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Bluehost Review
Building a website has many significant pieces, but the most important piece will be to settle on who you will choose to host it. Choosing the best web hosting plan for the next project is mostly confusing or at least it’s worth looking around for better plans. Because there are many excellent choices out there when it comes to web hosting and each one, of course, has its own pros and cons. To avoid disaster in the long-term you need to choose the one hosting service that fits your requirements and budget. If you are a start-up building your first website or looking to web host on WordPress, Bluehost is one hosting service that you can trust.
Here is a detailed Bluehost review:
What is Bluehost?
Bluehost is a Web Hosting Solution Company founded by Matt Heaton in 1996 as a free hosting company called 0catch.com, later along with Danny Ashworth, Matt Heaton renamed the company to Bluehost in the year 2003 in Provo, Utah. The company is known to be serving customers across the globe by offering reliable, affordable and great service.
The company’s software was built on open source technology and was taken over by Endurance International Group in the year 2010. For over 10 years, Bluehost is in partnership with WordPress, having a dedicated team to offer WordPress support to the users along with an engineering team dedicated to helping users with the core development of WordPress.
Currently, the company hosts more than 2 Million websites and accommodates around 750 people of the dedicated team offering customer support 24/7. Bluehost is constantly recognized as the number one web solution provider for WordPress.
Powerful Features of Bluehost Web Hosting:
Bluehost is packed with a whole host of features, here are some of them:
Unlimited Domains and Email Addresses
Every shared plan from Bluehost comes with unlimited domains registration and email addresses. It goes perfect for start-ups and individuals trying to establish themselves online. Most domain names cost around $10, so having it free is quite impressive with Bluehost.
Note – Domain name registration with Bluehost is free, however, renewals are not free.
Extensive Tools
Bluehost has many options in terms of extensive tools. This also includes free WordPress plugins. To handle finance and accounting Bluehost offers host of apps such as QuickBooks. It also provides the ability to plug in prominent gateways. The different applications that can be plugged in for collaboration, sharing, digital marketing, and social media apps are seamless and easy to use.
Security Features
Bluehost has very effective tools for security concerns. It takes its security very seriously even in low-end packages with SpamAssassin, hotlink protection, ability to block or unblock specific IP addresses. Moreover, SSL Certificate that is powered by Let’s Encrypt helps to secure the connection between websites and visitors. This helps to secure personal information, e-commerce transaction, and other data.
Free CloudFare Integration
CloudFlare is well-known to protects and accelerate any website online. Once your website is a part of Cloudflare community, you can be sure that your visitors will get the fastest page load times and superior performance. Bluehost websites easily get integrated with Cloudflare at no cost making your website safe from hackers. Moreover, this partnership ensures that your site quickly gets loaded across the globe.
Impressive Uptime
Bluehost is a member of the Endurance International Group (EIG). Most of the time that we tested the uptime of Bluehost, we landed with 99.97% uptime levels. For any downtime have a Network/Server Uptime Agreement, where they promise that most issues are resolved in 15 minutes. Unless the issue is complex then it may take longer.
Easy and Free Backups
Of course, uptime and speed is something you cannot ignore when choosing a Webhosting provider, but Bluehost goes beyond basic features and provides backing up data regularly and charges nothing for restoration. One can access the files through cPanel or ask the support team to help with recovering the files.
Easy to use interface
The interface of Bluehost is easy to use and seamless. The dashboard has all the easy steps to navigate between the different features that you need. If you look at the control panel of Bluehost, you will find a convenient site-builder that helps to create an effortless website, or at least you can get started there.
Great eCommerce Options
The powerful and easy to the infrastructure of Bluehost makes it a great choice for eCommerce websites. Online shopping sites are resource-heavy, so you need an excellent eCommerce solution if you are running an online shopping site. Bluehost has access AgroCart, CubeCart, Magento, OpenCart, OSCommerce, ZenCart, PretaCart and more to help your business growth without much hassle.
Money-back Guarantee
The product provides you a promotional price. They encourage users to try the hosting with a promise of a full refund if you are not ok with the product within 30 days. For cancelation after 30-days you are eligible for a prorated refund for the term remaining.
WordPress Installation
Given that WordPress is one of the leading blogging options, Bluehost easily integrates with it. It does that at all levels of packages. Bluehost is also recommended by WordPress and showcases a simple and easy integration process. Also, having a separate expert team to serve WordPress users is encouraging.
