Expert Bluehost Review
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“Surprisingly good shared hosting with some surprising features such as Site Staging, and an extremely intuitive dashboard that makes managing the account extremely easy.
Its custom WordPress installation makes setting up a new website a simple task for absolute beginners. With simple performance enhancements such as SSD storage, Proton CDN, and integrated page caching your website will perform decently. “
- Go Pro, with more resources, dedicated IP address, Domain Privacy and CodeGuard Basic.
- FREE Domain and Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on all plans.
- Their Enhanced cPanel contains additional tools making it easier to manage your website, emails, and files.
- 24/ technical support by ticket (billing and sales only), live chat and phone.
- Free Proton CDN that can be enabled instantly from within the control panel.
- Daily, Weekly, and monthly account backups, with discounted (or free with specific plans) CodeGuard for third-party off-site backups.
Bluehost used to have an excellent reputation, and our previous review had been edited many times to incorporate the 2016 / 2017 debacle that saw a meltdown in reliability and support. When it came to update and refresh this review yet again in late 2018, we had no choice but to carry out a new, more extensive test of their services.
We are so glad that we did.
BlueHost has us pleasantly surprised. Let’s take a closer look.
The Signup Process
Signing up is very easy. You can choose the billing term (not monthly), and a choice of a few add-ons such as Sitelock and CodeGuard (we will talk a little more about them later). You will then need to enter all your details, pay via credit card or PayPal, and then set your password after the account is set up. The process took us minutes.
If you had your own domain, you would need to configure your A record to point it at your new hosting. Details are located in the welcome email, but they also give you a temporary URL too, so that you can get started right away.
When we logged in for the first time, we were presented with a screen saying “Pick a theme that inspires you.” We don’t recall electing to auto-install WordPress, but this is a nice touch if that is your intent. You can see a screenshot below of a great select of smart, yet simple themes including Storefront for WooCommerce sites.
We chose the Hestia theme and continued. Bluehost then proceeded to set up a WordPress website using that theme.
Be warned. This took about 5 minutes, and we feared it had crashed. After some time the theme and WordPress were installed. If after 10 minutes it is still on the loading screen, log in again, and it will take you to the dashboard. You will see everything is installed correctly.
When you first visit your new site (assuming your domain is working, or by using the temporary URL they provide in the dashboard), you will see a “Coming Soon” page rather than the theme. Don’t worry. When you log into your WordPress dashboard, there is the option to Launch your website.
This is not intending to be a walk-through of all the features (we may create this separately). Instead, because the sales documentation on the BlueHost website is limited, we will post a selection of screenshots of the hosting dashboard, as well as the custom WordPress dashboard so you can see all of the customizations BlueHost have made to make your life easier.
Hosting Dashboard features
First, let’s take a look at the main dashboard screen:
The “Home” screen shows a summary of your services. From here you can log in to WordPress, manage your domain hosting, manage your G Suite, or use the selection of helpful links.
Moving on to the My Sites section in the left-hand menu; select your website (hover over your website and click “Manage Site”) to be taken to the following screen:
Here, you will see the option to view your website or log in to your WordPress Dashboard in the top right corner. Below that, you will see seven different tabs. We will discuss each of these in turn:
Overview - Here you will see basic information about your WordPress installation. You can manage your themes and plugins (the links take you to appropriate place in WordPress), Manage users (takes you to the Users tab), and you can update your WordPress site on demand.
Users - Here you can easily log in as any user, edit the user profiles, or reset user passwords.
Backups - If you have signed up for the CodeGuard addon (highly recommended), then you can manage your backups here.
Performance - Here you can manage your page cache settings. For sites where the content does not change regularly, you can cache your contents more aggressively. Otherwise, you may wish to stick with the recommended setting.
Security - Here you can manage your SSL certificates, SiteLock, as well as check the integrity of your core WordPress files to ensure no hackers have tampered with them.
Plugins - Here you can easily update, enable, and disable your plugins. You will see that BlueHost has installed various plugins that it thinks you might find useful.
Settings - Here you can configure your site URL (you may wish to change this from the temporary URL you were given when you signed up), turn on automatic WordPress updates, configure comment, and content revision settings. You can also disable the coming soon page when you are ready to go live.
BlueHost Shared Hosting is extremely easy to use with WordPress. They appear to have installed by default just enough plugins to help you on your way, and the automatic installation of WordPress with a custom theme is a very nice touch. If you are new to hosting, and just starting a new blog or business website, it makes it very easy to get going.
WordPress Dashboard features
While an experienced WordPress developer will not want to clutter their WordPress installation with any plugins of customizations they don’t explicitly approve, for beginners the WordPress dashboard has been dramatically improved.
#1. Custom BlueHost Dashboard Page
On the left-hand side menu, you get a BlueHost option that contains a very easy to use dashboard containing the most important settings and tasks. You can easily Launch your site (it installs with a coming soon page), create posts and menus. You can even install WooCommerce if you wish to build an online store.
If you wish to customize the theme you installed, then there is a link to the customizer, as well as the ability to browse both Premium Themes and Free Themes.
There are also links to Site Staging, Social Sharing automation, Performance, as well as Hosting related features that take you back to the Hosting area.
