Bluehost Review (Is It Still the Best Web Host in 2022?)

Bluehost is a web hosting company founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth. It’s owned by Endurance International Group, which also owns HostGator, iPage, and other hosts. The company provides shared, VPS (virtual private server), dedicated, cloud, and WordPress hosting for sites of all sizes.

The host claims to power more than 2 million websites worldwide — which is a pretty impressive figure.

Bluehost is a major name in WordPress hosting and it is an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. In this Bluehost review, I test its features, support options, performance, and price – helping you decide if this is the best web host for you.

Bluehost Review 2022

If you type web hosting into a search engine like Google, one of the first names to appear is Bluehost, without a doubt. This is because it is part of a large company called Bluehost which has a large number of market shares. EIG (Endurance International Group) owns a bunch of other hosting providers (like HostGator).

Frankly, they have a lot of money to spend on marketing. In addition, they are also endorsed by WordPress. But does that mean it’s really good? Is it as good as many reviews out there say? Well, in this 2022 Bluehost review, I’ll try to answer that question and settle the discussion for sure!

Bluehost isn’t perfect – but Bluehost is one of the best web hosting for WordPress beginners that offer automatic WordPress installation and a website builder – plus solid features and a free domain name.

As with any other hosting provider, Bluehost also has its own pros and cons. Let’s take a look at what exactly they are.

Bluehost Pros and Cons

Control panel for WordPress on your device where you can customize the settings for WordPress auto-update, comments, content revisions, and of course caching.

Caching is a technology that increases your speed. You can choose between different cache levels and clear the cache with the push of a button.

You can also create staging copies on your WordPress sites. This is great when you want to clone your live website and use it to test design or development changes before publishing.

Speed and Performance

Speed is key when it comes to hosting, as it affects everything from user experience to your SEO ranking.

If your web hosting provider cannot provide you with fast loading times and you are not optimizing your website for speed and performance, you risk losing a lot of site traffic.

A study found that a one-second delay in Google mobile page load times can affect conversion rates by up to 20%.

The good news is that Bluehost does well in speed performance tests. I ran tests on Bluehost (a Bluehost hosted test site) and said the average site load time was really good.

Everyone wants to have fast page load times, especially if you’re in the online retail business. Cloudflare is a CDN (content delivery/distribution network) that harnesses the power of a geographically dispersed network of data centers and proxy servers to maximize security and performance for your site and improve your overall experience with the host.

Basically, CloudFlare’s network is a wide VPN network, allowing your site to run over a secure and encrypted internet connection.

The good news is that Bluehost has customized and personalized Cloudflare integration for father’s day. This vast worldwide network of servers easily stores cached versions of your site, so when a visitor goes to your site, the browser they use to access the site’s content retrieves it from a CDN network closest to them. Therefore, your site will have much faster load times as it takes much less time for the data to reach its destination.

Cloudflare is integrated for free to all Bluehost accounts, no matter the plan. All you have to do is create a Cloudflare account and enable integration in the control panel.

That’s the Cloudflare Basic plan. You can also use the Premium plan, which has an additional cost.

Both plans are mobile-optimized, offer 24/7 customer support, and are SSL compatible. Also includes:

• Global CDN
• Global HD Content Streaming
• Optional Edge Cleaning

The premium plan also offers:

• Rate Limiting (this basically lets you shape and block traffic to your site based on requests per second)
• Web Application Firewall
• Web Code Compression (Auto Shrink)
• Polish (this means automatic image optimization that allows you to remove unnecessary data from images and also recompress them so that they load faster in visitors’ browsers)
• Argo Smart Routing (algorithms that choose the fastest route available to get your site’s data to the required destination).

Strong Working Time

Besides page load times, it’s also important that your website is “up and running” and available to your visitors. I’m monitoring the uptime of Bluehost for a hosted test site to see how often they experience downtime.

The screenshot above only shows the last 30 days, historical uptime data, and server response time on this uptime monitoring page.

