Bluehost Review

Is it Really Worth the Money?

Bluehost Review

Intro

If you want your business to be taken seriously in the modern moment, it’s pretty much essential to create a professional, attractive website. Luckily, services like WordPress allow you to build and customize a business website in a matter of minutes.

To use WordPress, however, you need a reliable hosting provider to prevent your site from crashing or getting hacked.

Bluehost is one of the most popular providers in the web hosting industry, and we’re here to take a look at their services. We’ll go over pros and cons, pricing and features, customer reviews and more to help you decide whether they’re the right choice for you. Enjoy!

Some Pros and Cons of Bluehost

Pros of Bluehost

  • Bluehost offers some of the most affordable plans in the web-hosting industry, as well the most flexible, with monthly rates ranging from $4 to $50 depending on your needs.
  • Since they were established in 1996 they’ve hosted nearly 2 million websites, so yours would be in very experienced hands.
  • They’re one of the only hosting providers that offers packages specifically tailored to WordPress.
  • They offer a 30-day 100% money-back guarantee, so trying out their services is risk free!
  • In addition to their robust help center, they offer 24/7 live chat and phone support. If you experience a problem at any time of the day, a customer service rep will be there to help you through it.

Cons of Bluehost

  • While some web-hosting providers offer free migration, Bluehost charges $99 for this service.
  • Some users have complained about their websites being hacked. That said, we used Bluehost for two years and never experienced any security problems.

Bluehost Alternative

Weebly is one of the most popular website builders on the market because they offer highly customizable themes and flexible package options. Read Review

Weebly

Pricing & Features

Bluehost essentially offers two levels of hosting for WordPress. In this Bluehost review we’ll discuss their standard packages, but keep in mind that they also offer optimized WordPress hosting.

Quick Tip: If you're just getting started, the standard pricing (below) is more than enough. No need to pay extra until you need it!

Their standard options are broken down into three packages: Basic, Plus and Prime. Take a look at what each one includes:Bluehost pricing and features

Basic = $3.95/mo.

For $3.95/mo you’ll get for a single website with unmetered bandwidth, free SSL certification, 5 email accounts and 50 gigabytes of website space. Not bad for the price of a good cup of coffee!

When to Use: As the name indicates, this is a standard no-frills hosting package. If you’re only in need of very simple hosting services, it may be totally sufficient. That said, we think it’s worth considering the Plus and Prime packages since it only costs an extra $2/mo to upgrade.

Plus = $5.95/mo.

The Plus package offers for a lot more flexibility, including unlimited websites, unmetered website space and bandwidth, and unlimited email accounts and email storage. You’ll also get over $24/yr worth of extra perks, although they don’t say what they are.

When to Use: I’d recommend this package to established brands and businesses looking to upgrade and expand their WordPress site. It definitely has more to offer than the Basic package. However, you’ll notice that the Prime package is currently listed at the same monthly rate as Plus, so if you’re considering this package you might as well upgrade once more for free.

Prime = $5.95/mo.

For the same price as the Plus package, Prime includes their Domain Privacy and SiteBackup Pro features, over $80/yr worth of extra perks, and everything from the Plus package.

When to Use: Honestly, I’d recommend this package to anyone who’s willing to spend the extra $2/mo. Might as well get the most bang for your buck. If you're planning on building a handful of websites and take online marketing pretty seriously, this might be your best bet.

Recommended Package

If you’re looking to spend as little as possible on web hosting, Bluehost’s Basic package may be the ideal fit for you.

However, as we’ve discussed, their Prime package includes a lot of additional features for only $2 more per month. If any of the extra features sound appealing to you, I’d recommend going for Prime since it removes any limitations that might become a hassle as your website grows.

Bluehost Customer Reviews

Bluehost has no shortage of customer reviews, but they’re pretty mixed. Even though they’ve been a titan of the industry for years, they’re definitely not immune to complaints. Take a look at their various rating breakdowns below:

Customer reviews as of: 9-22-2017
  • HostAdvice.com: 5.8/10, 33 reviews
  • WebHostingGeeks: 2.4/5, 726 reviews
  • Whoishostingthis: 3.5/5, 468 reviews
  • Thewebmaster.com: 5.7/10, 16 reviews
  • Digital.com: 61% positive, 1,855 reviews

So, they average around a 60% satisfaction rating. Not super hot. The most frequent complaint I’ve seen is that their customer service isn’t as great as they advertise. Many users felt they were getting the runaround when they reached out to the customer support team.

Despite this, they do still have plenty of satisfied customers -- in fact, I’m one of them! We encourage you to scroll through some of their customer feedback yourself to get an idea of past users’ experiences, and ultimately decide whether or not you see too much risk.