If only one web host had the bragging rights for being the best WordPress host on the market, it’d be BlueHost. Whether you are a webmaster or are looking to migrate your existing website to a new provider, you have definitely heard of BlueHost.
Many of the websites I have managed including my personal ones have been hosted on BlueHost and I will share my personal thoughts on my experience with them.
In the rest of this BlueHost review, we’ll go in-depth into the core features you get with the host’s plans, how affordable their packages are, how easy it is to use their platform for your website’s management, how responsive their support is – all the good stuff!
So if you are considering BlueHost, this is the only guide you’ll need.
BlueHost Review – The Host’s History
BlueHost is just a little over 2 decades old and was found in 2003. Since then, the company has grown into an empire currently powering over 2 million domains around the globe. BlueHost has impressive accolades to their name – they are the longest running number 1 WordPress.org recommended host. Their hosting plans are WordPress-heavy with everything you need to create, manage, and promote your website.
The host provides a variety of hosting packages – shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. BlueHost also provides emails, a domain registration engine, and marketing tools and services that you can pay for as addons. On every hosting package you go for on BlueHost, you get a free SSL, free domain name registration, access to live chat with their agents, free CDN and free WP themes. Aside from their most basic shared plan, you also get Malware Scanning and daily backups to powerful SSD drives.
BlueHost caches customer websites across a network of servers in 6 locations around the world. Nearly 13,000 people have reviewed BlueHost on TrustPilot and they score a pretty impressive 4.1.
BlueHost Pros and Cons
- BlueHost is recommended directly by WordPress
- They provide hosting plans for every website need
- Their plans are pretty affordable
- Website essentials are provided for free
- They have vast complementary services
- BlueHost is incredibly easy to use for beginners
- Excellent uptime
- Their servers get slow sometimes
- Not privately owned
- Many out-of-the-box addons are only free for the first year
BlueHost Rating – How I Score The Host
We’ve discussed BlueHost’s rating on TrustPilot. However, what’s my personal take? Considering the host’s prices, features, real-life performance, user friendliness, customer support convenience, how will I rate each core consideration on a scale of 1-5. It makes sense to actually take a dive into some of the host’s core features and see how well they score.
And if you think about it, given that there are thousands of hosting providers on the market, having a ‘standardized’ rating of each host enables you to compare different providers fairly.
So if you want a simple outline out all that BlueHost has to offer and how I’ll score them, let’s take a look. Note that these scores are based on my personal opinion and experience with the host and may change as the host improves on their offerings:
| Quality | My rating | Why I gave this score |
| Features and specs | 5.0 | Virtually every kind of hosting, free SSL, domain, email, CDN & WP themes, and third-party marketing tools built-in make BlueHost an absolute beast. |
| Pricing | 4.8 | With BlueHost’s shared plans starting at $2.95/month, the host is really affordable. However, I’d give them a 4.8 because, after the first year, the subscription prices quadruple. |
| Performance stats | 4.7 | BlueHost is known for their 100% uptime guarantee. With each of their plans providing SSD storage, you are also guaranteed high-speed website data delivery. However, after several speeds, the average server response time was around 400 ms which is great but not the fastest. |
| Ease of use | 4.9 | BlueHost uses the modern cPanel for your website’s backend and a visually appealing design on the frontend that’s also incredibly intuitive for even hosting newbies. However, many hosts also now offer custom control panels that are even easier to use than cPanel. |
| Customer support guarantee | 5.0 | BlueHost offers an excellent customer support guarantee – you can reach their agents via phone and live chat, and you can learn how to use their products as well as other WordPress specific answers on their Academy page, knowledgebase, and blog. |
BlueHost Hosting Plans & Pricing – 2024
BlueHost offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and cloud hosting for WordPress. For every plan you subscribe to, you are protected by a 30-day money back guarantee to give you enough time to decide if it meets your need
And when you decide to commit to a particular plan, BlueHost accepts payment via card – Visa, Mastercard, DISCOVER, American Express – and Paypal.
BlueHost’s shared hosting plans
BASIC
Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 1 website
Features – Free CDN, SSL, domain, and email, custom WP themes
Price – $2.95/month
CHOICE PLUS
Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 3 websites
Features – Everything in BASIC plus daily backups, domain privacy, malware scans
Price – $5.45/month
ONLINE STORE
Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 3 websites
Features – CHOICE PLUS plus eCommerce specific features
Price – $9.95/month
CLOUD
Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 50 websites
Features – Unmetered bandwidth, priority support, WAF, caching, DDoS protection
Price – $29.99/month
BlueHost recommends their CHOICE PLUS shared hosting plan for new customers. You can host 3 websites with 40 GB of SSD storage, charged at $5.45/month for the first year.
