Education logo

Bluehost Web Hosting Review 2022

Flexible, affordable WordPress hosting

By ADEL EL MARZOUKIPublished 2 years ago 11 min read
Like
bluehost review 2022

If you want to build a website to connect with your customers, you'll need a web hosting service that's reliable, simple to use, and reasonably priced. Bluehost expertly balances price and features, providing services that are suitable for both hobbyists and business professionals. Many web hosts do this, but Bluehost stands out with a new website builder that integrates with WordPress to give the popular content management system unprecedented flexibility. Bluehost, along with A2 Hosting, is a co-Editors' Choice pick for WordPress hosting in this category.

Web Hosting that is Shared

Shared hosting is an excellent choice for people who do not anticipate a high volume of traffic to their website. What's the advantage? It's a low-cost web hosting service. What's the catch? Because your website shares server resources with other sites, the performance of your site may suffer if one of its server mates experiences a traffic surge.

Bluehost, which is based on Linux, does not provide month-to-month shared web hosting plans. Instead, you must sign up for an annual plan. The Basic plan costs $2.95 per month whether you sign up for one, two, or three years. After your initial commitment, the price of Basic rises to $9.99 per month for an annual commitment, but drops to $8.99 per month if you renew for three years. If you only need hosting for a few months, HostGator has excellent month-to-month plans.

The Basic shared hosting package comes with a free domain name that you can keep for as long as you use Bluehost, a free domain name transfer, the ability to host a single site, 50GB of storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and five email addresses. The Plus package ($6.95 per month with a one-year contract, increasing to $13.99 per month upon renewal) includes an antispam tool for a single domain as well as unlimited websites, storage, and mailboxes. The Choice Plus package ($6.95 per month with a one-year contract, rising to $18.99 per month upon renewal) expands on Plus by including one year of free automated backup and domain privacy, which allows you to hide your physical location for increased security.The Pro plan ($18.95 per month with a one-year contract, renewing at $28.99 per month) includes all of the features of the Choice Plus plan, as well as a free, dedicated IP address.

Bluehost's web hosting plans are adequate, but not the best we've seen. HostGator, our Editors' Choice for shared hosting, allows small and medium-sized businesses to grow their online presences. Starting at $10.95 per month for the Hatchling plan, HostGator provides unlimited disk space, monthly data transfers, and email addresses, as well as support for one domain and third-party applications such as content management systems and e-commerce platforms. Even better, HostGator offers both monthly shared hosting subscriptions and Windows Server-based hosting. Don't overlook the value of a Windows Server option. If you intend to build (or migrate) an ASP.NET-based website, you'll appreciate HostGators' Windows Server offerings.

get started with bluehost here

Web Hosting on VPS

Bluehost's virtual private server (or VPS) options are worth considering if you require more power, anticipate high traffic volumes, or have specific compliance requirements that prevent you from using shared servers. It works similarly to shared hosting in that your site shares server resources with other sites, but there are two major differences: VPS hosting has fewer sites per server and the provider guarantees a certain amount of server resources. A VPS-hosted site can withstand a Reddit hit and continue to function.

Bluehost provides three Linux-based VPS hosting tiers, ranging from $29.99 per month Standard (30GB of solid-state storage, 2GB of memory, and 1TB monthly data transfers) to $119.99 per month Ultimate (120GB of SSD storage, 8GB of memory, and 3TB monthly data transfers). VPS hosting plans, like shared web hosting plans, include discounts for longer-term contracts.

Those are appealing plans, but Hostwinds, the Editors' Choice for VPS hosting, outperforms Bluehost with a wide range of packages that include up to 96GB of RAM, unlimited email, unlimited monthly data transfers, and Linux- or Windows-based server options.

