Bluehost is a well-known hosting provider, and most beginners go with Bluehost hosting. But before taking a final decision, you should know Bluehost’s pros and cons. So, that you can choose the perfect hosting for your website or blog.
When I had to launch my first site on WordPress, I was also quite confused about which hosting should I choose and what the pros and cons of Bluehost hosting.
Now, I have over 4+ years of experience using Bluehost. And, in this guide, I’m going to cover the key pros and cons of bluehost.
Let’s dive into it!
Quick Overview of Bluehost Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Affordable
- Recommended by WordPress
- Free domain name
- Free SSL certificate
- Good Uptime
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Hassle-free setup & onboarding
- 1-click WordPress installation
- Easy to use dashboard & c-panel
- Free business email
- Good customer service
Cons:
- May not be good for high-volume sites
- Higher renewal rates
- Hard to find discounts
- Sometimes there are some support issues
- No free website migration
Bluehost Pros
Firstly, we will talk about the advantages of Bluehost and then will go over the disadvantages.
1) Affordable
The top reason behind the popularity of Bluehost is it’s quite affordable. Its starting plan just costs you around $2.95/month. And it’s perfect for beginners who want to get the best hosting at the lowest price.
2) Recommended by WordPress
Another great plus point is WordPress itself recommends it. So, it gives us two indications: one, Bluehost is trustworthy, and the second it is fully compatible with WordPress sites.
3) Free Domain name
To get your website live, you need a domain name. If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, then no need to pay extra money for a domain name. Because with Bluehost you will get one free domain for one year.
Remember that the domain will be free for one year and after that, you have to pay as per their renewal price.
4) Free SSL Certificate
Having a secure website is a must-have to survive in this digital world. One quick step for adding security to your site is installing an SSL certificate.
SSL certificate is a security shield that adds a padlock icon to your site and loads it with the HTTPS version. This security symbol indicates that the website is secure to browse. And with Bluehost hosting, you will get a free SSL certificate.
Once you install the SSL certificate, your website will load with the HTTPS version and have a padlock icon before your domain name in the search bar.
6) Money-back guarantee
Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. This means if you’re not satisfied with the purchase, you can ask for a refund within 30 days to get your money back.
7) Hassle-free Setup and Onboarding Process
The entire setup process of Bluehost is quite simple and, with a few mouse clicks, you can easily purchase hosting.
Apart from this, Bluehost also provides a very smooth onboarding process to quickly set up your first site on WordPress.
Right after the signup process, Bluehost will guide you to set up your website and give you the options to quickly create a site. Through this process, you can easily build a WP site within a few minutes.
Note 📢 For a step-by-step guide on the Bluehost setup and onboarding process, you can check my ultimate blog post on How to Start a Blog with Bluehost.
8) 1-click WordPress installation
If you’re not tech-savvy, you may face difficulties while installing WordPress. But with Bluehost, you don’t need to worry about that. Because it offers a 1-click WordPress installation feature.
All you need to do is select WordPress as your CMS software during the onboarding process and Bluehost will handle all the backend processes.
And within a few minutes, it will install WordPress for you and provide you with login credentials to get started.
9) Easy-to-use dashboard and c-panel
Most hosting providers have very cluttered hosting dashboards and C-panels, which makes it difficult for us to find things.
But it’s not true with Bluehost. The Bluehost dashboard is quite simple and you can easily navigate to the hosting account. Here is how the main Bluehost dashboard looks.
On top of that, the C-panel of Bluehost is well-organized and without wasting time, you can easily locate things in cPanel. Here is how the Bluehost C-panel looks.
10) Good Uptime
Bluehost provides good uptime, although they have not officially claimed any specific uptime score. But overall the Bluehost uptime is good and I personally never faced much downtime on my website. I’m using Bluehost on blog websites, and the page speed score is quite good for my sites as you can see in the screenshot below.
The speed of your site does not depend only on your hosting. But many other factors affect the speed of your site such as caching, image optimization, and more. To know more, check out my guide on: Why is My WordPress site slow? 9 Reasons with Solutions
11) Free Business Email
For official communication, we all need professional emails such as contact@yourdomain.com, admin@yourdomain.com, and many more for different purposes.
With Bluehost, you don’t need to pay any extra money for creating a business email. Because it allows you to create a free business email ending with your domain name.
Based on your plan, the email limit may vary. But it allows you to create at least 5 business emails per domain even with the basic shared hosting plan.
I’m using the Choice Plus Shared Hosting plan and with this plan, I can create infinity emails out of which I only created 2 as of now.
Further, you can also integrate your business email with a personal Gmail account to get email directly into your personal Gmail. For example, I have integrated my learnwithkaur business email with my personal Gmail account, instead of logging into the Bluehost dashboard to check email, I directly check the emails from the learnwithkaur business email in my personal Gmail account.
12) Usually Good Customer Service
Overall the customer service of Bluehost is good, it provides 24 x 7 phone and chat support as mentioned on their official website. I have a good experience with their support team. But, sometimes you may face difficulties in getting the right support, which we will cover in the cons section.
