Bluehost – Everything You Want To Know
Bluehost | Technology is growing so fast. The digital age offers us a sophisticated lifestyle. If you are in the online world ecosystem, then you might have heard a word named “Bluehost”. If not its ok. To say simply, Bluehost is a hosting service provider.
But it is the simplest description one can provide. But why to stick with just definition only? The word is talking about this hosting service provider. There are hundreds of hosting service provider out there. Why people are talking about this? So there must be some specialty there.
You may have the curiosity to know, everything about Bluehost. I honor your curiosity and that’s why I have collected and bundled the information regarding Bluehost. This is going to be a long discussion on Bluehost. So without wasting a single second, let’s take a deep dive into it.
About Bluehost?
Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton in 2003. This simply means Bluehost has been providing web hosting solutions for over a decade.
Now Bluehost hosts more than 2 million websites and growing. So Bluehost is the most Famous hosting service provider providing a wide range of services. Bluehost is among the three company who is an official recommendation of WordPress organization.
Bluehost is owned by Endurance International Group. This parent company of Bluehost provides tools for web design, hosting and marketing to over 5 million small and medium businesses all over the world. Some other popular partners of the Endurance International Group are HostGator, Domain[dot]com, and BigRock and Constant Contact.
Bluehost Services
Bluehost provides a wide range of services. Let’s know them in details.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the best way to get started for beginners. You can make your presence online by spending a couple of dollars per month. They provide three plans for shared hosting.
Basic: You can host 1 website, 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL, 5 parked domains, 25 subdomains, 5 email accounts, email storage – 100 MB per accounts. It costs $2.95 per month.
Plus: You can host unlimited websites, free SSL, unmetered SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited email storage, and some marketing offers. It costs $5.95 per month.
Choice Plus: This is a top-tier shared package and recommended by Bluehost itself. You can host unlimited websites, unmetered SSD storage, free SSL, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited subdomains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited email storage code guard and some marketing offers. It also costs $5.95 per month.
Go Pro: If you want more then you can head to the Pro package. You will get everything same as Choice Plus package plus a dedicated IP address, an SSL certificate, domain privacy, and code guard basic. It costs $13.95 per month.
To manage your website and hosting, Bluehost offers a user-friendly cPanel. If you ever need more resources, you can upgrade to the virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated hosting package matter of just one click in your control panel.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
Virtual Private Server hosting is the next level of shared hosting. Your website will be hosted on the same server with others. But it will be in fully isolated environments with no sharing of resources between sites whatsoever.
Bluehost can ready your VPS server instantaneously. You don’t have to wait long to get a VPS plan.
Bluehost offers three verities of VPS plans.
Standard: 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD storage, 1 domain, 1 IP address, and unlimited bandwidth. It costs $19.99 per month.
Enhanced: 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD storage, 1 domain, 2 IP address, and unlimited bandwidth. It costs $29.99 per month.
Ultimate: 4 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD storage, 1 domain, 2 IP addresses, and unlimited bandwidth. It costs $59.99 per month.
Among the three plans, Bluehost recommends the Enhanced plan. With each VPS plan, they provide 30-day money back guarantee.
The next hosting service is dedicated hosting. Let’s discuss that one also.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is often considered as the medium or large business hosting. Bluehost care about that and provide performing server, security, and control.
Bluehost provides three dedicated hosting plans.
Standard: It includes 4 cores/8 threads, 4 GB RAM, 5 TB bandwidth, 500 GB of mirrored storage, 1 domain, and 3 IP addresses. It costs $79.99 per month.
Enhanced: It includes 4 cores/8 threads, 8 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, 1 TB of mirrored storage, 1 domain, and 4 IP addresses. It costs $99.99 per month.
Premium: It includes 4 cores/8 threads, 16 GB RAM, 15 TB bandwidth, 1 TB of mirrored storage, 1 domain, 5 IP addresses. It costs $119.99 per month.
All dedicated hosting plans of Bluehost come with a 30-day money back guarantee and free SSL certificate.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress is a widely used content management service which powers 32% of the web. As it is a beginner friendly platform to create and manage a website or blog, Bluehost has something special for WordPress.
Bluehost provides various hosting services dedicated to WordPress based sites.
Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared WordPress hosting comes with three plans.
Basic: 1 website, 50 GB SSD storage, free SSL certificate, free domain for 1 year, 5 parked domains, 25 subdomains, $50 marketing credit. It costs $3.95 per month.
Plus: Unlimited website, unmetered SSD storage, free SSL certificate, free domain for 1 year, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, $100 marketing credit. It costs $5.95 per month.