You can see a screenshot of the WordPress Dashboard below:
#2. The Marketplace
The Marketplace is powered by MOJO Marketplace and is integrated into the WordPress installation for easy access.
You can choose from premium Themes, Plugins, Services, and Graphics, as well as see past purchases. From our brief look, the premium themes look great, as do some of the plugins available. The Graphics section is also useful, as it mainly focuses on items that will be useful to build out your website, such as logos.
The services, however, look over-priced, especially comparing it with the WP Live WordPress support, or other similar WordPress support services. For instance, paying $149 to make your website look like the theme demo is extremely overpriced. Any theme from, say, Theme Forest will come with instructions to help you do this. If you really do not know what you are doing with WordPress, you would almost be better spending a few hours on a TeamTreeHouse course where they can take you through all the basics.
#3. Performance
The Performance section has three sections to it:
Caching - This is where you can configure your page cache. With WordPress, page caching is essential to speed up the load time of your website. Instead of building the page each time from the database using PHP, a cached page will be a pre-built version. For websites that do not change often, you can comfortably choose Aggressive caching.
CDN - With the Plus or Choice Plus plan you get access to a Content Delivery Network and the Photon image acceleration service from Jetpack. If you don’t have this option, you may want to consider using CloudFlare instead.
#4. Site Staging
Technically, site staging is not supposed to be included in their cheapest plan (the one we signed up for). However, it is.
Site staging is an excellent feature, and not something many hosting providers now offer. You can switch between your production and staging site with one click.
If you make changes to your staging site, you can view it on a temporary URL that they provide. When you are ready, you can Deploy Files, Files & Database, or Database only. You can save a snapshot of your staging site and restore it at any time.
This must be one of our most favorite features that BlueHost provide. A screenshot of the Staging Environment screen is below:
Third-party Services \ Upselling
There are four products that BlueHost try to upsell you with, either during the signup process or from within the dashboard. You don’t necessarily need to purchase all of them, but they may be of interest whether or not you decide to buy hosting from BlueHost as many of them are third-party services.
The point is though, these are genuinely useful, and we will talk about each in turn:
#1. CodeGuard Backup Service
BlueHost, by default, comes with daily, weekly, and monthly backups of your entire account. The problem with this is that you can only restore ALL files with a single click, or download databases to restore manually. To get the ability to restore individual files, and databases automatically you have to upgrade to their PRO backup service.
We always say that you should never rely on your host’s backups, so paying for a premium in-house service versus a third-party off-site service like CodeGuard is not recommend. You can purchase CodeGuard for just $2.99 per month (or free with specific plans), which is much better value than buying it directly ($60 per year).
We, therefore, recommend either choosing a hosting package that includes CodeGuard or selecting it as an addon.
CodeGuard automatically takes daily backups, with a default retention setting of 90 days. You can even keep all daily versions forever should you wish. Here are the main features:
- Daily Backups: Automatic, daily site backup of your site.
- Monitoring: CodeGuard checks your site for changes every day. Great for knowing if it has been hacked.
- One-Click Restore: Revert back to a previous version of your website with just one click.
- Redundancy: CodeGuard stores your backups offsite across multiple secure locations. This is a third-party service not linked to BlueHost.
#2. SiteLock Spam, Blacklist, and Malware monitoring
SiteLock is a service that helps provide trust to your users. By scanning your website for malware, checking whether it is listed in spam or blacklists you and your customers will have peace of mind. With basic verification of your business, you will be able to display the SiteLock certificate, which they say can increase conversion rates on your website.
SiteLock has the following features:
- Basic Spam Monitoring: Make sure your site is free of spam lists.
- Basic Business Verification: Display a certificate confirming your business can be trusted.
- Site Verification Certificate: Increase conversions and develop customer trust.
- Blacklist Monitoring: Know if your site has been quarantined by search engines.
- Basic Malware Monitoring: Ensure your site is free of Malware that might prevent users from visiting your site.
#3. BlueHost SEO Tools
If you are entirely new to SEO and want more traffic to your website, the BlueHost SEO Tools is a good place to start. It will provide weekly reports on up to 10 keywords (in the Start package) and will provide recommendations on how to improve your website.
The Start features include:
- Search engine submission
- 50-page analysis
- Weekly scan
- 10 keyword ranking reports
- 2 competitor reports
- Monthly email report
- Marketing report with 5 recommendations
While there are a lot better SEO Tools out there (SEMRush, CognitiveSEO, AHrefs, and Moz to name a few), they require a more in-depth degree of knowledge and cost 30 - 50 times the price every month. At $1.99 per month, this is probably a great place to start while you get your website going. You can always upgrade to a more comprehensive service at a later date.
#4. WP Live OnDemand WordPress Help
WP Live is a specialist WordPress support service that will go the extra steps to get you online with your own WordPress website. It is integrated into the MOJO Marketplace, a third-party service, also owned by EIG. EIG is BlueHost’s parent company.
WP Live looks like a great product if you are struggling to get to grips with WordPress, and the support offered by the BlueHost team is not quite comprehensive enough.
WP Live offers 3 different plans:
- WP Live lite ($29 pm) - Expedited Ticketing.