Who this is for:
BlueHost’s shared hosting plans are best suited for new websites that are not yet pulling in a lot of traffic. New websites or websites that are only meant to serve content to a few target personas fit this bill nicely – think portfolio websites, parked pages, landing pages, etc. However, BlueHost actually integrates a cloud plan CLOUD to allow upgrade seamlessly should your resource demand increase.
BlueHost’s VPS hosting plans
STANDARD
Memory – 2GB RAM
Number of CPUs – 2 core CPU
Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth
Price – $31.99/month
ENHANCED
Memory – 4GB RAM
Number of CPUs – 2 core CPU
Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth
Price – $41.99/month
ULTIMATE
Memory – 8GB RAM
Number of CPUs – 4 core CPU
Bandwidth – Unmetered bandwidth
Price – $71.99/month
As usual, BlueHost recommends their intermediate ENHANCED VPS hosting plan to webmasters. For just $10/month extra on their STANDARD plan, you get double the RAM and 45 GB of extra storage.
Who needs BlueHost’s VPS hosting?
BlueHost’s VPS plans are excellent for you if your website is growing and you are maxing out your shared resources. VPS hosting gives you more resources and also gives you a dedicated virtual engine, even though you are still sharing the same physical server with other websites. VPS hosting plans are great for blog websites, growing eCommerce stores, and websites that handle sensitive user data.
BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans
CLOUD 1
Number of websites – 1 website
Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage
Computing power – 2vCPU computing power
Price – $29.99/month
CLOUD 10
Number of websites – 10 websites
Storage space – 125 GB SSD storage
Computing power – 20vCPU computing power
Price – $49.99/month
CLOUD 25
Number of websites – 25 websites
Storage space – 175 GB SSD storage
Computing power – 75vCPU computing power
Price – $89.99/month
CLOUD 50
Number of websites – 50 websites
Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage
Computing power – 150vCPU computing power
Price – $109.99/month
Who needs BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans?
Fun fact: BlueHost just launched their cloud hosting plans!
BlueHost’s cloud hosting plans cater to websites that experience sudden spikes in traffic and need resources on demand. Like the idea of paying for only the resources you use? Then these plans are for you. Ecommerce websites selling seasonal products and web apps find cloud hosting plans invaluable.
BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans
STANDARD
Cores/thread – 4 cores/8 threads
Memory – 8GB RAM
Storage – 1 Terabyte HDD storage
Price – $91.98/month
ENHANCED
Cores/thread – 8 cores/16 threads
Memory – 16 GB RAM
Storage – 2 Terabyte HDD storage
Price – $121.88/month
PREMIUM
Cores/thread – 8 cores/ 16 threads
Memory – 30 GB RAM
Storage – 2 Terabyte HDD storage
Price – $141.99/month
BlueHost recommends their intermediate ENHANCED dedicated hosting plan. A dedicated server with 16 GB of RAM, 2 Terabytes of storage, and unmetered bandwidth, for $121.88/month.
Who is BlueHost’s dedicated hosting for?
BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans give you a whole server to yourself. All of the server’s resources – storage, bandwidth, storage, memory – are yours. BlueHost’s dedicated hosting plans make the most sense if your website receives tons of traffic and you need the most security – your website doesn’t share these resources with any other website.
You can choose a managed dedicated hosting plan or if you have an IT team that can manage your dedicated servers, you can request complete control over your website’s servers.
BlueHost’s WordPress hosting plans
BASIC
Storage space – 10 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 1 website
Features – Free CDN, SSL, domain, and email, custom WP themes
Price – $2.95/month
CHOICE PLUS
Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 3 websites
Features – Everything in BASIC plus daily backups, domain privacy, malware scans
Price – $5.45/month
ONLINE STORE
Storage space – 40 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 3 websites
Features – CHOICE PLUS plus eCommerce specific features
Price – $9.95/month
CLOUD
Storage space – 225 GB SSD storage
Number of websites – 50 websites
Features – Unmetered bandwidth, priority support, WAF, caching, DDoS protection
Price – $29.99/month
BlueHost’s WordPress plans exactly mirror their shared hosting plans albeit with WordPress-heavy features optimized to accelerate creating and managing your WordPress website. They recommend their CHOICE PLUS plan that accommodates 3 websites, gives you 40 GB of SSD storage, daily backups, and malware scanning.
Who is BlueHost’s WordPress hosting for?
