Bluehost Review 2024 : What Makes It a Popular Hosting Provider?

Bluehost Review: Key Features

Who is This Chatbot Platform Designed For?

How Did I Stumble Across Bluehost?

I’ve been trying out various web hosting services over the years to find out which one suited my website  and online store the best.

When my website’s traffic started growing, the server started getting overburdened and the site was plagued with slow loading speeds, which gave a bad experience to my visitors.

I decided to look for a new web hosting provider that was not only reliable but could also support my massive traffic and load my website quickly.

But that was not all I needed…

It was also essential to ensure that the web host had minimal downtimes so that my website would remain up all the time.

Finally, the most important parameter was that my web hosting company should be compatible with WordPress hosting as my website is built on it.

That’s when I came across Bluehost, which ticked all the boxes for me.

I’ve used it for quite some time, and to help you decide if it’s the right web host for you, I’ve put together this Bluehost review.

Detailed Bluehost Review:

Are you looking for a reliable web hosting platform for your website?

The numerous web hosting services out there can make it difficult for you to figure out which one to sign up with.

Bluehost is one of the most prominent names that will pop up when you’re looking for web hosting services.

One of the oldest providers in the world, Bluehost started back in 1996 and has been recommended by WordPress since 2005.

But is it worth all the hype that it has generated?

Let’s find out.

1. Technical Tests

To test the reliability of Bluehost, I used a dummy website (https://loveinmemory.com/).

I ran a few tests to figure out the effectiveness of Bluehost’s web hosting for WordPress.

1. Speed Test

The loading speed of your website is extremely important from the user experience and SEO perspective.

In fact, the importance of page loading speed has increased so much that starting 2023, Core Web Vitals such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID) are going to become ranking parameters.

So, it’s essential to make sure that you choose a web hosting provider that delivers superior speeds.

And how did I test Bluehost?

I used Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Insights to test the loading speed of the website.

For Pingdom, I set the location to San Francisco.

Here are the results that I got from Pingdom.

Image via Pingdom

The fast loading speed in spite of the large size of the page is testimony to Bluehost’s speed.

Similarly, on Google PageSpeed Insights, the website gave a score of 62, which is fairly decent considering the size of the page.

Image via Google PageSpeed Insights

P.S. You can get Bluehost for just $3.95/month now.

2. Uptime

It’s critical to ensure that your website remains up most of the time. Downtimes can damage your user experience and you might lose out on some customers or visitors due to them.

The web hosting provider that you choose dictates your website downtime more than anything else.

So, it’s essential that you choose a web hosting service provider that can give you maximum uptime

Bluehost mentions that it delivers 99.99% uptime.

But does it live up to that figure?

To find out, I ran an uptime test on my dummy website to figure out if there was any downtime. For this, I used Uptrends

Image via Uptrends

As you can see from the image above, while the page loading speed might be slower in some countries, the website is available everywhere.

This confirms that Bluehost does deliver on the 99.99% uptime promise.

3. Server Response Time

The server response time is a critical element of your website’s speed.

If your server takes too long to respond, it’ll result in a long page loading time. This, in turn, can put off your website visitors.

In order to get a clear picture of how fast the Bluehost server responds, I used a tool called Bitcatcha.

This helps you find the server response time without loading any website data like the other page loading speed tools.

Image via Bitcatcha

As you can see, when it comes to the server response times, Bluehost delivers right on-point. The slowest server response time is just 4 ms, which makes it exceptionally good.

And that’s not all…

When you compare other web hosting platforms head-to-head, Bluehost delivers supreme performance too.

Image via Bitcatcha

2. User Experience

The thing I like the most about Bluehost is the user experience that it offers.

1. Dashboard

When you log in to your web hosting account, the intuitive dashboard makes it easy for you to find anything and everything that you need.

You can see your website and its thumbnail in the center of the page and can log in to WordPress directly from there.

This way, you don’t need to go through the process of going to your WordPress login page.

But wait, there’s more.