- WP live ($49 pm) - Expedited Ticketing & Chat Support.
- WP Live Pro ($149 pm) - Live Phone calls, Expedited Ticketing & Chat Support.
We would suggest only signing up with this service if you are struggling. It is quite expensive, but something that you may just need to purchase for a limited time while you configure your website.
It is also worth pointing out that these guys are not the only show in town, and there are other similar services around at varying price points that might be worth considering.
Hosting features
Of course, BlueHost Shared Hosting is not solely about WordPress. You get all the features you need to enable you to manage your website, emails, backups and more. Let’s take you through some highlighted features:
#1. cPanel Control panel
Bluehost uses a custom version of cPanel. Many of the options have been removed, making it more simple to use. For instance, there is no ability to take cPanel backups. Instead, we presume that you will need to contact their support to initiate any restoration from the backups they take. This is another reason their CodeGuard third-party backup addon is a great idea.
All the essential features of cPanel are there. You can manage your domains, emails, files, databases, and see statistics about your hosting account. You can see a screenshot below:
#2. MOJO Marketplace One-click installer
We have already touched on how the MOJO Marketplace can help you with your WordPress website. However, it does much more than this.
With MOJO, you can install a wide range of software to your web hosting account, including Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and PrestaShop.
The Plugins and Extensions are not just limited to WordPress either. You can find plugins for Magento, OpentCart, and more.
Interestingly, if you access the MOJO marketplace from within your hosting dashboard, rather than from within WordPress, you get access to a much broader range of services. Whether you need help Marketing, Design, Development, Writing, and Video editing, they will have a service for you.
#3. Other features
With cPanel and MOJO, BlueHost has all the basics covered. However, it is useful to quickly list some other features that you might find helpful to know: - SSH Access is available - Free SSL certificates are available - You get a free domain for one year (not included in the money back guarantee) - Spam protection and CDN are included with Plus, and Choice Plus Plans. - All plans come with a 30-day money back Guarantee - Unlimited email accounts - Unlimited websites are included with their Plus, and Choice Plus Plans.
BlueHost Support - Is it any better?
Bluehost offers a team of specialist support agents, providing 24⁄7 customer support through a range of different methods; telephone, live chat, and ticket support. It should be noted that ticket support is only available for sales and billing queries, NOT technical support.
They even have a specialist WordPress support team who can help with general WordPress issues and troubleshooting. If that is not enough, then you can use the WP Live addon to gain Expedited specialist help.
Testing BlueHost support
It was evident that as soon as we received our welcome email after signing up, that we would need to get in touch with their support. We use a third-party DNS, meaning we needed the IP address so we could set up an “A” record to the new hosting service.
On the Bluehost dashboard, in the “Helpful Links” box we clicked “Help & Support.” We then had to enter our name, and either domain, phone number or email to initiate a live chat.
They asked us to pre-select a topic, then pre-select a sub-topic (they call it description), and then type more information on the problem. We suspect that they have teams that deal with specific issues, and within about ten seconds we were speaking to a support technician.
Here is a screenshot of the conversation:
The whole process was quick and easy, and the support technician quickly provided the correct answer to my query.
We don’t know how they will manage to deal with more complex queries or difficult issues without ticket support, but this is not unusual. For instance, GoDaddy has been mainly using just telephone support for years (although they do make available live chat support as well).
BlueHost Shared Hosting Review Final Thoughts
BlueHost has a torrid history to live down. When we first started working on a significant update of our BlueHost review in October 2018, there was little information to go on about their service. Their website had barely been updated, and even where it had, information about their offerings, and what their service was actually like was limited.
It was clear. We had to sign up again, and test them out.
We didn’t want to like them. The last time we tried them, their dashboard and website were full of spammy upselling of other products. Products that we were not impressed with.
It has all changed. Gone are the spammy upsells, and instead you get carefully selected good quality services being promoted. Sure, this may still annoy you, but they may actually be useful to people.
The new dashboard looked great and was incredibly easy to use. WordPress configuration was very straighforward, and it was a nice touch asking you to select a theme for a more customized WordPress install from the very beginning.
The support we received by live chat on several occasions was excellent. While they were only simple queries, the support technician joined the conversation in seconds, and the whole issue was dealt with successfully within minutes. Getting rid of ticket support seems to have worked wonders.
While their shared hosting is fairly basic on the technological front, we do like it. We suspect combining all the features we experienced here, with either their Cloud Site or Managed WordPress hosting would make us very happy indeed.
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“BlueHost offers a range of VPS hosting plans to suit most users’ needs, with the current limit of 4 CPU cores soon to be upgradable ad hoc.
Their VPS come with standard support, but we worry it slightly over-priced for those who can manage their own website, but not quite good enough for users who would really benefit from a Completely Managed solution. BlueHost seems to be targeting the middle ground, with a balance of pricing and support. “
- CentOS KVM VPS Server, with Root Access. Choice of 2 or 4 CPU Cores, and 4 - 16 GB RAM.
- Enhanced easy to use cPanel control panel, with MOJO one-click installer.
- SSD Storage for lower latency, and higher throughput.
