Bluehost Hosting Review: Pros and Cons

General information about Bluehost

Hosting Bluehost.com is one of the most popular hosting providers in the United States. It is part of the largest international corporation Endurance International Group (EIG), which owns several hosting providers, and has been known since 1996. The provider has built its reputation over several decades. Bluehost has a user audience of over a million customers, making it one of the most influential market leaders. The servers of this provider are located in the state of Utah, in the city of Orem.

To access a user’s account and buy hosting from Bluehost, you must familiarize yourself with tariff plans and register on the server. After that, the subscriber will get access to all the features of the service.

How to register on the service

To begin with, you need to determine the domain that will be the main for the registered account. Pay attention to an important nuance: you can write a domain for free, but if the user decides to use the service “refund,” the service will deduct $ 15.99 from it. The company will also extend free domain registration when the client uses the provider’s services.

After selecting a domain, you need to enter your data – to do this, fill out a form and choose a payment period and a tariff plan.

Hint for new users: Choosing the monthly hosting payment is unprofitable because such tariffs usually include high fees. At the moment, Bluehost.com does not offer a one-month plan.

In order not to overpay, it is better to remove all the checkboxes from the additional options that are charged:

• SiteLock;
• CodeGuard;
• SEO-tools.

If you are not interested in using these services, you do not need to overpay for them.

Provider’s services

Provider Bluehost.com offers many products with different functionality:

• domain names: their cost starts at $17.99 per year;
• shared hosting: In the user does not manage a large project or starts to understand the server configuration; you can consider a shared hosting plan. This service ranges from $8.99 to $25.99 per month;
• dedicated servers: suitable for those websites that generate tons of traffic and/or need a high-performance server;
• VPS-hosting and WordPress-hosting;
• Cloud sites.

File manager

Hosting users can access a modern and convenient file manager that supports most formats, including archives (zip, tar, tgz, and gz). The file manager supports unpacking and compression and works with archives of large volumes (for example, more significant than 1 GB). File search is also available in the manager.

Pros and cons of Bluehost

1. Performance Tests

Bluehost.com hosting provider’s health and performance tests show excellent results. For example – impressive uptime, but the provider does not offer users a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This document usually guarantees a minimum uptime. Hosting uptime can be measured using StatusCake, a special online tool that checks every website every five minutes.

Provider ensures uninterrupted operation of servers and unlimited bandwidth of traffic. However, some tests show slower server speeds.

1. Low initial prices

New users of the hosting provider can use the services with great discounts, and when deciding not to use the services, the provider returns the money within the Moneyback option,

1. Good safety parameters.

High level of security – the business card of Bluehost.com provider. Subscribers can use a different two-factor authentication system. Thus, when attempting to hack into an account, an attacker will not automatically access the user’s data.

Users are also offered several options for additional paid options to improve security. For example, SiteLock can prevent hacker attacks, while CodeGuard provides users with more backup options.

Site owners receive three spam protection levels in Spam Expert, Spam Hammer, and Apache Spam Assassin. You also get protection for your mailbox; the user can easily set up filters. All your directories will be password protected.

If you need to block access to your site, you have the option to blacklist IP addresses. Another first-class feature is secure shell access (SSH). This allows the site owner to access the configuration files individually and securely.

Bluehost also offers one-click integration with CloudFlare, which provides even greater security and speeds up your website. Cloudflare is perfect for preventing DDOS attacks.

1. Bluehost for e-commerce WooCommerce and WordPress hosting.

WordPress hosting is hosting for Bluehost business, optimized for WordPress sites, with several advantages, such as the intermediate zone. This is a more expensive option – the cost of WordPress on Bluehost starts at $29.99 per month;

These plans are pretty expensive compared to simple WordPress hosting and what some competitors offer (many hosts sell WordPress hosting plans at the same prices as general hosting plans).

WordPress Pro on Bluehost is one of the most popular services of the company (with more than a million sites hosted by the company).

Pro-planes run on high-performance VPS and offer improved site speed.

Features at the building level include basic Jetpack site analytics, a marketing center, 100 free premium themes, daily backups, and malware detection and removal for added security.

Business review tools allow your visitors to leave positive reviews of Yelp, Google, Yahoo, or Bing directly from your website. SEO tools give you real-time optimization tips on how to improve your search engine ranking. These tools are integrated into the marketing center, where you can see statistics on how you cope with major search engines. Sites owners are also offered Paypal integration and flexible search.

Users are supported as their business grows and scales. The company guarantees practical assistance with design, functionality, or general questions from real WordPress experts around the clock.

All plans come with a positive SSL sign (the price of the certificate for Bluehost can be specified on the official website), as well as 24/7 service and a money-back guarantee. These plans also include automatic plugin updates and regular backups, as well as an intermediate environment that allows you to create and test your site on WordPress before it is published.

A feature that probably not many people use is unlimited video compression. Users can upload their videos without optimizing them for the Internet. Bluehost takes care of this. A review of e-commerce on Bluehost shows that the hosting provider provides users with extensive functionality. Still, the tariff plans are pretty expensive (maybe even overpriced compared to those of competing Bluehost providers).

1. VPS, server location

VPS is a virtual private server that combines the functionality of shared and dedicated hosting. The user shares the server with other users, but there is a virtual separation between their projects. This type of hosting is suitable for those who use servers with a specific programming language.

