Bluehost Review

Bluehost Review - young women

It may be surprising to know that Bluehost ranks high among hosting platforms. However, does Bluehost go the extra mile to help you manage every aspect of your online business? I reveal the details in this Bluehost Review. Let’s get to it.

OVERVIEW

Bluehost is one of the largest website hosting providers that collectively hosts more than two million domains, together with its sister companies, namely, HostMonster, FastDomain and iPage.

Bluehost offers many types of hosting and domain services such as cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, shared hosting, VPS hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and of course, WordPress hosting among them. The servers are powered by PHP7, HTTP/2 and NGINX+ caching.

Bluehost Review

  • Company Name: Bluehost
  • Industry Type: Web Hosting
  • Website:  bluehost.com
  • Founder: Matt Heaton
  • Owner: Endurance International Group
  • Price: Starts at $2.95 per month
  • Overall Ranking:  54 out of 100 (2.7/5)
  • Verdict:  Legitimate

If you are ready to launch your first business website, getting started can be daunting. While Facebook or other social media platform can be an easy route to communicate with your clients, your online business will be taken more seriously if you sign up for a top-notch web hosting service. If you’re looking for a company that can lay claim to being good at doing a hosting job, you cannot go wrong with Bluehost.

Whether you are a blogger or entrepreneur, Bluehost has a wide variety of web hosting options that fit your needs.

About the Company

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BlueHost is one of the oldest and famous WordPress hosting companies in the world. It was founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton. The award-winning hosting provider is based in a 50,000 square foot facility in Provo, Utah with more than 700 employees.

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Bluehost currently powers more than 2 million websites with over one million of those as WordPress sites. Bluehost and WordPress have remained close partners for more than 10 years, providing the best possible hosting experience for free. In fact, Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress.org as the number one provider for easy installation and management.

The company caters to an estimated amount of 15,000 to 20,000 new customers every month. It boasts a reputation specializing in comprehensive, easy-to-use solutions that even beginners can use to start a new blogging website quite effortlessly. In 2010, Endurance International Group acquired Bluehost.

What are the Bluehost Features?

Without going into an in-depth evaluation, Bluehost offers some eye-catching features that make the company stand out from others. This includes:

  • Unlimited web space
  • Unlimited transfer
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • 24/7 highly supportive response behavior
  • Simple, easy, and understandable scripts with 1-click install
  • Fast and secure servers
  • 30 days money-back guarantee
  • Higher storage space for starter plans
  • Recommended hosting for and by WordPress.org
  • Free site builder
  • 100% in-house services
  • Helps leverage Google and Bing advertising

Undoubtedly, Bluehost balances quality services, features, and price for a business. Does it help you manage your online business? Not exactly, which means that having the ease of these services to help you run and manage web-based business needs to be sourced elsewhere.

Hosting Plans and Prices

Bluehost Review - Sale

Depending upon your choice of plan, you may shell out from $2.95 to $5.95 every month. The introductory price applies only on the first term, so it is more advantageous to get a hosting package for 2 to 3 years to avail of the special pricing. Discounts are offered for an extended contract, which means paying less the longer your contract lasts. In the first year, Bluehost will waive the setup fees and domain registration fees.

During the checkout process, there is an option to add more features and services at an additional cost. In case you are not satisfied with your purchase, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee that comes with all hosting packages, including the domain privacy service. Domains, however, are not covered by this guarantee. In the event of a plan cancellation that includes a free domain, the pertinent cost of the domain will be deducted from the amount to be refunded.

Contracts are automatically renewed unless otherwise discontinued. Bluehost shared hosting plans are the most popular and best for starter sites. The introductory price at the beginning of the initial contract will no longer apply, but instead the price changes for the three levels.

Bluehost offers the following variety of hosting plans with features and pricing packages that are reasonable and affordable.

  • Shared Hosting: As the cheapest hosting plan, it is the best solution for starters and small blogs/sites with less traffic. Shared hosting means your website shares space with other sites on the same server.
 BasicPlusChoice Plus/Prime
Starting Price/mo$2.95$ 5.95$ 5.95
Renewal Price/mo$7.99$10.99$14.88
  • Cloud Hosting: Starter $6.95/Performance $8.95/Business Pro $15.95 per month – Faster than, but also affordable, cloud hosting is a reliable upgrade to keep your data more secure. It allows the use of different cloud servers to enable you to switch to a different server in case there is high traffic or hardware failure.
  • WordPress Hosting: Basic $2.95/Plus $5.95/Choice Plus $5.95 per month – Designed and optimized to run for WP-powered sites only, this hosting plan is perfect for traffic and lowest loading time sites. It also protects your site from common WordPress threats.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting: Standard $19.99/Enhanced $29.99/Ultimate $59.99 per month – Designed to give you maximum control on your hosting server, VPS hosting is more efficient and does not have the need to share the webserver. The software divides the server into few virtual servers.
  • WooCommerce Hosting: Starter $6.95/Plus $8.95/Pro $12.95 per month – Ideal for starters in online selling, WooCommerce is a popular plugin with the features required to start an eCommerce store with WordPress. WooCommerce is a third-party company specializing in creating online stores using WordPress.
  • Dedicated Hosting: Standard $79.99/Enhanced $99.99/Premium $199.99 per month – This most powerful and most expensive hosting service is built for businesses or sites with millions of page views and visitors every month. In this hosting plan, you own the whole web server and you can install any script, but managing the resources on the server is also entirely yours.