- Instant Provisioning, with guaranteed scalable on-demand resources.
- Their specialist support team can be contacted via telephone for technical help.
- Includes enhanced WordPress features, including a custom dashboard, site staging, and more.
BlueHost offer Linux VPS, with a choice of three different plans. Also, if you run WordPress, you may want to consider the Optimized WordPress plans that provide an optimized version of the VPS server.
We take a look at some of the highlighted features:
#1. High-Performance Scalable Servers
OpenStack and KVM - BlueHost use the latest servers with state-of-the-art components, all housed in their own data center. Each server uses OpenStack and KVM for increased performance. KVM provides dedicated resources to each account which are not shared with other customers.
SSD Storage - Solid State Disk storage increases the performance of your website, but also decrease latency, I/O input, and throughput.
PHP 7 - PHP 7 is significantly faster than the previous version 5.6, with some benchmarks indicating it can handle nearly double the number of requests per second.
Instant Provisioning - Get you up and running with your new VPS server in seconds.
Dynamic Resources - While not yet implemented (as at October 2018), BlueHost will soon be launching the ability to add additional CPU and RAM on the fly.
#2. Management
BlueHost provides access to manage your server through their custom-built dashboard. You get access to custom tools, cPanel, or WHM as appropriate. Here are the highlights:
Custom VPS Management Tools - Use their custom tools to manage your VPS, including starting & stopping the server, putting the server in rescue or maintenance mode, setting up SSH for Root & other users, accessing the system console, managing IPs, disk management, and managing system updates.
Root Access - BlueHost offer full root access to your VPS so you can modify it to suit your needs, whether you want to tweak PHP settings, install NGINX, OpCache or anything else.
Enhanced cPanel & WHM - All VPS servers come with access to their custom dashboard, with enhanced cPanel. Easily access all the advanced WordPress features, including auto-updates, site staging and more. Their MOJO installer will allow you to install popular software such as Magento, Drupal, Joomla, and Weebly site builder among many others. You can use WHM to create cPanel accounts, manage cPanel plans, and all other aspects of your hosting.
#3. Support Included
BlueHost offer specialist teams that focus on VPS and Dedicated server support. Either select the appropriate category when requesting live chat help or use the designated telephone number for VPS customers.
It is unclear as to the exact level of support you would receive, and it would appear that the VPS servers are not proactively managed. This in itself is not an issue, as many hosts charge $50 or $75 per month for proactive management. The problem we see is that you have no option for this.
Conversely, they would not appeal to users who require a simple unmanaged server.
Lack of choice on the support options (or more particularly a fully managed option) is where we feel they are let down here.
#5. Other Features
Other features include free SSL, domain privacy, spam protection, SiteLock malware, and hacking protection. For backups, you can add CodeGuard, which is available for a small fee.
BlueHost VPS Review Final Thoughts
For VPS hosting, they have a really rock solid offering. SSDs, plus KVM and specialist support. The prices are reasonable for the level of support, but the renewal prices do seem a little high on the larger plans.
Small businesses or bloggers who don’t know anything about hosting would really benefit from a Full or Complete Management solution, rather than a support team that might walk them through how to do things. That would, though, come at a cost, so it is only natural there would be some trade-off.
BlueHost offerings are in that middle ground, and they appear to be doing it well. They do also offer Cloud Sites, which has scalable resources for a more hands-off solution.
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“Their Cloud Sites are one of our favorite BlueHost products. Their high spec NGINX configured servers come with data mirroring and automatic failover in the event of hardware failure.
Couple that with a highly tuned NGINX configuration and SSD storage and you have the making of a reliable high performance site. They mention also Varnish Caching, but as Varnish doesn’t work on HTTPS sites, we don’t know what use this will be in the modern web age. “
- Data Mirroring stores 3 copies of your site to ensure data protection.
- High performance NGINX server with Varnish Caching.
- Custom dashboard allows you to monitor your site”s performance, including traffic and load speed.
- Instant scaling of resources without the need to rebooting the server.
- Fully managed hosting. BlueHost take care of absolutely everything for you.
- SSD Storage for increase performance, and lower latency resulting in faster load times.
BlueHost offers three different plans, starting at $6.95 for one site, or $8.95 for unlimited sites (renewal prices are higher).
Websites hosted on the Cloud will be more reliable than a standard server. This is because BlueHost duplicates your site, and mirrors it to three other servers. If a hardware issue occurs, your site will automatically be redirected to one of the backup copies, while the other two copies work on rebuilding once the hardware issues are resolved.
This is not to say your website will be infallible, but it will get rid of one of the causes of the longest downtimes. A rebuild of a RAID disk can take many hours, if not several days. While a failure of this nature is rare, it can be disastrous when it happens. The Cloud Sites will avoid this.
Better performance
According to statistics provided by BlueHost, their Cloud Sites are over twice as fast as their own shared hosting. Their Cloud includes low-density servers, varnish caching layer (this does not work with HTTPS), and global CDN to ensure the fastest load times.
With their integrated caching, dynamic requests are cached on the first page load. Any subsequent page requests are then served as a static page, without the need for any PHP processing or database queries.