Drag and drop WordPress Website Builder

As I mentioned earlier, Bluehost is very seamlessly integrated with WordPress. Regardless of the Bluehost plan, you can use the WordPress page builder to create responsive, beautiful-looking websites.

And I’m not just saying that. Smart AI makes it really easy to build a site from scratch, one that will look good on any device. For a quick start, you can choose from ready-made templates and edit the layout in real-time without any coding.

When you’re logged in, you have the option to create and edit your site directly from here. Website Builder for WordPress or Bluehost WordPress is a really simple builder that can do a lot of things.

You can use 100+ free stock photos and upload custom images, videos or music without any limitations. Bluehost’s generator also lets you choose one of the fonts or upload your own if you believe is more appropriate.

If you want to tinker with the customization a little more, you can enter your own custom CSS by managing the CSS from the builder dashboard.

Bluehost’s WordPress website builders start at $2.95 per month and you can build a professional website using features like:

• Custom CSS – manage your CSS rules directly from the control panel.
• Stock Image Library – Enjoy access to hundreds of free-to-use photos.
• Live Editing – View changes to your website in real-time as you create them, before publishing.
• Quick Start Smart Templates – Create custom templates based on your preferences.
• Unlimited Downloads – Unlimited private images, videos, music, etc. install it.
• 1-click WordPress Access – Builder and WordPress as you customize it.
• Custom Fonts – Choose from a font pack or upload your own favorites.

24/7 Customer Support

Also, there is the Bluehost resource center which contains many resources such as how-to video tutorials, articles, and step-by-step guides.

Who Can You Contact? Bluehost Steam?

To make things easier for customers, Bluehost has divided its support team into three main categories:

• Technical Support team – as the name suggests, this team is responsible for your website, domains, hosting, etc. Responsible for different types of questions or issues related to Basically, everything related to the technical side of their products.
• Sales team – responsible for more general information about Bluehost as well as interacting with potential, new or regular customers.
• The Account Management team – this team takes care of terms of service, account verifications, and most importantly – billing.

Security and Backup

Bluehost offers very solid security protection for your site. They offer IP address blacklists, password-protected directories, filters for email accounts and user accounts, and access to manage private keys and digital certificates.

Bluehost also offers SSH (secure shell access), which means administrators and web developers can securely access their configuration files. You can choose from three anti-spam tools: Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Hammer, and Spam Experts. They also offer hotlink protection.

If you’re willing to pay to further increase the security of your site, you can choose from a number of high-quality paid plugins such as SiteLock is designed to prevent attacks from hackers and CodeGuard offers more backup options.

SiteLock scans your site daily for viruses and malware. It also does 24/7 network monitoring on company servers.

Additionally, you can take advantage of the two-factor authentication system they offer, so even if you experience a hacker attack and learn your password, they still cannot access it automatically. Bluehost account.

The great thing about Bluehost is that it also comes with Cloudflare integration, a type of CDN (free to use) that aims to protect against identity theft and DDoS attacks, among others. It also serves to improve your site’s performance and speed, especially for load times.

Basically, CloudFlare will improve your site’s security features and your site performance, so you should definitely consider using it.

I’ll talk more about Cloudflare CDN in the next Speed ​​and Performance section so you can learn more about how it affects your site’s performance.

Bluehost Backup Options

Bluehost offers its customers free backups that are updated daily, weekly, and monthly.

The problem is, that they don’t really guarantee the success of any of these backups. What does it mean? This means it may retain incomplete backups – for example, if your files in FTP directories are accidentally deleted, you may not be able to get all of your files back. This also means that you won’t be able to access old versions of your site if you need them because Bluehost automatically rewrites them.

Instead, Bluehost recommends creating your own backup option and managing it in-house. You can easily do this by getting a backup plugin like the one below. Jetpack Backup will do daily and real-time backups for a fee.

Bluehost Pricing Plans.

