Bluehost is one of the three web hosting services that tie for the top spot in our rating of the Best Web Hosting Services of 2024. The service emphasizes its WordPress and WooCommerce offerings, including managed WordPress hosting packages. It also offers full-featured shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans, but doesn’t sell cloud hosting or reseller hosting packages. Among Bluehost’s ancillary services are domain registration, professional design and marketing services, Google Workspace plans, and fee-based support for your site via the company’s Blue Sky service.Bluehost currently powers more than two million websites worldwide, primarily out of its data center in Utah.
Pros and Cons
Bluehost Pros
- Seamless WordPress integration: It couldn’t be easier to set up a WordPress site through Bluehost
- Budget-level pricing: Bluehost has an overall value score of 4.7 out of 5 – prices are still competitive even after the first year, and a variety of tiered pricing plans means there’s an affordable option for every site
- Dependable features: Bluehost’s plans are rich in features, including unmetered bandwidth, a free domain, and cPanel access
Bluehost Cons
- Limited basic plans: Bluehost’s cheapest plans won’t be enough if you’re looking to grow online, but it can get you started on your journey
- Unreliable uptime: Sadly, Bluehost performed poorly in our site speed and uptime testing, despite an advertised uptime of 99.98%
Bluehost has an advertised uptime guarantee of 99.98%. No web host can provide 100% uptime, so 99.98% is a strong showing – it translates to roughly one hour and 45 minutes of downtime per year.
Other Bluehost Features
Seamless WordPress integration is Bluehost’s most impressive feature, but definitely not its only feature. Though Bluehost only scores 3.3 and 3.8 out of 5 for shared and VPS features, respectively, its dedicated and WordPress hosting plans have excellent features, both scoring 4.4 out of 5. We’ve compiled the rest of Bluehost’s best offerings below:
| Domain registration | Bluehost offers a free domain to certain users when they sign up for a one-year plan. However, that perk doesn’t include the domain registration fee (between $10-15), which you’ll still have to pay for. |
|---|---|
| Website builder | There’s a drag-and-drop site builder for those who have an idea of what they want to create, but don’t have sharp enough HTML and CSS skills. |
| Data transfer | Bluehost offers unlimited data transfer on many of its plans. However, Bluehost also provides CPU protection – more on this below. |
| cPanel | Bluehost uses the “cPanel” Control Panel, which is a popular site management system. The company also offers free backups so you don’t lose any key site files. |
| Storage | Depending on the plan you use, Bluehost offers anything from 10GB up to unlimited storage space for your site files. If all you plan to do is run a WordPress blog with words and images, then the 10GB plan will be fine, and you can always upgrade if you need more space. |
Pricing
Bluehost ranks highly in our research for value for money, with a score of 4.7 out of 5 overall. Additionally, Bluehost scores the best for price when it comes to VPS, dedicated, and WordPress hosting. The best part? All Bluehost plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee.
Shared hosting offers Bluehost’s cheapest plan, at $2.95 per month for the first year and $9.99 per month after that. Dedicated hosting, understandably, offers the most expensive plans, starting at $99.99 for a 12-month term.
Bluehost Starting Prices:
For consistency across our hosting reviews, we’ll be focusing on Bluehost’s starting prices with a 12-month term. If you commit to a longer period of time, the price will usually be cheaper!
- Shared hosting: $2.95 per month, renews at $9.99 per month
- Shared WordPress hosting: $2.65 per month, renews at $8.98 per month
- WooCommerce hosting: $7.95 per month, renews at $24.95 per month
- VPS hosting: $24.99 per month, renews at $39.99 per month
- Managed WordPress hosting: $24.95 per month, renews at $29.99 per month
- Dedicated hosting: $99.99 per month, renews at $119.99 per month
Bluehost Pricing vs Competitor Pricing
Take a look at the table below to compare our top three hosting providers when it comes to pricing. Again, we’ve focused on 12-month subscriptions to keep the comparison fair.
| Provider | Shared Hosting | VPS Hosting | Dedicated Hosting | WordPress Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bluehost | $2.95 | $24.99 | $99.99 | $2.65 |
| HostGator | $3.95 | $23.95 | $109.97 | $7.95 |
| InMotion | $3.49 | $24.99 | $89.99 | $4.49 |
Which Plan Is the Best Value for Money?
If you’re new to web hosting or your site isn’t that massive, then we recommend starting with Bluehost’s shared or shared WordPress hosting plans. They’re the cheapest, and still offer a decent variety of features, but Bluehost’s shared hosting does only score 3.1 out of 5 in our price testing.
Bluehost Additional Costs
Unfortunately, most hosting providers will fill your virtual basket with add-on items during checkout. These odds and ends will hike up the price of your plan, but you can always uncheck them before making your purchase.
Canceling Your Bluehost Plan
Bluehost’s 30-day money back guarantee means that you get some time to test out the platform and see if it’s for you. But it’s important to make this decision within the first 30 days, because afterwards, Bluehost doesn’t offer any refunds or cancellations.
Help and Support
Bluehost has a variety of support options, including live chat, email support tickets, and 24/7 phone support. For each hosting type, Bluehost scores an average 3.5 out of 5 for help and support, but it peaks at 4.6 out of 5 for WordPress hosting support.
Bluehost Review: Summary
Thanks to our hosting research, we can confidently say Bluehost is the best overall hosting provider, scoring 4.8 out of 5. It comes in first ahead of hosting heavyweights such as HostGator, InMotion, and GoDaddy.
In individual categories, Bluehost ranks first for VPS, dedicated, and WordPress hosting. It’s also the best hosting provider to manage an ecommerce site with.
If feature-rich plans, reliable help and support, and affordable plans are what you’re after, look no further! Despite additional costs and extras to consider, Bluehost’s our top choice for a reason.
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