Furthermore, BlueHost enables you to understand your site’s performance via their custom dashboard. See usage trends, page speed, uptime, and global reach at a glance. This will enable you to understand your resource usage, so if required, and at a touch of a button, you can scale up resources.
Fully Managed
The Cloud Sites are fully managed. You will not get Root access or even a cPanel control panel for that matter. You will get a carefully designed custom control panel, designed to make your hosting as easy to manage as possible.
BlueHost will deal with all security patches, port access, and other issues automatically.
BlueHost Cloud Final Thoughts
We think their Cloud Hosting is great. With their low starting price, and upgradable resources you can buy the exact amount of resources you require, without having to upgrade to a plan that is too large.
The auto failover to duplicate copies of your site is excellent in the event of hardware failure. Restoring a server to RAID storage can take long time. It could be hours or even a couple of days if the absolute worst happens. We have personally been through it.
A NGINX configured server, when coupled with SSD storage, always makes a big improvement to website load times.
There are a couple of things we are not so keen on:
Lack of cPanel - They use their own custom control panel, which works just fine, though.
Varnish Cache - This was all the rage a few years ago when HTTPS and HTTP/2 were not so popular. Varnish does not work with HTTPS, and that is a big problem. With browsers now giving warnings to people who don’t use HTTPS, and Google giving a ranking boost to HTTPS sites, there really is no reason not to use it.
No Monthly payment option - For the cloud, they should be offering this with a monthly payment option. Presumably, when you upgrade resources, it will charge you for the remainder of the term. This could be costly if you signed up for three years at the outset to lock in the lower price. This is almost a deal breaker.
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“Despite providing some robust offerings with the Shared, WordPress, VPS and Cloud, their dedicated hosting looks a little dissapointing.
It is unclear whether you actually have your own server, and we suspect you may get dedicated resources on a server shared with multiple users, or even dedicated resources on their Cloud. Pricing is good, until you realize you have to sign up for 3 years to get that price. “
- Enhanced cPanel option, for ease of management.
- Modern hardware, with servers located in-house for ease of maintenance.
- Unmanaged. Users have full control of everything, from the OS to Apache \ NGINX.
- Dedicated specialists provide support to dedicated hosting customers.
- Private DNS, with 5 free Dedicated IP”s. IP Tables Firewall.
- Minimum of three dedicated IP addresses.
BlueHost offer three different dedicated servers. All are powered by open source technology, such as open stack, providing the ability to upgrade the performance of the servers over time.
The three servers all come with 4 CPU cores (8 Threads), but vary the CPU speed, which is 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, and 3.3 GHz respectively. Storage is raid 1 (mirrored) configuration which helps prevent against data loss in the event of hard disk failure. This is pretty standard for dedicated hosting, but the lack of SSD options is not good. All plans come with plenty of bandwidth (5TB to 15TB) and between 4GB and 16 GB Ram.
All servers come with a 30-day moneyback guarantee, which is unusual for dedicated hosting and includes 24⁄7 support, up to 5 IP addresses, a free domain, and free SSL certificate as standard. You can install their enhanced cPanel control panel that has their custom user friendly WordPress dashboard (see our shared hosting opinion for more details on this).
BlueHost state that you can increase storage on the fly, without requiring admin intervention. This statement on their sales page has made it slightly confusing about what you are actually getting. They mention racking your server within 24 - 72 hours, yet they can increase storage instantly. We suspect they are not racking the servers, but instead providing you with dedicated resources from a larger server or cloud. Surely, though, a cloud would have better storage than Raid 1, so it may be the former scenario.
Provisioning time for their dedicated servers is in the region of 24 - 72 hours. They claim this is faster than their competition, but many now offer server provisioning within a few hours if no customization is required. In BlueHost’s case, no customizations are available when you sign up, which is not so good.
BlueHost Dedicated Review Final Thoughts
Despite being warm to some of their other products, their dedicated hosting seems lacking. There is no ability to customize the server configuration, with standard HDD storage being made standard.
The introductory pricing looks great until you realize that it is for the 3-yearly price. For example, if you want to pay monthly, then the cost is $149.99 per month. The monthly price when paying 3-yearly is just $79.99. That is a lot of outlay, and a lot of time to be tied to a dedicated server.
We have said it elsewhere (VPS review), but the lack of a fully managed solution might put some people off. Sure, there is a specialist technical team, but a fully managed solution is always going to be superior. A fully managed server will have a highly crafted server configuration with various performance optimizations that just works. A vanilla server with support might have an array of changes, that each successive support technician might tweak in their own way. Eventually, mistakes can creep in, and you have problems.
We much prefer clearer management plans or just a fully managed server option that makes it clear what you are getting. Whether that is unmanaged, partially managed, or completely managed, is up to you. BlueHost’s scope of support is unclear.
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“BlueHost offer Optimized Hosting for WordPress, hosting on their VPS servers. For more about the hosting service check out our VPS opinion. For more about the WordPress optimization features, check out our shared hosting opinion which looks in-depth at their WordPress customizations.
You may also want to check out the Cloud Sites, which come with account mirroring with hardware failover and Varnish Caching. “
- Endorsed by WordPress.org since 2005.
- Custom WordPress installation for easy set up.
