Bluehost, one of the first web hosts, was founded in 1996 and has grown to be the most well-known name in WordPress hosting. They are a hosting company that is officially recommended by WordPress. Even in high-traffic situations, you never have to worry about your website loading slowly when you choose Bluehost. Through phone, email, or live chat, their knowledgeable support staff is available around the clock to assist you. They have the highest ranking among small business web hosts. Additionally, they are providing WPBeginner users with a free domain, free SSL, and a free site builder with templates in addition to an exclusive 63% off deal. 

One of the largest web hosts in the world, Bluehost is an official WordPress recommended provider. With round-the-clock customer service, Bluehost provides a huge range of hosting plans for novices as well as medium-sized to large enterprises. Check out our experts’ comprehensive evaluation of Bluehost to determine if it’s the best option for you. If you take a few minutes to investigate the top web hosting companies, Bluehost will almost certainly come up because it is incredibly well-liked and widely used. What, though, distinguishes Bluehost from the competition? Is this exactly what you’re looking for, or would there be a better option from another vendor? 

Among the most well-known hosting companies is Bluehost. Because it makes installation and migration simple and the most frequently suggested option for WordPress hosting. In addition to hosting plans, Bluehost is another reasonably priced hosting company that provides special features like marketing tools and a website builder. It also provides strong website security features and outstanding performance. So is Bluehost a decent choice for novices, or are its solutions limited to more experienced users? We provide a thorough rundown of all Bluehost offers in this review. Through an amalgamation of user feedback and internal testing and assessments conducted by the knowledgeable Cybernews research team, we lead you through every step of the Bluehost setup procedure, performance analysis, usability, cost, and more.

Services provided by Bluehost

Bluehost provides shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting solutions, much like many other hosting companies. Below are brief descriptions of each sort of hosting, along with who it is intended for:

Shared Hosting

Bluehost has four reasonably priced shared hosting plans. All of them come with free SSL certificates, unlimited bandwidth, CDNs, and custom domain registrations. 

VPS Hosting

When a company outgrows shared hosting, the next step is a virtual private server or VPS. VPS hosting packages from the provider range in price from $19.99 to $59.99 per month. All Bluehost VPS plans come with varying amounts of CPU cores, storage, RAM, bandwidth, and IP addresses based on the plan’s price. With managed VPS services, the provider handles not just the hardware but also the software and maintenance, launching the server on your behalf. A customer dashboard and cPanel for managing servers and websites are also included. Additionally, complete root access is offered. You do not have complete control over the server like you would with many other managed service companies.

Dedicated Server

When even the most potent VPS plans prove insufficient, dedicated server hosting becomes the solution. For major corporations and enterprises that want complete server management, power, and security, this is the preferred alternative despite its high cost. The monthly cost of Bluehost’s dedicated plans ranges from $89.98 to $139.99. Four core CPUs, one free domain, and three to five dedicated IPs are included with every dedicated hosting package. The plan determines the differences in storage, RAM, cache, and bandwidth.

Pricing:

Let’s examine Bluehost’s pricing and the features that come with each package.

Basic Plan: You can only host one website with the basic plan. It supports five email accounts, each with 100 MB of disc space, one domain and 25 subdomains, and 50GB of SSD storage. The monthly payment for the first term will be $2.75. The cost of renewing the account will be $8.99 a month.

Plus Plan: Unlimited websites with unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth are included in the Plus plan. Also, an infinite number of email accounts are yours. For the first term, the monthly cost is $4.95. The monthly cost to renew the account will be $11.99.

Choice Plus Plan: All of the Plus plan’s features are included in the Choice Plus plan. As bonuses worth more than $80/year, you will also receive free domain privacy and daily automated backups powered by CodeGuard. The initial term will cost you $5.45 a month. You will be required to pay $16.99 each month for the renewal.

Pro Plan: For the first term, the Pro plan’s monthly cost is $13.95. You’ll pay $23.99 a month after that. Along with a dedicated IP address, it has all of the premium features of the aforementioned subscriptions.

Features of Bluehost

Let’s start by examining the features that make Bluehost the best option.

• Pricing: Most customers, especially those who are just starting, can easily afford their hosting options.
• Reliability: They provide minimal downtime for a vast array of websites.
• No additional fees: When creating an account, there aren’t any extra costs.
• Free domain: Upon registration, you will receive a free domain name for the first year.
• Free CDN + SSL: To reduce malware and boost security, every website receives a free SSL certificate and a free Cloudflare CDN.
• Money Back Guarantee: On all programmes, they provide a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Performance of Bluehost

We ran several tests to measure Bluehost’s performance, including response time and uptime, the speed at which a website loaded, and the number of users it can accommodate concurrently. To replicate how a host would function as closely as feasible in real-world circumstances, all tests were conducted using a shared hosting package and a fully functional website. As a result, compared to an empty site, certain statistics, including load speed and server response time, might be higher. Bluehost performs significantly better than average overall. Websites load swiftly, and there are no downtime problems. Additionally, it performs dependably overall and manages traffic spikes pretty well, making it ideal for small-to-medium-sized websites.