Bluehost has so many pricing plans, that it can be confusing at times, depending on what kind of hosting server and service you want to use. But don’t worry, I’ll try to make things clear here and show you what each pricing plan has to offer.

Bluehost Shared Hosting Plans

Shared hosting allows you to share servers with other websites. This means that multiple websites from different owners can use the resources of a single physical server.

Shared hosting is because Bluehost offers some of the cheapest hosting plans out there. Who should use this option? People who don’t expect a lot of traffic on their site.

This is because if one of the other websites using the same server as yours experiences a traffic spike, your site will feel it too. Your site’s performance will be affected and you will experience slower page load times.

However, Bluehost offers father’s day customized and personalized “resource protection” on all shared hosting plans which means maintaining your site’s performance on the shared server, regardless of traffic fluctuations from other hosted websites.

Bluehost offers four partner plans. This Basic one starts right now at $2.95/month and is the most expensive at $13.95 per month.

Bluehost’s shared hosting plans are some of the cheapest on the market.

The Basic plan only costs $2.95/month (with a current discount) and comes with essential features such as:

• 1 free WordPress Website
• 50GB SSD storage
• Custom themes
• 24/7 Customer support
• WordPress Integration
• AI-driven templates
• Bluehost easy to use a website builder
• Free domain name for 1 year
• Free CDN (Cloudflare)
• Free SSL certificate (Let’s Encrypt)
• If you want to run multiple sites, the Plus plan is the way to go. an unlimited number of websites, as well as unlimited storage. Along with the same core features like WordPress integration, 24/7 customer support, free SSL certificate, free one-year domain name, etc. Office 30 is free for 365 days.

If you want to focus on on-site security and have more privacy features, then head over to the Option Plus plan. Besides the basics in the Plus plan, this plan also includes free domain privacy and free automatic backups for 1 year.

The last option in shared hosting is the plan that adds more power and optimization to your sites per head. Alongside the upgrades on the Choice Plus plan, it also includes free dedicated IP, automatic backups, and a premium, positive SSL certificate.

All shared plans include:

Domain administrator – you can buy, manage, update and transfer domains.
SSL certificates – secure online transactions and protection of sensitive data.
Resource protection – your site’s performance remains unaffected on a shared server.
Easy creation of websites – A really easy-to-use WordPress website builder
My Google Ads – Google Ads will match up to $150 in credit on the first campaign (only applies to new campaigns). Google USA-based advertising customers)
Google My Business – If you have a local business, with this you can list it online, set hours and location, and connect with customers in your area really quickly.

Bluehost Basic vs Plus vs Choice Plus vs Pro Comparison

Which plan should you get? This is what this chapter aims to help you learn…

So, what are the differences between Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro hosting packages? Here is a comparison Basic and Plus plan, Plus and Choice Plus plan, and a Comparison of Choice Plus and Pro plan.

Bluehost Basic and Plus Review
Their Basic plan is their cheapest plan, so it has the fewest resources and features. The main difference between the Basic and Plus plan is that with the basic plan you can only host one website, however, with the Plus plan you can host unlimited websites. If you are considering running more than one website, you should choose the Plus plan.

Another key difference between these two plans is the amount of web space you are allowed to store on the server. The basic plan only comes with 50GB webspace, the Plus plan has unlimited storage. 50GB is quite a lot of space and should be enough in most cases, but it can add up quickly if you store a lot of images and videos.

Finally, the number of email accounts and email storage is quite limited on the Basic plan. The number of emails is perhaps not much as most users never use more than 5 emails, but having only 100MB of email space is pretty low and you can run out of space quickly.

You should consider choosing the Plus plan if:

• You want to host unlimited websites in your hosting account
• You want unlimited storage instead of the 50GB that comes with the basic plan
• You need unlimited email accounts with unlimited email storage
• You want Spam Experts, the spam protection tool

Bluehost Plus vs Choice Plus Review

There is little difference between Plus and Choice Plus hosting packages. In fact, there are only things that separate these plans. This is free domain privacy (also known as whois privacy) with the Choice Plus plan you get, and the Choice Plus plan for your domain also comes with SiteBackup Pro which is its own website backup and restore service.

