Bluehost Review for 2024

One of the world’s most popular web hosting providers, Bluehost has been serving users since 2003, powering over two million websites with its user-friendly interface, free SSL, and affordable pricing.

With an exclusive partnership with CMS giant WordPress, it’s no surprise that it’s one of the best website hosting platforms on the market. In our in-depth Bluehost review, we’ve studied every detail about what you should know before setting up a plan.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Bluehost Hosting Plans & Pricing
2. What Hosting Types Does Bluehost Offer?
3. Bluehost Features
4. How to Set Up Bluehost
5. Bluehost User Control Panel
6. Bluehost Website Migration
7. Bluehost Performance
8. Is Bluehost Secure?
9. Bluehost Reviews From Customers
10. What is Bluehost Good For?
11. Bluehost vs Top Competitors
12. FAQs

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Bluehost Hosting Plans & Pricing
2. What Hosting Types Does Bluehost Offer?
3. Bluehost Features
Show Full Guide
4. How to Set Up Bluehost
5. Bluehost User Control Panel
6. Bluehost Website Migration
7. Bluehost Performance
8. Is Bluehost Secure?
9. Bluehost Reviews From Customers
10. What is Bluehost Good For?
11. Bluehost vs Top Competitors
12. FAQs

Bluehost Hosting Plans & Pricing

Our Bluehost review had to begin with looking at the pricing structures – is it affordable and fairly priced? All plans include automatic WordPress installation with automatic malware scans, free CDN, and free SSL certificates.

While a lot of features have the caveat of being free for the first year only, you can choose from four tiers of Bluehost pricing for shared hosting – Basic, Choice Plus, Online Store, and Pro. As shared hosting is best for most sites, we’ll focus on it in the next section.

Shared Basic – from $1.99/month with 12-month plan

We found the Basic plan to be most suitable for a straightforward website or blog. This unfussy plan supports a single website and comes with just 10GB of SSD storage.

You get a free domain for the first year, and there are custom WordPress themes to help develop your site quickly and easily. Email is not included, but you get a free trial to test it out before paying to include it in your subscription.

In terms of limitations, we felt that the SSL offering is quite disappointing, as it’s only included for the first year. Also, if you need help, customer support is limited to chat only – you won’t be able to speak to an adviser on the phone.

Shared Choice Plus – from $5.45/month with 12-month plan

The Choice Plus plan is best for users with multiple sites. It has all the same perks as the Basic plan, but with a bit more capacity.

This plan supports up to three websites and adds up to 40GB of SSD storage for your growing business.

We liked the extra features of daily website backups and Domain Privacy and Protection – these are both free for your first year, as is malware scanning. Unlike the Basic plan, you can access phone support, on top of live chat, should you encounter any issues.

Shared Online Store – from $9.95/month with 12-month plan

If you have a business selling goods online, Online Store is an incredibly helpful plan with specialized e-commerce tools. You can host up to three websites with 40GB of SSD storage, and you can access Bluehost customer service via both phone and chat.

In terms of e-commerce, you can sell an unlimited number of products, with gift card options and shipping label support. Bluehost Online Store also schedules bookings and appointments. If you need to bill your customers, Bluehost even accepts secure online payments.

Customers can get more involved in your site too, with the addition of customer accounts and a wishlist option. It’s an extremely well-rounded, value-for-money option for users who are selling online.

Shared Pro – from $13.95/month with 12-month plan

Our review of Bluehost found that the Pro plan is best for growing businesses, supporting up to five websites. Of course it has all the benefits of the Basic and Choice Plus plans, but also offers the highest volume of storage of any plan – 100GB of SSD storage.

Beyond that, it’s similar to the Choice Plus Plan with its first-year free domain and free trial of professional email. Similarly, you get free SSL with malware scanning, free daily website backups, and Domain Privacy and Protection for your first year too.

What Hosting Types Does Bluehost Offer?

At its core, Bluehost combines WordPress support with e-commerce to create the best website hosting for small businesses. But like all the top cheap web hosting services, Bluehost does not only offer shared hosting, but a range of hosting types.

With Bluehost, you can also get VPS, dedicated, WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting plans – quite a varied offering compared to some of the competition. However, understanding what each hosting type means is the first hurdle.

Shared Hosting on Bluehost

When you opt for shared hosting, you get up to five sites with up to 100GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth. Your domain comes free for the first year, with a one-year trial of Bluehost’s professional email service.

