Should You Use Bluehost For WordPress?

Should you use Bluehost for your WordPress blog? Let’s find out.

Before delving deeper into Bluehost for WordPress, let’s get to know a little bit about this popular hosting provider. Bluehost was founded by Matt Heaton in 1996 as a free hosting company under the name 0catch.com. They were renamed Bluehost in 2003 and have become one of the most popular, reliable and affordable hosting providers worldwide since 2005. In 2010, Bluehost was acquired by the company “Endurance International Group (EIG)”, which owns Hostgator and several other companies in the industry. Mike Olson was appointed as the new CEO of Utah-based Bluehost in 2015.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and are at no additional cost to you. I get compensated when you make purchases using those links, which helps make this guide free to you. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I have personally used, thoroughly examined all positive or negative aspects and found to be worth it.

No matter whether you are looking to boost your already established business, striving to make a fortune from blogging as an online career, or living an itinerant digital nomad life as a content creator, you will definitely realize the importance of a CMS like WordPress-hosted by the best service provider like Bluehost because the combination is used by most bloggers or website owners including me.

Bluehost is the most popular and 100% reliable among the top 5 web hosting companies in the hosting world and is best suited for brand-new bloggers or website owners. It hosts over 2 million websites across the web and has been officially recommended by wordpress.org since 2005. Also, Bluehost for WordPress is the combination used by most new bloggers and website owners including me.

With the ‘Choice Plus’ plan for $7.45/month* (36/month term), you will get everything you need to create your own desired and optimal blog with excellent speed, unbeatable uptime and high-security features. Plus, if things don’t turn out as expected, you are free to change your mind and get your money back at any time as they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Sounds good, isn’t it?

However, my excellent experience with Bluehost does not prove that it is the best hosting provider in the world. It should be judged from all aspects so that you can better decide whether Bluehost is the best fit for your needs or if you should look for other alternatives. In this honest and unbiased Bluehost for WordPress review, I have tried to cover in detail all the aspects and some of the most important deciding factors that will help you empower your decision.

Why Choose Bluehost for WordPress?

WordPress (powered and managed by wordpress.org) is the most popular CMS in the world with millions of bloggers (including me) using it every day to create, modify and maintain their blogs. The latest online statistics show that over 65% of blogs run on WordPress, including popular names like Forbes, New York Observer, TED, Thought Catalog, TechCrunch, NBC, and more.

But to get the most out of WordPress, you need an excellent hosting service like Bluehost because your web host plays an important role when it comes to the reliability, security and stability of your site. Thus, if you are trying to make a fortune online then Bluehost for WordPress is not an option but a necessity of the era.

If you looking for a professional, high-quality and well-performing hosting company, Bluehost is the way to go as it offers the highest value you will pay for hosting. To find out which hosting provider was worth it, I compared dozens of competitors and narrowed it down to the top five based on security, performance, and pricing, and Bluehost ranked first in every aspect. With an easy-to-navigate cPanel, drag-and-drop page builder and customer support features, Bluehost for WordPress holds the edge over all the big names in the hosting world.

Reason #1: Affordable Introductory Pricing

At as low as $2.95/month, Bluehost offers one of the cheapest hosting pricing in the hosting world. You get everything you need to comfortably host a website at this competitive price including:

  1. 50 GB SSD Storage
  2. Free SSL Certificate
  3. Unmetered Bandwidth
  4. Free Domain Registration and
  5. 24/7 support from their technical expert

Apart from great loading speeds and excellent uptime, you get more than what you invest in hosting a site and trust me; This is one of the affordable prices for your basic needs that you can find anywhere in this business.

Reason #2: Unbeatable Uptime Guarantee

This is the time a blog, website or web service is available to its users for a specified period. This means- that if your site is down for some time, people can’t access it. Thus, site availability or uptime is the most determining factor when choosing a host and Bluehost has proven to be #1 in this area as compared to other hosting providers. Undoubtedly it has been maintaining an average uptime of 99.99% for the last five to ten years as you can see in the screenshot below:

Reason #3: Excellent Loading Time

When determining the quality of a good web host, one of the most important factors you should always look at is its speed performance. It not only affects the user experience of your website but also affects your website ranking.

