pros of Using Bluehost Hosting
Bluehost has been around since 2003, so they have plenty of experience to know what makes a hosting service excellent.
Their introductory prices are affordable, customer support is easy to reach and helpful, and you get many useful features to go with your hosting plan. In addition, they provide reliable uptime and fast server speeds.
Let’s take a more detailed look at Bluehost’s strong points.
1. Great Uptime Through 12-Months (99.96%)
Uptime is one of the most critical aspects when choosing a web host – after all, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So, consistent uptime should be one of your top priorities when looking at hosting services.
After reviewing over 40 web hosts, our benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.93%. So ideally, we don’t want to see anything less than that.
The good news is that Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark, comfortably keeping our test site live for 99.96% of the time during the last 12 months (April 2020 to March 2021). The total downtime was a bit less than four hours for the whole year.
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans for all budgets and sizes. This includes shared hosting, VPS, dedicated server, cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and more.
Let’s take a look at
Bluehost hosting plans and their features.
Shared hosting: Shared hosting is the perfect way to start a new website with low traffic volume. In a shared hosting environment, your website shares server resources with other websites.
Cloud hosting: A more reliable upgrade to the shared hosting plan. It allows you to utilize multiple cloud servers, allowing your website to automatically switch to a different server in case of a hardware failure or high traffic.
WordPress hosting: A hosting package designed specifically for WordPress powered websites. It is optimized to run WordPress and can even protect your WordPress site against common threats.
WooCommerce hosting: WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, it allows you to easily start an online store with WordPress. WooCommerce hosting offers you all the essential features to kick start your eCommerce store.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting: An upgrade to shared WordPress hosting, VPS hosting allows you to virtual dedicated resources in a shared environment.
Dedicated server hosting: A dedicated server to for your website, means you will have all the resources of the server to yourself. The downside is that you will have to manage the server on your own.
All Bluehost hosting plans allow you to
install WordPress with 1-click.
All plans come with an easy-to-use hosting control panel where you can manage your hosting, create databases, etc.
Breakdown of Bluehost’s Shared Hosting Plans
Bluehost offers a shared hosting package suitable for starter websites. Their shared plan is available at four different levels.
Let’s take a look at what’s included in each plan.
Basic: The basic plan only allows you to host one website. It hosts one domain and 25 subdomains, 50GB SSD storage, 5 email accounts of 100 MB storage for each account. For the first term, you’ll pay $2.75 per month. When you renew the account, you’ll have to pay $8.99 per month.
Plus: The Plus plan includes unlimited websites with unlimited web space and bandwidth. You’ll also get unlimited email accounts. The price for the first term starts from $4.95 per month. When you renew the account, you’ll have to pay $11.99 per month.
Choice Plus: The Choice Plus plan includes all features of the plus plan. You will also get free domain privacy, and automated daily backups powered by Code Guard as extras worth over $80/year. The price for the first term is $5.45 per month. When renewing, you’ll have to pay $16.99 per month.
Pro: The Pro plan starts from $13.95 per month for the first term after that you’ll pay $23.99 per month. It includes all features of the above plans + dedicated IP address.
If you are just starting your website, then you can select any of these plans. You can easily upgrade your hosting plan as your website grows.
Quick Facts
Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
Website Migration: Free transfer for 1 WordPress website. Other migrations are $149.99 for up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts.
Free domain? Yes, for the first year. Then renews at $15.99 per year.
Ease of Sign-up: Easy and guided sign-up process.
Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.
Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting are much higher than the introductory rates.
Upsells: Some upsells during sign-up, but nothing too aggressive.
Account Activation: Instant activation in most cases. If the information is inaccurate or there’s suspicion of fraud, activation might get delayed.
Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Easy-to-use cPanel
Installation of Apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy.
Bluehost Support and Customer Service
Bluehost provides 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system. On top of that, they have a vast knowledge base packed with answers to frequent questions and useful information.
We went ahead and tested their live chat option, and the experience was pleasant.
We got answers to our questions quickly, and the representative was knowledgeable. Sure, some responses felt copy-pasted, but the follow-up questions prompted improvised and helpful answers
We all need help every now and then. It is really important that you choose a web hosting company that offers help and support when you need it.
Bluehost maintains a huge library of articles, step-by-step guides, and video tutorials as part of their extensive knowledge base. This is a huge help for beginners and most common issues can be quickly resolved by a simple search.
(Bluehost Hosting Review)
However, sometimes you may need to talk to an individual to get more help.
Bluehost offers a 24/7 support system where you can talk to their support team representatives using live chat or phone support. This is really helpful when you need quick help from technical support staff.
One thing that is missing is the ticket based support system. Bluehost recently decided to eliminate ticket-based support to focus on personal approach of live chat and phone-based support.
However, some users may still miss the ticket-based support system which is particularly good if your issue cannot be resolved in one live chat or phone session. (Bluehost Hosting Review)
Conclusion: Is Bluehost the Right Choice for You?
After reading this review, you might be wondering if Bluehost is the right choice for your website?
Bluehost is often ranked #1 web hosting provider by many websites. They offer a wide range of hosting options with tons of features that help you easily build your website.
All their hosting plans include expert 24/7 customer support from knowledgeable staff.
Most importantly, they offer affordable starter plans that fit any budget requirement.
If you are just starting out, then you cannot go wrong signing up for a Bluehost shared hosting plan. It’s easy on your pocket and comes with all the right tools. As your site grows you can easily upgrade your hosting plan accordingly. {Bluehost Hosting Review}
Ready to start your website with Bluehost?
Click here to select your Bluehost plan.
Bluehost Coupon
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 60% off discount and a free domain with our
Bluehost coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to purchase. The discount will be applied automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions About Bluehost hosting
In this detailed Bluehost review we have tried to cover all the aspects of their hosting services. The following are some of the most frequently asked questions about Bluehost that we hear from our users.
1. Can I make an online store using WooCommerce on Bluehost?
Yes, you can. In fact, Bluehost is one of the best WooCommerce hosting service provider. Their starter plan is perfect to start an online store.
However, keep in mind that you’ll need to upgrade as your store starts getting more traffic. Hopefully, by that time you’ll be making enough money to justify the upgrade costs.
2. Is Bluehost good for beginners?
Yes. Bluehost is the most beginner-friendly WordPress hosting company on the market. They automatically install WordPress for you when you sign up. They also have an easy-to-use control panel that allows you to manage your hosting account by yourself.
There is plenty of help available with detailed guides, video tutorials, and articles. You also have 24/7 access to their expert support via live chat and phone.
3. Can Bluehost handle high traffic?
Their shared hosting plans are suitable for starter websites and small businesses. In our stress test, their shared hosting plan was able to handle 100 virtual users without any slowdown.
These plans can handle reasonable and sudden traffic spikes. However, they are still quite limited in server resources. If you are expecting high traffic then you’ll need to upgrade your hosting plan.
(Bluehost Hosting Review)
4. Why use Bluehost for WordPress?
Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. They have been supporting the WordPress community for a very long time and know WordPress very well.
Their platform is highly optimized for WordPress websites and engineered to run WordPress at peak performance. They also have WordPress engineers in their team so you know your website is in safe hands.
5. Where are Bluehost servers located?
Bluehost operates its own in-house data center located in Utah, US. It is a massive 50,000 square feet facility that serves as their primary data center.
6. What Bluehost plan should I get?
If you are just starting out a brand new website, blog, or online store, then we recommend starting with their basic plan. It is good enough for a starter website and you can always upgrade later.
But overall, Bluehost delivers decent performance and good value for your money. Ready to start your website with Bluehost?
Click here to select your Bluehost plan.
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