Plan to build your website on WordPress or you currently have one? BlueHost’s plans offer affordable hosting with WordPress essentials for your website. You get custom WordPress themes, the BlueHost WONDERSUITE – an AI-powered website setup stack, WordPress pre-installed, WordPress-tailored support, and so much more!
BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans
ONLINE STORE
Storage – 40 GB SSD storage
Ecommerce features – Store website, analytics, Yoast SEO, YITH integration, daily backups for WordPress and Jetpack, online payments enablement
Price – $9.95/month
ONLINE STORE + MARKETPLACE
Storage – 100 GB storage
Ecommerce features – All in ONLINE STORE plus multi-channel selling through third-party platforms – Ebay, Amazon, eBay, etc.
Price – $12.95/month
BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans are billed annually or triannually.
Who needs BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans?
BlueHost’s WooCommerce hosting plans build upon their WordPress plans and give you eCommerce functionality. Plan to build an eCommerce store or migrate your store from another platform, then these plans are for you. You can choose the ONLINE STORE if you only plan to use your website as your point of sale. If you plan to harness other Ecommerce platforms, then the ONLINE STORE + MARKETPLACE is just the one for you.
BlueHost’s Features
Let’s take an overarching overview of the features that BlueHost offers across most of its plans:
- SSD storage
- Free domain, SSL, WP Themes, and professional email
- Free CDN
- Unmetered bandwidth
- BlueHost WonderSuite website builder
- 1-click WordPress acceleration and WordPress built-in
BlueHost offers most of the features typical of a leading provider, however, they stand out because they are first a WordPress host – their shared hosting plans are actually all WordPress plans.
BlueHost Performance Tests
To test BlueHost’s performance, we will perform real tests on websites hosted by the provider to determine their average server response speed, performance score, and uptime.
The quicker the server response is, the more quickly any website hosted on them will load whenever a user tries to visit that website. Pages that load under 2 seconds have a bounce rate of 9% but that figure shoots to 38% once the load time is more than 3 seconds.
So it’s incredibly important that you choose a host with very quick server response times as this contributes to your overall website load time. Another important factor to consider is the web host’s uptime or reliability.
The uptime simply measures the amount of time your web host’s servers are running – and in turn, your website is available online. The industry standard for uptime is 99.9%.
Here were the results of the tests I carried out on BlueHost:
To measure the web host’s server speeds, I considered the time to first byte (TTFB) and after several tests, the average TTFB was 490 ms. This is a decent score but other hosts like SiteGround have more impressive figures.
The overall performance of the website was 99% which is excellent.
To test BlueHost’s uptime, I used Uptime Robot to investigate the website’s availability over the past month:
BlueHost’s servers have a 100% uptime and their websites have been available for the same portion of the time.
BlueHost’s Customer Support
What support portals are available on BlueHost? And how easy would it be to reach an agent when you have inquiries to make or errors to troubleshoot? Let’s see.
BlueHost has a thriving support hub where you can get in touch with their agents 24/7 via:
Phone
BlueHost has phone lines for it sales department, customer support, and international phone lines for customers calling from abroad.
Live chat
I was quite impressed because for many hosts you need to be a paying customer first before you can reach out to their support agents. On BlueHost, you can chat with an agent live to make inquiries about their services or seek support.
I tested BlueHost’s live chat to see how quickly I would get the help I wanted. When you initiate the chat, you are first attended to by a chatbot that asks for what category the inquiry you want to make falls under:
Next, you are asked to provide your name and are redirected to speak with a human agent. In this test, the agent connected with me in less than 20 seconds which is impressive:
I asked a couple of questions and they seemed very knowledgeable in the technical details about BlueHost’s plans:
Overall, I was satisfied with their live chat support and you’d find it invaluable as a customer.
WordPress Academy
It’s only natural that WordPress’s number 1 host has an academy page dedicated to WordPress tutorials. BlueHost’s academy page has 14 lessons and you can take them for free even without creating an account with BlueHost. You only need to fill in your email address.
Knowledgebase
BlueHost’s search engine enabled knowledgebase contains resources and information on managing your account, email, their different packages, DNS, WordPress, domain names, and so much more.
BlueHost Blog
And finally, the BlueHost blog with informative articles on generic industry topics every website owner will find useful irrespective of your industry.
BlueHost’s Security Features
There are bad actors everywhere, more so online. BlueHost gives you a host of security features out-of-the-box to protect your brand and your website from cyberattacks and malware.
On even the most basic plans, you get a free SSL certificate to give your website the ‘HTTPS’ badge of trust. You also get a free CDN built-in to cache your website content across their network of servers and improve your website performance.