You can find all the important navigational links below that.

Be it the cPanel, File Manager, phpMyAdmin, or even Databases, you can do it all from there.

Additionally, you can also navigate to the “My Sites” page from where you can manage all your websites.

It’s also possible to create a new website, browse your themes and plugins, or access support from Bluehost's website builder.

2. Manage Website

You can also manage your website directly through Bluehost without having to go to WordPress. To do this, all you have to do is click on “My Sites” on the left sidebar. From the page that opens, select “Manage Site.”

When you do this, you’ll be taken to the website manager that will look like this:

There, you’ll be able to see how many plugins, users, updates, and themes are on your WordPress site.

You could then move to the Marketing Center through which you can run a Google Ads campaign directly from Bluehost.

By going to the “Users” section, you can seamlessly get information about all your website’s users, including the admins.

And there’s more…

On navigating to the “Backups” section, you can check all the backups of your website that have been done through CodeGuard that’s offered by WordPress.

This feature takes a backup of your website every day to ensure that you can restore it whenever you need to.

All you need to do is click on “Restore” and Bluehost will do the heavy lifting for you.

Want to control your website’s performance?

Bluehost makes it possible through the “Performance” dashboard.

With Bluehost, you can also leverage Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) without having to register for it separately.

On the “Performance” tab, you can choose between Bluehost’s server and Cloudflare CDN for your website. You can also control the caching settings based on the type of website that you have.

Bluehost also makes it easy for you to manage the security of your website. All you have to do for this is to navigate to “Security.”

There, you can manage all the security features of your website. These include SiteLock and SSL, among others.

You can also scan the core files of your WordPress installation to detect any file integrity issues you may have.

From the website manager, it’s also possible to manage all your plugins without having to log in to the WordPress dashboard.

You can turn the plugins on or off directly.

You can experience the convenience of Bluehost now for just $3.95/month.

And finally, Bluehost also gives you total customization power for your website directly in the website manager.

How can you unlock the power of this website builder?

All you have to do is go to “Settings.” There, you can turn on or off automatic updates to your WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

Additionally, you can place controls over your content and the comments on your website.

For example:

If you’re building out your website and need to show a “coming soon” page, you can set it up with the click of a button.

It’s also possible to delete your website files permanently.

3. Customer Service

One of the things that makes Bluehost one of the best web hosting providers out there is that they provide stellar customer service.

The customer service team is available round-the-clock and you can reach out to them through multiple channels as well.

Be it live chat or calls, they’re available 24/7 to help you resolve your questions.

But wait, it gets better…

This service is extended not only to the registered members but also to new customers who might still be considering buying hosting from Bluehost.

Be it website migration or even the simplest of issues, the customer support team helps you through it all.

3. Hosting Plans Overview

Bluehost provides WordPress, Shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting options. With all the plans, you get a free SSL certificate and domain for 1-year.

Let’s look at the major features offered by each.

WordPress Hosting

With every WordPress hosting plan, you get automatic WordPress install and updates.

Some of the features offered for each WordPress hosting plan are:

• Basic: This plan allows you to host a single website and gives you 50 GB of SSD storage. Along with this, you also get 25 subdomains, 5 parked domains, and $200 in marketing credit.
• Plus: You can create unlimited websites with this plan and get unlimited storage, parked domains, and subdomains with it.
• Choice Plus: Choice Plus provides all the features offered in the Plus plan and also gives you access to CodeGuard Basic.

WP Pro

WP Pro takes WordPress hosting to the next level. Here are the plans offered:

• Build: This plan includes free themes, daily backups, malware removal, domain privacy and protection, a marketing center, and Jetpack site analytics (Basic).
• Grow: With the Grow plan, you get business review tools, Jetpack ads integration, Bluehost SEO tools, 10 GB video compression, Jetpack Premium, and Blue Sky ticket support.
• Scale: Elastic search, PayPal integration, Blue Sky chat support, unlimited video compression, and backups are some of its best features. You also get Jetpack Pro with it.

