Bluehost Review: Today I will be reviewing Bluehost which is one of the biggest hosting providers in the world powering around 2 million websites around the world. It is considered as a brand name, moreover it is a recommended host by WordPress. This has added up as a credibility factor to it.
Bluehost Review By SecondOnlineIncome.com
I have been using Bluehost for quite some time and I must say that in few areas it just stole my heart.
Because I have been using it for quite sometime I can try to review the hosting program offered by Bluehost to my best of abilities which will help you in determining whether this is good for you or not.
I will be reviewing the hosting program based on some factors such as
- Performance: we will look into the performance of websites hosted on Bluehost, the speed and the server response time.
- Reliability: One thing which concerns most website owners is will the site be online 24/7/365. Will there be any downtime? We will try to look into this.
- Customer Support: How knowledgeable is there support staff and how fast are they in resolving the queries
- Features: What is there feature support in designing websites? Are they always updated with the features and technologies
- Pricing: This is one of the most concerned areas. We will look into the pricing and plans offered by Bluehost and will check the special deals with them.
Bluehost: A quick background overview and information
First let’s get to know about the company and the background of it..
Bluehost was founded in 1996 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth. Ever since then they have grown at a steady pace and now hosting more than 23 million websites. With a staff of 750 people they strive to provide the highest quality of service to all the website owners.
Bluehost is having a long and strong relationship with the WordPress community which made them one of the most favoured and recommended host by WordPress since 2006. This adds up to the confidence in the company.
Apart from this they offer highest quality of infrastructure with 24/7 support.
Pros And Cons of Bluehost
Nearly every web hosting company is having advantages and disadvantages. Some of them can be ignored and some cannot be ignored at any cost as they cost the money and business.
We will look into these one by one..
Pros Of Bluehost
A) Pricing: Bluehost offers of one of the best and most affordable pricing options. People who are just starting out can be benefited because its within the reach of literally everyone who wants to start a website. There are no hidden charges while signing up for the account.
Although they are not the cheapest provider but considering the infrastructure and reputation of the company, the pricing are fairly good which can help any on budget webmaster.
We have secured an amazingly sweet deal for you. Click on the link to check it.
B) Reliability: They are powering around 2 million websites with minimum downtime. As they are trusted by so many websites, they are quite reliable
The reliability factor can be divided in:
- Strong Uptime of 99.99%: Bluehost has invested quite a lot in infrastructure which helps them to have 99.99% of uptime which is an industry standard.
- Fast Page Loading Times: With the right type of setup, Bluehost has managed to provide an average page load time of 424 ms. This has made them one of the fastest web hosts.
- Free domain: You get a free domain when you sign up to them, although this is optional and you can choose to opt out.
Cons Of Bluehost
Bluehost is also having its equal share of disadvantages or cons. We have put together few of them down below:
A) High Domain Renewal: As we mentioned in the pros section that Bluehost offers you a free domain, but this domain will be very costly the next year. This is because their domain renewal price is very high. Hence we mentioned that you can choose to not have domain from them.
Tip: Never buy a domain name from the same hosting company where you are hosting your site.
B) Addons: I have found that Bluehost is very aggressive with their upsells and downsells, during the sign up process. So I suggest you to be a bit careful while signing up for an account. You can just identify which upsells or addons you need and unchecked the ones which you feel are not for you.
Hosting Features, Plans and Types
Bluehost offeres loads of features at a very low price. Some of the features are:
- Customized Control Panel(cPanel) which is quite easy to use
- Number of site tool add-ons
- Free site builder
- 100+ Email address
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Cloudflare integration which makes the site super-fast
Now let’s dive into the hosting plans offered by them:
A) Shared Hosting
This option is best when you are just starting out. Your site is having low traffic and you want to test the waters. Most of the new webmasters opt for this hosting. In this plan you actually share your site uses server resources with other websites.
