3. BlueHost Hosting Reviews
To many things good with BlueHost Hosting Company
We’ve been a paying Bluehost customer since 2014.
That means we’ve been monitoring their cheapest shared hosting plan performance (both average load time and uptime) for the past two years.
This Bluehost review relies heavily on data, as well as the overall experience with their hosting features and customer support.
In a nutshell, all Bluehost plans offer their customers 24/7 live chat, unmetered bandwidth, and at least 5 email accounts. Similarly to many other web hosting companies, they too offer their users a free domain for the first year. Their plans start from $2.75/mo and include improved security, backups, and SSL certificate. These help to keep your website protected and safe.
Overall, their performance has been good. Bluehost is clearly at the top with their uptime (99.99%) and fast load time of 406ms (0.4 seconds).
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Verdict: #1 Host for Beginners
Bluehost is known for their partnership with WordPress, but they offer a variety of plans for all types of websites.
You can currently get 75% off all plans . BlueHost offers a 100% money back guarantee.
Pros:
- Free domain and SSL certificate
- Managed WordPress hosting
- E-commerce plans and convenient marketing services for small businesses
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer reseller hosting plans
- Offers regular backups, but they’re not guaranteed. Customers are advised to make their own backups
Don’t just take our word for it — over 480 of our users have rated BlueHost and love the easy setup, customer support and instructional videos.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Pros of using Bluehost
1. Best Uptime – 99.99% – Throughout the Year
Uptime is one the most important aspects when choosing a web host – after all, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So consistently good uptime should be one of your top priorities.
After reviewing 32 web hosts, our benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.94%. That might seem pretty high, but it’s actually even slightly below average. Type those numbers into a calculator and you’ll quickly see it translates into at least 26 minutes of downtime each month or just over five hours over the course of a year.
So ideally, we don’t want to see anything less than that.
The good news is that Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark, comfortably keeping our site live for 99.99% of the time in 2017-2019. Here’s the monthly breakdown of the past 16-months (with one scheduled maintenance period in October 2019)
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
- September 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- February 2019 average uptime: 100%
- January 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
- December 2018 average uptime: 100%
- November 2018 average uptime: 100%
- October 2018 average uptime: 99.91% (scheduled maintenance)
- September 2018 average uptime: 100%
- August 2018 average uptime: 100%
- July 2018 average uptime: 100%
- June 2018 average uptime: 100%
- May 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
- April 2018 average uptime: 100%
- March 2018 average uptime: 100%
- February 2018 average uptime: 100%
- January 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
- December 2017 average uptime: 100%
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Top 10 Website “Load” Speed – 406ms
A report from Google last year found that the vast majority of mobile websites are way too slow.
That’s a problem for two major reasons. Google’s mobile-first index can either elevate or hide your site in user searches based on its loading speeds and studies show that slow websites almost always translate into lower sales.
So, after uptime, your host’s page loading times are the second most important thing that can literally make or break your site’s success.
We have been keeping track of Bluehost’s performance since December 2017 using a third-party tool, Pingdom. And once again, we were pleased with the results — an average page loading speed of 406ms which places them as the 4th fastest site we’ve tested.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Low Introductory Pricing ($2.75/mo)
We’ll look into Bluehost’s full pricing and plans in just a moment.
However, if you were to go check out the starting prices, you’ll notice the lowest advertised price is $3.95/month. That’s a pretty good deal considering they’ve supposedly reduced it already from $7.99/month originally.
For that price, you get pretty much everything you need for a single website. That includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more.
So you’d be getting a pretty good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.
The good news is that we’ve been able to work out a deal with Bluehost for our readers that takes the starting price down even further to $2.75/month.
This is the lowest rate We’ve seen anywhere online (and trust me, our team spends way too much time online as it is). So it’s a great deal if you’re in the market for a new affordable host.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Excellent Security Options
Even though Bluehost is one of the “cheaper” options on the market, we have been pleased to see that they don’t cut too many corners or skimp on critical features like security.
Bluehost provides a lot of good security options by default, including the free SSL certificate for each plan like we mentioned earlier.
All plans also include a domain privacy feature that will help keep the personal information you used to sign up for a domain private. This prevents hackers from finding and using these personal details for phishing schemes to trick you or others into handing over sensitive information.
SiteLock is included to help prevent malware attacks, which are unfortunately fairly common on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another form for protection, which also provides daily backups so you can roll back previous versions of a site if it does get hacked.
Postini, from Google, is the final security tool worth noting. It provides spam protection for your email so anything suspicious is prevented from getting in your inbox.
Altogether, this is a pretty decent security package to keep your site safe and sound.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Integrations, Apps, and eCommerce Features
Beyond the included security features, Bluehost also provides access to a huge number of different apps and integrations so you can use the most popular services on the web.
For example, they have a domain manager if you’d rather just purchase and manage multiple domains through them. You can set daily, weekly, or monthly backups just in case.
You can install WordPress with a single click (more on that in the next section below). You can also install other popular content management systems (CMS) like Drupal, Joomla, run an e-commerce shop, and more.
Plus, Bluehost will even include access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). These host your images and large files, taking that work off your servers, to deliver them faster to users around the world and keep your site quick at the same time.
Cons of Using Bluehost
Bluehost performs pretty well across the board. There are two big areas, however, where the costs get a little steep. Let’s dive deeper into each one.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Site Migrations Not Free
Most web hosts we’ve reviewed will move your existing website over to their service for free. They see it as a friendly service that helps make new customers happy, so they’ll wave any fees.
Unfortunately, Bluehost doesn’t do free migrations.
They have a one-time fee of $149.99 that includes the migration of up to five websites, 20 email accounts, and any other database files for these sites.
They claim it’ll be quick and seamless, so you won’t experience any delays or downtime.
However, the fact that you have to pay for it, and pay so much, is a big “Con” to consider.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Bluehost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Bluehost’s Basic plan will cost you $3.95/mo (or $2.75 with our discount).
The Plus plan increases to $5.95/mo — the same price as the Choice Plus option for unlimited websites, SSD storage, and bandwidth. They also allow you to manage unlimited domains, parked domains, and subdomain on these plans, too.
The Pro plan starts at $13.95/month with all of these features and high performance from their servers.
In addition, Bluehost has all major web hosting types, including VPS, cloud, and dedicated data centers.
- Free domain? Yes for 1st year, then renews at $15.99.
- Ease of Sign-up: Easy two-page sign-up process.
- Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
- Upsells: Some Upsells. Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence in the web hosting industry and happens with a lot of different big-name hosting companies.
- Account Activation: Most users enjoy instant activation. If the information is inaccurate or there’s suspicion of fraud, activation might get delayed.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Simple and easy-to-use control panel.
- Installation of Apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.
Do we recommend Bluehost?
Yes
Bluehost has ranked at or near the top for both uptime and loading times for more than a year.
In addition, they offer strong security support, a money-back guarantee, and plenty of user-friendly apps, all for one of the lowest rates in the industry ($2.75/month).
They’re not perfect, though. Renewal rates will increase after the introductory pricing ends. Also they charge extra for site migrations, which other hosts throw in for free.
But overall, Bluehost delivers strong performance and good value.
#1 out of 32 in OVERALL
Bluehost Pros:
- Best uptime (99.99%)
- Fast, 406ms load time as average
- Good & quick customer support
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- 1-Click installs for website builders
- Cheap introductory cost
Bluehost cons:
- Website transfers are not free
Best Uptime
Free Domain For 1 Year
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Thanks for your support.