Response Time and Uptime

When it comes to hosting, uptime describes how accessible your website is to users, or how long it stays up and operating for a predetermined period. After 30 days of testing, Bluehost achieved a 99.63% uptime rating for long-term monitoring. Unlike other providers, Bluehost does not provide an uptime guarantee; nonetheless, the uptime is almost perfect, with a goal of 100%, which is something that very few companies ever accomplished. In light of this, Bluehost’s uptime performance is regarded as excellent. The amount of time it takes for the host server to respond to a request from a website visitor to access the website is called the server reaction time, or TTFB. In addition to processing time, server response time also includes latency (shown in the figure), which is effectively the bare least amount of time a server needs to make a response of any type. As a result, latency will never be lower than the overall server response time (TTFB). The average server response time in our Bluehost tests was 971 ms, which is not a bad but yet not a very good result. This is an acceptable overall result, especially because testing was conducted using a fully functional website.

Speed Test

The following test illustrates the speed at which a fully functional WordPress website loads when run in various locales. The primary indication of the speed at which this website loads is the Largest Contentful Paint. We obtained the fastest result in the US, where our Bluehost website is housed; the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is 1.3 seconds. The LCP scores for India and the UK were 2.2 and 1.2, respectively. The most significant outcome is the Largest Contentful Pain since Google uses it to determine how highly to rank your website. Additionally, it serves as a signal to the user that the website is loading correctly. As befitting one of the greatest and quickest hosting companies, Bluehost passes the LCP benchmark, which has a maximum duration of 2.5 seconds, in every tested location with flying colours.

Stress Test

Bluehost managed fifty virtual users flawlessly. The blue line, which shows the server response time, should, in the best-case scenario, stay flat as the number of visitors (grey line) rises. While there were some increases in the response time during our testing, overall it was rather steady, which is encouraging. Additionally, the server responded to each request with ease.

Security

There are several security features on Bluehost. However, you’ll need to buy these security measures from Bluehost or another provider to access and activate them. Let us examine Bluehost’s efforts concerning the more important security protocols. This covers firewalls, DDoS defence, and SSL certificates.

SSL certificates: Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are included free of cost with all Bluehost shared plans. Paid options are also available. Still, the majority of Bluehost users should be able to get by with the free edition.

DDoS defence: Bluehost uses Cloudflare to offer defence against DDoS attacks. A denial-of-service (DDoS) assault involves flooding your website with traffic from a compromised system in an attempt to overrun and interfere with it. Through traffic proxies to Cloudflare, you can conceal your original IP address from direct attacks by turning on Cloudflare.

Firewalls: Bluehost uses iptables as a firewall for its dedicated and VPS plans, but there doesn’t appear to be a default firewall for shared hosting. Therefore, I advise using free plugins if you’re using shared hosting. For example, Jetpack and Wordfence will complete the task for free.

Automated backups: One helpful item that can save your life in an emergency is automatic backups. It essentially creates a daily snapshot of your website, which you may restore whenever you’d like. Choice Plus and Pro plans come with them, but if not, using a third-party tool would cost you $2.99 a month.

All things considered, Bluehost’s security safeguards aren’t the greatest or most extensive. Unfortunately, it charges for essentially necessary security measures.

Support of Bluehost

Bluehost provides phone and live chat help around the clock, in addition to a comprehensive knowledge library with a wide range of topics. We had a positive experience interacting with live chat assistance. An agent logged on in a matter of seconds. There were some attempts at upselling, but the responses were kind, prompt, and insightful. Now, Bluehost offers Blue Sky, a premium customer care option, if you want even better assistance. You can get on-demand ticket support, help with account access, help with website backups, design advice, and much more for an extra fee.

Overall, Bluehost’s customer service is good. It’s simple to receive professional assistance for current problems. Additionally, you can always search the knowledge base independently to uncover pertinent information.

Servers Location of Bluehost

The server locations of Bluehost are:

• Mumbai, India
• Utah, USA
• Orem, USA
• London, UK/Europe
• Shanghai, China
• Hong Kong, China

Refund Policy of Bluehost

With Bluehost’s 30-day money-back guarantee, you can give the platform a try and decide if it’s right for you. However, Bluehost doesn’t allow cancellations or refunds after the first 30 days, so it’s crucial to decide during that time.

Conclusion

One of the greatest hosting providers is Bluehost, particularly for WordPress websites. The marketing tools and website staging are two of its strongest features. Every Bluehost plan also includes a free SSL, CDN, email address, and custom domain. With a 99.63% uptime and an average response time of 971 ms for a fully developed site, Bluehost’s performance likewise leaves little to be desired. You can be sure that your hosting experience will be outstanding. Whether you’re a novice, an experienced user, or a web expert, Bluehost is an almost ideal hosting company. It’s a fantastic, reasonably priced, and user-friendly choice for brand-new websites and small-to-medium-sized companies.