Bluehost Review – Updated For Feb 2021

9.8 Overall Rating
Price
$2.95
Best Hosting Overall

BlueHost offers the fastest, most reliable entry-level web hosting we’ve tested. With WordPress-optimized cloud hosting, VPS and dedicated servers, they’re able to serve you well as your site grows in traffic.

With BlueHost, after you sign up for any hosting plan, it walks you through step-by-step to set up your site. After just a few easy steps, WordPress is ready, you picked a beautiful free theme for your site, basic settings are all finished up, and you hit the ground running! It’s an impressive onboarding experience.

Bottom line: If you want to start a blog or business website with WordPress, BlueHost’s shared hosting plan is an excellent value.

9.8Editor's score
Features
9.5
Ease Of Use
10
Price/Value
9.4
Uptime & Support
9.6
9.4User's score
Features
9.3
Ease Of Use
9.3
Price/Value
9
Uptime & Support
10
PROS
  • FREE domain and site builder
  • Unlimited site traffic
  • 24/7 in-house support team
  • 1-click WordPress installs
  • Industry-leading server hardware and uptime
  • Recommended by Wordpress.org
CONS
  • Customer support replies sometimes take several minutes
  • Wordpress hosting plans are expensive. HostGator's WP Cloud Hosting is much more affordable.
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9.8 Blog Rating

Price
$2.95

If you’re starting a blog, BlueHost is a great option.

Their most affordable Basic shared hosting plan is currently $2.95/month (exclusive for our visitors), and gives you everything you need to launch a blog with WordPress.

If you want to move your existing blog to a new host and your site gets less than 1,000 visitors daily, BlueHost’s shared platform is still worth a try because all accounts now include PHP7, which speeds up WordPress dramatically. You also get powerful caching and CDN (content delivery network) included for free, even in the basic plan.

They do also offer WordPress-optimized hosting which is theoretically faster and can handle more traffic load because it’s based on their cloud VPS platform.

However, BlueHost recently improved their shared hosting plans so much I can’t recommend spending the $19.95/month for WordPress-optimized hosting unless you expect your site to receive thousands of visitors daily. BlueHost’s shared hosting plans are faster than ever now because…

  • Accounts come default with PHP7 (which runs WordPress MUCH faster than any previous version of PHP can)
  • You can tweak your PHP settings and install new modules to your liking
  • If you need to, you can use different versions of PHP for different websites on one account.
  • You can enable caching and CDN to speed up your sites, free of charge.
  • …and if you are new and don’t know what I’m talking about above, that’s ok because it’s really fast out of the box and you don’t need to tweak anything. I’m just mentioning the things above for people like me who obsess over achieving that last 1% more of website speed 😉

Anyway, this powerful level of control is not typical for shared hosting. I also love BlueHost’s account control panel. Here’s why…

Let’s say you are making your first website. With many hosts, you sign up, and then it’s like, what do I do now??

With BlueHost, after you sign up for any hosting plan, it walks you through step-by-step to set up your site. After just a few easy steps, WordPress is ready, you picked a beautiful free theme for your site, basic settings are all finished up, and you hit the ground running! It’s an impressive onboarding experience.

Bottom line: If you want to start a blog, BlueHost’s shared hosting plan just makes sense.

  • FREE domain and site builder
  • 1-click WordPress installs (also endorsed and recommended by WordPress)
  • Unlimited site traffic and in-house support available 24/7
  • Usually $7.99/month, but our visitors pay $2.95/month!
  • Industry-leading server hardware and reliability
  • All accounts now include PHP7 which increases WordPress site speed more than 40% vs PHP 5.6
  • Free caching and CDN further maximize your site speed/performance

Get started with BlueHost now.


Money-Back Guarantee
30 Days
Disk Space
50GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
See Plans
9.4 Dedicated Rating

Price
$79.99

BlueHost is highly regarded in the industry for their ongoing investment in state-of-the-art hardware and infrastructure. It seems they know that providing reliable high-performance hosting is the key to turning a new customer into a customer for life.

All BlueHost dedicated servers come with a minimum of 4 CPU cores with 8 threads.

  • RAID 1 mirrored storage
  • Includes minimum of 3 dedicated IPs
  • Modern server hardware unique to BlueHost and maintained by their team

  • OpenStack tech means instant server provisioning and ability to upgrade server on demand
  • 24/7 expedited support from exclusive engineer team

  • RAID 1 storage configuration
  • Minimum 3 IP addresses per plan
  • Modern servers, designed and maintained in house
  • 24/7 expedited support from the dedicated team
  • Downside: No SSD storage; servers are unmanaged.

