Why You Must Experience Bluehost At Least Once In Your Lifetime.

There are innumerable Web hosting companies to choose from and Bluehost is one among them. It was started way back in 1996 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah, USA. This makes it quite an old name in the industry. With a staff of 750 people working throughout the day, it is a name on the top. It is also a part of the giant corporation Endurance International Group (EIG) which owns various hosting providers and has a very large market share indeed.

They offer numerous products related to hosting to their users and customers ranging from domain name to shared hosting and even WordPress hosting. So even WordPress recommends Bluehost.  They also provide a VPN ( Virtual Private Server). This is something in between the dedicated server and shared hosting.  Here you generally share your server with the other clients but there is a virtual separation or a wall between you and them.  For those websites that generate tonnes of traffic, they also provide a dedicated server. They also provide cloud hosting facilities.

Let us now quickly take a look at the price structure of the various services offered.

Shared hosting costs around $ 8.99 to $ 25.99 for a month.  The lowest price for WordPress-optimized hosting is around $ 39.99 per month. It is $ 29.99 for a VPN and a dedicated server costs $ 120 per mon Thus they have services for almost all kinds of budgets.

PROS OF BLUEHOST

Like all other Web hosting services Bluehost also has its pros and cons. The best part about Bluehost is no doubt their services are best suited and optimized for a WordPress blog, and that is why WordPress recommends them on their official hosting resource page. Moreover, they can easily handle a huge amount of traffic every day of about 20000 per day absolutely without any downtime.  Uptime is one of the most important aspects to consider while buying web hosting service. Good uptime is 99.93%  but even that is slightly below average. But Bluehost definitely surpasses this benchmark and there is absolutely no need to worry about uptime.

Bluehost provides a lot of apps and features for you to take advantage of so that you can get the best services on the web. There is a domain manager if you would choose to purchase and manage many domains through them. You can install and set up numerous content management systems like Drupal and Joomla.

The question then arises that how many resources are offered by Bluehost and the answer is unlimited. One can host an endless number of files and use unlimited bandwidth. But they have certain fair usage policies which need to be remembered The limit is however so high that it is the same as unlimited. Their CPU limit is also much higher than other hosting services.

Bluehost is also extremely easy to use. It uses ePanel which is by far one of the easiest hosting panels. This year they have even made it suited to the needs of WordPress.

It offers you a free domain name for a year which comes along with your purchase.  This is one of the major pros of using Bluehost. Moreover, their starter plan will provide you with 100 email accounts, and the Plus and Business Pro plans come with unlimited email accounts.  That definitely sounds good, right? Do you know what is even greater? If you are totally new and absolutely ignorant about the technical details then also Bluehost makes it a cakewalk for you. Blueflash Launch Support makes it easier for you to get started and the service is absolutely free. You can interact with experts over a phone call. This feature also familiarises you with the tools and options needed for posting. And what is more, the Blue Flash expert team is there to assist you 24*7 no matter where you are. Whether it is about appropriate themes or plugins, you can get all your doubts cleared and problems solved very easily. And if you require more support with WordPress after completing the use of this free service, you need to sign up for WP Live Support at $ 99 per month.

When you sign up for a plan with Bluehost you get the option of getting your very own domain name. This is extremely important to build brand awareness and establish trust and proper relationships in business.

Bluehost also provides you with e-commerce facilities which means you can easily set up an online store. You also get SSL security for all transactions and a free certificate. You can add an end number of products to your shop and the $ 200 in free marketing credits is a bonus and can be definitely used to promote your business on other social media platforms. Though it is not probably one of the best sites for eCommerce and there are some better ones, it is surely a good choice for keeping your budget in mind.

Bluehost comes with Spam Hammer, Spam Expert, and Apache Spam Assassin which provides you with three layers of protection and males it exceeds when it comes to matters of security. It also provides you with a free SSL certificate with all your plans. All plans come with the feature of domain privacy which keeps all the information that you used while signing up, secure and private. This prevents hackers from finding out all your personal information and misusing it to achieve their ends. Margaret attacks are very much common on WordPress sites which is really very sad and unfortunate. Bluehost provides Sitelock which prevents these mallard attacks.  It provides you protection for your inbox which provided by a tool from Google known as Postini which gives protection against spam for your emails thereby ensuring that anything found even slightly suspicious does not get an opportunity to enter your inbox. Moreover, all your directories are safe which are protected by passwords. You can also easily block access to your site with the help of the option called blacklist IP addresses. Thus in terms of safety, you can be very sure that your website is 100% secure and safe from threats.

They interestingly provide you with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can take note of their performance from your own personal experience and after that, if you do not find their services up to the mark and satisfying, you can always ask for a refund within one month.  So if you cancel the plan within 30 days you will get a full refund. But after that, the domain fees are not refundable for the period which you have not used.  Also, fees of about 16 dollars will be deducted if they had provided a free domain name in the plan used by you. However, the benefits and the services provided by them might not at all require you to cancel their plan.

In terms of customer service, Bluehost might not however be the best option in the market.  Though they provide all kinds of support including knowledge base, email support, and also live chat support. Many customers report that they were unable to get help when they needed it the most even after trying to reach them innumerable times. Certain clients however provide positive reviews. They say that the customer service agents were friendly and helpful and solved their problems easily.

