Bluehost Review 2017

Bluehost is one of the popular hosting companies founded by Danny Ashworth and Matt Heaton in Utah and Provo. With a staff of about 750 people, Bluehost is a go to hosting company for numerous small and large scale business sites and blogs. It’s also the number 1 recommended hosting site by WordPress with a one click installation in their plans.

Bluehost is one of the top ranking hosting companies in the list of the main ones like A2hosting and Hostgator. It was started back in 1996 that makes it the oldest and earlier web hosting companies. In this post, we would like to have you look at the main features of Bluehost and by the end of this review, you will know what to expect and which plan to opt for. Let’s have a look!

Shared Vs other Hosting

Five basic types of hosting are offered by Bluehost:

• WordPress hosting
• Dedicated hosting
• Cloud Sites
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting
• Cloud Sites
• Shared hosting

For majority of customers, shared web hosting is sufficient but if you are developing a whole new site and you are unsure about the frequency of traffic, opting for anything above shared hosting in basically overkill at this stage. Whereas, you basically rent out a physical space with dedicated hosting. On the other hand, VPS hosting is a middle ground if you want to share the server with others while keeping your own virtual operating system, hence the service works as if it’s your own. Next, WordPress hosting is something optimized for WordPress customers. Let’s take a more detailed look at each of these options.

Shared Hosting

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The starter plan begins at $3.49/month which goes up to $7.99/month at the regular price.“Plus” plan has a regular price of $10.49/month, whereas business pro plan costs $23.99/month.

At the beginning level, you have one website, an umetered bandwidth and 100 GB of space. Users also get one domain, 25 sub domains, and five parked domains. Further features include $50 in marketing offers and 100 email accounts with the storage capacity of 500 MB.

With the Business Pro or Plus Plan you have unmetered space, unlimited bandwidth and site which is quite awesome. Also, storage and emails accounts are unlimited with a $200 in marketing offers. It also includes a global CDN and one SpamExperts which is over $24/year.

The business Pro plan on the other hand has $180 in extra benefits which includes two SpamExperts, one IP address, one SSL, enhanced performance, domain privacy, and site backup.

VPS Hosting

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The VPS hosting has the following plans available:

• Standard for $14.99 for the first month and $59.99 afterwards
• Premium for $44.99 for the first month and $89.99 afterwards
• Ultimate for $59.99 for the first month and to $119.99 afterwards

The above prices are in sync with the regular cost for VPS hosting. You can enjoy the speed of 2 CPU cores for the first two plans and about 3 to 4 cores for the top two plans. There is one IP address in the standard tier and the rest have two. All these plans are backed by a money back guarantee and 24/7 support.

Dedicated Hosting

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There are three plans in dedicated hosting:

• Standard for $74.99 for the first month and $149.99 afterwards
• Enhanced for $99.99 for the first month and $199.99 afterwards
• Premium for $124.99 for the first month and $124.99 afterwards

With standard and enhanced plans, users get a 4 x 2.5GHz CPU. But in the Premium plan they can get a 4 x 3.3GHz CPU. They also get IP address at the standard, four at Enhanced and 5 at the premium plan. These plans are also backed up by a money back guarantee and 24/7 support.

WordPress Hosting

Bluehost has the following packages designed for WordPress users.

• Blogger for $12.49 for the first month and $24.99 afterwards
• Professional for $37.50 for the first month and $74.99 afterwards
• Business for $60.00 for the first month and $119.99 afterwards
• Enterprise for $85.00 for the first month and $169.99 afterwards

These plans are expensive in comparison with some competitors as many others sell wordpress hosting at the same price as general purpose hosting. Despite this, Bluehost for WordPress is actually a big deal and it is one of the most popular preferences of many users given the features. For instance, Blogger level features include 100 million visits per month, 2 GB of RAM, 30 GB of backup space, 30 GB of storage, and up to five sites. You get one domain and IP address. Whereas, the top level tiered packages give you unlimited monthly visits, 8 GB of RAM, 240 GB of storage, and up to 30 sites.

Ecommerce Features

An ecommerce store is very easy to set up with Bluehost as it offers various shopping carts like Cube, Zen, OS Commerce and Agora. You can add as many products as you want if you are using the Plus level plan. Also unmetered bandwidth turns your cost predictable and steady even for the months when you have lots of traffic. Although not really known for ecommerce stores, Bluehost is an economical option as you have a ton of access to features that help you sell online. 

Security

Bluehost excels at this area. There are three layers of anti spam protection which are in the form of Spam Hammer, Apache Spam Assassin, and Spam Experts. Users have a protected inbox as well since it is very simple to set filters. There are password protected directories and if you need to block access to your site, you can blacklist the IP address. The most amazing features are a secure shell access (SSH) which lets you access the configuration files securely and separately. 

Refund Policy

The users get a 30 day money back guarantee with all its plans but if you choose to cancel after that you don’t get a prorated refund for the hosting period that you have not used. However, the domain fee is not refundable.

Ease of Use

Bluehost makes it super easy to set up and manage websites. The cPanel interface has enhanced features that are easy to use with one click icons. From one central location, the users can manage their email addresses and websites. There is also an option of customizing the control panel layout.

Customer Service

Bluehost gets mixed reviews in this area. Many users report fast and friendly response from their support team while a lot of others are unable to get timely help. Excessive up selling is another issue with Bluehost as it sells you upgrades and add-ons for the areas where you need an essential full fledge functionality. This is a problem for clients who have a right budget.

Who is Bluehost Ideal for?

• Users who want a reliable hosting service with a great reputation
• WordPress customers who can pay extra and have access to enhanced features and a dedicated support team
• Small and large business owners who want general purpose shared hosting. Just be conscious of up selling.

Pros of Bluehost

• Unlimited disk storage, bandwidth, email address and domain hosting.
• Availability of free domain name for a year
• Excellent security features.
• Availability of different databases like MySQL, Ruby, PostgreSQL, Python, CGI-BIN Perl, and PHP.
• A number of free website scripts can be accessed like mailing lists, blog support, and social networking scripts.
• It is very easy to use the enhanced cPanel that offers quick access to features.

Cons of Bluehost

• Though there are various add-ons, you are supposed to install many to get full functionality.
• The customer support response can be slow at times.
• Up-selling can be annoying to users who are on a tight budget.
• While the WordPress plan has many nice features, but they are expensive as compared to those offered by competitors.

Conclusion

Bluehost offers a lot of exciting features at different price points with a diversity of packages which are flexible for every budget. Whatever the user needs is provide by Bluehost in the form of different plans. Despite the negative review, most of the customers are happy with the services and this is exactly why Bluehost has such a strong reputation for over 20 years in the online business services. So if you are looking for hosting service with a sturdy reputation Bluehost has to be your pick!