- Powered by SSD VPS Hosting for faster performance.
- Automatic Updates, Site Staging, CDN, and integrated caching.
- Optimized WordPress plans based on their VPS Hosting. Root \ shell access.
- Special Woocommerce plans for E-Commerce websites based on their Shared Hosting.
While their Optimized WordPress Hosting utilizes their VPS server hosting, it is packaged and priced slightly differently.
Their prices are heavily discounted for the first billing term with our exclusive BlueHost coupons, so signing up for a longer period may be wise.
Optimized WordPress Hosting
With increasing resources for the more expensive plans, instead of advertising CPU Cores, they instead display the estimated visits per month that the server should handle. Their cheapest “WP Standard” plan should serve 100 million visits, which for most users, should be ample.
As all plans come with full SSD Storage, NGINX, a custom PHP-FPM configuration, and plenty of resources your website you can be sure of a fast, responsive website. There is no CPU throttling as resources are always guaranteed to be available.
With integrated Caching, Site Staging, free CDN, and MOJO Marketplace, you can easily improve performance, find plugins, scripts and more.
For more insights on the custom features BlueHost offer for WordPress users please see our Shared Hosting Opinion in which we walk you through in detail their custom dashboard and WordPress installation.
Other features
- Access control - Easily create permission-based accounts to let people access certain areas of your account.
- Root Access - You have full access to the CentOS operating system, giving you complete control over your server. Great for advanced users.
- cPanel - Use BlueHost’s enhanced user-friendly control panel to manage all aspects of your account, and utilize their custom-built WordPress management tools.
- WHM - Because it is based on their VPS servers, you get access to WHM enabling you to create and manage multiple cPanel accounts on the same account.
- SiteLock - With the SiteLock security features (optional add-on), you can defend your websites against malicious attacks and malware.
BlueHost WordPress Hosting Final Thoughts
All WordPress features are available on all Bluehost plans (some cheaper plans limit some features). Despite the Specialized WordPress Hosting being based on their VPS plans, it is missing a few features that we would like to see, such as OPCode caching and Memcached,
While their Cloud Sites offer Varnish, in the modern age this is useless as Varnish doesn’t support HTTPS (important for SEO). Using Cloud Sites for WordPress for Varnish is therefore not feasible.
Overall, though, and despite lacking a few performance features, you would be relatively happy with the performance their hosting offers.
NB. Many other reviews around the web have not been updated to indicate that ManageWP is no longer part of the BlueHost dashboard (It was removed at the end of 2016). You can add ManageWP manually though, should you wish.
Jonathan Griffin. Hosting Expert & Editor @ The Webmaster:
“BlueHost have partnered with Weebly to offer a free website builder to it’s line-up, although premium plans are available for more advanced features.
Weebly is one of the most popular website builders that offers clean modern responsive designs that can be built with absolutely no coding knowledge. You can launch a new website in a matter of minutes. “
- Weebly can be used with any of their hosting plans.
- Responsive Mobile Ready Themes that adapt seamlessly to any device.
- Powerful E-commerce Store features including cart, search, Shipping, Tax and inventory management.
- Create a blog including categories, sidebar customization, commenting, and SEO.
- Quickly add slideshows, galleries, fully customizable forms and more.
- Fully customize forms by dragging and dropping new fields, customize questions and response types.
Weebly can be installed in just a couple of clicks via MOJO, BlueHost’s one-click installer, which is available on any plan.
When you go to install, you will have the option to select three plans; Basic, Professsional, and Business. You can see a screenshot of the installation screen below:
You will then see a loading screen, which will automatically redirect you once the installation is complete. Weebly will then take you through all the configuration options for your new site.
For example, it will ask you if you wish to sell products, choose a theme, after which you can start to edit your new site.
Finally, once you have edited your site, click publish to go live.
Once you are happy with your website design, you may wish to uprade to a paid Weebly plan in order to remove the Branding in the footer of your website.
Users Reviews
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 1 Cloud Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
I have been with bluehost for about 3 years and truth be told never really been satisfied with there service, but foolishly continued to give them my money. Today, however was the last straw.
I had a website launch planned for midnight last night, and I noticed the site was going quite slowly. I went on Live Chat to talk about some options, including VPS and Cloud Performance Hosting. The salesperson (I believe named Daniel G), said that the performance on Cloud would be better, less managed for us, and that migration would take 1-2 hours. I confirmed with Daniel multiple times about it taking that time. I underlined and stressed that I had a launch at midnight and the site had to be usable by them. He said it would be certainly done in that time and, when it was done, I would just need to re-install my SSL on it.
So, I bought this service, and waited. I waited for 3 hours before going on Live Chat again, asking if the migration was done and if, perhaps, the email had simply not arrived. This customer service rep now said–“Sorry, it’s still under way, and will take 4-8 hours.” I began to get frustrated at this point, realizing that the first person had lied. I voiced these frustrations, and the rep simply kept saying, “There’s nothing we can do, you have to wait, it’ll be done within 4-8 hours for sure.”
I moved the launch to 8am the next morning, thinking this would give me plenty of time. I ended up going to bed at 1am (6 hours after the beginning of the migration) and it was not done. I set the alarm for 5am, thinking I would get up at that time and do the SSL. Still not done. Then, after a sleepless few hours, 7am. Still not done.