A study by Strange Loop Networks shows that “a 1-second delay in website loading can reduce your conversion rate by up to 7%. This results in an 11% reduction in page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.” it occurs.” This means, that slow websites often lead to reduced sales which is certainly not a good sign for the long term stability of the business.

If your website loads too slowly, search engines may boost or hide your website from user searches based on its loading time, and therefore a hosting company has an impact on your website’s performance. The fact is, Bluehost has recorded an excellent loading speed of 398ms on average from 2017 to date.

Reason #4: Beginner-friendly

Not all hosting providers are suitable for brand newbies and people with no technical knowledge. Actually, some of them are best suited for advanced users. For example, services like LiquidWeb and Cloudways are excellent if you are skilled enough. Also, their interface is not newbie-friendly, especially for non-technical users. So being a newbie, you will find it very difficult to create a blog or website with them.

Bluehost’s control panel (cPanel) is very simple and straightforward to use. But, they have similar features for advanced users, so it is not entirely for beginners only. However, if you are new to the business, you can easily install and start WordPress in minutes after completing the signup process. Or, you can simply use the Bluehost website builder (such as Weebly) to get started. It has tons of beautiful drag-and-drop templates that you can customize to suit your taste and style. On top of that, their 24/7 support is always there to assist you at any time.

Reason #5: Flexibility and Scalability

Bluehost offers additional add-on features or scalable options to suit your budget and needs as your business grows. They make it incredibly easy to upgrade your hosting plans should your current plan not fit your business or traffic load needs. You are free to upgrade the current hosting package or opt for a completely different plan whenever you need it, such as changing from shared hosting to WordPress managed hosting and their hosting team is there to help you every step of the way. will be available for you, ensuring that your website is up and running throughout the process. You can monitor your servers from their custom dashboard to know when it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan.

Reason #6: Third-party integration

Website integration is the process of connecting a third-party app to a website. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool can be integrated directly into a website and data can be shared from one system to another. If your site is managed and hosted by Bluehost, you will have access to a large number of third-party integrations that you will need to manage your website efficiently as your business grows. Plus, you can easily install your favourite CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and even WooCommerce directly from your cPanel whenever you need it. Plus, you’ll have access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which will help reduce work on your servers and boost loading speeds.

Reason #7: Excellent customer support

Once you’ve completed the signup process and logged in to your dashboard, the first thing you’ll want to do is get instant online customer support, especially if you’re building your site for the first time. Bluehost offers an excellent technical support team that is available 24/7 and always ready to assist you. However, not everyone will have the same experience as it depends on the geographic location of the users.

Bluehost focuses heavily on customer support by providing several different support channels. You’ll get phone support, live chat, as well as social media support. The easiest way to contact them is through online chatting or by phone, they will always be there to assist you when you call them. They also have a huge support library with tons of questions and in-depth guides to help you fix common problems that come along the way.

Reason #8: Bluehost Backup

Backups are often overlooked when building a blog or website. It’s usually not something you bother about until it’s too late. But when you face real problems like losing your data, you will know why it is important to have backups along the way and hence, having an automatic backup of your database is really a necessity in business.

Of course, Bluehost provides excellent backup support for your site where you will enjoy daily backup and restore on almost all hosting plans. However, backups have some limitations depending on your chosen plan, which is why it’s always advisable to use a third-party backup solution, or simply upgrade your plan.

Including basic backup in all your hosting packages makes it attractive and a reason to go for it. If something happens to your site, you just need to restore it from the previous version. This will save a lot of time and effort and avoid having to rebuild everything from scratch.

Reason #9: Excellent Security Features:

Protecting sensitive information from hackers and cyber thieves has been a real challenge for the online working community. Malware spread, password hacks and network attacks are some of the serious issues that cannot be compromised and without effective security measures, it will be quite impossible to get a fair chance at the initial stage of your blogging career. Bluehost provides the best security features mentioned below to protect your website.