VPS-hosting plans at Bluehost.com range from $29.99 to $59.99 (Bluehost price per month) – users can choose three VDS tariffs. They are available with a Linux-based operating system (KVM virtualization).

Tariff plans for VPS-hosting:

• standard: you pay $19.99 for the first month, and then you pay $29.99 after the first month;
• better option: $29.99 for the first month, then you have to pay $ 59.99 every month;
• Ultimate: $59.99 for the first month, then $119.99 after the first month.

There are traffic restrictions, so you need to read the terms of the tariff plans carefully.

For example, the first two plans have two processors, up to three and four cores for the top plan. The user gets 30 GB of SAN storage at the lowest level, up to 120 GB at the highest level. RAM ranges from 2 GB to 8 GB. You get 1 TB of bandwidth at the standard level, up to 3 TB at the end level. Each level includes one domain. The standard layer contains one IP address; you get two with the others. Each plan is backed by 24/7 support and a money-back guarantee under the Moneyback option.

1. Customer support

Technical support service at Bluehost.com is available 24 hours a day. It can be accessed in any user-friendly way:

• by tickets from your cabinet;
• via the online chat form on the website;
• local phone number of the service.

The response time of the technical support operator usually does not exceed five minutes.

Bluehost Prices, Hosting Plans, Discounts

Test period

The provider does not offer its subscribers the service of a free trial period. However, the service may refund the money within a calendar month after payment. The company guarantees a full refund at the first request of a subscriber. The refund timing depends on the banking organization through which the payment was received from the user.

Hosting services

Bluehost tariff plans promise unlimited use of domains, an unlimited number of sites, total disk space, and online traffic. However, there is a variant that if a user stores too many databases, it may adversely affect the server’s performance and other subscribers. In such a case, Bluehost.com reserves the right to request that the number of files and database tables be reduced. The provider has the option to terminate the user account due to excessive use of hosting resources.

Tariff plans

The basic plan fits the owners of one site, for whom 50 GB of memory will be enough within the project. You can store up to 100 MB of files on email. The Starter Plan also offers 100 email accounts.

The Plus plan allows you to have as many websites as you need and unlimited storage capacity. Subscribers also get a total number of email accounts attached to their email.

The Choice Plus tariff plan is a more advanced option: within this tariff plan, you can get additional features and free domain privacy, and extensive backup options.

A professional tariff plan is suitable for those who need the maximum of options and features. The maximum number of files is available to the user of this tariff – from 200 000 to 300 000.

Bluehost discounts for hosting users

Although Bluehost has no free test period, the provider offers enormous discounts on Bluehost hosting for the first year. Owners can also use Bluehost discount codes and coupons. As part of the promotional offer, registered users must receive up to $200 in bonuses.

Bluehost: Can We Recommend It?

Summing up in our review, we can say that the service Bluehost.com offers all those services and features stated in the tariff plans’ description.

The service differs favorably from competitors in the hosting market by its intuitive interface of the control panel. Everything is as intuitive and straightforward as possible, which allows the subscriber to look into the FAQ (if you look there at all).

Thanks to the competent and correct allocation of resources hosting, he offers its users high speed and maximum stability.

As for the drawbacks of the provider, here we can distinguish the following: some users from other countries because of territorial remoteness is not the fastest response, for example, when working with SFTP. However, reducing the speed of data exchange concerns only part of the audience Bluehost.com, outside the United States. The American owners of the site should not be affected by this problem.

Also, the disadvantages of hosting can be attributed to the following points:

• the system can be overflowing with continuous cells;
• for foreign users the ability to host sites only on U.S. servers, which increases the response rate;
• limited backup options;
• The provider can migrate users’ sites only with a paid subscription as an additional service; this option will be expensive – migrating five sites will cost about $150.

Concluding from this review of the disadvantages and advantages of the Internet provider Bluehost.com, we can say that the performance of the service is relatively high and can suit a large number of site owners (including commercial sites on WordPress) tariff plans offer high prices.

Alternatives

If most visitors to your sites live in America, where the Bluehost servers are located, then using Bluehost.com will not cause any problems or difficulties. However, the tariff plans of this provider are still not the cheapest compared to the tariffs of competitors. Therefore, in some cases, site owners may look for decent alternatives with more advanced functionality (for example, with backup or intermediate areas).

If a user is looking for a balanced hosting that combines budget plans and good performance and speed, he may pay attention to such providers as A2 Hosting or DreamHost. They offer cheaper rates (compared to Bluehost.com) and the same excellent performance.

If users are looking for a provider with the best support service, they can choose SiteGround, InMotion, and DreamHost.

Based on these criteria and characteristics, we can conclude that the most effective service providers are the SiteGround and DreamHost providers. SiteGround has slightly more features (for example, more backup options).

All of the above providers can run sites on WordPress. However, SiteGround has a better system for extending the capabilities of WordPress-based site owners (e.g., built-in caching plugin and speed optimization options).

In 2021, the company made its own 2022 forecast of what to expect from the updated WordPress. Among other changes, the following trends were highlighted:
1. Full site editing.
2. Block threads.
3. Gutenberg improvements.
4. Headless WordPress.
5. Improve SEO with Google Core Web Vitals.
6. Accessibility improvements.
7. WordPress for e-commerce.
In addition, betting that the project “Full Site Editing” will be completed, and the user interface will improve even more.

USA, Timpanogos Parkway, Orem, UT.
Phone: +1 801-765-9400