Bluehost Review: “The Best” Hosting – Or Overrated? [2023]

Not The Worst Host Around – But Not Spectacular, Either

Type “best hosting provider” into any search engine, and you won’t have to scroll far to find Bluehost. Touted as one of the “top hosting services worldwide,” it’s maintained a certain golden status for years. It’s especially popular with first-time bloggers and small e-commerce site owners, drawn in by its generous affiliate marketing scheme.

Unfortunately, few review sites properly test Bluehost’s service before recommending it. We did, measuring every technical aspect of hosting a WordPress site using Bluehost – from ease of setup to its uptime rate.

Though seemingly affordable when signing up, Bluehost’s regular hosting renewal rates are actually quite pricey after the first-term discount dissipates. I also found the features and “freebies” included in Bluehost plans are easy to beat if you shop around for another host.

Since Bluehost’s service is serviceable, many customers stay on. But what they don’t know is that there are better options out there that offer superior performance and value for money. I highly recommend Hostinger’s low-cost plans, which don’t skimp on features, support, or reliability.

If you’re skeptical about Bluehost but still want to weigh the pros and cons, this review will fill you in. You can also take a look at our round-up of the top 10 best web hosting services to compare it to what else is out there.

Many “Free” Features – Which Are Generally Free Anyway

Features add value to a hosting package, but Bluehost may have taken marketing its “extras” too far. The host makes a big deal of certain features being “free,” but this is misleading since you can use these services and plugins for free no matter which hosting provider you’re with. Naturally, first-time website owners won’t know any better.

For example, the “Bluehost Marketplace” is very similar to the WordPress Marketplace. It features a selection of curated free and premium WordPress and WooCommerce themes and plugins. The only difference is that you access them directly via the Bluehost admin panel.

Likewise, the included “Yoast SEO Free” is just the free version of this popular WordPress SEO plugin. While this integration makes sense considering both Bluehost and Yoast are subsidiaries of Newfold Digital, I don’t appreciate the misleading “free” title of this feature.

Unlimited Website Creation

The entry-level shared and WordPress plans from Bluehost allow for only a single website. The 3 upper tiers allow for unlimited websites. If you only plan to create one website, the Basic hosting package storage limitation of 10GB shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

However, issues may arise if you want to create and manage multiple sites on one of the Bluehost unlimited-site plans. Mainly, you’ll want to keep an eye on the amount of storage you have remaining, especially if your sites have a lot of large images or other storage-intensive media files.

If you’re hosting text-based blogs, though, the 100 GB of space on the top-tier plans should be more than enough for a lot of sites.

SSL Certificates & More (Paid) Security Features

In addition to a year of domain name registration, you can expect a number of other add-ons – such as integration with Cloudflare’s CDN, and SSL certificates.

The SSL certificates are the standard ones from Let’s Encrypt, which are intended to provide a very basic level of SSL encryption. In other words, it removes the “not secure” warning and adds a padlock icon to the address bar in web browsers when people visit your site.

For a fee, you can add on a Single Domain SSL and SiteLock Security, which includes the use of the much more secure TrueSpeed CDN and the TrueShield firewall.

Though they are affordable, you’ll note that Bluehost’s Basic hosting plans don’t come with more security features than the above. In comparison, every premium WordPress and shared hosting plan from Bluehost comes with domain privacy, malware scanning, and daily website back-ups included.

One value-for-money extra Bluehost includes in its plans is a free domain name. It’s a handy addition if you’re looking to bundle all of your website launch costs into one.

Keep in mind that a domain name is never truly “free” as fees must be paid to the organizations that oversee the domain name system – so, if you decide Bluehost’s services aren’t for you, and you decide to take advantage of Bluehost’s 30-day money-back guarantee, the cost of the domain name will be subtracted from your refund. You can then take the domain name with you to a new provider.

Bluehost Features at a Glance

I did appreciate the speed and simplicity of getting started with Bluehost. Featuring a two-step order process, WordPress auto-installer, and an automatic site creation and optimization questionnaire, getting your website up and running is very straightforward.

The Bluehost admin panel is equally delightful to navigate after you’ve signed up. Though it did take a bit of time for certain pages to load, the layout is clean, uncluttered, and makes sense.

Creating a New Account With Bluehost

Bluehost’s streamlined sign-up process has no painfully drawn-out marketing and upselling – you only have to navigate your domain setup and payment. You’ll also be prompted to create your Bluehost account and login credentials simultaneously.

The typical account creation details required on the payment page itself include your name, address, and contact details. The account creation tool also allows you to specify your chosen service term and paid hosting add-ons. That said, I recommend thoroughly reviewing all of these, as some paid extras are pre-selected.

Lastly, there’s space to input your card details. It’s nice that Bluehost’s accepted payment methods include a number of cards, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. However, I’d like to see more payment methods beyond bank cards, such as EFT and PayPal.

That said, all Bluehost plans come with a $150 Google Ads credit (for first-time US customers only). However, you won’t see this offer listed on your order summary itself.

After payment for your Bluehost hosting plan is complete, you can focus on setting up or migrating your website. Handily, the domain name setup page pops up just before the hosting payment page.

You can select your free domain from a number of popular domain extensions or add an existing domain, if needed. The inclusion of a wide range of popular US, UK, and global domain extensions in Bluehost’s free domain name selection is definitely a win. You can choose one that best fits your unique demographic and audience instead of settling for a generic one.