If you are torn between these two plans, then you’d better choose the Choice Plus plan.

You should consider choosing the Choice Plus plan if:

• You want a free domain whois privacy
• You want Site Backup Pro, their website backup and restore service

Bluehost Choice Plus vs Pro Review

There are a few differences between Choice Plus and Choice Plus. The Pro hosting plan is worth knowing about it. First and foremost, if you want to run an e-commerce or more resource-intensive WordPress website, the sites on the Pro plan are high-performing servers.

High-performance servers in the Pro plan have 80% fewer accounts per server allowing for more resource usage per account (more CPU usage, disk usage, bandwidth). More speed, more power with fewer users.

The Pro plan also gets you a dedicated IP address and a dedicated (non-shared) SSL certificate.

You should consider choosing the Pro plan if:

• You want high-performance servers (i.e. a fast-loading website) and fewer users sharing server resources
• You want a free private IP and private (non-shared) SSL certificate

Which shared hosting plan is best for you?

Their new Bluerock platform is a WordPress-focused control panel offering an integrated experience for WordPress websites. Bluerock offers WordPress pages 2-3 times faster than the previous technical stack. Every hosted site from Bluehost.com will benefit from the latest security and performance features such as:

• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
• PHP7, HTTP/2, and NGINX caching
• WordPress staging environments
• SSD drives
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• Free domain name for the first year

Now you know what plans they have to offer and you are in a better position to choose the best shared hosting package for your needs. Note that you can always upgrade to a higher plan if you need more resources and features.

Based on my experience, here is my advice to you:

• I recommend signing up with the Basic plan for a single website for a basic purpose.
• I recommend signing up with the Plus plan if you want to run multiple sites or WordPress sites.
• I recommend signing up with the Choice Plus plan if you’re considering running WordPress or any other CMS site, and want security and anti-spam features.
• I recommend signing up with the Pro plan if you’re considering escaping to an e-commerce site or WordPress site, and a dedicated IP address plus security and anti-spam features.

Bluehost Dedicated Plans

Dedicated hosting plans give you the option to use the resources of an entire server, making your site more powerful and optimized and giving you more control over the services you pay for.

The standard plan starts at $79.99 per month (with a current discount), paid $36 per month. A dedicated hosting plan is not available for annual payments.

The Standard plan offers the following features:

• CPU – 2.3GHz
• CPU – 4 Cores
• CPU – 4 Threads
• CPU – 3MB Cache
• 4GB of RAM
• 2 x 500GB RAID level 1 storage
• 5TB network bandwidth
• 1 free space
• 3 private IPs
• Rooted cPanel and WHM

The other two plans, Advanced and Premium, have the same elements but offer more storage and more power for better performance and more traffic.

All custom plans include:

• Multi-server management – ​​this allows you to add more VPS to your own account as well as more dedicated or shared hosting services; you can manage them all in one place;
• Unmanaged servers – if you really know about servers and how they work, you can gain direct access and control to everything related to servers. It uses it to power your sites, including the Bluehost operating system and Apache server software;
• Improved cPanel – this way, domains, emails, multiple websites, etc. You can easily manage all the features of your site from one place, including;
• Free domain for 1 year – this applies to all hosting plans. You can register your domain name for free in the first year of your plan, after which your renewal will be charged at the market rate;
• Extreme speed – each of Bluehost’s dedicated servers is “custom-built using the latest open source technology”, making it more flexible when it comes to future performance upgrades;
• Storage upgrades – these give you the ability to increase the available storage space on your server at any time without having to seek help from server administrators;
• Free SSL certificate – secures the connection to your site, protects personal data, and enables secure e-commerce transactions;
• Fast provisioning – Bluehost has a team of IT professionals who custom build and rack your server to get your server connected to the network within 24-72 hours;
• Root access – if you are an advanced server user, Bluehost gives you full root access for custom installations and other tampering with your dedicated server;
• RAID storage – RAID1 storage configuration provides additional security and protection to your data;
• 24/7 dedicated support – Bluehost has trained IT professionals to deal with any issues that may arise on your dedicated hosting server.