Choice Plus: 1 website, 50 GB SSD storage, free SSL certificate, free domain for 1 year, 5 parked domains, 25 subdomains, $50 marketing credit, and code guard basic backup. It costs $5.95 per month.
All the WordPress hosting plans include automatic WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, WordPress staging environment etc. But Bluehost recommends the Choice Plus plan.
Managed WordPress Hosting (WP Pro)
Bluehost has introduced a new WP Pro hosting plans. It has three plans.
Build Jetpack site analytics (basic), marketing center, 100 free premium themes, daily scheduled backups, malware detection and Removal, domain privacy protection. It costs $19.95 per month.
Grow: It includes everything in Build plan plus Jetpack premium included, business review tools, Bluehost SEO tools, Jetpack Ads integration, 10GB video compression, WordPress live ticket support. It costs $29.95 per month.
Scale: It includes everything in Grow plan plus Jetpack Pro included, PayPal integration, unlimited backups and restores, unlimited video compression, elastic search, WordPress live chat support. It costs $49.95 per month.
Bluehost recommends the Grow plan. All the plans include, unlimited websites, unlimited web storage, unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, spam protection, WordPress auto update etc.
WooCommerce Hosting
WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin that allows you to build an online store. Bluehost has separated this type of hosting and make some dedicated packs for this type sites to host.
They provide three plans for WooCommerce hosting.
Starter: 1 online store, 100 GB SSD storage, free SSL, storefront theme installed, domain privacy, $50 marketing Credit, free setup call. It costs $6.95 per month.
Plus: Unlimited online stores, unmetered SSD storage, free SSL, storefront theme installed, domain privacy, $100 marketing credit, free setup call, CodeGuard backup basic. It costs $8.95 per month.
Pro: Unlimited online stores, unmetered SSD storage, free SSL, storefront theme installed, domain privacy, $200 marketing credit, free setup call, CodeGuard backup basic, Bluehost SEO tools start. It costs $12.95 per month.
Bluehost recommends the Plus plan. All plans include 1 free domain, dedicated IP address, WooCommerce auto install, PPC ad credits etc.
If you are a beginner to WordPress platform, then Bluehost has a number of resources to help you. This will make your WordPress setup easy. For example, if you don’t have any idea on how to install WordPress, WordPress has some resources to help you. You can view a video tutorial or read the step-by-step guide. They have a number of tutorials on YouTube.
Scroll to the bottom of the Bluehost website you will find the link to their WordPress Guide. Or visit this link that shows you the page. All of these resources are absolutely free.
Domain Service
Bluehost also provides domain name registration service. You can choose an appropriate domain name (if available) as your wish. You can choose a domain extension among various available options.
The .com domain registration costs $11.99 per month. You can add separate privacy protection for $11.88 per month.
Bluehost’s Marketing Services
Most of the people know Bluehost for its affordable and best level hosting. But Bluehost also provides Marketing Services as well. They provide pro-level website making and its marketing service. An experienced blogger or medium business owner looking to get the next level can go with this.
Their marketing service includes:
- Customs website or blog making
- Setup your blog
- Content creation and its marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Professional branding
- Custom consultations on a monthly basis
Pros and Cons of Bluehost
The world is talking about the Bluehost for its pro-level services. So let’s see what are the pros as well as some cons. The whole discussion is based on hundreds of Bluehost reviews.
Pros
Let’s see the pros of Bluehost first.
- Strong Uptime
As we know uptime is very important in the online world. The more is the downtime, the organization will lose more. So Bluehost really cares about this.
In the last 10 month, they have 99.99% average uptime. It is more than the industry standard, 99.94%.
Bluehost agree that they have a serious downtime in August 2017. The company claims that they have faced various DDoS attacks.
Here is a tabular representation of their uptime over the past months.
| Month | Avg Uptime In % |
|---|---|
| December 2017 | 100% |
| January 2018 | 99.99% |
| February 2018 | 100% |
| March 2018 | 100% |
| April 2018 | 100% |
| May 2018 | 99.99% |
| June 2018 | 100% |
| July 2018 | 100% |
| August 2018 | 100% |
| September 2018 | 100% |
- Fast page loading speed
Bluehost’s page loading is very impressive. It was not good before but they have worked hard on this area and improve much more.
Website owners want faster page load because it is good for SEO point of view. Google has recently added page loading speed as a ranking factor. No one likes slow page loading speed.
Now Bluehost has 424 ms page loading speed.