I have been on Live Chat since then, and have received appalling service again. The first person said, “Well sorry but migrations take 24-72 hours” and said there’s nothing I can do. I kept at it and she managed to give me a phone number for the migrations department. When I called, it said they’re closed until 9am MT (which would be 11am my time). When I asked, I was told there is no one on call.
I was offered nothing but a “sorry”. I asked to speak to another person. She then told me that migrations take 12-24 hours. And the kicker is–she claimed that she “consulted with the technical experts and they said it would be done within then.” Who did she call? The closed department?
Needless to say I will be cancelling my account with them ASAP. If you are thinking about using bluehosts services, consider yourself warned. I highly suggest you stay as far away from them as you possibly can.
Features
Server Technology
- SSD storage as standard on all plans (not dedicated) for lower latency, and greater throughput.
- Fully optimized Cloud Sites available with NGINX and Varnish Caching for ultimate performance, and data mirroring for automated failover protection.
- Easy scaling across products, allows you to upgrade seamlessly to Cloud, VPS, and Dedicated.
Software & Ecommerce
- Customized cPanel interface allows easy management of domains, emails, files and more.
- BlueHost uses MOJO Marketplace to install software, themes, and plugins to all the popular software. This includes E-Commerce software such as Magento, PrestaShop and Opencart.
- WordPress comes with easy setup, custom plugins and configuration, Site Staging, WP CLI, and more. BlueHost have done a very good job with this.
Backups & Security
- BlueHost backup your entire account daily, weekly, monthly using their SiteBackup Service. You can restore files with a single click, and download databases to restore manually. For a small fee, you can restore individual files and databases with a few clicks. BlueHost support recommended to get CodeGuard, rather than go Pro. We concur.
- They offer CodeGuard Basic backups on some plans which offer further piece of mind by taking daily backups. It is also available as an addon for just $2.99 per month.
- The SiteLock addon helps defend your websites against malicious attacks and malware by fixing vulnerabilities as they occur. All Bluehost servers are PCI compliant for levels A and B.
Support & Reliability
- Support is available via phone, ticket (sales and billing only) or live chat. They have special teams for various tasks, such as Traffic Generation, Website speed and performance, security and general questions. They may try to upsell services, so be warned.
- If you are looking for extra reliability, their Cloud Sites automatically mirror your account to multiple servers. Should a hardware failure occur, your website will automatically switch to one of the backup locations.
- Knowledge base and basic howto videos are available to help with common tasks. The organization, and quality of these could use some improvement.
Server Locations
A data center near your users you can decrease server response times. Bluehost has data centers in the following locations:
North America
- Provo - Utah, US
Europe
- None
Asia
- Bangalore, IN
Australasia
- None
Africa
- None
South America
- None
Support
Historically, this is where BlueHost let themselves down. By getting rid of their ticket support for technical queries they avoid the long wait time for people to get issues resolved.
Our testing of their technical support appears to show significant improvement, at least for simple queries.
Support Methods
- Ticket support is available 24⁄7 for sales and billing questions only. Ticket support is NOT avilable for technical queries.
- Telephone support is available, divided into specialist teams that can help you with anything from general support, to marketing, performance optimizations and more. They may try to upsell services to assist, so be warned.
- Live chat support is available, with the support technician able to liase with more senior staff to resolve more complex issues while you wait.
Response Satisfaction
- Everything about how they have setup their support screams that it should be great. Review feedback from users says otherwise. Our own testing in late 2018 shows major improvement, and we were happy with how our simple support requests were handled.
- The billing team seems to be one the of biggest areas of complaints. Lack of availability, and trouble cancelling accounts \ being rebilled after cancelling seems to be a frequent complaint. We tested this by refunding an account, and had no issues.
- We were able to talk to a support technician within seconds of opening a live chat request. Queries were dealt with in a friendly, and fast manor. It is difficult to know how they will deal with more complex problems.
Speed
Cutting Edge Technology
- NGINX — This is a high performance web server that can be placed in a reverse proxy to Apache, providing increased performance caching static. It is available on Cloud Sites and their Managed WordPress Hosting.
- SSD — Solid State Disk storage increases the performance of your website, but decreasing latency, I/O Input and Throughput, as well as increasing reliability.
- PHP 7 — The latest version of PHP is available for increased performance over that of earlier versions.
Performance Caching
- Page Caching — Even on their basic WordPress sites they have integrated disk-based page caching, which combined with SSD storage will significantly speed up your website.
- Varnish — This is a web application accelerator that caches HTTP calls as a reverse proxy. This is available on Cloud Sites.
- CDN — With Jetpack, installed automatically on WordPresss websites, you get access to an unlimited Content Delivery Network called Photon.
Uptime
Bluehost do not offer an uptime guarantee.
Although they do not promise a specific uptime, some of their products are specifically designed to improve it. Their Cloud Sites for example, are mirrored accross three different servers to protect against hardware failure.
Their servers also utilize 10 GB connections in their own data center, with UPS backup system. They utilize resource protection against rogue users, by automatically isolating problem accounts.