VPS Hosting Plans

Bluehost VPS plans are slightly cheaper than the dedicated plans, starting with the Standard plan at $36 per month with the current discount (payable for a period of 18.99 months, as with all VPS plans).

The standard plan packages include the following features:

• 2 cores
• 30GB SSD storage
• 2GB of RAM
• 1TB bandwidth
• 1 IP address
• cPanel / WHM

The other two plans, Enhanced and Ultimate, have the same elements but offer more power and storage. and performance capabilities for more demanding sites. So you have 4 and 8 GB of RAM, 2 and 3 TB of bandwidth, as well as your 60 and 120 GB SSD storage, respectively.

All VPS plans include:

• Multi-server management – ​​the ability to add more shared, dedicated, or VPS hosting services in one place and manage them from a single account;
• Access control – the ability to create passwords for certain access areas, such as server administration, ownership information, and a master password for everything;
• Root access – the ability to create as many FTP accounts as you want so you can download, upload or modify files on your VPS as you wish;
• Host unlimited domains and websites – you can use the capacity of a VPS to organize and host as many of your domains and sites as you want;
• Dedicated power – VPS’s server resources are yours and yours alone, and each plan comes with its own CPU, RAM, and storage;
• One dashboard – simple, easy-to-use dashboard offers all tools for website management and analytics in one place;
• unlimited bandwidth – Bluehost’S Acceptable Use Policy, no traffic caps for your VPS site(s) as long as your site(s) is eligible;
• 24/7 VPS support – as with other hosting plans, Bluehost VPS plans offer 24/7 expert support;
• Solid State Drives (SSD) – all virtual private servers feature high-performance SSD drives that dramatically increase performance.

WooCommerce Hosting Plans

There are two Bluehost WooCommerce plans – standard and Premium. The Standard plan is $12.95 per month with the current discount and is only payable on a 36-month basis.

The main features of the standard plan are:

• Online store (website + blog)
• Email marketing
• Unlimited items
• Installed WooCommerce
• Installed Jetpack
• Installed storefront theme
• Customer product reviews
• Website traffic analysis
• 24/7 customer support
• Payment processing (one-click setup)
• Manual order creation
• Discount Codes
• Basic backup from CodeGuard Backup Basic, free for the first year
• Office 30 free for 365 days

The Premium plan includes a premium version of the Jetpack plugin, local and country tax management, product customization, subscriptions, online reservations and appointment scheduling, Google My Business Verification, and unmetered bandwidth so you can have as much traffic as you want without slow load times. In the premium plan, you can also rest assured that domain privacy and domain protection are for a safer e-commerce site – you won’t have to deal with identity theft, spam, malware, or unwanted or unauthorized changes to your website.

All plans of WooCommerce include:

• A free SSL certificate;
• The ability to make your e-commerce store as secure as possible with the help of automatically encrypted transactions and visitor data;
• Multiple cache layers;
• Site optimization and fast page load times;
• Statistics and site monitoring;
• Track customer behavior and trends so you can increase sales and optimize your sales experience as you see fit;
• Free space;
• A free name for your site.

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee on All Hosting Plans

Bluehost’s promotional or discounted rates are valid for the first term only, after which the plans renew at their regular rate – meaning they become more expensive.

Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all hosting plans and hosting services. If you are not satisfied with any of these and wish to cancel your plans within this 30-day purchase period, you will receive a full refund.

However, keep in mind that the refund does not apply to most add-ons you may have purchased within the 30-day period.

If you cancel 30 days after your purchase, you cannot get your money back. Bluehost’s services.

FAQs