BlueHost Review: Your Effective Web Hosting Solution

This post contains affiliate links in which I receive commissions. The reviews and opinions expressed in this article are my own.

When launching my site, I spent a good amount of time looking and comparing reliable web hosting service companies.

But why spend so much time on something as simple as hosting you ask? Well, because if your website frequently goes down or face other similar issues, your potential customers will not be able to even visit the site.

Based on my experience, I can vouch for a handful of Hosting service providers and Bluehost tops the list for affordable and simple hosting.

BlueHost is definitely one of the largest and most popular web hosting service companies in the world – keeping more than two million websites up and running. Even more, it was the first hosting company to earn an official recommendation from the makers of WordPress.

Matt Heaton first thought of BlueHost in 1996 but only started seven years later in 2003. Since then, BlueHost has been at the forefront of web hosting technology – they introduced CPU throttling in 2009 and VPS and dedicated hosting in 2013. 

Also, they have acquired some of their competitors over the years, further increasing their reach and capabilities.

While a lot of other web hosting companies have sprung up over the years, BlueHost remains among the best choices for casual users and experienced developers. 

Here you will find a  summary of one of BlueHosts’ most popular services – managed WordPress hosting. Also included are its strengths and weaknesses compared to most of its major competitors in the same area of service.

BlueHost Managed WordPress Hosting

While there are other web hosting engaged in the WordPress content market, from the all-around GoDaddy to WordPress-specific hosts such as Kinsta and WPEngine, a lot of users still choose BlueHost as their managed WP host provider. 

From features to pricing plans, I have put together a breakdown of BlueHost Managed WP so you can see if it fits your needs.

Relevant: Read all the reasons that make WordPress great here!

Features with WP users in mind

One of the questions WordPress users ask is if they can expect a lot of trouble adjusting to an external web hosting service provider. The fact is BlueHost allows a smooth transition for first-time users with its extensive knowledge base, excellent customer support, and WordPress-specific features. 

In terms of features, BlueHost does keep the users of WordPress in mind with these designs and functionalities:

• WordPress custom control panel

BlueHost offers a custom dashboard designed in a way that is familiar with most WordPress users, making tasks and controls intuitive and easy to learn.

• ManageWP integration

ManageWP is an integrated management dashboard that allows WordPress users to streamline and automate their tasks across multiple WordPress sites. It is among the first WordPress management tools available in the market with the intention of managing two or more sites seamlessly.

Some of the capabilities of ManageWP include an overview of critical data for your websites such as the number of spam comments appearing on each of your pages, the overall number of revisions for all contents on the site, and the overall file size of your database. 

You can also view the data via its analytic dashboard which you can further connect with Google Analytics for a more thorough breakdown.

Support Options

One of the strengths of your WordPress website hosted by BlueHost is its support service, which is among the best you can find in the market today. 

A huge share of percentage in any of the tech services often stay for longer because of excellent customer support and subscribers can be assured that BlueHost maintains:

• A customer support portal available via phone and live chat, 24/7.
• An extensive and in-depth help database

Performance

BlueHost maintains a custom-tailored approach to its WordPress users to give them the best performance and experience using their services. There are some  excellent services you can expect from WordPress hosting managed by BlueHost like:

1. A Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) Hypervisor – it is an open-source virtualization technology included in Linux. Initially, it was designed to use the Linux operating system as a hypervisor for running separate guest sites called virtual machines (VM). For online users, the KVM Hypervisor allows BlueHost servers to isolate their hardware resources and run multiple virtual machines without the guests experiencing delays or degraded performance.
2. NGINX – it is an online web server that is used for a variety of improving client experience – from load balancing, reverse proxy servers, and HTTP cache. It is often viewed as the more streamlined alternative to older Apache HTTP Server
3. Virtual Private Server (VPS) – all websites hosted by BlueHost with its WordPress Managed hosting have their very own VPS. Having their own virtual private server means that they do not share online resources with their co-WordPress users. This is important in keeping their privacy and increases both speed and security.

Pricing

BlueHost’s managed WordPress hosting is available in three levels:

The price is average for managed WordPress hosting, mainly because it uses more resources and offers more features compared to shared hosting. It is highly recommended to start out with the Build Plan. 

Should your traffic increase, or if you need more tools for customization and analytics, you can move to the higher plans as you see fit.

BlueHost vs GoDaddy

GoDaddy, with its wide range of plans and services and its aggressive marketing campaigns, have grown to become the to-go web hosting service provider for most people, especially for beginners. 

BlueHost vs GoDaddy: Pricing Plans

You should know that the prices compared are only for Managed WordPress hosting, shared hosting for both web hosting companies are a different matter altogether. 

However, while GoDaddy offers flexible and cheap plans for most of their services compared to other companies, in the arena for managed WordPress hosting, BlueHost takes the lead.

BlueHost vs GoDaddy: Features

Of course, managed hosting is usually used by developers and owners planning to set up a business website. They expect to manage more than one website and project a large number of online traffic to come in.

✋ Stop worrying about SEO and have me do it for you

PS: Ready to work with the 0.01% of all SEOs worldwide? Click here.

Both BlueHost and GoDaddy offer SSL certificate for all their plans which makes your site authentication easier. BlueHost, however, boasts unlimited websites and unlimited storage which is unavailable with GoDaddy’s managed WP hosting, as reflected in the limits in each of their plans.

Also, malware protections come with all plans on both providers, so the risk of malware harming your site is another problem taken care of.

On the other hand, BlueHost’s managed hosting has prescribed traffic volume for its managed hosting plans except for Scale. However, there’s no need to worry since exceeding your limits does not necessarily translate to additional charges.

GoDaddy on this front relies on its seamless scalability made possible by its large number of servers which manage traffic and adjusts accordingly.

