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bluehost review 2022

bluehost honest review

By ADEL EL MARZOUKIPublished 2 years ago 11 min read
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bluehost review

Bluehost enables you to set up a website in minutes. It's a reputable web host that millions of people use to host their online projects, start businesses, and create new things.

What is it about Bluehost that makes it so popular?

It's simple to use, even for beginners, and it's reasonably priced.

When you sign up, you get a free domain name (usually worth $10-15 per year), and hosting costs as little as $2.95 per month. Bluehost also includes a slew of features to help you get up and running quickly.

Learn more about what you get and why I believe Bluehost is the best value for money.

get started with Bluehost here.

Bluehost vs. the Best Web Hosting Services

Bluehost offers entry-level shared hosting plans. If you're a first-time website creator, Bluehost is a safe and affordable option. In addition, as previously stated, when you sign up, you will receive a free domain name. This, along with its customer support options and affordable additional hosting tiers, distinguishes it from other budget options.

I couldn't name Bluehost as the hosting provider that provides the best value for money without first comparing it to other providers on the market.

I compared dozens of competitors and narrowed it down to the top seven choices to determine which hosting provider was truly worth your time. See all of my top picks for cheap web hosting for a more in-depth look at each one as well as a buying guide.

Who is Bluehost best suited for?

Bluehost is ideal for beginners who are creating their first or second website. Assume you're a new blogger looking to get started in your niche; Bluehost allows you to get started quickly without having to worry about all the technical details.

Bluehost ensures that your learning curve is as short as possible and that your site is publicly available to the world with plenty of uptime, in addition to their customer support features and easy-to-navigate cPanel.

If, on the other hand, you want to start an ecommerce business with a large number of products and require the fastest site speed and dedicated hosting, you should consider other options first.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Bluehost

Benefits

Not every company can boast 24/7 customer support, especially at such a low entry-level price. Bluehost's customer support is available to you as you launch your site and whenever you require additional assistance troubleshooting site errors that are unavoidable.

One year of free domain registration: One of Bluehost's most appealing features is the free domain name for a full year. This eliminates the need to go through a third-party domain seller or invest more money at the start of your site.

Free SSL certificate: An SSL certificate, also known as a Secure Sockets Layer certificate, ensures that your website's identity is authenticated and that important site information is encrypted. To put it another way, it's a must-have for any website you publish. Fortunately, Bluehost offers free SSL certification.

Quick site setup: With Bluehost's intuitive and guided step-by-step setup, you can easily get your site up and running in no time. And if you run into any problems, you can use their real-time chat support feature.

Beginner-friendly: Bluehost is ideal for anyone making their first foray into creating and maintaining a website. This is due to the fact that there is no requirement for advanced web management knowledge or coding when you set up your site through it. To sweeten the deal, they've partnered with WordPress and made WordPress installation a seamless part of the process.

Drawbacks

Charges for site migrations: Bluehost isn't always the best option when it comes to migration perks. If you need assistance migrating your site, Bluehost charges at least $149 to move your site to or from another platform.

Not suitable for high-traffic sites: If you want to scale an already high-traffic site and require hosting to meet those specific requirements, an entry-level Bluehost plan won't suffice. You can always upgrade to one of their more expensive managed WordPress tiers, which we'll discuss further below.

Bluehost Costs

Bluehost has several pricing tiers that are fairly straightforward. If, after reading through them, you're still not sure which one will work best for you, contact them for a free consultation.

It's worth noting that the prices for each shared hosting tier I discuss here are only valid if you buy a 36-month hosting plan in advance. The monthly amounts change depending on whether you choose a 12-month or 24-month plan.

If you choose a month-to-month plan, your monthly hosting fee will be slightly higher. Regardless, Bluehost remains the most affordable and value-packed plan available, particularly for beginners.

Now, let's take a look at how each shared hosting tier breaks down, along with its value.

Shared Hosting

A shared hosting service The Bluehost plan is without a doubt one of the simplest ways to get started building your site. You can begin with the Basic plan for $2.95, which allows you to create one site with 50 GB of storage space. When you consider they also include a free CDN and an SSL certificate, that's quite generous.

You don't even need to understand what a CDN or SSL certificate is–enable them with a single click to get a faster, more secure site.

It does not end there. Do you run a few websites? Then you should try the Plus tier, which costs $5.45 per month. It includes everything in the basic plan tier, plus the ability to host and manage an unlimited number of sites, as well as 30-day access to Microsoft 365.

Not too shabby. It's the most practical tier if you want to reliably start more than one site from scratch without incurring too many costs.

The Choice Plus tier, at $5.45 per month with added security features, is their most recommended tier and the one that gives you the most bang for your buck under the shared hosting plan.

Everything in the first and second tiers is included, as well as free domain privacy and free automated backup for a full year. Because internet security is a growing concern in the online world, and the price for this tier is the same as the Plus option, this is the clear winner in my book when it comes to affordable shared hosting plans. Added security features can only be a good thing.

Finally, if you want something a little more, consider the Pro tier, which costs $13.95 per month. You'll get more CPU resources as well as a free dedicated IP address with this plan.

As you can see, Bluehost goes out of their way to personalize each tier so that it meets your needs. I recommend that you take the time to thoroughly examine each tier and its offerings in order to get the best deal based on your objectives.

VPS Hosting

VPS, or virtual private server hosting, is when your site is hosted on a shared server but has its own dedicated virtual space. VPS hosting has grown in popularity because it is less expensive than dedicated hosting while providing better security and potential performance than shared hosting.