We were impressed with security features like automatic malware scans with free CDN and free SSL, plus free daily website backups and Domain Privacy and Protection for your first year.

VPS Hosting on Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the best VPS hosting providers to support high-powered websites with lots of traffic. By choosing a VPS hosting plan, you get specific resources – like CPU, RAM, and SSD storage – for your use alone. You can have unlimited domains and websites with unlimited bandwidth.

Bluehost won’t limit your traffic, even as you grow. It includes a cPanel License Fee for access to a user-friendly control panel for site management with 24/7 VPS-specific support. With pricing beginning at $30 per month for a 36-month term, it’s fairly good value for such a comprehensive service.

Dedicated Hosting on Bluehost

Dedicated hosting is best suited to large companies and organizations that require an entire server to themselves. This includes unlimited web hosting, meaning you can customize and configure your server to your specific needs since there is no one else sharing it with you.

You can have as many sites as your server can support, giving you unlimited growth potential, plus an upgraded cPanel takes care of account management. You’ll get five cPanel accounts included with the Standard plan on dedicated hosting, but 50 users with the Premium plan.

The Standard plan starts at $90 per month for 36 months, which we don’t think is a huge expense for a big, growing business.

WordPress Hosting on Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the best WordPress hosting providers on the market. Since 2005, Bluehost has enjoyed a unique partnership with WordPress, working together to create the ideal hosting platform for WordPress users.

This comes in the form of Wonder, a built-in tool that helps you set up and create your site with automatic installation. There’s no need for coding, and you can use almost any WordPress plugin you want. Bluehost goes even further to help you create the perfect site, offering the WordPress Academy with tutorial videos.

It’s a no-brainer for WordPress website creators to get set up on Bluehost, as it’s a top choice for WordPress enterprise hosting too.

WooCommerce Hosting on Bluehost

If you plan on selling items through your site, Bluehost offers a WooCommerce hosting plan. The base plan starts at $10 per month and includes 40GB of SSD storage, free SSL, and a free first-year domain.

Using YITH plugins, you can make bookings and appointments, manage gift cards, and offer your customers wishlists to promote more sales. You will be able to review analytics to see how your site is performing, and can also benefit from the added power of Yoast SEO for better rankings.

This type of hosting on Bluehost offers everything you need to create a popular, profitable online store.

Bluehost Features

During our Bluehost.com review, it was easy to feel mesmerized by the incredible offering of WordPress tools, but there are plenty more useful features hiding in plain sight. Bluehost comes stacked with features to improve your web hosting experience.

Top-Recommended for WordPress

We highly rate the fact that Bluehost enjoys an exclusive partnership with WordPress as its preferred provider for WordPress hosting. Since 2005, the two companies have worked closely together to create the perfect web hosting and management service for your website.

On top of practical tools, you’ll find WordPress education initiatives through webinars, masterclasses, and special events like WP CreatorCon. Bluehost also participates in WordCamp Sponsorships, which support active community and regional groups in the WordPress community.

Enhanced Security Features

We found that Bluehost web hosting plans come with free SSL by Let’s Encrypt, a reliable certification provider. You also have the option to upgrade to Premium SSL from Comodo, which includes a $10,000 warranty if you accept customer payments.

Regardless of which SSL package you choose, Bluehost also includes SiteLock to protect you from spammers and hackers with malware detection. With CodeGuard Backups, you also get automated, daily backups with one-click CodeGuard restore.

Bluehost Customer Support 24/7

If you ever need help or assistance, Bluehost has 24/7 customer service and support for its users. No longer do you have to wait until business hours for an answer to your burning question.

We also appreciated that free chat support is available for your convenience. With upgraded plans, you can get phone support with Bluehost customer advisers – basic plans do not include phone support.

Bluehost User Control Panel

We were hoping to see user-friendly interfaces in our Bluehost hosting review, as not everyone using the platform knows a whole lot about tech. So we were glad to find that Bluehost uses a simplified control panel that’s very easy to manage.

From the control panel, you can do everything in one place, whether you want to:

• Create a new website
• Edit an old site
• Add a new domain name
• Manage or install plugins and themes
• Manage your professional email service (this is an add-on depending on your plan)

Your panel also manages security features, including backups and SSL, so you can keep your information safe while you update your site. It will also show analytics, so you can see your website’s performance and where it can improve. This information is incredibly useful for online stores in particular.