Get started with BlueHost now.


Money-Back Guarantee
30 Days
Disk Space
500GB - 1TB RAID1
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
See Plans
9.6 VPS Rating

Price
$19.99

When comparing various VPS hosting options, BlueHost’s VPS offering is definitely worth a look.

In the VPS world, you can find plenty of companies offering VPS hosting in the $15-$40/month price range without the same value and benefits you’d get with BlueHost.

One of our favorite perks of BlueHost’s VPS plans is the premium managed support. Other companies won’t do much for you besides restart your VPS for you. But with BlueHost’s managed support, it’s like having your own system administrator always ensuring it’s operating smoothly.

  • 2-4 cores and 4-16GB of RAM
  • 30-120GB SSD made redundant for added data security
  • Endorsed by the WordPress team
  • Premium managed support included
  • Easy migration from Bluehost shared plans

Get started with BlueHost now.


Money-Back Guarantee
30 Days
Disk Space
30GB+
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
See Plans
9.6 Wordpress Rating

Price
$19.99

BlueHost’s WordPress-optimized hosting is not cheap. However, this isn’t just shared hosting with some optimizations to make WordPress run well.

Their WordPress hosting is powered by their VPS platform with a customized architecture specially designed to make WordPress sites as fast as possible. That means they run PHP-FPM as well as NGINX instead of Apache.

BlueHost also understands that WordPress hosting shouldn’t only be about performance. That’s why they include a custom WordPress-centric control panel to help make running a WordPress site easier for anyone. Of course, this also includes their MOJO Marketplace offering, which offers additional plugins and themes beyond the WordPress marketplace.

To keep your WordPress site secure, every plan includes SiteLock Security and automated backups.

Your best alternative to their WordPress hosting would be to get any reputable VPS hosting and configure the server to run NGINX and PHP-FPM. Then you would want to set up CloudFlare on your domain and enable caching to speed up your site’s load time. You’d also need to make sure you install some sort of security plugin like Sucuri and perform the hardening tasks in there. These are just a few of many optimizations that must be done to WordPress run fast and securely.

Or you could just let BlueHost take care of it all: If you’re looking for a fast, reliable and affordable WordPress hosting option, we can highly recommend BlueHost.

  • Officially endorsed and recommended by WordPress
  • Built on their high performance VPS platform with CDN
  • ManageWP pre-installed
  • Automated website backups

Get started with BlueHost now.


Money-Back Guarantee
30 Days
Disk Space
30GB
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
See Plans

Bluehost is well known as one of the top web hosting providers, boasting of over 2 million websites. Their shared hosting service is one of the most popular and least expensive hosting packages.

for 2020, BlueHost again managed to achieve our pick for Best Hosting Overall. However, no host is perfect, and BlueHost is no exception.

Many companies have entered the web hosting industry with good intentions, only to shut down because, well… running a good hosting company is hard. It costs so much money for these companies to acquire a customer, so if they fail to provide the service you’re looking for, they lose a lot of money due to customers leaving.

With that said, Bluehost was founded in 2003 and is running stronger than ever. What makes this hosting company different from the rest?

Well… first off here’s what I don’t like about BlueHost:

  • First off, they upsell many addons – During signup, Bluehost aggressively upsell their add-ons. However, you can uncheck them and only remain with those you find useful.
  • If you want Windows hosting, look elsewhere – If you are running Windows-specific features, BlueHost won’t work for you since they don’t offer Windows hosting. That said, their Linux servers are good.

Okay, so why are they our top pick for best overall web hosting in 2019?

Let’s see…

From their server hardware to internal tools and scripts, Bluehost leverages state-of-the-art technology to give their customers first of its kind hosting solutions.

Secure Server Environment

Bluehost offers free SSL for each of their plans from shared to dedicated. This ensures secure data transmission from the web server to a browser. In turn, your customers will feel confident interacting with your site. To add to this, Bluehost have integrated powerful SiteLock features such as advanced CDN, SiteLock WAF, and SiteLock Professional.  For devs and sysadmins, they also offer SSH access, even on their shared hosting plans.

Unmetered Bandwidth

Irrespective of the amount of disk space you use, Bluehost doesn’t limit your resource needs. This guarantees you an uninterrupted online presence. However, if you exceed the normal usage, you will be notified via email to reduce your usage back to the normal range.

Fast Site Performance

Bluehost servers are low-density and that means shorter load times. The servers are built with premium hardware, advanced NGINX architecture, and layered with a varnish caching technology that ensures resources are focused where they are needed the most. Dynamic requests are processed much quicker which is a plus for most modern websites.

