Bluehost Compared to The Best Web Hosting Services 

After two weeks of rigorous testing, which included signing up, building a website, talking to customer support, and 30 days’ worth of uptime and speed testing, Bluehost came in at #5 in our list of the eight best web hosting providers. Although other hosts outperformed Bluehost, it’s still an excellent choice and our top pick if you’re looking for a free, beginner-friendly WordPress drag-and-drop site builder.

If that’s not something you care about, there may be a better option. See all of our top picks to check out in-depth reviews by a team of researchers who’ve actually used the products, our scoring strategy, and which one is best depending on what you need.

Bluehost: The Good and The Bad 

Every web hosting service has its flaws, even the most exclusive. Here’s an in-depth look into Bluehost’s top good and bad features. 

The Good

Great Security: Bluehost has one of the best security measures on the market. All Bluehost security features are efficient and will help you cut back hours of tweaking your website. It will also give you peace of mind, which is especially needed for absolute beginners. 

All Bluehost plans come with resource protection, and CodeGuard Backup Basic can be added for an additional $2.99 per month fee. CodeGuard will help you with daily backups and monitoring while notifying you of any changes. 

The most basic version of this security feature comes with 1GB storage space, daily backup and monitoring, and three restorations per month. However, for the more expensive plans like Choice Plus and Pro, you can expect free automatic backups for one year and 24/7 network monitoring. 

Extensive and Fast Customer Support: Another excellent feature of Bluehost is its extensive and fast customer support base. Customer support is paramount for any web hosting service to have, but finding a service that has fast and efficient support can be a dime a dozen. 

Luckily, Bluehost offers just that, and most users have said the customer support is very helpful when needing immediate support. In fact, there’s a high chance you will connect to Bluehost’s Live Chat system within five minutes of waiting. 

All of its support-base is available 24/7, so you don’t need to worry about figuring out time zones. Bluehost also offers phone and email support, but the waiting times vary. However, you always have the option to pass the time by browsing its extensive knowledge base support forum for multiple FAQs, videos, in-depth articles, and support resources on everything web hosting related. 

Easy to Use: Not only is Bluehost the most popular web hosting service on the market for its outstanding features and products, but it’s also because it’s so incredibly easy to use. Ease of use is an important feature to have because web hosting can already be confusing to some, so there’s no need for the onboarding process to be difficult, too. 

Fear not though, as Bluehost has an easy onboarding process that takes a few minutes to complete, to get your website up and running. With an intuitive interface, it will ask you to fill out a form that includes your website goals, what you want to add to your site, and what you want your name and the tagline of your site to be. 

After answering these questions, you get to choose a theme of your choice from the Bluehost Marketplace, and then it automatically installs WordPress for your ultimate convenience. All you have to worry about is customization, while Bluehost takes care of the backend and the technical nitty-gritty. 

High-Performance Servers: The last thing that’s great about Bluehost is that it offers very high-performance servers to all users purchasing the Pro plan. Although it’s not always ideal for every user to fork out more money, we think you get what you pay for. For $14.95 per month, you get access to Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers that will keep large ecommerce websites functioning effectively. 

This server is an excellent option for larger websites because Bluehost makes sure there are fewer users per server—with an individual file count of 300,000—so there are no slowdowns for anyone involved. 

However, if you don’t want to pay the price for these servers, we still think regular Bluehost servers that come with the other plans are great and work just fine. 

The Bad

No Free Site Migration: Now here’s where the downsides come into play. Currently, Bluehost does not offer free site migration, which can be an issue for users transferring from a different web hosting service. 

You can expect to pay a hefty $149.99 for Bluehost to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts. Although this service comes with 24/7 support, a complete review, and an uninterrupted transition, it’s still quite expensive for most users—especially when many other web hosting services will transfer your website for free. 

What’s also not great is that this migration service does not cover reseller, VPS, or dedicated server accounts, nor does it include domain registrations. 

No Guaranteed Uptime: Unlike most web hosting services, Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee on any of its plans. This is concerning because downtime can be quite detrimental for website owners, as you can lose potential customers if your website is experiencing this. 

An uptime guarantee gives users that extra peace of mind and shows them that the provider will keep your website up and running in the most efficient way possible—and is serious about the customer service experience while putting its customers’ needs first. 

However, even though this may be an issue for some, many users have still applauded Bluehost for its uptime, regardless of guarantee, as the data shows it has an uptime of 99.99% efficiency. 

Bluehost Pricing and Options 

Bluehost offers quite a few pricing plans for individual website goals and needs. Let’s break it down into each level.

Bluehost Pricing 

The great thing about Bluehost is that it has a wide variety of options at an affordable price. It offers three main business niches, with different pricing plans according to said niches. These include shared hosting, online stores, and managed WordPress.