Web Hosting That Is Dedicated

Dedicated hosting is a powerful type of web hosting that provides your website with complete server resources. If you anticipate high traffic volumes, dedicated hosting is the only way to ensure that your site can withstand the rigors of the internet. Bluehost also offers a variety of Linux-based dedicated server configurations. The servers begin at $119 per month and can be configured with up to 2TB of hard drive space, 16GB of RAM, and 15TB of data transfers per month—the same specifications as HostMonster.

AccuWeb, the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated web hosting, outperforms Bluehost with a choice of Linux or Windows Server operating systems, as well as several configurable server plans (starting at $108 per month for 1TB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and 20TB of monthly data transfers).

Cloud Web Hosting and Reseller Hosting

If you want to get into the web hosting business but don't want to deal with infrastructure issues, reseller hosting may be the way to go. Bluehost used to offer reseller hosting packages, but the site now redirects visitors to ResellerClub, a separate service with its own pricing and services. Existing reseller users can continue to use Bluehost's old plans, but no new signups are permitted.

The resources required for your website's operation are shared across multiple servers with cloud hosting. Because your site isn't constrained by physical server constraints, you can scale resources in real time. Bluehost, unlike many other web hosts reviewed by PCMag, does not provide cloud hosting. If you want to learn more about cloud hosting, consider DreamHost or 1&1 Ionos. The first is the Editors' Choice for standard cloud hosting, while the second is the Editors' Choice for enterprise-level cloud hosting.

get started with bluehost here

Web Hosting for WordPress

WordPress is a content management system that powers approximately one-third of all websites. It's simple to use and has a thriving theme and plug-in ecosystem for expanding the functionality of your site. Consider Bluehost's three Linux-based packages for creating a basic, WordPress-powered website: Basic, Plus, and Choice Plus. The prices are the same as the shared hosting plans offered by the company.

Check out Bluehost's three managed WordPress "professional" tiers if you want more WordPress power. They take care of your website's backend and provide SEO, social media, and email marketing tools. All three WP Pro plans (Build, Grow, and Scale) include unlimited site hosting, monthly data transfers, domains, subdomains, and storage. Bot protection, automatic SSL installation, and brute force protection are also included in Bluehost's managed WordPress plans. These managed accounts also include staging areas for testing sites before they go live on the web, which is a nice touch. Build, Grow, and Scale renew for $19.95, $24.95, and $37.95 per month, respectively.

The Build plan can handle up to 50,000 monthly visitors and includes daily backups, malware detection and removal, and domain privacy protection. The Grow plan builds on the Build plan with SEO tools, 10GB of video compression, live ticket support, and 150,000 monthly visitors. Scale goes above and beyond all managed plans by including Blue Sky live chat support, unlimited video compression, PayPal integration, unlimited backups and restore, and support for up to 500,000 monthly visitors.

Bluehost does not require you to install the content management system because it is included. Once logged in, you can create posts, pages, and galleries just like you would on any other WordPress site. You can easily export your existing site as a with a free WordPress migration tool. XML file, and then upload it. Move the XML file to the new location. Bluehost, in a nice touch, allows you to migrate a single WordPress-powered site from another web host for free. Bluehost has a $149 plan that allows you to migrate up to five sites and 20 email accounts.

Bluehost's WordPress plans are quite good, matching the Editors' Choice pick in the category, A2 Hosting, in several areas. A2 offers four excellent WordPress hosting tiers starting at $10.99 per month, with unlimited domains, databases, and storage on all plans except the bottom-tier Startup. Bluehost's WordPress options are slightly less expensive when renewed, with comparable features and uptime. Add in the fantastic Bluehost Website Builder for WordPress—more on that later—and you have a WordPress hosting service that joins A2 Hosting as a co-Editors' Choice pick in the category.

You should read How to Get Started With WordPress for more information on the phenomenally popular content management system.

Making a Website

To start a Bluehost site, choose a domain, sign up for a Bluehost account, and pay for the plan you want. Bluehost provides a plethora of tools for building websites, filtering spam, managing email, collecting site statistics, and managing domains. To build a site, you can use the WordPress content management platform, Weebly (a popular website builder), FTP or File Manager, the goMobi Mobile Web builder, or Bluehost's excellent Bluehost Website Builder for WordPress.

