Bluehost Reviews and Expert Opinion
This Bluehost review is highly dependent on data, as well as the overall experience with their hosting functions and customer support.
In short, all Bluehost subscriptions offer their customers 24/7 live chat, non-measured bandwidth and at least 5 e-mail accounts. Just like many other web hosting companies, their users also offer a free domain for the first year.
Their plans start from $ 2.75 / month and include improved security, backups and SSL certificate. These help to keep your website protected and secure.
Their performance has generally been good. Bluehost is clearly at the top with their uptime (99.99%) and fast loading time of 406ms (0.4 seconds).
Read all "Advantages" and "Disadvantages" in 13 facts below:
1. General Information & Hosting Overview
OVERALL RANK:
Rated #1 out of 32 web hosts
SPEED:
406ms (December 2017 to March 2019 average)
UPTIME:
99.99% (December 2017 to March 2019 average)
SUPPORT:
24/7 Live Chat
APPS:
WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and some website builders
FEATURES:
Unmetered bandwidth and storage, email accounts, free domain 1st year
HOSTING PLANS:
Shared, Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Servers
SITE TRANSFER:
Not free
RICING:
Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $7.95/mo)
Advantages of using Bluehost
2. Best uptime - 99.99% – Throughout the Year
Uptime is one of the most important aspects when choosing a web host. If your site is not active, your users will not have access to it. So consistently good uptime should be one of your top priorities.
After assessing 32 web hosts, our benchmark for "good" uptime is 99.94%. That may seem pretty high, but it is even slightly below average.
Type those numbers into a calculator and you will soon see that this translates into at least 26 minutes of downtime every month or just over five hours over the course of a year.
So ideally we want to see nothing less than that.
The good news is that Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark and keeps our site comfortably 99.99% of the time live in 2017-2019. Here is the monthly breakdown of the last 16 months (with one scheduled maintenance period in October 2018):
- March 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- February 2019 average uptime: 100%
- January 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
- December 2018 average uptime: 100%
- November 2018 average uptime: 100%
- October 2018 average uptime: 99.91%
- September 2018 average uptime: 100%
- August 2018 average uptime: 100%
- July 2018 average uptime: 100%
- June 2018 average uptime: 100%
- May 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
- April 2018 average uptime: 100%
- March 2018 average uptime: 100%
- February 2018 average uptime: 100%
- January 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
- December 2017 average uptime: 100%
Conclusion?
Bluehost is the most reliable web hosting provider according to our uptime study.
3. Top 5 website "loading" speed - 406ms
A Google report last year showed that the vast majority of mobile websites are far too slow.
That is a problem for two important reasons. Google's mobile-first index can increase or hide your site in user searches based on loading speeds and studies show that slow websites almost always translate into lower sales.
So after uptime, the loading times of your host pages are the second most important thing that the success of your site can literally make or break.
We have been monitoring Bluehost's performance since December 2017 with the help of an external tool, Pingdom. And again, we were happy with the results - an average page load of 406 ms, making them the 4th fastest site we've tested.
4. Low introductory prices ($ 3.95 / month)
We will see the full prices and plans of Bluehost in an instant.
However, if you look at the starting prices, you will see that the lowest advertised price is $ 3.95 per month. That's a pretty good deal since they probably already lowered it from $ 7.99 / month.
For that price, you get almost everything you need for a single website. That includes 50 GB SSD storage, non-measured bandwidth, a free SSL certificate and more.
So you get a reasonably good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.
This is the lowest rate we've seen anywhere online (and believe me, our team spends way too much time online as it is). So it is a good deal if you are looking for a new, affordable host.
5. Good security options
Although Bluehost is one of the 'cheaper' options on the market, we are pleased to see that they do not cut back too much or skimp on critical functions such as security.
Bluehost offers many good security options as standard, including the free SSL certificate for each subscription as we mentioned earlier.
All subscriptions also include a domain privacy feature that allows you to keep the personal information you used to register for a domain private. This prevents hackers from finding this personal data and using it for phishing schemes to mislead you or others to transfer sensitive information.
SiteLock is included to prevent malware attacks, which unfortunately occur fairly often on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another form of protection that also provides daily backups, so you can roll back previous versions of a site if it is hacked.
Postini from Google is the latest security program that is worth mentioning. It offers spam protection for your e-mail, so that suspicious item cannot end up in your inbox.
All in all, this is a pretty decent security package to keep your site safe and healthy.
6. Many integrations, apps and e-commerce functions
In addition to the included security functions, Bluehost also offers access to a large number of different apps and integrations, so that you can use the most popular services on the internet.
For example, they have a domain administrator if you prefer to purchase and manage multiple domains through them. You can set up daily, weekly or monthly backups in case.
You can install WordPress with a single click (more on this in the next section below). You can also install other popular content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, Joomla, running an e-commerce store and more.