There are total 3 types of shared hosting they offer. The pricing are as follows:
- Basic Plan: This plan offers to host one domain and 25 sub-domains, 50GB storage, 5 email accounts. For the first term you pay $3.95 per month which changes into $7.99 per month after the renewal
- Plus Plan: This plan includes unlimited websites, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited web space and unlimited email accounts. This makes it a perfect choice for middle level webmasters who are having multiple websites. The plan is for $5.95 per month in the first term, when you renew the term its for $10.99.
- Choice Plus: This plan is similar to the Plus Plan with few additional features such as domain privacy and site backup. This plan also is for $5.95 in the first term then later on after renewal its for $14.99
- Pro Plan: This plan is same as Choice Plus Plan with same features with addition of a dedicated IP. This plan costs $13.95 per month in the first term and then after renewal of the term it costs $23.99
- Cloud Hosting: This is a much better and reliable option and it’s kind of an upgrade of shared hosting plan. It allows you to use multiple cloud servers and automatically switch servers in case of any failure or any other type of crisis situation. This type of hosting is best for businesses and online stores. It can handle high amount of traffic. The cloud hosting with Bluehost includes varnish caching which makes dynamic content requests quick as well as more streamlined. This gives a positive effect to the load times of the website
- VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting: This is an enhanced version of shared hosting. This type of hosting allows you to have virtual dedicated resources in a shared environment. There are 3 plans available which are as follows:
- Standard: $19.99 your first month, up to $29.99 after that
- Enhanced: $29.99 your first month, up to $59.99 after that
- Ultimate: $59.99 your first month, up to $119.99 after that
The customers enjoy dedicated resources in the VPS plan. Nothing is shared in terms of resources with the other websites. This makes it an ideal for mid business owners.
B) Dedicated Hosting
This plan gives a fully dedicated server for your website. This also means that you will not at any point will be sharing any type of resources with anyone. All the resources and power will be assigned to your website only. The downside of this option is that you will have to manager the whole serer yourself and no one will help you in this. Following are the available plans for dedicated hosting with Bluehost:
- Standard: $79.99 your first month, $119.99 per month after that.
- Enhanced: $99.99 your first month, $159.99 per month after that.
- Premium: $119.99 your first month, $209.99 per month after that.
C) WordPress Hosting
This hosting is super specific to only WordPress based websites. It is optimized to run WordPress based websites and also offers protection of your WordPress website from common threats.
D) WooCommerce Hosting
Bluehost provides all the essential features and facilities to start an online eCommerce store on your WordPress website. The WooCommerce hosting plan with Bluehost is perfect answer if you want to start an online store on WordPress platform.
Bluehost Support: How well they support
Now let’s look into the type of support provided by Bluehost
Whenever you choose any hosting company then you should keep in mind that the staff is knowledgeable or not. Are they able to handle your queries and resolve them in the quickest manner.
Bluehost is having a vast knowledge base of article for you to solve most of the problems which you may encounter. There are lot of step by step guides, video tutorials and walkthrough which will help you handle the issues easily and effortlessly.
The Support We Seek Is..
However it’s quite possible that there must always be some problems which will be a bit hard. This is the time when you can completely rely on Bluehost as they offer 24/7/365 days of support system. There customer representatives can give you support on live chat and sometimes on phone too depending upon the seriousness of the problem.
It is essential for you to contact the right support team as per the problems you are facing. Contacting the right team will ensure you get faster response and your problems are handled in the most seamless manner.
Following are the Bluehost support teams:
- Sales team: this team handles general inquiries, new customers and their issues
- Technical team: this team handles the technical part of your queries. This is the team whom you need to contact when you encounter any technical difficulties
- Account Management team: this team handles billing, terms of services and account issues. You need to contact them for your bills and invoice related issues.
The Verdict
Well after reading the whole Bluehost review by us, you might be wondering whether you should opt for the Bluehost hosting or not.
I would like to assure you that you will never go wrong with them. They offer the best competitive hosting plans which suits all types of webmasters. They can choose the plan whichever suits them as per their needs.
All their plans fits into all types of budgets which is a major plus point.
Their support is quite fast and very knowledgeable which makes them top notch.
Get ready to experience one of the best hosting available.