1. Sure Socket Layer or SSL certificate

Each Bluehost plan comes with a free SSL certificate to provide you with an extra layer of security and protection. Sure Socket Layer or SSL is a computing protocol that ensures the security of data sent through the Internet by using encryption. It is basically an encryption protocol in the form of various instructions that your server and browser must follow while exchanging or transferring data. This ensures that the data being exchanged is never hijacked and read by unauthorized third parties.

How does SSL work?

The best indicator for a secure website is an SSL certificate. It ensures safe browsing and security for its users. You may see a padlock icon and “HTTPS://” at the beginning of the web address indicating that the site is secure. It authenticates the identity of your website, encrypts sensitive information on the site and is mandatory for the site you publish online. It is usually installed and activated on web pages and web servers to use the more secure HTTPS protocol which ensures a more secure connection.

How important is an SSL certificate for a website?

Google better ranks websites that have an SSL certificate installed. However, SSL certificates are of paramount importance for businesses that are looking to sell products or services from their websites. This is primarily important on websites that collect sensitive data from users, such as passwords, emails, names, credit card information, etc. SSL certificates usually help to bind an identifier and a company identity together. This is only to prove that both the recipient and originator of the file are exactly what they claim to be.

Here are some of the major benefits of having an SSL certificate installed on your site:

  1. Boost customer confidence resulting in improved conversion rates
  2. Help you protect your website data from malicious activities
  3. Increase Your Website Rankings in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) – If you are running an unsecured website, ie without SSL installed, then search engines cannot trust your site.

2. Domain Privacy + Protection

In the ‘Choice Plus’ plan, you will get domain privacy as an added security feature that will keep your personal information private for safe browsing. Since internet security is a growing concern nowadays, it is important to protect your personal information from being made public if you are working online and Bluehost offers this feature if you opt for the ‘Choice Plus plan’. This prevents cybercriminals from discovering your personal information such as your credit card credentials and using this information for misuse.

3. SiteLock

You will also enjoy the SiteLock feature, which helps protect your site from malware attacks. Unfortunately, these attacks are quite common on WordPress-powered websites. Bluehost SiteLock features are included in all plans to help you detect and fix vulnerabilities and threats before they cause problems to protect your website from attacks and malware.

4. Code Guard

Bluehost backups with CodeGuard daily or as you choose, and these backups are stored separately making it easy to restore your site in the event of a disaster. If you believe that you are unable to upload your previous data or that your site has been compromised, you may immediately restore the previous versions at any time at your convenience.

5. Spam Protection

Other free Bluehost security features include spam killer protection, hotlink protection, and secure shell access. Bluehost provides Postini security tools from Google for spam protection. Using Google Filters, Postini separates quarantined messages for review before they reach your inbox.

Reason #10: Bluehost cPanel

Each shared plan has a Bluehost standard control panel or cPanel. Bluehost cPanel is an enhanced version of the regular cPanel used by most hosting solutions. The redesign of their cPanel makes it more intuitive to use and a lot more beginner-friendly. cPanel gives you access to everything about your site’s hosting account. And from there you can easily manage your website. It gives you access to things like:

  1. Domain Name Management
  2. File Upload
  3. CMS Installation (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.)
  4. Billing for the Services You Receive
  5. Email Address / Inbox Configuration

There you will find a unified login i.e. a username and password giving you access to all Bluehost services. You also get a full-featured email configuration and domain management features, integration with hotlinks to access their technical support resources, easy scalability, and upgrades so you can easily make changes to customize your site and hosting experience.

Reason#11: Officially Recommended by WordPress.org

WordPress (powered and managed by wordpress.org) is the most popular CMS in the world with millions of bloggers (including me) using it every day to create, modify and maintain their blogs or websites. What’s more interesting, however, is that Bluehost is one of their “officially” recommended web hosts for building a WordPress site (the other two being SiteGround and DreamHost). Of course, you are free to choose any other that you think best suits your needs. However, Bluehost is one of the officially approved partners which is really attractive and makes anyone confident about their long term outlook.

Reason #12: Exclusive 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Bluehost also provides a second chance to its users if they are not satisfied with the plan or its services. While this is not long as compared to some other money-back-guarantees like- Dreamhost offers 97 days, InMotion Hosting offers 90 days, or even Hostgator offers 45 days, Yet that is enough to decide if you are really enjoying their services. You’ll get your full payment once you cancel it within the 30-day refund period. However, if you cancel after the 30-day guarantee period, you will still receive a pro-rata refund for the remainder of your period.

