Bluehost Review 2021
In this Bluehost review, we’ll look at Bluehost, a web hosting firm that is popular with bloggers and company owners alike. It was founded in 2003 and is based in Utah, one of the world’s largest and longest-existing web hosting firms with over two million customers and over 750 full-time employees.
Over the years, Bluehost has expanded its services to include a wide range of professional services as well as support for prominent platforms like WordPress and WooCommerce. This Bluehost web hosting review will cover the features and services offered by Bluehost, as well as an unbiased analysis of the value of Bluehost’s hosting alternatives.
What’s on This Page
Bluehost
4.7/5
- Includes WordPress site integration and support
- Provides a one-stop shop for websites
- Offers additional professional services and support
What is Bluehost?
Bluehost is a popular web hosting service, having been in business since 2003 and with a huge customer base. It has a lot of expertise to draw from, given that it’s been around since 2003, and it’s most likely doing something correctly. Bluehost provides six types of hosting: shared computers, VPS servers, dedicated servers, shared WordPress websites, managed WordPress sites, and WooCommerce.
A website’s performance is dependent on the number of visitors it receives. If a company’s audience or sales growth, its internet presence can scale to match. Bluehost offers lower hosting service rates because of shared hosting plans, which mean that other sites share server space with yours. When your business or audience expands, you may opt for dedicated hosting at a higher price. Virtual private servers (VPS) are a compromise between shared and dedicated hosting by providing a virtual private server experience on a shared host system.
Avast’s antivirus programs defend your devices against hackers and bugs to keep your data where it should be—safe and sound on your private network. One of the most popular plans is Avast Free Antivirus, which offers basic protection against well-known viruses, so you can live your best virus-free life. If you need more comprehensive security, Avast also offers paid versions with more advanced antivirus features to block all malware and known variants, plus anti-tracking protection, a VPN for total online privacy, in addition to some pretty nifty cleanup and tune-up tools.
What makes Bluehost different?
In addition to a wide range of hosting options, Bluehost offers an equally diverse suite of additional services that can help you reach your audience. These supplementary services include marketing learning opportunities and professional services such as design, website migration, marketing, weekly SEO reports, and keyword optimization. In terms of additional features, they also offer a tool that optimizes your video for web use, so you won’t have to do it yourself.
Bluehost has a team of specialists that includes WordPress experts who can assist you in getting your site up and running as well as help you solve any issues that may occur. Managed WordPress hosting is also available from the firm. It’s worth noting that, like WooCommerce, WordPress, which runs about half of all websites on the Internet, recommends Bluehost. WordPress is a one-click installation program like WooCommerce.
Bluehost Pros and Cons
Pros
- Wide range of web hosting options
- Scales easily with upgrades to VPS or a dedicated server
- 30-day refund policy
- Strong security features, including free SSL Certificates, and anti-spam solutions
- Domain name registery, dedicated email addresses and other benefits
Cons
- Subscribers must book an annual subscription – no month-to-month options offered.
- Charges fees for migrating to another site and initial low hosting rates will often double or more after the initial term.
- Only available in Linux. Windows hosting is not available
Is Bluehost Secure?
Security is essential when you’re investing in your online presence. Bluehost leverages a tool called Sitelock to scan your site daily to protect it from malicious attacks, spammers, and hackers. This same tool is used to perform 24/7 monitoring of the company servers. They also offer one-click Cloudflare integration, which can make your website run more quickly and safely by shutting down DDoS attacks.
Anti-spam tools include Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Experts and Spam Hammer, but you can also protect your email account with filters, password protected directories and IP blacklists. Users who pay for additional services in more expensive plans can mask their physical location for extra security via domain privacy. Finally, Bluehost includes free SSL certificates on most of its plans.
Our Rating Process
We assessed Bluehost based on its ease of use, customization capabilities, analytics, and customer service. We scored each of these criteria out of 5 points to help you in your decision process.