There can be plenty of other reasons for you to choose Bluehost.  It has a very good uptime of 99.99%. If your site is down most of the time, how will your clients access it? Thus uptime is of utmost importance when considering a hosting service. Apart from uptime the load speed also matters very much and Bluehost is the fifth-fastest site with a page loading speed of 405ms.

So now let us see who can opt for Bluehost. If you are looking for reliable names in the industry that have a very good reputation, you can definitely close your eyes and go for it since Bluehost is one of the oldest stakeholders in this sector and trust is something that comes with its very name.

If you are a WordPress customer who can spend a few more bucks to get professional help and support from a team of WP experts then Bluehost is for you and you can get access to many more features. Both small and large business owners can use Bluehost and if you have a tight budget and are looking for a general-purpose shared hosting then you should go for it but you must definitely remain cautious regarding up sales.

CONS OF BLUEHOST

Let us now look at certain cons of Bluehost which you need to be aware of before hiring their services. The most talked-about con of Bluehost is its customer service which more often than not gets mixed reviews. Many people say that their support team is not one of the best to rely on. People are not able to reach out to their support system when they need it the most.

Another very disturbing feature is continuous and endless upsells. You constantly need to buy this feature or that to ensure proper and full functionality.  This can become very irritating at certain times and you need to take care of this.

Moreover, speed is also not something great to boast about. It has an average speed and is lower than most other sites. Anyone would be concerned with speed as it is the most important issue. There are other alternatives like Dream host which provide far better speed.

Bluehost has high renewal rates. Most clients would prefer to pay for some time upfront rather than renewing after every short interval of time. When you pay upfront, you can also save a few bucks. But paying upfront also means that you need to make a long-term commitment and that too not just of few dollars but several hundred dollars. If you prepay for a full period of three years, it will allow you to enjoy a cheap rate of $ 3.99 per month, but then after the expiry of the term, you will have to pay extremely high rates of 8 to 9 dollars per month which might be a great burden for your pocket especially if you are on a tight budget.

Another major drawback is those site migrations are not at all free for Bluehost. Certain sites move your current website to their site absolutely for free. However, sadly Bluehost doesn’t provide any free migrations. They have a one-time cost of around 150 dollars that lets you migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts. The process might be smooth and won’t consume much of your time but the very fact that it has to be paid for is in itself a great disadvantage.

If we consider the WordPress plans of Bluehost, they are very good with regards to the features however they are extremely expensive when compared to plans offered by other sites like Inmotion which has a pretty good plan starting at less than three dollars a month. That is even less than half of the price you need to pay for the lowest WordPress package in Bluehost.

Moreover, though there are many useful add-ons,  you need to keep on installing one thing or the other to get proper and smooth functionality.

Another major drawback is that in contrast to other servers you can host your site only in the United States. If by chance your viewers and readers come from other different regions of the world they might not have a very good experience and might be confronted with a dismally slow site and be disappointed thus you may lose on a prospective client.

Their default backs up option is not great and is kind of limited. This can be a ploy to push customers to get their paid product. While they do offer backups, these can be considered as just a formality and one cannot really depend on them for a daily and automatic backup of their data. You must manually set up and run your own backup via the cPanel and using your own local device. Also, any data they backup within the previous 30 days is overwritten and they are not going to take any responsibility for this. Therefore it means that only the very recent backups can be accessed even if those are not the ones you require to restore your site. Thus to get proper backup facilities you have no option but to invest in their paid premium plan.

They do not offer windows hosting.  It is only Linux bases hosting that they offer, but this is not much of a problem since Linux is the most widely used for hosting services but it can be a problem for those who prefer Windows.

You also do not get an uptime guarantee.  You ideally wish to see a 100% uptime for your site.  They offer as good as 99.94 % and this indicates that the site can be down for an average of almost five hours in a year. Though they assure to resolve all problems within 15 minutes if and when they arise.

So if you are someone who has a thriving business like an eCommerce site or you are a blogger with a huge amount of traffic every day on your site then Bluehost is definitely not the best option for you and there can be better alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

CONCLUSION

Now since Bluehost is the part of a massive giant corporation,  it is financially extremely strong and therefore cannot end millions of dollars for marketing purposes and this is probably the reason for the tonnes of positive reviews online. But in this review we have tried to provide you with a detailed, in depth and balanced review mentioning in details all its pros and cons and the things that you should definitely keep in mind before purchasing any Web hosting services be it Bluehost or something else.

Bluehost provides various interesting and diverse features. It also has a range of price options for you to choose from. So no matter what your budget is, they have something or the other to offer for everyone and you can definitely check out their offers and packages to find out which one is best suited for your needs and requirements.

Despite some negative feedback most of their customers are kind of satisfied with their services and that is why they have been able to build a strong reputation for their online business for almost twenty five years now which makes them really ancient and dependable at the same time.

Therefore it can be said in conclusion that Bluehost is among the top few and you can take it as a go-to option that will allow you to customize your plans based on your kind of website, your requirements, and of course your budget. You can just set yourself up in a couple of minutes and get going. What is more, you might even get lucky enough to grab some of their best deals and offers which will allow you to save a few bucks. We can say that though Bluehost is not perfect it provides you with commendable performance and excellent value.