BlueHost Expert Review
After over 20 years in the business BlueHost has become an industry heavyweight, and its services have made it a WordPress-recommended hosting provider. Even starter accounts provided access to many tools and features, making it easy to create and maintain websites.
The host also offers a wide range of advanced features that allow us to easily create complicated backend configurations. BlueHost's uptimes, load times and reliability impressed us. This is important for small businesses who are starting to establish their brands and need reliable hosting.
BlueHost was subject to extensive testing as usual to see if its premium and basic products can deliver. To decide if BlueHost is right for you, take a look at the BlueHost Review.
Both the pros and cons
The pros:
- You will experience higher load times, uptimes and minimal downtime.
- You can access popular, free features even with the most basic account, as well as advanced developer tools.
- BlueHost offers low fees at the lowest end of the market.
- To get your Ecommerce solution or WordPress installed quickly, you can use a 1-Click installation.
- You get unlimited bandwidth and almost unlimited storage.
- It is easy to set up WordPress websites with rich tools and educational materials, as well as seamless integrations from third-party providers.
- The intuitive user interface and drag-and drop website builder are a great benefit for beginners.
Cons
- During peak times, customer service may be slower.
- BlueHost's load times are not as fast or consistent with industry standards.
- You may be sold products that you don't need at the time of signing up.
Prices and payment methods
Depending on what you need, there are many BlueHost plans available. BlueHost shared hosting is available starting at $2.95 per month. It provides one website, unlimited bandwidth, and an SSL certificate. This package is ideal for small businesses that are just getting started with their websites. You can get similar features with the WordPress basic package for $3.95 per month. It also includes preinstallation of WordPress, a staging environment to allow you to test your changes and deploy them confidently.
Premium plans are our favorite in terms of price and value. Upgrade WordPress for $5.95 per month. This includes unlimited sites and unmetered SSD storage. VPS Mid-range, which costs $29.99 per month, offers 60GB SSD storage, 2 IP addresses, and is priced at $29.99. BlueHost's Premium Dedicated Hosting plan costs $119.99 per monthly. It is BlueHost’s most costly plan. Although it provides lightning speeds (3 Ghz) and secure storage, it is more suited to companies hosting multiple sites, which makes it less attractive for SMBs.
It was very easy to switch between plans, which is a great feature for smaller businesses with high aspirations.
It's easy to use
BlueHost is a flexible hosting provider that offers both advanced and beginner users different benefits. Weebly's drag-and-drop website creator is an advantage for those with little or no previous experience. Additionally, integrations are available for many useful tools that make it easy to quickly roll out. Website maintenance is simplified with the free SSL certificate and one-year domain.
BlueHost also offered advanced features that are useful for developers. We wanted to check this feature as well. We were able to customize our backend quickly and easily thanks to the wide range of programming languages, support and databases as well as free scripts and website scripts. These features are not necessary for beginners, but they can be a huge advantage to SMBs.
Load times and reliability
BlueHost does not advertise a fast loading time or reliable uptime. This surprised us. We tested BlueHost over several months in order to determine how those two aspects performed. BlueHost's uptime performance was excellent, with an average of 99.99% and very few service interruptions. BlueHost was not the fastest hosting platform, but still managed to be among the top five services in our testing.
These are the features
BlueHost's price is at the low end of web hosting, but it offers many features that can be customized to your site. Bluehost offers basic WordPress hosting that allows you to create a 6-page website without any fees. The Weebly plugin automatically updates the WordPress version so it runs safely and securely. You can also have daily backups of your website to prevent any major site disruptions.
The WP Pro account is for advanced WordPress users. It offers a simple dashboard that allows you to manage SEO and social media. The WooCommerce integration allows you to easily set up an online shop and manage it. Additionally, each plan comes with a free SSL that protects your customer information. There are four options for shopping cart integrations. The platform is highly secure, as we were pleased to see that it offers spam protection and 24-hour network monitoring.
We are always interested in more sophisticated features and BlueHost's extensive customization options for developers. The platform offers free website scripts, including social networking, Drupal, and Joomla. Unlimitted FTP accounts are available, along with an impressive collection of CGI tools and databases that includes MySQL, PHP 5, Ruby and Perl collections.
Customer Support
BlueHost's customer service was excellent. We were mostly satisfied. BlueHost offers a variety of contact options, such as email, phone, chat and 24/7 live chat. They also encourage their customers to use social media to communicate with them. Despite the fact that communication was not always easy, all of our agents were polite and willing to assist.
The amount of and depth of their resources to assist you with troubleshooting is impressive. We also found it easy to resolve issues on our own, with the assistance of documentation.
BlueHost User Reviews
BlueHost's expert review is based upon our technical expertise and uses specific metrics to assess how companies compare. For a complete picture of BlueHost, check out our BlueHost customer reviews.
Conclusion
Our BlueHost expert review concluded that BlueHost's services are suitable for both technical and experienced customers. Easy-to-use interfaces and embedded Weebly drag and drop website creation make it easy for beginners to set up websites quickly and effectively. Developers have advanced tools that allow them to modify the back-end and improve their website.
BlueHost offers reliable and fast web hosting. This affordable hosting option is a great choice for people with different levels of comfort and tech.
It's hard for me to get past not being able to sign in easily... so unfortunately I need to hunt for a different host I hate to say it; I hate the hassle of moving!