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Ever wondered whether BlueHost lives up to the hype? Are you still looking for the right web hosting platform that caters to all your needs? Well, in this BlueHost Review article we will cover the pros, cons, features, and pricing of Bluehost and overall just decide whether Bluehost is the best bang for your buck.
Let’s hop right into the article and discover why BlueHost is one of the biggest web hosting providers in the world.
Table of Contents
What is Bluehost?
Bluehost was founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah with the simple mission in mind to empower people to fully harness the web. Since then they have grown drastically to over two million websites worldwide with over 750 + employees!
History of BlueHost
Before we dive headfirst into Bluehost let’s give you a little History of Bluehost.
As you may know in December 2003 Bluehost was born. Fast forward to August 2007 they reached over 500,000 domains registered on Bluehost.com.
In June 2008 they reached one million registered domains! In November 2010 Bluehost was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG).
In April 2013, there was the launch of VPS and Dedicated hosting solutions. In October 2013 the Endurance International Group takes the hosting platform public.
In May 2014 they became an optimized hosting solution for WordPress. In July 2015 Cloudsites were released.
On the downside in 2017, the Endurance International Group laid off over 400 people in order to create a better customer service.
Today Bluehost is a leading web hosting solutions company providing effective and efficient tools to millions of users throughout the world in an effort to become the number one web solution provider.
Now you have a short backstory on Bluehost, let’s hop straight into this Bluehost Review!
What are Bluehost’s best features?
So what really makes Bluehost different from other hosting platforms? There are tons of tools and features that Bluehost offers that makes it one of the beasts in the marketplace. Here are the main and best features of BlueHost.
Bluehost is optimized for WordPress
Since 2005 Bluehost partnered with WordPress to produce a platform that powers WordPress like no other platform. Over the years, Bluehost has recruited professionals that are specifically trained in WordPress in order to provide not only amazing Customer support but full-time WordPress CORE development.
This makes the platform perfect for beginners especially given that they have a “Getting Started” series and blog that walks you step by step in building the perfect WordPress website.
Bluehost’s Open Source Platform
Bluehost has an in-house development team that is experienced in optimizing over 80 open source projects including Drupal, Joomla, and phpBB. Needless to say, Bluehost is the world’s leading hosting solution for the carrying out of open source hosting. With Bluehost’s open source you get :
- Full Scalability
- Advanced Features
- 30-day Money Back Guarantee
Other amazing features include:
- Unmetered bandwidth with every account
- Up to $200 in marketing services, tools, and paid ad credits
- 24/7 support, 365 days a year
- 100+ emails with the starter plan, the Plus, and Business Pro offers unlimited emails
- Free SSL certificate
- 99.99% uptime
- Advanced, easy to use and customizable cPanel
What Are The Plans Offered By Bluehost?
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans that are built in order to provide a powerful, flexible and security advanced hosting solution. Bluehost offers four main plans, these are the Shared Plan, VPS, Dedicated and WordPress hosting. These plans are perfect regardless of whether or not you’re running a blog or e-commerce store.
Shared Hosting
Ahhh, the most popular web hosting solution. If you’re now beginning and looking to build out an efficient and effective website then this shared service is the perfect one for you.
Bluehost offers four different plans in the Shared Hosting package. These are Basic, Plus, Choice Plus (recommended by Bluehost) and Pro.
All these plans include a domain manager, which makes it even easier to organize and keep track of all your domains. They also come with resource protection, scalability, SSL Certificates, and Marketing Credits.
As it relates to pricing:
The Basic Plan begins at $3.95 per month.
The Plus Plan begins at $5.95 per month.
The Choice Plus Plan begins at 5.95 per month
The Pro Plan begins at $13.95 per month
The main difference between these plans comes down to the number of websites, the SSD Storage, the performance, the number of domains, parked domains, and subdomains.
In the Basic Plan you only get 1 website, 50 GB of SSD Storage, unmetered bandwidth, Free SSL Certificate, 1 domain, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains.
However, in the Plus, Choice Plus and Pro plan you get unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, Unlimited Domains, Unlimited Parked Domains, Unlimited Sub Domains, Spam Experts, Site Back-Up, Domain Privacy + Protection and 1 Office 365 Mailbox!
Now, do you see why Bluehost recommends the Choice Plus? You get all the benefits that come with the Basic and Plus plan but for just a $2/mo more.
VPS Hosting
Bluehost’s virtual private servers are all built purely using SSD storage. This ensures that you have increased power, flexibility and ultimate control over all of your websites.
With VPS Hosting you can expect a free domain for the first year, 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 Support. You can also expect additional features such as multi-server management, access control, and file management.