Things That Could Be Better About Bluehost

Bluehost is an amazing hosting option with many impressive features which is excellent as compared to other hosting providers in the industry. However, it still lacks five key aspects. Let’s consider them before making a choice.

1. High Renewal Rate

While Bluehost offers incredibly low and competitive hosting prices, its renewal rates are something that needs to be improved. This is common in the industry, although it should be more lucrative. Most web hosting providers use their cheap introductory price only to attract you as a customer, but you’ll know the actual rate during the upgrade. The same is the case with Bluehost.

So, when considering going for Bluehost, keep in mind that you will be paying more once your introductory period is over. But, here’s a point and guess what? You will renew your plan only when you can continue and grow or grow your business and if you know what you are doing then there is no point in thinking about it. This is why I always recommend choosing the “Price for the option plus 36 months – ₹7.45/month*” if you want to lock in the lowest possible price you are willing to pay for hosting.

2. Only One Free Site Migration

“Free WordPress website migration applies to only 1 WordPress website upon the purchase of a Bluehost hosting account.” Some hosts, such as Siteground and WPX Hosting, help you transfer your existing site to their servers for free. This is an essential service that will make things easier for new customers. But Bluehost charges a one-time site migration fee of $149.99, which includes moving your site (up to five), email accounts, and other database files.

3. No Windows Hosting

Bluehost only provides Linux hosting and does not support websites that require Windows Server to function properly. This probably won’t be a noticeable problem for most users; however, it is not a recommended option for individuals who need to run Windows Server.

Bluehost Hosting Pros

The good thing here is that with Bluehost hosting, you usually get more than you would expect from cheap hosting services. Here are some of the attractive features that you will enjoy with Bluehost hosting:

  1. The easy two-page sign-up process
  2. budget-entry-level pricing
  3. easy to use for beginners
  4. 24/7 Customer Support
  5. Free domain for the first year
  6. Free SSL Certificate
  7. Unmetered bandwidth
  8. Free SEO Tools 
  9. Easy-to-use, customized cPanel
  10. Free drag-and-drop website builder
  11. Dozens of Site Tools Add-ons
  12. 100+ free business email
  13. 99% Uptime guarantee
  14. Cloudflare integration to boost your site’s loading speed
  15. Technology to support super-fast page load times
  16. Above-average security features
  17. One Free Site Migration 
  18. seamless WordPress installation
  19. Multiple integrations, apps and eCommerce features
  20. 30-day money-back guarantee.
    Now, let’s break down the Bluehost plans in detail:

Bluehost Cons

  1. No monthly subscription for shared and WordPress hosting.
  2. Add-ons for upselling, but you are free to uncheck them.
  3. Storage: Bluehost offers a smaller amount of storage on its basic plan than its competitors.
  4. Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on any domain name. Increased renewal rates for both domain and hosting.
  5. Additional Costs: Several optional add-ons will be added to your cart at checkout, and it is up to you to uncheck them.
  6. Site Migration Fees – It is true that when it comes to migration benefits,  Bluehost is not necessarily your best bet.
  7. Upsell: Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence in the web hosting industry.
  8. Site Migration Cost: Bluehost charges a minimum of $149 to migrate your site to or from another platform. Not the best choice for high-traffic sites – If you want to scale to an already high-traffic site and need hosting to meet those specific needs, an entry-level Bluehost plan won’t cut it You can always upgrade to their more expensive managed WordPress tier.

Although most of the above considerations can make Bluehost pricing even more attractive and stand away from the competition, its pros always outweigh the cons and meet your average expectations from such a budget-friendly hosting price.

Which plan is best suited for beginners?