BlueHost vs Kinsta

While BlueHost maintains traffic and keeps its servers in-house in Utah, Kinsta offers cloud-based hosting. Even better, Kinsta offers its hosting services via the Google Apps servers. 

This means that your WordPress websites are basically hosted and run using the same infrastructure as Google. So you need to see which company suits your needs and your budget. 

In the entire web hosting industry, BlueHost has the upper hand in terms of reach and flexibility – offering plans for web hosting outside WordPress, and even their WP hosting can come in shared or in managed options to cater to a wider range of users and developers.

Kinsta, meanwhile, solely focuses on managing WordPress websites but it does so with a clear advantage in terms of tech and security features.

BlueHost vs Kinsta: Pricing Plans

Right off the bat, Kinsta offers more costly plans for its managed WordPress hosting. It has plans starting from Starter, Pro, then Business 1 to 4, then Enterprise 1 to 4. Starter plans for WP hosting are at 30 USD per month while the Enterprise 4 pricing plan is at 1,500 USD. 

Of course, the higher upfront costs are quite understandable with Kinsta, given the technology and the infrastructure they use for their managed WP hosting.

Basically, if you’re not looking to utilize the cloud-based hosting as strongly advertised by Kinsta, you might not be getting the most out of your money’s worth.

BlueHost vs Kinsta: Features

Data backups, malware protection, and SSL certificates are already available even with the lowest price plans from both providers. In terms of technological advantage, Kinsta expectedly gains the upper hand over BlueHost.

The Google-based WP hosting company has already laid out PHP 7.3 over its competitor’s PHP 7.0. 

To put it simply, Kinsta already has a significant advantage in terms of processing speed and security. Also, the use of lower versions of PHP poses significant security threats.

In the BlueHost community, a lot of old accounts still use PHP 5.6 even though support for versions until PHP 7 has already ended last December.

Updating to the latest PHP 7.3 would require the user to either create a new account or pay a one-time bill of 150 USD for server upgrades.

On the plus side, for users with less technological concerns, BlueHost more than makes up for it with their storage and websites. BlueHost offers limitless storage size as well as the ability to host as many sites as you want. 

To put it in perspective, Kinsta’s starter plan only supports one WordPress website and has a monthly limit of only 10GB.

BlueHost vs WPEngine

BlueHost, like GoDaddy, offers a wider range of services in the domain registry and web hosting industry. WPEngine, like Kinsta, is a dedicated web hosting service provider for managed WordPress content.

To compare both, let’s focus only on their managed WordPress hosting plans and see if the top two hosting providers meet your requirements.

[Also, check my article on how to set up your ecommerce store from scratch]

BlueHost vs WPEngine: Pricing Plans

In the managed WordPress hosting arena, WPEngine starts out just a little above BlueHost’s with 35 USD for its Startup plan. However, it scales and escalates immediately, going up to 290 USD a month for the Scale plan. 

This lack of flexibility between WPEngine’s pricing plans will require careful study before changing plans, or starting one. BlueHost keeps afloat of the competition due to the features they offer across the board, at the prices indicated in the above table.

BlueHost vs WPEngine: Features

WPEngine also falls short in the same category as the first two competitors – the number of websites. While not every user will go and put up websites one after the other, the idea of being able to set up another site without changing plans keeps BlueHost ahead of the rest. 

The same idea can also be applied to the storage limitations, which BlueHosts advertise they do not have on all plans.

Meanwhile, it is important to note that WPEngine is focused more on enterprise-level business and high-traffic sites. As the owner, you no longer need to worry about performance-enhancing plugins like W3 Cache or CDN, as is usually the case with WordPress websites. 

Their content delivery network features are only enabled for subscribers of Growth and Scale pricing plans. This feature is one of WPEngine’s strengths in terms of fasting content delivery from their managed websites anywhere in the world by utilizing a system of interconnected servers that defines the fastest route to its end-users based on their geographic locations.

In terms of extending reach for your WordPress sites, WPEngine will keep you on top of the line technology in marketing and delivery speeds. BlueHost, on the other hand, might lag in terms of tech but gives its users a pretty neat marketing incentive.

Their managed WP hosting plans come with a free search engine submission tool, a 100 USD Google Ads Credit, a 50 USD Facebook Ads Credit, and a free listing for Yellowpages.

Another testament to WPEngine’s focus and commitment to its enterprise-scale websites is its proprietary EverCache technology. This front-end system they use for their managed WordPress sites significantly reduces the page-load times for their websites. 

If you are after fast and secure delivery of your content to your market, WPEngine definitely delivers and more, but at a price.

Lastly, BlueHost gains the upper hand in terms of customer support services. The best part is it maintains 24/7 voice and chat support for their users, regardless of the plan subscription. WPEngine, unfortunately, only offers chat support for Startup plan subscribers. 

Although their support is also available anytime, voice support is only available on the next two plans, which start at 115 USD per month.

Wrapping it up!

BlueHost maintains its lead in the industry by diversifying the services it offers while keeping investments in its technology and infrastructure.

This way, it achieves the pricing range second only to GoDaddy but can still keep up with WordPress-focused managed web hosting entities such as Kinsta and WPEngine. 

Also, among their strongest points in terms of general marketability lies in its limitless storage space and website building. Although storage sizes of 10GB a month are quite high and are rarely exceeded, except for media-heavy websites, BlueHost’s promise of limitless storage from its most basic plan at only less than 20 USD a month is enough to draw the market in.

I hope this review will help you decide if you should go for BlueHost as your hosting service company. Don’t forget to drop your feedback below in the comment section.

Sign up for Bluehost here.

You would also like to read:

• My guide to get 250,000+ visits to your website
• What are the best E-Commerce Platforms currently? 
• Check other useful SEO tools