BLUE HOST REVIEW. MY EXPERIENCE AND RECOMMENDATION
Tags: Bluehost Coupon, Web Hosting, Bluehost Review, Bluehost Pricing, Bluehost Domain

Blue host review, this post contains all you need to know about the blue host. One of the oldest web hosts started in 1996, Bluehost has become the largest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting.

They are an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. With Bluehost, you never have to worry about your website being slow even when there is a lot of traffic.

Their 24/7 expert support is always there to help when you need it by phone, email, or live chat.

They are rated #1 in web hosting for small businesses. On top of that, they are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 63% off discount, a Free Domain, Free SSL, and a free Site Builder with templates.

Pros:

Most affordable prices

Free domain name

Free CDN + SSL

Great customer support

Officially Recommended by WordPress

1-click WordPress install

Cons:

Higher domain renewal price

Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners and for medium to large businesses with 24/7 customer support. See the complete Bluehost review by our experts to find out if Bluehost is the right choice for you.

In this comprehensive Bluehost review, we’ll put their promises to test with a rigorous and thorough analysis using industry-standard benchmarking tools.

Following are the areas we’ll look into:

Speed: How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will test their speed and server response time to assess that.

How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will test their speed and server response time to assess that. Performance: How does Bluehost perform under traffic spikes? We’ll test that by performing the stress test and seeing how well it performs under traffic.

How does Bluehost perform under traffic spikes? We’ll test that by performing the stress test and seeing how well it performs under traffic. Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime?

Will your website be available 24/7/365 without any downtime? Customer Support: Can you count on Bluehost’s customer support when you immediately need help with your website?

Can you count on Bluehost’s customer support when you immediately need help with your website? Features: Do they offer all the features that you’ll need to build your website?

Do they offer all the features that you’ll need to build your website? Pricing: Do they have the best pricing in the industry? Are there any Bluehost deals that can save you money?

This is our complete Bluehost review and we’ll be doing an in-depth analysis of Bluehost's pros and cons. If you don’t want to read the full review, here is the quick scorecard of Bluehost with our verdict right below it.

Bluehost Review SummaryPerformance gradeA+Average load time1.48 msAverage response time1.26 msFree domainYesFree SSLYes1-click WordPressYesSupportPhone / Live Chat / Knowledge base Start with Bluehost

Bottom line: In our Bluehost review, we found them to be reliable, fast, and affordable with friendly 24/7 customer support.

That’s why we’ve chosen to recommend Bluehost as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.

Now let’s dive into our detailed Bluehost hosting review so that you can decide for yourself.

About Bluehost

First, let’s take a look at the company itself.

Bluehost started in 1996 and steadily grew to become one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. It now powers more than 2 million websites from all over the world.

Bluehost has a long-standing relationship with the WordPress community. They are an official WordPress.org recommended web host since 2006.

They pride themselves in their 24/7 customer support, great hosting infrastructure, and support for the free open source software like WordPress.

Pros and Cons of Bluehost

All best web hosting services have their pros and cons. Some you can live with, and some you cannot ignore.

Here are the pros and cons of Bluehost that we learned.

Pros

First, let’s take a look at the advantages that make Bluehost the top choice.

Pricing: Their hosting plans are well within the reach of most users, particularly those who are just starting out.

Their hosting plans are well within the reach of most users, particularly those who are just starting out. Reliability: They power a large number of websites with minimum downtime.

They power a large number of websites with minimum downtime. No hidden charges: There are no hidden fees when signing up for your account.

There are no hidden fees when signing up for your account. Free domain: You get a free domain name for the first year when you signup.

You get a free domain name for the first year when you signup. Free CDN + SSL: For each website, you get a free SSL certificate and free Cloudflare CDN to block malware and improve security.

For each website, you get a free SSL certificate and free Cloudflare CDN to block malware and improve security. Money Back Guarantee: They offer a 30 day money back guarantee on all plans.

Cons

As we mentioned earlier, there are always downsides with every hosting company. The following are some disadvantages of choosing Bluehost as your host.

Higher domain renewal price Their free domain renewal price is higher than average.

Their free domain renewal price is higher than average. Upselling Addons: They have an aggressive upsell process during signup. But you can easily uncheck SiteLock and all other addons if you don’t need them.

Bluehost Performance Tests

The most important performance metric that you should look for is the speed. It not only affects user experience on your site, but it also affects your WordPress SEO rankings.

Studies show that a 1-second drop in website speed can decrease your conversion rate by 7%. A 3-second delay can cost you 50% of your traffic.

