Bluehost Hosting Review
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosts out there. Also, it’s among one of the most affordable ones. In this Bluehost review. let’s take a look at their plans, quality of hosting and features offered in each plan.
Types of Hosting Offered by Bluehost
Since it’s inception back in the 1990s, Bluehost has made itself a big name in the web hosting industry, especially for WordPress.
Just browsing through their homepage, it becomes clear about how it has got so many users onboard. Firstly, they have a multitude of web hosting products, not just shared hosting.
Secondly, their prices are highly affordable. Plus, in most of their plans, you get a free domain for an entire year. This makes the initial cost of launching a website very low.
Now, let’s look at the types of hosting they offer. I will break it down into three categories:
- Entry-Level Hosting
This is the budget hosting solution from Bluehost. This plan is chosen mostly by users who are new to web hosting or who is just getting started with their new website.
Bluehost has two options under this:
- Shared web hosting
- Basic WordPress hosting
From my experience, both of them are exactly the same. It’s just that they market both of them a bit differently.
- Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is similar to the basic WordPress hosting but it has some extra WordPress-specific features which will take care of all the technical aspects of WordPress hosting.
Managed WordPress hosting also gives you more resources so that sites keep operating when there is heavy traffic.
Bluehost also has WooCommerce specific plans. They come with WooCommerce-specific elements pre-installed. So if you re looking for a WooCommerce-specific plan, then this may be the perfect plan for you.
- Professional Hosting
This is the most powerful solution offered by Bluehost. They are on the expensive side. Their two main offerings are:
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Servers
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. Basically, in this setup, everything is virtualized. So, you get access to your own dedicated resources. Other people can be on the same server as you BUT they won’t share resources with you.
Dedicated servers give you access to an entire server. No one shares that server with you. This is the most expensive and the most powerful hosting solution offered by Bluehost.
Pricing and Features
Bluehost has many different types of hosting plans available and each of them varies by features and resource allotment. In this review, I will take a look at their Basic Web Hosting as most people will go with this type of hosting as it’s the most budget friendly-solution.
As you can see from the picture above, all plans are similar but with some subtly differences.
Rest assured, all of these plans have similar resource allocation (barring the pro plan). So, selecting the pro plan will hardly make a difference in terms of performance (again, barring the pro plan). The differences are mainly in disk space and number of websites you are allowed to host. This is good news because say if you want to host more than one website, then you can get away with the plus plan (which costs only ₹299/mo).
ALSO READ – Hostinger WordPress Hosting Review
Ease of Use
Bluehost makes the signup process as smooth as possible. This is because they realize that whoever is choosing the entry-level plans, probably don’t have much experience with web hosting. Once you purchase a plan, you will be redirected to a new user profile page.
Bluehost will ask you how you want to build your website and how you want your installation of WordPress to be set up.
I went with the first option as most people will choose this option.
Next, you will get some suggestions in your dashboard:
On the left hand side, you can see some options. They are:
- Home – Shown above
- My Sites – It shows all of your sites
- Marketplace – For all the services that Bluehost offers
- Email and Office – Email integration via Office365 or Google Workspace
- Domains – For managing or buying domains
- Marketing Tools – For integrating with popular marketing tools like Google Ads, My Business etc.
- Advanced – For accessing your cPanel
Performance
We have concluded that Bluehost is cheap. But is it fast? There is always a trade-off somewhere – If something is cheap, then that product may not be good. A good product may not be cheap. For testing this, I tested Bluehost hosting with a WordPress installation with some dummy content and most commonly used plugins like WPForms, Jetpack etc. Below are the test results:
| LOCATION | LOADING TIME | TTFB | FIRST PAINT | INTERACTIVE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N. Virginia | 0.77 s | 288 ms | 0.81 s | 0.87 s |
| California | 0.91 s | 354 ms | 0.93 s | 0.99 s |
| Canada | 0.92 s | 385 ms | 1.09 s | 1.04 s |
| Frankfurt | 1.36 s | 576 ms | 1.40 s | 1.34 s |
| Paris | 1.24 s | 547 ms | 1.19 s | 1.19 s |
| Mumbai | 2.05 s | 849 ms | 1.62 s | 1.68 s |
| Sydney | 2.21 s | 911 ms | 1.74 s | 1.84 s |
Considering that Bluehost is a budget host, the results are impressive.
Customer Support
Bluehost offers 24/7 phone and life chat support. You can access their chat support from their contact page. Bluehost bot asks you a couple of questions and then connects you to an agent of the respective department. From my experience, an agent will connect to you within 5 mins. The agent was very helpful.
Verdict
Bluehost is a great solution for anyone looking for a budget host. It has all the basic features of a web host and performance is outstanding for it’s price. If you have any queries or suggestions, then please let me know in the comments down below.
ALSO READ – WPEngine Review