Ecommerce Hosting

Using ecommerce hosting, you can run your online stores with ease. Here are the plans that are offered:

• Starter: With this plan, you get one online store, 100 GB of SSD storage, an installed storefront theme, domain privacy and protection, and a free setup call.
• Plus: You can host unlimited online stores and get unmetered storage too. Along with other features from the Starter plan, you also get CodeGuard Basic.
• Pro: Along with all the features offered with the Plus plan, you also get Bluehost SEO tools.

Shared Hosting

Bluehost offers four plans for shared hosting. They are:

• Basic: You can host one website using this plan and get 50 GB of SSD storage. However, you do get unmetered bandwidth, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains.
• Plus: This plan lets you host an unlimited number of websites and gives unmetered bandwidth and unlimited storage, domains, subdomains, and parked domains. You also get Spam Experts.
• Choice Plus: Along with all the features offered with the Plus plan, you also get domain privacy and protection along with CodeGuard Basic.
• Pro: The Pro plan offers all of the features that the Choice Plus plan offers. However, it gives you high performance, two Spam Experts, and a dedicated IP.

VPS Hosting

With VPS hosting, you can get superior website performance. Here are the plans offered:

• Standard: With this plan, you get 2 cores, 30 GB of SSD storage, 2 GB RAM, 1 TB bandwidth, and 1 IP address.
• Enhanced: The Enhanced plan offers 2 cores, 60 GB of SSD storage, 4 GB RAM, 2 TB bandwidth, and 2 IP addresses.
• Ultimate: With the Ultimate plan, you get a 4 core server, 120 GB SSD storage, 8 GB RAM, 3 TB bandwidth, and 2 IP addresses.

Dedicated Hosting

Bluehost also offers dedicated server hosting packages from which you can choose the one that fits your needs. Here are the plans:

• Standard: In this plan, you get 500 GB mirrored storage, 4 cores @ 2.3 GHz, 5 TB bandwidth, 4 GB RAM, and 3 IP addresses.
• Enhanced: The Enhanced plan gives you 1 TB mirrored storage, 4 cores @ 2.5 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, and 4 IP addresses.
• Premium: Lastly, the Premium plan offers 15 TB bandwidth, 4 cores @ 3.3 GHz, 1 TB mirrored storage, 16 GB RAM, and 5 IP addresses.

What are you waiting for?

Select your plan from Bluehost now.

What Are Others Saying About Bluehost?

FAQs

Q1. Is there a minimum contract duration?

A. Yes, when you purchase web hosting from Bluehost, you need to subscribe to your web hosting plan for a minimum duration of one year. Alternatively, you can buy the hosting plan for two or three years too.

Q2. Does Bluehost offer a free trial?

A. No, however, Bluehost does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. This means that you can try out their web hosting plans and cancel the subscription before 30 days to get all of your money back.

After the 30 days, your plan will renew at the special introductory rates.

Q3. Does Bluehost offer free website migrations?

A. No. If you already have a website that’s hosted by another web host, Bluehost doesn’t offer any free website migration services. You could, however, opt for a paid migration service.

Alternatively, you can contact their reliable customer support staff and they can help you through the steps involved.

Q4. Which payment methods does Bluehost accept?

A. When it comes to payments, Bluehost makes the process of buying your web hosting plan extremely easy. They offer a variety of payment options such as:

• Major Credit Cards (American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa)
• PayPal
• Checks (US Only)
• Money orders in USD

Q5. Does Bluehost support webmail?

A. Yes, Bluehost supports both POP3 and IMAP webmail clients and has three webmail solutions including Roundcube and Horde.

But here’s the real deal:

Most of their plans also let you create an unlimited number of domain-specific email accounts.

Q6. Is there a limit on the number of websites that I can host on Bluehost?

A. Yes. If you choose the Basic plans, you might have a limit on the number of websites that you can host on Bluehost. However, most plans let you host an unlimited number of websites, even with shared or WordPress hosting.