On paper they look pretty reliable. However, historically, there have been grumbles on review sites and forums, but we believe they have moved on from their troubled 2016 /2017 period.
Value
Typical Bluehost Prices
| Hosting Type | Price Range | |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Hosting | $3.95 - $5.95 | 3 plans |
| VPS Hosting | $19.99 - $59.99 | 3 plans |
| Cloud Hosting | $6.95 - $15.95 | 3 plans |
| Dedicated Hosting | $79.99 - $119.99 | 3 plans |
| Managed WordPress Hosting | $6.95 - $49.99 | 7 plans |
Payment methods accepted: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, or PayPal.
Bluehost Hosting Plans
VPS Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard [1] | 30 GB | 2 CPU Cores | 2 | Unlimited | $19.99 | More Details |
| Enhanced | 60 GB | 2 CPU Cores | 4 | Unlimited | $29.99 | More Details |
| Ultimate | 120 GB | 4 CPU Cores | 8 | Unlimited | $59.99 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] All VPS plans includes Free domain, management, and free SSL.
Cloud Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter [1] | 100 GB | 2 CPU Cores | 2 | Unlimited | $6.95 | More Details |
| Performance [2] | unlimited GB | 4 CPU Cores | 4 | Unlimited | $8.95 | More Details |
| Business Pro [3] | unlimited GB | 6 CPU Cores | 6 | Unlimited | $15.95 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] Free SSL. 100 Email accounts. 500MB email storage.
- [2] Free SSL. Unlimited email accounts and storage. 1 Spam Experts.
- [3] Free SSL. Unlimited email accounts and storage. 2 Spam Experts. Includes CodeGuard Basic, Dedicated IP, SSL and domain privacy.
Dedicated Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard [1] | 500 GB | 4 x 2.3 GHz | 4 | 5 TB | $79.99 | More Details |
| Enhanced [2] | 1000 GB | 4 x 2.5 GHz | 8 | 10 TB | $99.99 | More Details |
| Premium [3] | 1000 GB | 4 x 3.3 GHz | 16 | 15 TB | $119.99 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] Includes Raid 1 storage. Full access. Unmanaged. 3 IPs. Upgradable.
- [2] Includes Raid 1 storage. Full access. Unmanaged. 4 IPs. Upgradable.
- [3] Includes Raid 1 storage. Full access. Unmanaged. 5 IPs. Upgradable.
Managed WordPress Hosting Plans
| Plan Name | Space | Bandwidth | Panel | No. of Sites | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP Standard [1] | 30 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $19.99 | More Details |
| WP Enhanced [2] | 60 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $29.99 | More Details |
| WP Premium [3] | 120 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $39.99 | More Details |
| WP Ultimate [4] | 240 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $49.99 | More Details |
| WooCommerce Starter [5] | 100 GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $6.95 | More Details |
| WooCommerce PLus [6] | unlimited GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $8.95 | More Details |
| WooCommerce Pro [7] | unlimited GB | Unlimited | cPanel | Unlimited | $12.95 | More Details |
Notes:
- [1] On VPS servers. Dedicated backup storage. 2 GB Ram. Free SSL.
- [2] On VPS servers. Dedicated backup storage. 4 GB Ram. Free SSL.
- [3] On VPS servers. Dedicated backup storage. 6 GB Ram. Free SSL.
- [4] On VPS servers. Dedicated backup storage. 8 GB Ram. Free SSL.
- [5] WooCommerce Auto-Install, Dedicated IP, Free SSL. Instant WooCommerce Integration. Free WooCommerce Themes.
- [6] WooCommerce Auto-Install, Dedicated IP, Free SSL. Instant WooCommerce Integration. Free WooCommerce Themes. 1 Spam protection domains.
- [7] WooCommerce Auto-Install, Dedicated IP, Free SSL. Instant WooCommerce Integration. Free WooCommerce Themes. Also includes Daily Website Backups, and domain privacy. 2 Spam protection domains.
Frequently asked questions
What control panel does BlueHost use??
Does BlueHost offer a money back guarantee?
Does BlueHost offer backups?
A basic version of SiteBackup Pro is included with all plans, offering daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
If you wish for more granular control over your backups, SiteBackup Pro can be upgraded. This enables you to restore individual files or databases.
What payment methods can I use?
What support methods do they have?
Support is available 24⁄7. In 2016, due to a meltdown with their outsourced ticket support, BlueHost made support available by Phone and live-chat only. Since then, they have re-introduced ticket support.
They have specialist teams answering phone queries for:
- Wordpress Help
- VPS, Cloud and Dedicated servers
- General support
Does BlueHost offer Windows hosting?
Do they offer a free domain?
Do they offer an uptime guarantee?
Where are their servers located?
About the author
Jonathan Griffin. Editor at The Webmaster.
Jonathan Griffin has been the Lead writer at The Webmaster for the last 5 years. Having provided technical SEO, WordPresss development, and hosting services for clients, his passion remains to help small businesses and bloggers develop their online presence.
In his spare time, he loves to push his technical knowledge further, and regularly undertakes professional courses on subjects ranging from python development, digital marketing, and Google Analytics.