Bluehost Review

Summary review

If you think Bluehost is one of the largest and most popular website hosting providers in the world, you’re not entirely wrong. In fact, WordPress itself officially recommends Bluehost as their chosen hosting provider. But what many people don’t know is that you can actually build your website with Bluehost.

In fact, they offer a good selection of website builders so you can create beautiful websites without HTML or any coding knowledge. As of this writing, Bluehost offers more than 55 website builders to help their clients build a professional website. WordPress and Weebly, in particular, are two excellent choices for building your website with Bluehost. Both require limited or no coding or design experience.

Now, you may ask why choose Bluehost when you can sign up directly with the website builders? To start with, Bluehost is a big deal in the industry. Like 2-million-websites-and-850,000-blogs kind of a big deal. And whether you admit it or not, some of these website builders have iffy support. Bluehost on the other hand, offers 24/7 assistance. They also offer you the freedom of choosing whether you want to build your own site or have a team of professionals take over and bring your dream website to fruition. Bluehost has something for you no matter what your budget or technical skill level is.



Pros:

+ 24/7 access to web experts - DIY, one-one-one, or full-service
+ All plans include a free domain for 1 year
+ 1-click WordPress install
+ A single larger website space compared to other website builders even with the basic plan
+ Thousands of free and premium WordPress themes
+ Unmetered bandwidth
+ Supports fast page load times
+ 99.99% uptime
+ Cloudflare integration (speeds your site loading)
+ Above-average security features

Cons:

- Renewal rates are not the cheapest in the industry
- No free migration
- Limited default backup options
- US-only servers

Who is Bluehost for?

Bluehost is the obvious choice for small business owners who want ultimate flexibility, while getting their website off the ground as quickly as possible. With Bluehost, you don’t have to be a savvy programmer or a pro at coding in order to build an optimized personal or business website. Besides providing you with countless website builder options, they have made everything easy by making it possible to install your website right from the checkout page!

Main Features

One-click WordPress Installation

There’s no need for you to manually install WordPress as you would have if you’re using a different web hosting provider. Installing WordPress with Bluehost is extremely straightforward. Just pick a plan, choose a domain name, fill up account information, and tada! WordPress is automatically installed. Now, all that’s left is setting up and designing your website which you can do on your own, with lots of handholding from one-on-one support, or you can just let a team of experts do it for you.



Excellent Uptime Guarantee of 99.99%

Referring to the amount of time that the server hosting your website is up and running, uptime should be one of your criteria when choosing a web host. After all, what’s the use of your website when it’s down half the time? Fortunately, Bluehost has a remarkable and consistent uptime of 99.99% which puts it above the industry standard of 99.59%.

Free SSL Certificate

SSL is another thing that a new website owner should worry about especially when your site handles customer data and credit card information. This is what ensures the privacy and security of both your website and your website visitors. Google also made it one of the search engine ranking factors, so if you want to rank higher, you better make sure you get an SSL certificate. The good news is that you won’t even have to worry about installing this yourself. Every plan with Bluehost comes with an SSL certificate that will be installed and configured automatically once you’ve created your website.

Outstanding Security Features

Besides the free SSL certificate, Bluehost also offers SiteLock which protects your new website against malware and other malicious attacks. Sitelock includes automatic malware detection and removal, Google Blacklist monitoring, unlimited web page scan, and more.

All plans also include domain privacy which blocks your personal data from the public. This keeps hackers at bay and protects you and your visitors from potential phishing scams.

CodeGuard is a security add on which provides site backups and automatic restore in the event of hacking. Postini is another security tool that can be helpful, especially if you’re getting tons of spam mail. This blocks spam and junk mails from ever reaching your inbox!

Apps and Integrations

Bluehost makes it really easy for your website and your business to reach its full potential by placing thousands of apps or add-ons in the palm of your hand, err, in the control panel. Some of these apps or plugins will let you add images, create customer forums, allow payment by SMS, add a hotel booking plugin, event registration, ticketing, and so much more.

Support and Knowledge Base

Bluehost has an intensive knowledge base with plenty of resources ranging from general articles to how-tos, guides, and instructions. They also offer phone and live chat support to new and existing customers.



Now, if you want a team of professionals to assist you every step of the way, you can opt to get WordPress Blue Sky. Depending on which plan you choose, you can get an on-demand ticket and chat support, design guidance, Bluehost SEO tools, mobile optimization assistance, and more.



If you need help with design and marketing, Bluehost also offers a full-service website. This lets professional designers build a mobile-optimized website on your behalf, keep it optimized for search engines, get your site found in Google, Yahoo, and Yelp, as well as post blog articles and post on Facebook and Twitter.

Pricing and Plans

Bluehost will cost you $2.95 per month which includes a $200 marketing credit, 50GB SSD storage, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains. Add $2.50 to get either the Plus or Choice Plus plans which gives you unmetered SSD Storage, unlimited parked and subdomains, and CodeGuard basic backup (Choice Plus). All plans include a free SSL certificate, free domain for 1 year, automatic WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, Microsoft Office 365, Google My Business verification, and secure configuration of your login credentials.

Bottom Line

Overall, we highly recommend Bluehost for its strong security support, excellent uptime and fast loading times, one-click WordPress installation, and a wealth of apps, integrations, and e-commerce features. It’s also one of the cheapest in the industry although renewal rates are pretty steep compared to the introductory prices. Still, it is the best choice for those who want the unbeatable flexibility of Wordpress, coupled with the helpful and easy installation features that not-super-techy people will appreciate.