For their higher-tier shared hosting plans, your website is backed up daily to protect your data. BlueHost also gives you access to their built-in malware scanner and domain privacy free for the first year. Domain privacy protects your personal information from being shown publicly on the WHOIS database.
BlueHost’s premium hosting plans also give you DDoS protection and a web application firewall(WAF). You can also buy security software as addons to all your plans on BlueHost including CodeGuard Basic and SiteLock Essentials both billed at $2.99/month each.
BlueHost’s Website Builder – WonderSuite
BlueHost’s website builder, WonderSuite is powered by AI to simplify designing your website. WonderSuite encapsulates several AI-powered products including:
WonderStart
BlueHost’s WonderStart simplifies creating your website by asking you a number of specific questions right from the beginning, instead of having to fill them at each stage.
The AI powered tool then finds the right themes and fills in your details automatically.
WonderTheme
WonderTheme generates website samples based on the business niche, themes and font you choose in WonderStart so you know exactly what your website’s final look will be.
WonderBlocks
WonderBlocks is BlueHost’s drag-n-drop website design interface that allows you customize the themes and webpages in a few clicks. Fill in the content blocks with page essentials like a contact form and photo gallery.
WonderCart
WonderCart is BlueHost’s website design tool for eCommerce websites. With WonderCart, you can customize your eComm website pages and your checkout pages to drive more sales and conversions.
BlueHost’s User-Friendliness
BlueHost is known as one of the easiest web hosts to use, especially for new webmasters. Let’s take a look at how to create an account with the host, what its control panel looks like, and how to setup WordPress on BlueHost:
How to register an account on BlueHost
Like with any other host, to register an account with BlueHost, you simply buy one of their hosting plans:
Step 1
Navigate to one of their hosting plans and click on “Select”. You’ll be redirected to the domain page.
Step 2
On the domain setup page, you can put in your domain name if you have or specify a new one you’d like to register in BlueHost’s domain search engine on the left.
If you don’t want to setup a domain yet, you can just click on “I’ll create my domain later”
Step 3
On the checkout page, fill in your account creation details:
Next, your billing schedule from the dropdown – month, annually, or a 3-year plan:
Choose any additional services you want as addons, fill in your payment details, and click ‘Submit’. And that’s it!
Once your payment is confirmed, you will have your BlueHost account created.
BlueHost’s modern control panel
Managing your account and website backend on BlueHost is fairly easy and the host features a modern cPanel to help you do just that.
To access your CPanel, from your main dashboard, simply click on ‘Hosting’ and cPanel. You will then be redirected to the login page.
BlueHost’s cPanel allows you to set up new email accounts, organize your website files, access your DNS settings, manage your database, configure your security settings, and so much more.
How to install WordPress on BlueHost
BlueHost comes with WordPress built in and only requires a few clicks to install the software and assign it to your website.
Step 1
To install WordPress on BlueHost, from your dashboard, click on ‘Hosting’ and then ‘Add site’ to set up a new website on your account.
Step 2
Click on ‘Install WordPress’ and click ‘Continue’. You’ll then be directed to fill in your site title. However, you can also click ‘skip for now’ to move right on to the next step.
Step 3
Enter your domain name or use a temporary domain name and click ‘Continue’. WordPress will now begin to install.
Finally, click ‘Login to WordPress’.
BlueHost makes it incredibly easy to access your WordPress website. Once set up, you won’t need to login to your WordPress portal anymore but can directly access your website from your hosting dashboard.
What are some of BlueHost’s complementary services?
BlueHost offers some of the most comprehensive complementary services on the market. Some of them include:
- Website design services
- Digital marketing services
- Professional email setup
- Access to third-party suites like Google Workspace
- Premium WordPress services
BlueHost’s complementary services help consolidate all your website’s needs in one place. You can use one provider to purchase a domain name, get hosting, design your website, get professional email addresses, get marketing services, etc.
Conclusion: Do We Recommend BlueHost?
We put BlueHost through its paces to see if its packages are worth considering. BlueHost is easily one of the best hosting providers on the market – they not only provide hosting plans but a truckload of complementary services that simplify setting up and managing your website.
If you plan to create a website using WordPress, BlueHost is indeed the best host for you. When you check out their WordPress-specific features and WonderSuite website builder, you’ll see why they have retained the title of WordPress no. 1 recommended host.
My only criticism of BlueHost would be they can do better in terms of performance and server response time.
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Published on The Digital Insider at https://is.gd/ErwK88.
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