Here is a tabular representation of page loading speed in the last 10 month.
| Month | Avg Load Time In ms |
|---|---|
| December 2017 | 399 |
| January 2018 | 415 |
| February 2018 | 463 |
| March 2018 | 429 |
| April 2018 | 409 |
| May 2018 | 406 |
| June 2018 | 467 |
| July 2018 | 418 |
| August 2018 | 414 |
| September 2018 | 421 |
- ‘Official’ WordPress.org recommended a host
We already know that WordPress is the most famous and world’s largest CMS platform. When they recommend a hosting provider, then we have to agree that there is something special in it.
The official site of WordPress (WordPress.org) has listed 3 hosting providers that contain Bluehost, SiteGround, Dreamhost.
- Low pricing plans
Bluehost is commonly known for its low price hosting plans. Although this provider is not the cheapest among all, the best performing server and improved load speed make them an excellent option. Many plans also include a free domain.
The shared hosting Basic plan starts from $2.75 per month. It can be the best choice for beginner level bloggers or business owners.
- Easy to use cPanel
Bluehost provides the beginner friendly and easy to use cPanel. It is the simplest cPanel I have ever seen.
You can manage your website and other services in a single place. They are just a click away. You can customize the interface of the cPanel according to your need.
- A wide range of Add-on Integrations
Bluehost provides application rich dashboard that allows you to integrate a wide range of applications and services.
You have the options to integrate a Google Apps on your website directly from your cPanel. I also provide one-click installation of many CMS like WordPress and Joomla.
To improve your security and better management of your content, you can use CloudFlare CDN which is already available in your cPanel. You just have to setup it and you are good to go.
It provides a healthy ecosystem to the eCommerce websites. They have several in-build options dedicated to an eCommerce website.
- Many security options
Security is a major factor when it comes to the online world. The number of victims of online data breaches is increasing day by day. So Bluehost is aware of that and providing many security features.
Bluehost provides a wide range of tools to prevent some of the most common attacks and risks.
To prevent spam it provides tools like Spam Experts, SpamAssassin, and Spam Hammer. CloudFlare can prevent you from the DDoS attacks that bring a huge amount of fake traffic from spam sources.
They also offer hotlink protection feature which restricts people from stealing your images and content. IP address blacklists feature is there to block a particular IP address.
In addition to the basic security feature, they also provide some advanced level as well. Bluehost by default provides some security layers. You can enable the two-factor authentication feature in your Bluehost account.
These security features will help you in the coming days and you will be pre-prepared for security breaches.
- Customer support
Their customer support is incredible. They have an around the clock 24/7/365 world-class support team.
They have a dedicated technical support team ready to solve your problem ASAP. But some people raised a complaint against their support team saying they may have more knowledgeable. You can contact the support team via email, phone call or live chat. They have also a number of bad reviews regarding customer support as well.
They have a YouTube channel contains hundreds of tutorial videos that can guide you to perform some tasks. They also have a vast knowledge base containing articles, how-tos, guides, instructions, and answers.
- 30-day money back guarantee
Bluehost knows the value of your hard-earned money. That’s why they offer a 30-day money back guarantee in each plan.
It is not the most amount of time as compared to the other host providers, like Dreamhost who provides a 97-day money back guarantee. But the fact is this much of time is not required at all. I think 30 day time is more than enough to decide a host.
Hold on, there are some terms and conditions in this money back guarantee. Read the terms before purchasing any plan.
Cons
Like most of the things in the world, there are also some cons as well.
- No Windows hosting
One of the biggest drawbacks of Bluehost service is, they don’t provide Windows hosting. All the servers of the company are Linux based. Although Linux servers support most of the software, there is also something beyond.
If your website or application have Windows-specific feature, then Bluehost is not for you.
- Confusing plans details
In the plans, Bluehost doesn’t provide the exact resource information you are going to get. In all the case they use the two famous word in hosting space i.e “Unlimited” and “Unmetered”.
In reality, the unlimited have a have a serious limitation. One may accidentally cross the limit in the name of unlimited and may lead to the account termination.
- Site migration is not free
Most other hosting providers provide free site migration service. But Bluehost has no mercy in this case.
They charge a $150 ‘migration fee’ to do the complete process. Another headache is they will not transfer more than 5 websites and 20 email accounts. It seems like Bluehost don’t want to allow you to migrate your site to any other host.
Most of the hosting providers are happy to provide you the site migration for free because you are with them from a long time.
Conclusion
Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting providers out there. It is cheap and WordPress friendly host. So it houses 2 million websites worldwide.
We have analyzed hundreds of Bluehost reviews and listed the pros and cons of this hosting service provider. In addition to the main service, it also provide some additional services like website design and digital marketing services. Company’s extensive knowledge base and the YouTube videos will help you to grab some extra knowledge.
As it is officially recommended by the WordPress organization, many people give this host as the number one priority. The picture is clear after seeing the services and all other things regarding Bluehost.