Q7. What are the modes through which I can reach out to Bluehost’s customer support?

A. One of the biggest advantages of Bluehost is that you can reach out to their customer support team 24/7.

And that’s not even the best part.

You can get in touch with the customer support team by either phone or live chat. This way, you can get your troubles resolved right away.

For complicated issues, the team will reach out to you by email once the issue has been resolved.

Q8. Does Bluehost provide Microsoft 365 emails?

A. Yes, when you purchase hosting plans from Bluehost, certain plans offer a 30-day Microsoft 365 registration.

However, if you want, you can purchase Microsoft 365 email from Bluehost. The plans for this start from $2.99 per license per month.

Q9. Why use Bluehost in 2024 for your online business?

A. Website loading speed is of the utmost importance and has even become a ranking parameter on Google.

That’s why it’s important to use a hosting platform that offers good speeds and Bluehost excels at that by providing blazing fast speeds.

Q10. Is Bluehost a good web host?

A. Bluehost is a great web hosting service. In fact, it’s one of the only three web hosts that have been recommended by WordPress.

With great uptimes and fast loading speeds, it’s one of the finest out there.

Q11. Can I trust Bluehost?

A. Yes, you definitely can trust Bluehost for your website’s hosting. In fact, it’s trusted even by WordPress and is one of the three hosting providers that WordPress recommends.

Q12. Why is Bluehost so cheap?

A. Bluehost is cheap because you get a steep discount when you’re buying one of their hosting plans for the first time.

However, when it comes to renewals, the rates are similar to those of other popular hosting services.

Q13. Is Bluehost good for beginners?

A. Bluehost is a great platform for beginners. Their portal is designed to help you handle your website without the hassle of getting into the technicalities.

The intuitive dashboard also makes it easy to manage multiple websites.

Q14. Is GoDaddy better than Bluehost?

A. While both GoDaddy and Bluehost are great web hosts, Bluehost clearly takes the cake, especially when it comes to WordPress websites. It’s recommended by WordPress while GoDaddy is not.

Q15. Which Bluehost plan is best?

A. While the Basic plan of Bluehost is the best choice for anyone who’s just starting out, the best plan for slightly more experienced people is the Choice Plus plan, which includes loads of features and lets you host unlimited websites.

Q16. Is Bluehost better than WordPress?

A. While WordPress.com is a great way to host your website, it gives limited flexibility as it’s not self-hosted.

On the other hand, WordPress.org gives greater flexibility and they recommend Bluehost for self-hosting websites.

This makes Bluehost the better choice of the two.

Q17. Can you cancel Bluehost at any time?

A. Yes, you can cancel Bluehost at any time. However, for cancellations after 30 days, you don’t get any refund.

On the other hand, for cancellations within the first 30 days, you get a 100% refund on your hosting service charges.

Q18. Can I pay Bluehost monthly?

A. No. Unfortunately, Bluehost doesn’t offer any monthly payment plans. You need to purchase a subscription for a minimum of one year.

The maximum duration for which you can purchase a subscription at once is three years.

However, if you opt for VPS Hosting, Ecommerce Hosting, or Dedicated Server Hosting, Bluehost does offer monthly plans.

What’s the Final Verdict?

Bluehost is one of the finest web hosting platforms and definitely lives up to the “Recommended” tag that bestowed upon it by WordPress.

Quick server response times and fast page loading speeds can help you improve your user experience and also improve conversion rates.

With a 99.99% uptime, you can rest assured that your visitors won’t have to face downtimes.

Wait, there’s more…

The fluid user interface makes it easy for you to manage your website with ease.

Without even logging in to WordPress, it’s possible to manage your plugins, security, performance, and more from Bluehost.

The stellar customer support team is available 24/7 through live chat and by phone, and they can solve your problems with ease.

Finally, the features offered with each hosting plan make it worth every penny invested in web hosting.

Do you have any questions about the Bluehost review? Let me know in the comments.