A WordPress auto-installer is also included with all hosting plans, accessible via your Bluehost admin panel. Do note that – as with many providers – the shared and WordPress hosting plans are essentially the same products with different names.

Custom Bluehost Admin Panel & WordPress Dashboard

Bluehost’s admin panel and your WordPress Dashboard are somewhat linked on its WordPress hosting plans. You can publish and edit website content directly from the Bluehost admin panel, or use exclusive Bluehost tools from your WordPress Dashboard.

This feature proves useful for beginners as it allows you to edit your website content directly via the WordPress Dashboard. If you’re not a fan of remembering passwords, here’s the good news – you can also easily access your WordPress Dashboard via the admin panel.

Google My Business Setup

Bluehost offers integration with Google My Business, allowing you to seamlessly connect your site and a Google Business account together. This way, you can get your business listed and mapped out on Google Maps easily in one place – a nice touch, particularly for those with physical stores or offices.

Adequate Performance – But Mainly in the US

Bluehosts’ main demographic is US-based sites and audiences. A contributing factor is that Bluehost’s data centers are located in Utah, meaning Bluehost-hosted sites perform best here and in nearby states.

Our Bluehost-hosted WordPress testing site scored somewhat poorly for performance here in terms of speed, but very well for uptime.

GTmetrix

Our Bluehost test site typically took about 2 seconds to load, which is just on the edge of acceptability according according to the majority of hosting experts. However, there were many deviations throughout the day and week, with it frequently taking over 3 seconds to load.

It’s very difficult to attribute deviations to peak times, as performance seemed to ebb and flow throughout the week.

The primary problem was identified in the Time to First Byte measure, as once the testing server in Chicago was able to make that first connection with the data center in Utah, the loading of page assets would often take place in less than a second. But it would frequently take more than a second – sometimes more than 2 – for this connection to take place.

Keep in mind that this was the default setup for a Bluehost hosting plan, and could probably be improved with various plugins and other tweaks, but we test a hosting plan to see what a non-technical user would get out of it.

UptimeRobot

In our UptimeRobot tests, our Bluehost-hosted website performed impressively, averaging a 100% uptime rate over the course of a month. Our site only dropped out for a 3-minute period once during this time, which may be attributed to regular Bluehost maintenance.

Do note that Bluehost doesn’t have a typical service-level agreement (SLA) in place, which would guarantee both a set uptime rate for your hosted site and compensation if terms aren’t met. Instead, Bluehost lists out the likelihood of downtime and subsequent measures taken to restore your site in its Network Server Uptime Agreement.

If a server goes down, Bluehost claims that most fixes take approximately 15 minutes. However, the host mentions that it could take as much as a day or more to do so (in extreme cases). And, no, you won’t be compensated for any of that unexpected downtime. Despite stellar UptimeRobot results, I can’t say I find this lack of accountability reassuring.

You shouldn’t have to worry about server outages and the potential financial losses these could cause your business. There are definitely better hosts to go with if you need more assurances. For example, A2 Hosting offers better peace of mind, with compensation should it fail to meet the terms stipulated in its SLA.

Sucuri Load Time Tester

Our Sucuri Load Time Tester results provided global figures regarding page loading times for our Bluehost test site. You can see that US-based connections – particularly on the West Coast, near Bluehost’s Utah-based data centers – performed best. At around half a second or less for a full page load, these speeds are higher than average.

Server connections as far away as London and The Netherlands performed OK, too. Other regions showed mixed results, though servers in some of these locations – particularly France and Germany – may have blocked the Sucuri Load Time Tester connection.

Again, we performed these tests without a CDN enabled, as a CDN is not a part of the default setup on a Basic shared or WordPress hosting plan.

Solid 24/7 Support – Via Phone & Live Chat

Bluehost has a streamlined support offering, with agents available via phone and live chat 24/7. You can also consult the knowledge base on the Bluehost website, which is filled with helpful articles on many relevant topics.

The level of support I received from Bluehost was more than satisfactory. When reaching out to Bluehost through live chat, there were some small problems. Mostly, the Bluehost chat representative was slow to respond at first, taking a minute or longer to answer each message at the start of the chat.

However, he quickly caught up, so I might have just got him at a bad or busy time – I did make contact at around 4:00 p.m. MT on Sunday afternoon.

When I called Bluehost phone support, the phone tree directed me to where I needed to go immediately. Once I was connected to a Bluehost support agent, they were on in less than a single ring and very helpful and friendly.

Even better, the agent asked for a verification token instead of a portion of my Bluehost account password – a less-than-safe practice it’s been found guilty of in the past.

One major complaint about Bluehost is its pricey renewal rates. These rates can be as high as up to four times the initial discounted ones – which is a considerable jump. If you plan on staying longer than the initial heavily-discounted 12- or 36-month first term, be prepared for a significant cost increase. However, you may find deals and coupons to reduce the price.

Bluehost is now only 元20.60 per month!

Sign up for an annual plan and enjoy the savings.

Get Deal

Another issue with Bluehost’s hosting plans is their limited capabilities and the lack of truly valuable included features. Most of the “freebies” – such as Cloudflare CDN, Yoast SEO Free, Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, and WordPress plugins and themes – are free anyway.

Both the Bluehost basic and premium plans also include less storage, security, and performance features than many similarly-priced hosting plans. With this in mind, it may be worth your while to compare a few other hosting providers before you sign up.