The drag-and-drop functionality of Weebly allowed us to quickly create an appealing page complete with slideshows, contact forms, social media links, and other site elements. The free version of Weebly provides basic functionality (you can create six pages and add custom HTML), but upgrading to the $8.99 per month Professional tier provides even more flexibility (custom themes, password protected pages, and more). For a more in-depth look, see PCMag's Weebly review.

The main attraction here is Bluehost Website Builder for WordPress, a tool that combines the simplicity of a website builder with the full capabilities of WordPress. You begin with a single theme that provides numerous layout options. Within that theme, you can customize the site's various sections by clicking and dragging them to your liking, as well as add new sections.and switch between the builder and standard WordPress site management. It's simple to use, and you can create a visually appealing website in no time. Bluehost Website Builder for WordPress currently lacks multiple themes; you can only edit the single available theme (Bluehost states that more themes are on the way). Nonetheless, the tool provides a great deal of design flexibility, with over 1,000 layout options. Bluehost's sister site, Web.com, provides the standard website builder experience, with a plethora of editable templates.

Tools for E-Commerce

DaDa Mail (starting at $34.95 per year) is an email-marketing tool that allows you to send email-based newsletters to a subscriber list. You must invest in an e-commerce application, such as Magento, ShopSite, or TransFirst, if you want an online store or the ability to accept online payments. We were able to create an appealing store with Magento by dragging and dropping website elements. Magento offers more flexibility than ShopSite, but if you don't need a complex online store, ShopSite's simpler interface will get you up and running faster. That time saved may be worthwhile for small businesses.

Bluehost also supports the PostgreSQL data management system, in addition to the popular MySQL. This allows you to use non-MySQL software like agileBase (a custom app creator) and Bacula (backup software).

Features of Security

Bluehost includes three anti-spam tools (Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Experts, and Spam Hammer) as well as hotlink protection. You can also use it to create email account filters, password-protect directories, generate IP address blacklists, and manage private keys and digital certificates. We're always happy to see secure shell (SSH) access, because it allows site administrators to access specific configuration files in a secure manner.

Bluehost includes CloudFlare, which improves website performance and security. If you want SSL on your site or are concerned about distributed denial of service attacks, CloudFlare is a good option to consider.

Outstanding Uptime

The uptime of a website is a critical component of the web hosting experience. Clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services if your website goes down.

We use a website monitoring tool to track the uptime of our test site over a 14-day period for this testing. The tool pings the website every 15 minutes and sends an alert if it is unable to contact a site for at least one minute. Bluehost is extremely stable, according to the data. Bluehost did not go down once during the two-week period. You can rely on Bluehost as a reliable web host.

Excellent Customer Service

Bluehost is similar to HostMonster in that it provides 24/7 telephone support, online web chat, a ticket-based system, and a knowledgebase.

On a weekday morning, we used Bluehost's web chat to inquire about the differences between regular WordPress and the managed service. The representative quickly answered our questions about the differences between regular WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting, and we were pleased with the response.

Later that evening, we called Bluehost's phone support system to ask how to import a WordPress.com setup into Bluehost. Someone came to our aid in less than five minutes, and the representative walked us through the process. Bluehost's customer service has won yet another battle.

Bluehost's hosting plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is standard in the web hosting industry. However, DreamHost outperforms it with a 97-day money-back guarantee.

A Reputable WordPress-Friendly Web Host

Bluehost is a dependable web host that makes site creation simple, especially for WordPress hosting. In fact, its new Website Builder for WordPress is an excellent tool that provides the drag-and-drop simplicity of a website builder, enhancing the already excellent content management system. Bluehost joins the equally fantastic A2 as our Editors' Choice picks for WordPress hosting.

get started with bluehost here

product review
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.