Bluehost Website Migration

When you purchase a hosting plan from Bluehost, you can benefit from full migration services for a flat rate of $150. The site migration service includes:

• Up to five websites
• Up to 20 IMAP email accounts
• All of the corresponding data and files that go along with the above

Simply contact Bluehost to initiate the process. It generally takes three to five days for completion, although this can depend on things like size and complexity. As one of the best email hosting services, Bluehost also offers a separate email migration service for $99 for up to ten standard webmail accounts.

Bluehost Performance

Unlike Domain.com and Dreamhost which offer 99.9% uptime guarantees, Bluehost is one of the few web hosting providers that does not offer an uptime guarantee. We were disappointed to find this out during our Bluehost review.

That said, users report a very responsive server network that performs well, with 99.99% uptime in most tests.

However, as Bluehost is only hosted in the U.S., its performance can be underwhelming for international visitors if you have a lot of overseas traffic. We recommend bearing this in mind depending on the type of website and audience you’re expecting.

Is Bluehost Secure?

With cybersecurity being more crucial than ever, we were impressed with Bluehost’s full suite of security features to protect your website. The following security features come included with Bluehost plans for at least the first year:

• Free SSL certificates (with optional paid upgrades)
• Cloudflare DDoS protection
• Automatic malware scans
• SiteLock Security Scans

Additionally, automatic backups are included for Choice Plus and Pro plans. Overall, the level of security on Bluehost is more than robust enough for most types of users.

Bluehost Reviews From Customers

While carrying out our Bluehost review, we also took third-party user reviews into account to get a bigger overall picture of this hosting provider.

We found very positive Bluehost reviews from most of its users. On TrustPilot, Bluehost averages a 4.1 out of 5.0 star rating.

Overall, users appreciate its range of excellent WordPress features and affordability. Subscribers repeatedly note top customer service with courteous, professional, and extremely helpful representatives.

Some people note experiencing issues with the migration service, but it tends to be resolved with a call to Bluehost support.

For those few users who have not had a positive experience, Bluehost takes the time to publicly respond to their reviews with an effort to make it right. It certainly inspires greater peace of mind when evaluating Bluehost’s customer service capacity and reputation of the company.

What is Bluehost Good For?

Quite simply, our Bluehost review found it to be a top choice for individuals and small businesses, and absolutely the best for those who use WordPress. It’s no surprise why Bluehost is the best website hosting service for WordPress:

• Exclusive, ongoing partnership between the companies
• Unique and tailor-made themes, plugins, and features

For small businesses that use WordPress to sell and advertise their services, Bluehost is the standout choice. The custom WordPress control panel is a massive timesaver and makes editing your site a breeze.

Aside from this, Bluehost is good for affordability. It offers some of the best cheap website hosting, with basic plans starting at less than $3 a month.

Bluehost vs Top Competitors

Bluehost vs GoDaddy

Although Bluehost and GoDaddy can both work well for small businesses, Bluehost caters more to the individual while GoDaddy takes a broader scope, embracing larger businesses too.

One clear difference is that Bluehost only has US-based servers, while GoDaddy has servers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This provides greater access and faster speeds to international visitors.

However, you will pay a premium for this benefit – GoDaddy starts at $10 a month, while Bluehost pricing starts at about $3 per month. But as GoDaddy also provides greater storage, this solidifies it as a better choice for enterprise users with more demanding website needs. Read our GoDaddy review for more information.

Bluehost vs HostGator

HostGator is one of the best cheap web hosting services, costing 20 cents less than Bluehost’s pricing at the lowest tier. However, with this price comes one limitation – your domain is only free for the first year, while it’s free with Bluehost every year.

That said, one benefit of HostGator is that you get unlimited storage, while Bluehost does limit your storage with some plans. Beyond domain pricing and storage, Bluehost and HostGator are fairly similar, offering free daily backups for the first year and server networks based within the U.S.

Bluehost vs DreamHost

Bluehost and DreamHost are not just similar in name, but they’re both excellent web hosting services for small businesses. Not only this, but they share the same starting price for their web hosting plans. While both offer free SSL and have server networks based in the U.S., this is where the similarities end.

DreamHost limits your bandwidth and only includes a free domain for your first year, while Bluehost delivers it for free year after year. Still, you do get unlimited storage, while Bluehost limits storage on some plans.

Another key difference is that DreamHost offers on-demand backups, while these come daily automatically with Bluehost. In the end, choosing between them might be a case of swings and roundabouts.

FAQs