Let’s see how fast your website will load on Bluehost.

Bluehost Speed Test Results

For a faster website, you will need to choose a fast website hosting company. Keeping this in mind, we created a test site to see how fast Bluehost really is.

Our test site was created using WordPress with the default Twenty Twenty theme. We imported dummy content for theme development including images. After that, we used Pingdom to test the website speed.

Here are our test results:

As you can see, our test site loads in less than two seconds. Considering the fact that our website wasn’t using any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this result is remarkable.

However, the speed test alone isn’t enough because this test site didn’t have a large amount of traffic.

To test how Bluehost servers would respond with increased traffic, we used a testing tool called K6 (formerly LoadImpact) to send virtual users (VU) to our test site.

We used it to gradually build up to 100 visitors to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.

Here is a screenshot of our results.

The green line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the blue line is the server load time. As you can see the server load remained stable throughout the test even at peak traffic.

This test indicates that if you are looking for a really fast website, then Bluehost can be a perfect fit for you.

It is also important to note that we didn’t record any downtime during our testing.

Many hosting companies promise a 99.99% uptime guarantee. We set up an uptime monitoring alert for our test account. See the screenshot below for a detailed look at Bluehost server uptime.

Bluehost Server Response Time

When you are testing a live website using tools like Pingdom, you are basically seeing how everything on your website loads. This includes images too, which take much longer to load than plain text.

In order to get a more accurate server response time, we used another tool called Bitcatcha. It allows you to test server response time without loading any data.

As you can see Bluehost server in the US performed under a fraction of a second. In other locations, the response was a bit higher but still under less than a second.

If your target audience is in the United States, then this would benefit your website. However, if more of your users come from other parts of the world, then you can change your server location.

Bluehost Hosting Plans and Features

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.

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.

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: Their WordPress plans are designed specifically for WordPress-powered websites. It is optimized to run WordPress and can even protect your WordPress site against common threats.

Their WordPress plans are 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.

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.

An upgrade to shared WordPress hosting, VPS hosting allows you to virtual dedicated resources in a shared environment. Dedicated hosting server: A dedicated hosting server for your website, means you will have all the resources of the dedicated 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 one 1-click.

All plans come with an easy-to-use hosting control panel where you can manage your hosting, create databases, etc.

Bluehost has a custom control panel that improves ease of use for beginners. It also uses a customized version of the cPanel hosting dashboard for more advanced options.

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 disk space 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.

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 disk space 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 storage space and unmetered 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.

The Plus plan includes unlimited websites with unlimited storage space and unmetered 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 a plus plan. You will also get free domain privacy, and automated daily backups powered by CodeGuard 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.

The Choice Plus plan includes all features of a plus plan. You will also get free domain privacy, and automated daily backups powered by CodeGuard 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.

Bluehost Customer Support and Service

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 its extensive knowledge base. This is a huge help for beginners and most common issues can be quickly resolved by a simple search.

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 and you know they are just one click away.

One thing that is missing is the ticket-based support system. Bluehost recently decided to eliminate ticket-based support to focus on the 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.

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 with 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.

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.

FAQs 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 providers. 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.

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. Do I need a credit card to sign up with Bluehost?

Bluehost accepts credit cards but you can choose to show more payment options during checkout and select PayPal as your payment method if you wish.

6. Is Bluehost better than GoDaddy?

Bluehost is better than GoDaddy because we believe Bluehost support is better. Their My Sites dashboard and overall onboarding experience are a lot more beginner-friendly. Not to mention, Bluehost offers better pricing for small businesses.

7. How does Bluehost compare with SiteGround and HostGator?

When comparing Bluehost with SiteGround and HostGator, there are several pros and cons you should be aware of.

Bluehost offers more value for the price when compared to SiteGround. Their plans start at $2.75 per month and include a free domain, whereas SiteGround plans start at $4.99 and do not include any free domain.

On the other hand, the SiteGround platform comes with better speed and security features. For more details, see our comparison of Bluehost vs SiteGround vs WP Engine.

In terms of Bluehost vs HostGator, they’re pretty similar when it comes to hosting CPU resources, functionality, site migration tools, pricing, and more. Bluehost is also more comparable with shared hosting providers like Inmotion hosting or Dreamhost. We find Bluehost user experience to be slightly better as they’ve invested heavily in their WordPress website builder platform.

8. 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 its primary data center.

9. 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.

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 e-commerce 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 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 a 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.