Once your WordPress site is generating traffic and gaining size, or if you want to be equipped with more professional tools, the WordPress Pro plans to become an ideal option. WordPress Pro is a platform managed by Bluehost to free you from server management issues, such as operating system updates and WordPress itself.  For optimized WordPress hosting, the price schedules are:

 BuildGrowScale
Starting Price/mo$19.95$29.95$49.95
Renewal Price/mo$39.99$59.99$89.88

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Customer Support

Bluehost boasts of a well-trained and friendly customer support team available 24/7 for telephone support, online webchat, and over the phone conversation. Problems, ranging from minor to major, may be sent to the team via a ticket-based system.

There is also a large collection of articles, step-by-step guides, tutorials, and videos that comprise their knowledge base. Beginners who encounter problems with web hosting can easily search the knowledge base for quick answers.

Best Features

  • Performance reliability – The overall performance is impressive.
  • Affordable price – With a domain and a site up and running for $2.95 a month, you are getting a pretty good deal.
  • Unlimited space and bandwidth – Hosting plans, such as the VPS and Dedicated hosting offers more speed, performance, and control on your server, all at a price that is easy on your pocket.
  • Easy to use control panel – Bluehost is so simple and friendly to use even by web development beginners
  • Backup facility – Backups are automatically created on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis of your entire account, which can be restored with a few clicks. A-Pro Backup service is also offered for bigger websites to ensure they are risk-free.
  • Ready integration with Apps and eCommerce tools – Everything is integrated into the control panel, allowing seamless access to third-party applications and management of everything in one place without multiple logins.
  • Security measures – Bluehost takes pride in its security features to ensure that your website is safe from spam and harmful attacks by hackers. The security protocols are updated on a routine basis. The administrators have a secure way of accessing specific configuration files.
  • 30-day free trial period and money-back guarantee

DrawbacksBluehost Review - Sad faces

Like other hosting sites, Bluehost also falls short in some aspects. The following drawbacks may be essential to your decision-making:

  • Lack of Windows-based servers
  • Need to install add-ons in order to do just about everything
  • Aggressive upselling
  • Paid site migrations
  • Higher renewal prices
  • Slow loading time during the massive amount of traffic
  • No monthly web hosting services

Final Opinion

Bluehost is a great web hosting option that offers reasonably-priced, full-featured plans for your WordPress site. It includes everything, ranging from unlimited disk space, unmetered data bandwidth to the 1-click installers that you need to get you started and move along within a minute at a cheap price. Bluehost lives up to its rock-solid reputation in the shared and Web hosting communities.

There are generally very little to complain about when it comes to creating attractive, functional, and stable pages for your business. Except for the lack of uptime guarantee and the absence of a few features found in other hosting services, you will not regret signing up for any of Bluehost’s hosting plans.

Overall, Bluehost is a user-friendly web hosting service providing excellent security solutions and superb customer support. It is a good choice, whether for a new website or an eCommerce store. Bluehost has mastered the art of providing quality and reliable services, clearly proving it is on top of the game. The company has consistently ranked at the top of charts and graphs in server hosting.

However, having a PROFIT EARNING web-based business requires many tools. Hosting is one of them. However, a hosting platform alone will not manage a web-based affiliate business. It takes more than this. If you are contemplating having a web-based affiliate business, then unless you already know what you are doing you probably will need a World-Class platform such as Wealthy Affiliate to train, host, support, and provide managing services to you.

Alternative Hosting Option

Finding a hosting platform for your web-based business can be tricky if you are not sure what you need in the first place. Some platforms provide just the basics but don’t actually provide web-based tools to online entrepreneurs.  While others are specifically designed for profit generation for those who plan to make money from websites! So, here is a comparison between Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate, a world leader in Hosting Web-based Business.

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Rina Walker

Rina Walker - Founder of EarningOnline.come

I am Rina Walker the founder of Earning Online and have been running a successful affiliate marketing website and blogging about earning online opportunites since November 2016. The niches that I am involved in include Wealth Creation, Permaculture, Action Cameras and Social Enterprise - all of which I have a great interest in.

I'm also involved in helping, supporting and coaching online entrepreneurs of all levels to build and run their own successful web-based affiliate business.