Intuitive cPanel
If you are looking to manage your server space, the intuitive cPanel that is provided by Bluehost is one of the best options available in the market. Not only is it intuitive, but it is also a widely used option that offers customization. Recently the interface has also been tweaked making it more user-friendly.
24/7 Customer Support
Bluehost has solid customer support. With 24-hour customer support, Bluehost provides all the help the customer needs, in terms of access and problem-solving. However, they are always available to help all through the day and night with both chat and social media support. Additionally, it comes with a money-back guarantee if you are not happy with the services.
The main focus of the company is to make things as easy as possible for users, right from cPanel to customer support, everything works towards this cause.
Some Notable drawbacks of Bluehost
High Site Migration Fee
In case you want to move your existing website to Bluehost, you would have to shell out $144.99 as a migration fee. There are many web hosting companies that offer migration for free.
Yearly Billing
While other hosting providers might offer you monthly billing, Bluehost anyways doesn’t. The least you can pay is for a year. Though you will obviously use the website for a year or more, having no monthly billing option lack a certain degree of flexibility.
Higher Renewal Rates
Like most hosting companies, the renewal plan on the hosting will jump with Bluehost as well. You can expect a twofold or even threefold hike in the renewal plans of Bluehost, but that’s quite obvious with web hosting companies.
No ASP.net or Window Hosting
Bluehost is a Linux-only website hosting company. So they don’t provide any support for websites functioning on Windows server. Considering, a larger proportion of users prefer Linux, this drawback shouldn’t be of any issue. But for those who want to run their websites on Windows service should look for other options.
WordPress Hosting is Often Slow
According to Google, one should reduce the server response time under 200ms. But a high number of website on Bluehost experience slower response time than recommended by Google. Slow WordPress hosting and Website going down are the common problem faced by Bluehost users. Users can update to Bluehost’s Optimized Hosting and should make use of Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights etc to keep a watch on the site’s loading time.
Bluehost Quick facts
- First-year free domain, the renewal will cost $15.99.
- Easy to sign-up and easy to proceed.
- Major credit cards and PayPal accepted at the payment methods.
- You won’t get any refund on domain names. Domain and hosting rates increases post 1st
- Might experience some Upsells, but are common in the hosting industry.
- Quick account activation process if the information provided is accurate and appropriate.
- Add-on server upgrades, security upgrades, and other additional features will cost more.
Hosting Package Details
Bluehost provides three distinct hosting packages, namely:
- Shared: Starting at $2.75 per month, this is considered one of the most popular hosting packages. This is a basic package that gives you all the solutions you need to get started. It is easy to use with a dashboard that provides solutions that are fully managed.
- VPS: VPS hosting is extremely reliable and scalable. If you have a good traffic receiving website, then VPS hosting can deliver a top-quality level of performance. This package gives you little more control over the shared web hosting package; this option is available at $18.99 per month. It is scalable and can be increased on-demand.
- Dedicated: If you want a complete hosting provided specifically for your website, it comes at a cost of $79.99 per month. If you have very high traffic and want higher security and performance, with the ability to completely customize, this is the package for you. Large websites such as e-commerce sites with a high volume of traffic can get full benefits of choosing a dedicated server.
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Getting started with BlueHost
Getting started with BlueHost is a very simple process. Once you are on the Bluehost website, you can choose your domain name. After you select the domain name, the system will provide you with a file that you would need to create your account by providing information. Once you have added this information, you can go through the different packages and select the one that is required by you, based on your needs. After providing your billing information, ensure that you start the installation of the Website builder. Bluehost is recommended by WordPress.
How to start a blog on WordPress using BlueHost
Starting a blog on WordPress using Bluehost is a simple seamless process and can be summarised in the following 10 steps:
- Register your domain name.
- Select your hosting package.
- Add your payment details.
- Enter your password.
- Connect your Domain to your hosting.
- Install WordPress.
- Select the theme.
Note: You can always change the theme later.
- Click Start Building.
- Select if you are creating a Business or Personal account.
- Depending on your experience with WordPress, go through the tutorial on WordPress.
After the WordPress tutorial is done, you can start to blog on WordPress.
Do we recommend Bluehost?
Totally!
We totally recommend Bluehost, because the company is on the verge of constant improvement. There aren’t many downsides of the hosting through Bluehost, apart from high migration and renewal fees. It is fast, reliable, and flexible. And most important is to have a team ready to help you day or night regardless of your hosting issue.
Over to you!
Choosing a website hosting site to build your online presence is beyond doubts an important decision. Bluehost has all the attributes to become your web hosting partner. So what’s your take when it comes to web hosting providers?
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