Automated Backups

Bluehost run courtesy daily, weekly, and monthly backups that they keep for a maximum of 30 days. They also allow you to run periodic backups through the cPanel. However, sites above 30 GB in size do not benefit from the automated backups. You are free to use WordPress plugins such as BackupBuddy to ensure your website is always backed up.

Scalability

As your website grows and demands increase, Bluehost allows you to scale up your resources through custom technology. This means you can start with a simple plan and grow as your business expands.

24/7 Support

The company maintains a huge knowledge base with guides, instructions, articles, and how-tos to answer frequently asked questions. If you still have more queries that the above resources cannot address, you are free to contact the 24/7 professional support team with your issue via phone, email, or live chat.

Which BlueHost plan is right for you? Let’s take a look…

Are you looking for hosting solution for your new website, blog, online store or a bunch of high-traffic sites complete with scalable, on-demand resources? Bluehost have plans that cover this and more.

Be sure to check the tabbed content at the top of this page for mini-reviews on their Blog hosting, Dedicated, VPS and WordPress hosting options. Below, let’s take a look at the plans they offer for each type of hosting. To help you narrow down your choices and avoid buy more resources than you need, I’ll periodically make suggestions on why you would or would not choose certain plans.

Shared Hosting

This is the best place to start when building a website for the first time or working with a limited budget. There are four plans under shared hosting that deliver powerful yet affordable services.

  • Basic – If you’re starting your first website or blog, this plan is the most effective and affordable choice.  This hosts one website for just $2.95/month. Also includes professional email (you@yourwebsite.com) and one free domain name. If you only need one website, this plan is a great choice. If you ever need to host more sites, you can easily upgrade anytime in the future.
  • Plus – This plan allows you to host unlimited websites at $5.95/month. Also includes unlimited professional email accoutns (you@yourwebsite.com) and one free domain name. Thanks to the unlimited email accounts, you can assign each of your team members a professional email that has unlimited storage. Also, if you wish to have a website per product or per region, this plan is perfect since you can host as many sites as you need without paying more. It also includes $200 in marketing vouchers you can use to promote your business online.
  • Choice Plus – Host unlimited websites with unmetered traffic, unlimited storage, pro email (you@yourwebsite.com), one free domain name, $200 in free marketing credits, and over $80/year worth of free extras including domain privacy and protection against website malware and spammers.
  • Go Pro –If you are a developer or you run an e-commerce store with many products, you need a high-performance server.  The Go Pro plan gives you everything in the above plans, plus enhanced performance, a dedicated IP address, SSL to secure your site for your visitors, and more at a discounted offer of $13.95/month.

Not sure which plan is for you? Try our quick, easy 2-minute quiz and instantly receive a customized suggestion for most affordable plan that meets your needs. Just click “Help Me Choose A Plan” below…

Cloud Hosting

Being a managed hosting solution, Bluehost cloud hosting is safer, faster, simpler, and more powerful. It mirrors your data across three server instances for added safety and guaranteed uptime should hardware issues develop in one of the devices. There are three plans for you to choose under cloud hosting.

  • Starter – Are you a small business that doesn’t have the resources for onsite hardware? or do you feel you may outgrow your storage too quickly and therefore need a scalable hosting solution? Well, this plan is suitable for you. It is a one website plan but gives you ample storage of up to 100GB SSD which is pretty much enough for a one-site business. The only restricting part is the email storage which is just 500MB. This doesn’t blend quite well with the 100 email accounts they offer unless you forward all emails to your email client and delete them from the server to create more space. However, if most of your emails are textual with no heavy file attachments, 500 MB can serve you for a few years. If you pay 36 months in advance, you will enjoy an effective monthly price of $6.95.

 

  • Performance –If you are running dynamic websites with scripting languages such as SQL and PHP databases, you certainly need more RAM. This plan gives you 4GB RAM that can accommodate space-intensive content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Even if your site traffic per month is more than 10, 000 unique visitors, this plan can sustain that pretty well. You can host as many websites as you want and this is perfect for multi-regional businesses with more than one business or product line. Paying for 36 months in advance unlocks the promotional offer of $8.95 per month.
  • Business Pro –This plan is for the high-end, resource intensive busineses. If you run an ecommerce store with hundreds of thousands of monthly traffic or you are an application developer looking for a plan that allows you to test and deploy apps within a short time, Business Pro is worth checking out. With 6 CPU cores,  6GB RAM and CodeGuard basic for site backup and restore, you can comfortably run multi-sites without straining your server resources. All this is available now at an introductory promotional offer of $15.95 per month if you pay 36 months months in advance.