14 thoughts on “Bluehost Review”

  1. For me, I can bodly say that Bluehost is about one of the best and most popular web hosting platforms in the world. I haven’t used it personally, but it’s a great platform to consider using, especially now that I have so much information on it from this review. The only thing is though, hosting is only one part of having a web-based business. There are a heap more things you need right?

    Reply
    • Hiya! Thanks for stopping by and for the comments and question. There are a lot of components to a web-based business depending on what you plan to promote. Whether a blogging site or an ecommerce site, they can vary a little or a lot. Bluehost does not offer all that is required to build out a profit ready web-based business. You would need to know what you need already for your business and how to plug it all into your website. 

      However, you have platforms such as Wealthy Affiliate who can provide the training, tools and hosting which is everything you need to build out a profit generating website. You don’t need to know what you need already, the training in WA will show you what you need and instruct you step-by-step how to build it.

      So it’s really a question of… is it just the hosting you require of Bluehost, or do you need more? 

      Reply
  2. Hi.

    Thank you so much for your honest review of Bluehost, one of the oldest and famous WordPress hosting companies in the world. I haven’t used it personally but I have heard about it many times and now I know so many information about it by reading your post. You have nicely described about Bluehost, how it works, how it costs, the pro’s and con’s, hosting plans and prices, best features, customer’s support, rating and so on. I think it is a trusted website for earning. 

    I will definitely try to use for earning and share this post to others so that they might be helped. Thanks again.

    Reply
  3. For a big hosting company as Bluehost, their plans are unimaginably cost effective and very cheap. Considering their services and what they offer, that is like a meager compared to the price. Thanks for reviewing them and I’d surely check then out right away. I had thought that they would charge more and that has been the reason I never gave them a trial before. Thumbs up for this review because I found it to be helpful

    Reply
  4. Hi Rina, thanks for this introduction to Bluehost. I have never heard of it before this. I have to say that I really like what they offer and it seems like it would be a good product to use. I would need to go over your article in detail to determine how much I would need to spend over , say three years, because I notice that I would need add-ons and the price for the basic applies only to the first year. I am a little concerned, also, about the upselling that may be involved, and the slow loading time that might be possible at times. Thank you for all these details

    Reply
    • Your welcome! I understand that there are other things to consider when building an online business or web-based business in particular. If you are not knowledgeble about the add-ons because in Bluehost, you have to load them yourself. There are of course platforms like Wealthy Affiliate which are purpose built to manage all of this for you. I highly recommend it. 

      Thanks again for taking the time to visit and offer your comments. I much appreciate it. 

      Reply
  5. Hello Rina, excellent article you have written up here and I must say that I found this to be very informative and enlightening. Bluehost is a very big hosting company and surely has enjoyed quite a great reception from the world considering the number of websites being hosted on it. I am just into the learning of affiliate marketing and I was told that it requires me to own a website. Thanks for suggesting this because I am sure to host my website on them. Their plan is very cool with me too because I would go for the lowest plan just to know how things operate on it. Thanks

    Reply
    • Hiya! Great to have you stop by for a while to read and comment on the Bluehost Review! You might also be interested in reading (if you haven’t already) about another website hosting and affiliate marketing training product since you mentioned that you are learning about affiliate marketing at the moment. Let me know what you think.

      Reply
  6. I have heard many very good things about bluehost. But I’ve also heard about this platform called wealthy affiliate that is technically like a website host. What are your thoughts in the comparison between wealthy affiliate and bluehost? I would love to hear what your thoughts and expertise are on this subject.

    Reply
    • Hiya Misael! Thank you for your comments and questions! I will go straight into what I like about both Bluehost and then Wealthy Affiliate. What I like about Bluehost is that the monthly hosting fee is dead cheap and great for those who are on a limited budget. It has all the security and function of a great hosting platform so no worries there! If you already have experience with web-based business then Bluehost is a great choice! 

      If however, you want the tools and services associated with online business including all the training you need then Wealthy Affiliate is what you need and will cost around $49 a month with the first month heavily discounted to just $19. It really is a platform made for those looking to start their own web-based business whether experienced or not and you can even get started for free!

      Reply
  7. Hello Rina. I see Bluehost ads everywhere and I am happy to know that they have been around for quite a while now. I like that you can choose the kind of hosting you need for your website. I was wondering why you have to pay more at renewal. How does it work? Do you pay $2.95 the first month then you pay a higher price?

    Reply
    • Hiya Cynthia! Thanks for the comments and questions. Bluehost waiver the setup fees and domain registration fees but only for the first year. So when you renew you are paying more. At the moment, Bluehost has a special where you pay $2.95 monthly but you need to pay for a 36-month term. So you pay upfront for 36 months to receive the discount. This is not uncommon among hosting providers and it is still a great deal. They will also discount the first month giving you an opportunity to experience the platform in that month then will have to pay the non-discounted amount the following month. Also, understand that there are various packages at various prices. I hope this answers your question.

      Reply

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