Personally, I always recommend choosing shared hosting with the “Choice Plus 36 Month Price – $7.45/month” plan, especially if you’re just starting out and want to lock in the lowest possible price that you are willing to pay for hosting. You’ll get all the features of the Plus plan along with site backup options and domain privacy features in addition at no additional cost. This is the most popular Bluehost for WordPress plan used by millions of bloggers and website owners including me. Features included are:

  1. Free SSL
  2. 1 FREE domain (for 1 year)
  3. Install Unlimited Websites
  4. 1 Domain Privacy
  5. Get Unmetered Website Space and Bandwidth
  6. Unlimited Parked Domains and Subdomains
  7. Unlimited Email Accounts and Email Storage
  8. $200 Worth Marketing Offer
  9. 1 Spam Expert
  10. Site Backup Included

Want to see if Bluehost is your first priority?
Go here to explore their features, plans and prices today—and get started with as little as $2.95/mo*

Visit www.bluehost.com

However, if your individual needs differ from those mentioned earlier, you are free to choose the foot that is best for your needs. So, let us go into detail about the types of hosting offered by Bluehost and their pricing:

Bluehost Pricing

Bluehost offers six types of hosting: Shared, VPS, Dedicated, Shared WordPress, Managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. Each of these comes with its pricing plans and features – the more advanced the hosting, the more features you get, and the more it costs.

Short term vs Long term hosting

It’s worth noting that the price points for each ‘shared hosting plan’ I review are the same only if you purchase a 36-month hosting plan in advance. If you decide to go with a 12 or 24-month plan, the monthly amount changes accordingly. Going with a month-to-month plan will also mean that your monthly hosting fee will be slightly more expensive. Let us dive into the details of what type of hosting Bluehost offers us so that we can choose the one that best suits our needs.

1. Shared Hosting

A shared hosting plan from Bluehost is undoubtedly one of the easiest ways to start building your blog or website, especially for beginners. With prices as low as $2.95, the ‘Basic’ plan includes 50GB of space, free domain for the first year, free CDN, free SSL and 24/7 support to help you create your own well-optimized and secure blog in minutes.

If you’re running an already established business, you can choose the ‘Plus’ plan at $5.45 per month. This includes everything in the Basic plan, as well as the ability to host and manage an unlimited number of sites. This is most convenient if you want to start more than one site without worrying about loading time.

Which shared hosting is the best

As you can see there are four options to choose from and the one that gives you the most bang for your bucks is the ‘Choice Plus’ plan for $5.45 per month (12 months term). You get everything you have in the first and second tiers, plus free domain privacy and a full year of free automatic backups make it worth considering as internet security is a growing concern in the online world.

Do you want to explore all the features and get started with the most valuable ‘Choice Plus’ plan right now?

Visit www.bluehost.com

2. VPS Hosting

VPS, or Virtual Private Server Hosting, is when the hosting takes place inside a shared server but acts as a dedicated virtual space for your site. VPS hosting has become very popular because it is less expensive than dedicated hosting but gives you higher security and potentially better performance than shared hosting. Guaranteed resources are the name of the game when it comes to VPS hosting options from Bluehost.

They stack up well against competitors as they only charge you $18.99 for the standard VPN feature. This includes 2GB of RAM and an additional 1TB of bandwidth. Guaranteed resources are the name of the game when it comes to VPS hosting options from Bluehost.

Looking at what each Bluehost has to offer, it is clear that they have positioned themselves as a beginner-friendly web host, but have lit the candle on both ends by offering affordable dedicated and VPS hosting. It’s a double win when it comes to hosting.

Is VPS hosting the best fit for your needs, and do you want to explore all the features to get started now?

Visit www.bluehost.com

3. Dedicated hosting

The exceptional benefits of dedicated hosting are security, privacy, and overall even more control. If you want your site to be hosted at scale and reliability, then a dedicated hosting plan from Bluehost is the way to go. Is your site growing fast? Do you see more traffic coming in day by day? This is where you will want to look for dedicated hosting, another reliable plan from Bluehost. To illustrate the power of a dedicated hosting plan, they start with 500GB of storage space, 4GB of RAM, and 5TB of bandwidth for just $79.99 per month. This places Bluehost as a premium competitor in the market, even for its most expensive hosting tiers.

Is ‘Dedicated Hosting’ the hosting option you were looking for and now want to explore all the features?