They also offer optional features that can enhance your account such as
- Additional Resources – These include adding storage to your dedicated server without requiring any delay
- Domain Privacy + Protection – Helps in preventing identity theft and spam
- SiteLock – Protects your websites against attacks and malware.
Bluehost offers 3 different plans in the VPS package. These are the Standard, Enhanced (recommended by Bluehost) and Ultimate plans.
As it relates to pricing:
The Standard plan starts at $19.99 per month.
The Enhanced plan starts at $29.99 per month.
The Ultimate plan starts at $59.99 per month.
The plans differ in terms of the Cores offered, the number of GB in SSD storage, the number of GB in Ram, the number of TB in bandwidth and the number of IP Addresses.
Dedicated Hosting
Bluehost’s Dedicated Hosting is built for websites that need increased security, optimal performance, and amazing control.
With Dedicated Hosting, you can expect a free domain for the first year, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a Free SSL Certificate. You can also expect additional features such as unmanaged access through the operating system, improved cPanel, and multi-server management.
Bluehost also offers optional features such as Domain Privacy + Protection, SiteLock, and Spam Protection.
Bluehost offers three different plans in the Dedicated Hosting Package, these are the Standard plan, the Enhanced plan, and the Premium plan.
As it relates to pricing:
The Standard Plan starts at $79.99 per month.
The Enhanced Plan starts at $99.99 per month.
The Premium Plan starts at $119.99 per month.
The plans differ in terms of the number of cores, the number of giga-bytes in Mirrored storage, the number of gigabytes of RAM, the number of Terabytes in Bandwidth and the number of IP addresses.
WordPress Hosting
It’s only right that Bluehost offers an amazing solution that is completely optimized for WordPress given that they have been a WordPress partner since 2005. This makes every integration, plugin, and theme seamless and exceptional.
BlueHost offers 3 different WordPress Hosting Plans, these are the Basic, Plus and Choice Plus plans.
All WordPress Hosting plans include automatic WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, Microsoft Office 365, a FREE domain name for one year, a secure configuration of Login Credentials and a WordPress Staging Environment.
Bluehost offers three WordPress hosting plans, these are the Basic, Plus and Choice Plus (recommended by Bluehost) plans.
As it relates to pricing:
The Basic Plan starts at $3.95 per month.
The Plus plan starts at $5.95 per month.
The Choice Plus Plan starts at $5.95 per month.
These packages differ as it relates to the number of websites, the number of SSD storage, the number of parked domains, the number of subdomains and whether or not you get access to 1 Office 365 Mailbox.
WP Pro (WordPress Pro)
The newest additional to Bluehost would be WordPress Pro, this hosting solution makes it easier to build and grow a WordPress website. They did this by introducing amazing features such as
- All-in-one marketing center and dashboard – this dashboard gives you the opportunity to control and review your SEO, traffic sources and social media from one easy-to-use platform.
- SEO, email marketing and social media tools
- Optimized performance for insanely fast site speeds.
Bluehost offers three plans in the WP Pro package, despite them being more expensive than WordPress hosting they offer solutions and features that are a great bang for your buck. These plans are the Build, Grow (recommended by Bluehost) and Scale plans.
All plans come with unlimited websites, unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, unlimited Web Storage, a staging environment and no traffic limits.
As it relates to pricing:
The Build Plan starts at $19.95 per month.
The Grow Plan starts at $29.95 per month.
The Scale Plan starts at $49.95 per month.
Regardless of whether you’re an amateur at WordPress or a seasoned professional, WP Pro is the right plan for you.
Pros and Cons of Bluehost
Like every other hosting platform out there, Bluehost is not all sunshine and rainbows, we have outlined the top pros and cons of having Bluehost as your hosting platform.
Pros:
- Excellent Security Features
- WordPress Optimized
- Easy-to-use control Panel
- Cloudflare integration
- The majority of plans come with unlimited disk storage, email addresses, and bandwidth.
- 99.99% uptime
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons:
- You are charged a fee for site migration.
- Customer support has received a number of complaints.
- WordPress plans are quite costly
Is Blue Host worth it?
The short answer is Yes. Regardless of whether you own a huge enterprise or you’re now beginning your blog journey Bluehost offers a wide range of packages that cater to each of these needs.
They offer tons of cool amazing features that solidify why it’s a leader in the marketplace.
Despite having to pay for migration when switching from your current hosting provider to another one Bluehost still makes up for it with great web solutions and extensive tools.
That’s a wrap on our Bluehost Review!
If you’re still looking for a hosting provider and you’re still unsure whether Bluehost is the right platform for you, check out our article “The Best Web Hosting platforms in 2020” and give it a read.
