Bluehost, an official WordPress recommended hosting provider, has proven to be a great hosting option for WordPress users for years. Bluehost offers a variety of options, suitable for businesses of all sizes. To make sure you know what you are getting, we have compiled both the good and the bad with Bluehost’s hosting.
To give you a full picture, we have reviewed the following areas of Bluehost:
- Company History
- Features
- Pricing
- Reliability
- Customer Support
Company Background
Bluehost first started back in 2003, out of Provo, Utah. The founders, Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth have since been able to grow the business to become one of the largest hosting providers in the world. Currently based out of Orem, Utah, Bluehost powers millions of WordPress sites. With its team of 750 members, they have the manpower to back up their excellent features.
Features
Being a leading provider of WordPress hosting, as well as a WordPress-recommended host, you can rest assured that you will be getting some great features when choosing Bluehost. Like most providers, you can expect several features to change based on your selected plan. To begin, let us first focus on the features that come standard across all plans.
- One free domain for a year
- Free CDN
- Free SSL
- Custom themes
- Automatic WordPress installation
- Automatic WordPress updates
- 24/7 customer support
The features listed above are just the tip of the iceberg that Bluehost offers. Several features scale based on the plan selected. For example, while you get one website and 50 GB of SSD storage on the Basic plan, you can get unlimited sites and storage on the Plus and Choice Plus plans.
On the Plus plan, you will also receive a free license for Office 365, good for 30 days. This is an excellent avenue into getting your business up and running. The Choice Plus plan takes this a step further and also throws in free domain privacy and a year’s worth of free automated backups, a must-have to keep your site safe.
Pricing
If you were looking to be blown away by prices, unfortunately, this is not the case here. Bluehost offers competitive pricing, but don’t expect any massive savings compared to other budget hosts. For WordPress hosting, Bluehost offers three plans:
- Basic – $2.75/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $99
- Plus – $4.95/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $178.20
- Choice – $5.45/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $196.20
After the terms expire, the billing reverts to its standard pricing of $8.99, $11.99, and $16.99 per month, respectively.
In addition to standard WordPress hosting, Bluehost also offers Managed WordPress Hosting. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of managed hosting, we’ll fill you in. Managed WordPress Hosting allows experts to manage some of the technical details of your site, rather than you having to. This allows you to focus on other areas of your business rather than maintaining your site. The Managed WordPress Hosting offerings are listed as follows:
- Build – $14.95/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $538.20
- Grow – $29.95/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $1,078.20
- Scale – $49.95/month billed upfront on a 36-month term, totaling $1,798.20
After the terms expire, the billing reverts to its standard pricing of $8.99, $11.99, and $16.99 per month, respectively.
Reliability
Much like the pricing area, Bluehost doesn’t offer anything paradigm-breaking when it comes to reliability. Bluehost offers the industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. Please note, this isn’t a bad thing, having your website up over 99% of the time is great, but it is relatively normal compared to other hosts.
Customer Support
Being around for 18 years generally is a good sign that their customer service is up to snuff, and that certainly is the case with Bluehost. Bluehost has top-tier customer support, staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 365 days a year. This means, no matter what day or time, you can work with the experts to address any issues you may have. Available through either phone or webchat, you have plenty of options when it comes to coordination with their support team.
Conclusion
Consistency is the key with Bluehost, and is why we fully recommend them as a WordPress hosting provider. Tremendous features, prices, uptime, and customer support justify Bluehost’s status as one of the largest and best in the world. Do not take WordPress’s official recommendation lightly, as Bluehost is indeed a great choice.