Visit www.bluehost.com

4. Managed WordPress hosting

An all-in-one managed platform that suits all your website needs. This includes all the pricing plans for managed WordPress hosting through Bluehost, including blazing-fast speeds, marketing tools, and multi-level security features. Undoubtedly the most dynamic hosting plan that Bluehost offers is their managed WordPress hosting.

Each one offers a different hosting package to suit what you are looking for. To make the best decision if you decide to go with a managed WordPress option, you will want to base your decision on the amount of traffic they are suitable for. Each plan is packed with several useful features built to help your site grow. That means storage space starting at 20GB, access to 200+ global servers, scheduled backups, test environments, and free SSL certification, just to name a few.

Is Managed Hosting your choice the one you were looking for and want to explore all the features?

Visit to www.bluehost.com

What is the basis of pricing?

Its traffic potential differentiates each managed tier and ultimately leads to different pricing.

Here’s a quick overview:

Small Businesses: $9.95 per month, best for 50,000 monthly visitors

Growth potential: $14.95 per month, best for 150,000 monthly visitors

Scalable: $27.95 per month, best for 500,000 monthly visitors

Shared vs VPS hosting

Breaking it down by traffic makes it easy to choose a managed WordPress hosting plan that will give you peace of mind and plenty of uptime. Now, while shared hosting may be the best affordable hosting option for beginners, it will not be what you want to see as your site grows.

Hence there is dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. Dedicated hosting is a more robust and reliable hosting option for powerful site performance, and VPS hosting offers more power, flexibility, and control to power your site better than what you have in shared hosting.

Bluehost Pricing Vs Competitive Pricing

Bluehost Exciting Offers

At this point, you have learned about Bluehost hosting prices. But the fun doesn’t stop here. In addition to hosting plans, Bluehost has other services as well. So, let’s see them one by one.

1. WordPress and WooCommerce

If you’ve already decided to launch your online store with WordPress and WooCommerce, it can be as easy as choosing between the standard or premium store hosting plans to get started. For a store with a robust payment processing system equipped with lots of analytics and the ability to create basic store backups, go for the standard offer of $15.95 per month.

2. Reliable e-Commerce Options

Your store can be a little more complicated than a simple store with its product catalogue. If you are going to capture subscriptions, online reservations and appointment scheduling, you are better off opting for the premium tier as a very reliable e-commerce option. I’d say it’s my top choice for a multifunctional online store with lots of moving parts. Instead, I’d pay a little more than they need for all the premium features and not give them up to save a few extra bucks.

3. Live WordPress support

Bluehost offers Blue Sky, a service to teach users how to build, develop and maintain any WordPress website through personalized training and guidance. Live WordPress support starts at $29 per month for on-demand ticket support and backup support and goes up to $149 per month for SEO tools, help with content optimization and mobile optimization, and access to Constant Contact Professional Marketing Services. In addition to hosting services, Bluehost offers to assist your business with design and marketing strategies to allow you more time to focus on income-generating activities and run your business.

Bluehost services other than hosting

Website support with full-service, design, marketing and content support. Apart from this, there are some other options like- SEO services to optimize your website and target keywords, PPC services to help with pay-per-click campaigns and Website migration support including an in-person consultation to review your website before and after any migration. As you can see, the cost of these services is not listed on the website. If you are interested, you will have to contact them for details.

Conclusion:

Many exciting features and extras are included at every price point, and the wide variety of plans offers plenty of flexibility for every budget. No matter what your needs are, Bluehost always offers the best-fit package for you. In short, if you are looking for a web host with a rock-solid reputation, look no further than Bluehost. With affordable and scalable plans, you can easily build and optimize your site in a matter of seconds, proving that Bluehost is an absolute knockout of a web hosting provider.

Now it’s time to make a decision. In this Bluehost for WordPress review, I have tried to empower you with the knowledge on how to make the most of what you are willing to pay for web hosting so that you make the right decision in choosing the best plan for your budget and needs. If you want to choose the best one from the many options available to you, there is no other way than to make yourself aware, well educated and informed before making a decision.

Would you like to check out Bluehost pricing today?
Head over here to find out their features, plans, and prices today and start as low as $2.95/month.

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