Moreover, Bluehost even offers access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). These host your images and large files, which takes that work off your servers, to deliver them faster to users around the world and at the same time keep your site fast.
7. "Official" WordPress.org recommended a host:
WordPress is the most used website platform on the market.
And they only "officially" recommend three hosting partners to use with a WordPress site:
Of course, you can use almost any web hosting provider to create a WordPress site. But the fact that Bluehost is one of the few officially recognized partners is encouraging.
8. Easy to use for beginners
Some web hosts that we have seen are only the best for advanced users.
LiquidWeb is great if you know what you are doing. But they lack a user-friendly interface for non-technical people. So if you are a beginner, you would have a hard time getting a site live.
The layout of the Bluehost (cPanel) control panel makes it easy to use. In most cases, you only have to point and click.
It also has features for advanced users, but beginners can also easily install and launch WordPress.
Or they can use the tools for building the Bluehost website (such as Weebly or Drupal) to start with a template that you can customize by simply dragging and dropping functions.
9. 30-day money-back guarantee
Getting the best deal on web hosting usually means paying in advance for a few months, a year or several years at a time.
Bluehost is no different - more on that below. But they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on their plans.
You can try out the service to measure their performance for yourself and then still ask for a refund if you are not completely satisfied. However, we have a few warning words.
According to their conditions, this is what is and is not covered by that guarantee:
You can only get money back on the web hosting costs, not on other products such as domains or other add-ons.
A fee of $ 15.99 is deducted if you have received a free domain name in your subscription.
Requests after 30 days are not refunded.
It is not exactly a policy without questions as we have seen from some hosts. So make sure you agree with these points before you sign up.
10. Customer service
Bluehost offers everything from a knowledge base to live chat, e-mail ticket support and even telephone support. We tried the live chat and Vinutha from Bluehost connected within two minutes.
There were minor delays between each answer, but overall Vinutha was extremely friendly and offered direct answers to each question. It was a painless experience, and that's exactly what you want from a customer's customer service.
Disadvantages of using Bluehost
Bluehost performs quite well across the board. There are, however, two large areas where the costs become a little high. Let's dive deeper into each of them.
11. Higher renewal rates (common in the web hosting industry)
The best way to get the lowest possible hosting price is to pay in advance, one, two or even three years in advance.
On the one hand, the monthly price is low, but on the other hand, paying in advance for a longer period (between 12-36 months) means that you are not only required to pay a few dollars but about a hundred dollars.
Another thing to consider is the higher renewal rates after your introductory period. In this case, it is a good deal to pay three years in advance for $ 2.95 because you keep that low rate for as long as possible.
However, at the end of that period, the rates will rise to their "normal" rates again. These range from $ 7.99 to $ 8.99 / month for the most basic shared plan, depending on how long you pay in advance.
12. Site Migrations are Not Free
Most web hosts that we have reviewed move your existing website to their service for free. They see it as a friendly service that helps make new customers happy, so they will charge any fees.
Unfortunately, Bluehost does not perform free migrations.
They have a one-time fee of $ 149.99, including the migration of up to five websites, 20 e-mail accounts, and other database files for these sites.
They claim it will be fast and seamless, so you will not experience any delays or downtime.
However, the fact that you have to pay for it and pay so much is a major problem.
13. Bluehost prices, hosting plans and quick facts
The basic plan of Bluehost costs you $ 3.95 / month (or $ 2.75 with our discount).
The Plus subscription increases to $ 5.95 / month - the same price as the Choice Plus option for unlimited websites, SSD storage and bandwidth. It also allows you to manage unlimited domains, parked domains, and subdomains for these plans.
The Pro subscription starts at $ 13.95 / month with all these functions and high performance from their servers.
Moreover, Bluehost has all important types of web hosting, including VPS, cloud and special data centres.
Free domain? Yes for the first year and is then extended at $ 15.99.
Easy registration: simple two-page registration process.
Payment methods: major credit cards and PayPal.
Hidden costs and clauses: no refund for domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting are increasing.
Upsells: some upsells. Unfortunately, it is common in the web hosting industry and happens with many different large hosting companies.
Account activation: most users can be activated immediately. If the information is incorrect or there is a suspicion of fraud, activation may be delayed.
Control panel and dashboard experience: simple and user-friendly control panel.
Installation of apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy.
14. Do we recommend Bluehost?
Yes, we do.
Bluehost has been at the top or almost at the top for both uptime and loading times for more than a year.
In addition, they offer powerful security support, a money-back guarantee and many user-friendly apps, all for one of the lowest rates in the industry ($ 2.75 / month).
However, they are not perfect. Extension percentages increase after the introduction prices. They also charge additional fees for site migrations, which other hosts enter for free.
But generally, Bluehost delivers strong performance and a good price.
Visit: www.bluehost.com
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