VPS Hosting

Bluehost virtual private servers use open source technology such as KVM and OpenStack for extreme performance. With instant provisioning, you can get your website up and running in a matter of seconds. Under this plan, there are three sub-plans as follows:

  • Standard – This package is available starting from $19.99 for the first month and $29.99 for subsequent renewals.
  • Enhanced – This is a fairly affordable plan for VPS that goes for $29.99 per month starting price and thereafter $59.99 per month.
  • Ultimate – This package gives you up to 8 GB RAM and 120 SSD storage at an introductory price of $59.99 for the first month and $119.99 for subsequent months.

Dedicated Hosting

Get up to 15 TB with Bluehost’s secure and custom-built dedicated hosting solution. The servers use RAID storage to protect your web resources. There are three plans under dedicated hosting.

  • Standard – For only $79.99 you can start on this plan. For the subsequent monthly renewals, you will pay $119.99.
  • Enhanced – This is the recommended package which goes for a special introductory price of $99.99 for the first month and thereafter $159.99 per month.
  • Premium – This is the best of Bluehost dedicated hosting. It goes for $119.99 for the first month renewable at $209.99.

WordPress Hosting

This is a custom-engineered architecture built purposefully to house WordPress websites. It guarantees you a secure, extremely fast, and easy to use environment to manage your websites. Under WordPress hosting, there are four plans.

  • WP Standard – This begins at $19.99 per month and thereafter renewable at $39.99.
  • WP Enhanced – This can accommodate up to 300 million visits per month at an introductory price of $29.99 for the first month and thereafter $59.99.
  • WP Premium – Down from the normal price of $89.99, Bluehost are giving a special price of $39.99 for the first month for this plan.
  • WP Ultimate – This plan gives you 8 GB RAM and 240 GB backup at a special introductory price of $49.99 renewable at $129.99 for subsequent months.

Conclusion

With a powerful easy-to-use platform, Bluehost stands out as one of the leading hosting solution providers. Irrespective of your nature or scale of business, you will likely find a plan that suits your needs.

Their generous distribution of features across their plans adds significant value, even for the more basic hosting types like shared. The speed, security, pricing, and support guarantee you peace of mind as you concentrate on your core business.

Intro

At the time of writing, they are offering a special introductory price of $3.95/month (from the regular price of $5.99/month). This includes the following:

  • FREE domain
  • FREE website builders
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • 24/7 customer support
  • 30-day money-back guarantee

Want to start a blog/Wordpress site?

Here’s what to do next: Get your website up and running with Bluehost’s Starter Plan which is available for only $3.95/month. If you ever want to host more than one website or you want to take advantage of add-on features like their super-fast global Content Delivery Network (CDN), then you can easily upgrade your account to Plus or Business Pro plans.

If you already have an existing WordPress site with high traffic load, you may also want to check out their WordPress-Optimized hosting (see the WordPress tab at the top of this page), or look into some managed WordPress hosting options like HostGator WP Cloud, WPEngine, Kinsta, and LiquidWeb.

For advanced users who demand the highest performance for their websites (and those with a larger budget), Bluehost also offers VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

2 Comments
Show all Highest Rating Lowest Rating Add your review
  1. Reply
    Brandon Kim September 7, 2018 at 8:09 pm
    5
    Features
    100
    Ease Of Use
    100
    Price/Value
    100
    Uptime & Support
    100

    been good so far on BlueHost shared. Didn’t see the point of going with their wp-optimized hosting since cPanel is easy enough to use.. I just got a shared (normal web hosting) plan, installed WordPress with the easy installer, etc… the default PHP version was still 5.6 back a few months ago when I signed up, but they let you switch it to PHP7 with fastCGI, so all I had to do was select that in the PHP settings panel and there we go. Cheap shared hosting optimized to run WordPress. I think BlueHost has the best shared hosting offering.

  2. Reply
    DLee August 31, 2018 at 8:08 pm
    4.15
    Features
    80
    Ease Of Use
    80
    Price/Value
    70
    Uptime & Support
    100

    we’ve been with bluehost since 2013 and I found this review while trying to figure out what type of hosting and plan/level we should upgrade to. We’ve about reached the limit of our shared as we’re looking for something more scalable. Looks like we’ll move to a dedicated server since we can install Nginx, Varnish etc… That would allow us to stop forcing CloudFlare to cache everything all the time, without sacrificing speed. Anyway, BlueHost has been good for us. Reliable and I think good value for what we pay.

    + PROS: good value we didn't have to switch hosts when we outgrew out shared plan been reliable

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