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Bluehost Review: Web Hosting Review

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In a Nutshell

Bluehost gives users an intuitive, easy-to-use control panel with extremely cost-effective pricing and a variety of hosting options.

pros

  • Easy and intuitive to use
  • 24/7 tech support via email, chat or phone

cons

  • Uptime has been criticized in the past
  • Plans escalate in price rapidly

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Bluehost at a Glance

Bandwidth
Unlimited
Free marketing offer
Up to $200 in marketing offers
Uptime
Less than 99.9%
Website builder
Concrete5 and Weebly
Money-back guarantee
30 days
Price per month
$2.95-$119.99

Ideal for

Bluehost offers a wide range of hosting packages, options, and extras to suit all-comers, from first-time website builders with no technical experience, to experienced webmasters seeking advanced capabilities. Bluehost’s WordPress hosting integration makes it easy to build a site with the world’s most popular content management system, and the SSH functionality supplies increased encryption and security.

Hosting Features

Techie Features
Marketing & Bonus Features
Unlimited space
Up to $200 marketing offers
Free domain for 1 Year
Up to $180 in extras (with Business Pro Plan)
Unlimited bandwidth
2 premium website builders: Concrete5, Weebly
Unlimited domains
WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, RoundCube, Zen Cart, PrestaShop
Unlimited FTP accounts
Website stats tools: Awastats and Webalizer
Unlimited MySQL databases
SEO submission
Intuitive cPanel control panel
30-day money-back guarantee
Unlimited email storage
Advanced capabilities (Secure Shell (SSH) Access, Log FileAccess etc.)
POP3, Web Mail, Alias, Mail Forwarding, Mailing Lists, IMAP
Automatic daily account backups

Bluehost’s 3 central plans cater to beginners, regular bloggers, and SMBs respectively. All come with a free domain for a year, and unlimited bandwidth. You can also easily transfer your previous domain name to Bluehost.

Pricing

While Bluehost offers some of the cheapest hosting plans among the major providers, the rates you see displayed on the homepage are discounted “first month” rates. Following your first month of use, Bluehost hosting plans will cost a few dollars more.

Here’s a breakdown of Bluehost’s pricing tiers:

Plan
Price
Basic
£2.26/month
Plus
£4.18/month
Choice Plus
£4.18/month

Basic

This is Bluehost's most basic package, suitable for first-timers who are just dipping their toes into digital waters. A bit more limited than the other plans, it’s still a great package for bloggers and individuals looking to set up a personal site. It comes with 10GB of website space, 5 email accounts, and 50MB of email storage per email account. Bluehost email setup is a breeze, and if you want to run additional Web-based services with Bluehost, the Google Apps integration can open up a new world of possibilities.

Plus

When you're ready for a bit of an upgrade, Bluehost’s most popular plan—Plus—is a good step up, especially if you’re running a small business or organization. The plan features $200 in free marketing offers, unlimited email accounts, unmetered space and storage, unlimited parked- and subdomains, and Global CDN and SpamExpert included.

Prime

If your goals are a little more ambitious, an extra $10 will give you access to Business Pro. Bundled with an SSL certificate, SiteBackup Pro, a dedicated IP address, and domain privacy, this is a package for business owners ready for some serious online growth.

Technology

There's a lot of technology under the hood at Bluehost (take note: this provider uses a Linux operating system)—and plenty of expertise to back it up. Virtual private server (VPS) hosting gives businesses their own operating system, controls, and flexibility, while dedicated hosting allows for a huge amount of power and space.

BlueHost’s resource protection will safeguard your website's performance and minimize shared-server risks. Meanwhile, automatic backups in a range of formats will keep your creation safe and sound no matter what happens—all at no extra cost.

Ease of Use

On the Bluehost website you can access a demo of their control panel, so you can get a good idea of what to expect with Bluehost domains and how everything works.

Bluehost has an easy-to-navigate system that feels intuitive no matter your digital proficiency, and you can easily tweak your email and hosting settings in an instant.

Website Builder Features

From website builders and CMS systems (including WordPress, Weebly, and concrete5), to SEO extras and Ecommerce essentials (including WooCommerce and more—accessible via the MOJO Marketplace), there are a lot of tools and add-ons you can integrate into your Bluehost to give your website the style and the functionality you require.

A few tools, like the Bluehost website builder and a wide range of templates, are free with your hosting package, but many others do require individual payment. When you use the website builder, though, you find a bunch of Bluehost templates that are also free to use. If you want WordPress, you can install it with one click.

Whether you're inexperienced and tentative about getting started, or want assistance with migrating your existing website, Bluehost offers unique $99.99 packages to assist you with both. Their migration package will help you seamlessly set up your current site with the provider, while the quick start package will give you one-to-one training from a Bluehost expert to show you the ropes and get you off on the right foot.

Bluehost also features an easy-to-understand “self help” section, 24/7 helplines, live chat, and email and support ticket options.

Free Offers

You can find some free offers with Bluehost, such as free hosting for nonprofits, or a free Bluehost domain name with any hosting package. Also with a domain name free of charge for one year, you can save a good chunk of change.

cPanel

With Bluehost, cPanel software is included with all hosting packages by default. To access the dashboard for your site, just head to the Bluehost cPanel login and enter your account credentials.

VPS Hosting

With Bluehost VPS, you get to enjoy many of the advantages of dedicated servers, but without the high cost that generally accompanies such plans. And when you decide to run your website on a VPS, Bluehost allows you to install nearly any software program on the platform that keeps your website running. Virtual servers aren’t perfect, though, and since some of the hardware is shared with other users, performance may suffer from time to time. That said, most Bluehost VPS reviews are favorable and applaud the company’s uptime.

Shared Hosting

Bluehost’s shared hosting plans are the company’s most popular options by far. These plans are more affordable than dedicated or virtual servers because webmasters split the cost of both the hardware and maintenance. However, because no one website has exclusive access to the server, loading times may sometimes lag and security can be a bigger concern.

Dedicated Hosting

If you operate a website that receives a high volume of traffic, a shared server may not provide enough power for you. When you choose a server that’s dedicated, Bluehost gives you near complete control over every aspect of the hardware and how it operates. Dedicated servers are also more responsive than their shared counterparts because all of the system’s resources are committed to keeping just one site running smoothly.

Cloud Hosting

Bluehost’s cloud hosting is more affordable than the dedicated option, but you will have less control over the specific hardware and software that powers their site, meaning this might not be the best option for everyone.

Email

Bluehost webmail is accessible from any device with an internet connection. If you’d prefer to use an email client like Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, Bluehost IMAP settings make it simple to keep your messages in sync. Likewise, if you have another inbox that you regularly check, Bluehost email forwarding can be set up to direct all of your incoming messages to the email service of your choice.

Conclusion

With good customer support, a simple cPanel, and a wide range of options, Bluehost is a great choice for most users. Downtime and page-load speeds are not always what they could be, but with flexible options and good feedback, it's easy to overlook this infrequent glitch if your site doesn't need to be super-fast. If you're looking for a good all-around host, Bluehost is a great option and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you're not happy.

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About

Bluehost web hosting has been around since 1996 and has established itself as a reliable and long-standing force in the industry. With 3 core packages, plus VPS and dedicated hosting available to those with more substantial and technical hosting needs, this host offers a full service, designed to be clean and simple to use.

Top10.com's editorial staff is a professional team of editors, writers and experts with dozens of years of experience covering consumer, financial and business products and services.
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