When it comes to Bluehost's VPS Hosting options, guaranteed resources are the name of the game. They outperform competitors by charging only $18.99 for the standard VPN feature. This package includes 2 GB of RAM as well as an additional 1 TB of bandwidth.

When it comes to Bluehost's VPS Hosting options, guaranteed resources are the name of the game. They outperform competitors by charging only $18.99 for the standard VPN feature. This package includes 2 GB of RAM as well as an additional 1 TB of bandwidth.

Looking through each Bluehost offering, it's clear that they've positioned themselves as a beginner-friendly web host, but they also offer affordable dedicated and VPS hosting. If you ask me, that's a double win in terms of dependable hosting.

get started with Bluehost here.

Dedicated Server Hosting

The most notable advantages of dedicated hosting are increased security, privacy, and overall control. A Bluehost dedicated hosting plan is the way to go if you know you'll want the best of the best to host your site for scale and reliability.

Is your website expanding quickly? Do you notice an increase in traffic day after day? This is where you should consider dedicated hosting, yet another dependable Bluehost plan.

To demonstrate the power of a dedicated hosting plan, they begin with a whopping 500 GB of storage space, 4 GB of RAM, and 5 TB of bandwidth for just $79.99 per month. This establishes Bluehost as a premium market competitor, even for their more expensive hosting tiers.

Managed WordPress Hosting

This is an all-in-one managed platform that can scale to meet the demands of your website. Bluehost's managed WordPress hosting plans all include lightning-fast speeds, marketing tools, and multi-tiered security features.

Bluehost's most dynamic hosting tier is its managed WordPress option. You have the option to Build, Grow, or Scale. Each one provides a unique hosting package to meet your needs. If you decide to go with a managed WordPress option, you should base your decision on the amount of traffic they're each appropriate for.

Each plan includes a slew of useful features designed to help your site grow. This includes, among other things, storage space starting at 20 GB, access to over 200 global servers, scheduled backups, staging environments, and free SSL certification.

What ultimately distinguishes each managed tier is its traffic capacity. Here's a quick rundown:

  • Build – $19.95 per month, recommended for 50,000 monthly visitors.
  • Grow – $29.95 per month, recommended for 150,000 monthly visitors.
  • Scale – $49.95 per month, with a maximum of 500,000 monthly visitors.

By categorizing it by traffic, you can easily select a managed WordPress hosting plan that will provide you with peace of mind and plenty of site uptime.

Bluehost Providers

You've now learned about Bluehost's hosting pricing. But the good times don't stop there. Bluehost offers additional services in addition to hosting plans.

Hosting

Unsurprisingly, shared hosting is Bluehost's most popular hosting option because it allows you to get your foot in the door in terms of getting your site up and running.

The number one reason Bluehost's shared hosting ranks high when compared to other hosting providers is their free SSL certification and free domain name offer. However, it does its job in terms of hosting your site on a server where it will share space with other sites like yours.

While shared hosting may be the most cost-effective option for beginners, it will not be what you want to stick with as your site grows.

That is why dedicated hosting and VPS hosting exist. Dedicated hosting is a more robust and dependable hosting option for high-performance site performance, whereas VPS hosting provides more power, flexibility, and control.

Online Shops

If you've already decided to launch your online store with WordPress and WooCommerce, you can get started by selecting either the Standard or Premium store hosting tiers.

Choose the Standard deal at $15.95 per month for a store with a robust payment processing system, plenty of analytics, and the ability to create basic store backups.

Your store may be more complicated than a simple storefront with product listings. If you want to capture subscriptions, online booking, and appointment scheduling, the Premium tier is a very reliable ecommerce option.

This is my top choice for a multifaceted online store with many moving parts. I'd rather pay a little more for all of the Premium features than not have them because I don't need them.

WordPress Help Is Always Available

Bluehost provides Blue Sky, a service that teaches users how to build, grow, and maintain any WordPress website through personalized training and support. Live WordPress Support starts at $29 per month for on-demand ticket support and backup assistance and can go up to $149 per month for SEO tools, content optimization and mobile optimization assistance, and access to Constant Contact.

Marketing Services for Professionals

Bluehost offers design and marketing strategies in addition to hosting services, giving you more time to focus on revenue-generating activities and running your business.

Bluehost's four primary services in this area are as follows:

  • Design, marketing, and content assistance are all available as part of a full-service website support package.
  • SEO services for optimizing your website and focusing on specific keywords
  • PPC services to help with pay-per-click campaigns and best practices for acquiring more customers
  • Assistance with website migration, including one-on-one consultations to review your website before and after any migration.

Bluehost's website does not provide pricing for these services. To discuss pricing and support options, you'll need to contact them.

Best Web Hosting Providers

Making a decision based solely on one piece of information is never a good idea. I recommend that you review my list of the best cheap web hosting providers to ensure that you're making the best decision for your specific needs. Here's a quick rundown of all of my suggestions:

  1. Hostinger — The best web hosting plan for less than $1.50 per month.
  2. Dreamhost — The least expensive on day one
  3. Bluehost — Excellent for new websites (especially WordPress)
  4. A2 Hosting — The best web hosting for online stores for less than $3 per month.
  5. HostGator — The most cost-effective way to host your existing website.
  6. iPage — This is the best option if you have multiple websites.
  7. GreenGeeks offers the most affordable managed WooCommerce hosting.

Overall, Bluehost is a dependable web hosting service that provides excellent value for money. It provides a great entry-level shared hosting plan for as little as $2.75 per month, one free domain name for a year, free SSL certification, and plenty of customer support available at any time.

Any thoughts on Bluehost as a good hosting service for new websites? Please let me know in the comments section.

get started with Bluehost here.

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