Ease of Use – 4.7/5.0
Bluehost’s seamless integration with sites like WordPress makes it easy to access advanced settings at the developer end. Less experienced users find Bluehost easy to navigate with a wealth of support, simple drag-and-drop functionality, and a clean, intuitive control panel known as a cPanel.
Customization capabilities – 4.6 /5.0
In addition to its dedicated website builder, Bluehost boasts numerous professional services to help you build the perfect site, including professional design, website migration, marketing, weekly SEO reports, and keyword optimization. Higher tier plans include e-commerce tools that support live chat, booking and invoicing tools, PayPal integration, and Microsoft Office.
Analytics – 4.5 / 5.0
When you want to know how your website is performing with your audience, the Bluehost dashboard can tell you what you want to know, including unique visitors, the number of visits, hits for resources bounce rates, and full pages viewed. In addition to these basic stats, Bluehost offers additional insight from the WordPress admin dashboard and allows you to connect to Google Analytics.
Customer Support – 4.8 / 5.0
Bluehost has an extensive knowledge base as well as 24/7 telephone support and online web chat and operates on a ticket-based system that ensures a timely response. WordPress users can access a dedicated team of WordPress experts who can help you, and WordPress also has a forum dedicated entirely to Bluehost customers.
Package Comparison
Product Details
Basic
Plus
Pro
Price per month
$3.75
$6.93
$17.74
24/7 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unlimited Storage
No
Yes
Yes
Automated Backups
No
Yes
Yes
Unlimited Websites
No
Yes
Yes
Dedicated IP
No
No
Yes
Technical / Product Details
Product Details
Specs
Supported Languages
Brazilian-Portuguese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese-euc-jp, Japanese-shift_jis, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified-chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional-chinese
Compatibility
MySQL, PostGreSQL, PHP, CGi, PERL, Pyton and Ruby on Rails
Restricted countries
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and the Crimea
Customer support
24/7 via telephone, live chat and email. Extensive knowledgebase available
Account migration
Not available for Reseller, VPS or Dedicated Server accounts, Paid professional migration service available for shared server accounts.
Server support
Hosting via shared, virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated options with support for PHP 7.2 (and higher).
Frequently Asked Questions
After you have purchased a package from Bluehost and a domain name for your site, ensuring the domain points to Bluehost servers. Familiarize yourself with the Bluehost dashboard and access their customer support or knowledge base if you have questions. You can start building your site using Bluehost’s dedicated website builder powered by Weebly, the WordPress site builder or another site builder of your choice.
How can I transfer my domain to Bluehost?
To transfer a domain to Bluehost, first ensure your domain settings and contact information are up to date with your original host. Then disable privacy and update your name servers to ns1.Bluehost.com or ns2.Bluehost.com. Unlock your domain manually or through your current domain registrar, and then ask for the EPP or authorization code that will allow Bluehost to conduct the transfer. Log in to your Bluehost dashboard, select Domains and then Transfer and complete the steps, including inputting your EPP code. Note that this transfer could take up to five days to complete.
How can I change my primary domain to Bluehost?
You can change your primary domain if you have a Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, or Dedicated Hosting account. However, WordPress Optimized Hosting plans cannot be renamed. Call Bluehost customer support or access their webchat for specific instructions. You will need to have the original domain name, new domain name, and your password’s last four digits to initiate the process. Note that your site can be down from a few minutes to an hour and that you will need to manually set up any custom configurations such as email forwarders and move your file directories onto the new domain.
Which Bluehost plan should I choose?
Bluehost has numerous plans to choose from, and your site purpose should dictate which one you choose. First, you need to decide if the bandwidth offered by shared hosting is enough or if you need to use either a VPS or dedicated hosting option. For most blogging sites, a basic shared hosting plan should be sufficient. However, a company with a significant e-commerce element will probably want to consider a VPS or dedicated hosting option with support for things like shopping carts, transactions and reviews. If your website helps feed your sales funnel, you may want to consider plans with high-end analytics and SEO optimization.