Bluehost Cons
1) Not Suitable for a High Traffic Volume
Bluehost may not be a good fit for high-volume traffic because the lower plans could not be able to handle high traffic. You can get a good speed for high traffic but for that, you need to go with the higher plans of Bluehost, which will be costly.
But if you need a hosting provider that can easily handle millions of users and also commit the fastest speed. Then you can also consider checking other hosting providers that are purely optimized for traffic and speed. For example, Kinsta, A2hosting, and Siteground.
Keep in mind that, hosting plays a huge role in website speed but it is not the only factor for slow speed issues. To know more about it, consider checking the following guide which includes potential speed issues and how to resolve them.
2) Higher Renewal rates
One of the biggest cons of almost every hosting provider, is there renewal rates are quite high.
Because hosting providers give big discounts to newcomers to lower the cost for beginners. Once you have purchased the hosting, afterward it will not renew at the discounted price, and you have to pay as per their renewal rates.
The same is true for Bluehost. The first-time rates of Bluehost are quite low starting from $2.95/month. And this is why most people choose Bluehost hosting.
However, their renewal rate is not the same as their first-time rates. Once the validity expires afterward, you have to pay as per their regular renewal rates, which are quite higher compared to their first-time prices. Below is the screenshot of getting an idea of how much you have to pay once your firstly time plan has expired.
For example, if you’re buying a basic plan of shared hosting from Bluehost, then initially it will just cost you around $2.95/month.
But once your hosting plan expires, then afterward it will not renew at the same rate($2.95). Instead, you have to pay their regular rates, which usually cost you around $10.99/month for 1-year for basic shared hosting plans.
Quick Note 📌To know more about, Bluehost renewal pricing and rates for different hosting plans, consider checking their official guide.
3) Hard-to-find Discounts For Existing Customers
Bluehost gives huge discounts to first-time buyers. But for existing customers, it’s very rare to find any coupon codes for renewing your hosting at discounted prices.
If you’re an existing Bluehost customer and desperately looking for discounts to renew hosting. So, you can get in touch with their support team to know about discounts.
If they have anything for you, they will surely let you know. Once the Bluehost support team helped me to renew my hosting plan at a discounted price which is a very rare thing.
4) There May be Some Support Issues
No doubt Bluehost provides 24 x 7 phone and chat support. But sometimes you may face some issues, such as.
- Long waiting time for getting in contact with support.
- Might be the support team member is new and does not have much capability yet to resolve your issues.
- Miscommunication issues
Overall, I have had a great experience with the Bluehost support team. But once I faced a big technical issue while I was integrating my website with Ezoic. So, as a result, my website went down, and I reached the Bluehost team.
I got connected with their team members but some of them were not even able to understand my problem. Because the issue was so technical and some are newly hired(I think).
After connecting so many times with their team, my problem was still unresolved. So, finally, I asked to connect with their senior team. Their senior team assured me that the issue would be resolved on a priority basis and I got some hope.
The best thing is, the senior support team member showed dedication to solving my issue and she continuously followed up with me until the issue was fully resolved. She goes beyond their duties and also checks the issue at the Ezoic end to get my issue resolved.
In my opinion, Bluehost has good team support which works hard to resolve our issues. But some team members, specifically new joinees might not have enough experience to handle big technical issues.
So, in this case, I prefer getting help from a senior advisor to get the right assistance.
5) No free Website Migration
The other big downside is, Bluehost doesn’t offer you free website migration services.
In case, you already have a website running on another hosting provider and want to switch to Bluehost hosting. Then either you have to do it by yourself, hire a tech person, or purchase Bluehost migration services.
Bluehost charges $149.99 for one website migration as per their support team.
Is Bluehost the Right Hosting Provider?
Bluehost is a perfect hosting provider for beginners who want an affordable hosting provider with all the must-haves such as a free domain for one year and an SSL certificate. The Bluehost also provides good speed for small to mid-size websites.
Bluehost may not be an ideal option for large websites that get millions of visitors because, for this, you have to go with their higher plans which are costly. For high-traffic websites, you can also consider checking performance-optimized hosting providers like Kinsta, A2hosting, and Cloudways.
Final Thoughts on Pros and Cons of Bluehost
I’ve personally been using Bluehost for over 4 years now, and overall I have had a wonderful experience till now. Since my website does not currently have millions of traffic, so, it loads quickly and everything is going smoothly.
When in the future, the traffic of my sites goes up and if I face speed issues due to hosting, then I can think about migrating to another hosting provider. But as of now, Bluehost is working fine for me.
Key Takeaways:
- Bluehost is a good choice for beginners because of its affordability, ease of use, and features.
- But for high-volume websites, Bluehost may not be a perfect choice.
- Initially, you can start with Bluehost to get hosting at affordable prices. If you face any difficulties when your website starts getting high-volume traffic, you can always migrate to performance-optimized hosting providers.
Next Helpful Guide 📝 How to Start a Blog with Bluehost | Step-by-Step Guide