27 Oct
Last Updated on
Bluehost is the No.1 best web hosting in the world that offers a free domain and a free SSL certificate. In these Bluehost reviews, I’ll discuss the 12 key points that make the company rule in the hosting industry. If we talk about the largest web hosting companies that have a user base of millions and provide a world class hosting experience with free domain and SSL certificate to their customers, Bluehost is one of them. Most noteworthy features that Bluehost offers in its hosting plans are unlimited.
Above all, the hosting giant uses the latest technology with super powerful hardware and network infrastructure to keep millions of web pages alive and load with the fastest speeds. Live chat is available 24/7 either you are a customer or a new user to answer any queries, that’s the beauty of Bluehost.
Bluehost is the Best Web Hosting with Free Domain and SSL certificate
The major hosting products that Bluehost offers are Shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller and Dedicated hosting with free domain and SSL certificate on all plans. Also it is at the top in the list of recommended best web hosting for small business. Whether you buy a VPS, a WordPress hosting plan or a dedicated server, you’ll get a free domain for the first year and an SSL certificate free for lifetime. Hence you can get a complete hosting package at one platform.
Honestly it’s really amazing after you go through a long list of unlimited features included but not limited to unlimited disk storage, unlimited websites, unlimited domains and spam experts protection. Most importantly, Bluehost offers all of that at un-beatable prices relatively low in the hosting industry.
1. Why Bluehost is Ranked @ No.1
There are a number of reason Bluehost is the No. 1 web host among the popular hosting companies in the world. This is no surprise when we dig into the amazing features we get in all the hosting plans.
Unlimited Features Overview:
Not every company gives away a domain and an SSL certificate for FREE. I mean that’s a saving of around $20 dollars right away. So grab a cup of coffee and let’s stat digging into the Bluehost amazing features:
- Only 3 popular hosts have been recommended by wordpress.org, Bluehost is at the top along with SiteGround and DreamHost.
- Free Domain Name
- International Domain names support
- Unlimited Add-on, Parked and Sub domains
- Free SSL certificate
- Free Drag and Drop Site Builder
- POP3/POP3 Secure E-mail Support
- IMAP/Secure IMAP E-mail Support
- Unlimited email accounts
- Customizable Error Pages
- Spam Assassin Protection
- Support for both MySQL and PostgreSQL Databases
- Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails
- SimpleScripts 1-Click Script Installs
- Hotlink Protection
- Free web scripts
- Message Forum (PHPBB and More)
- Image Galleries (Coppermine and more)
- Blog Support (WordPress, b2evolution, …)
- Hotlink Protection
- OpenPGP/GPG Encryption
- Multiple shopping carts
- FTP and SSH access
- Password Protected Directories
- Servers with world class technology
- Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers
- Multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet Connections
- Live chat phone and ticket support
- 24/7 Network monitoring
- $200 Marketing credit
and more….
2. Bluehost Now and Then
The Utah based hosting giant started rolling over the internet back in 2003 with a huge motive to provide promising web hosting services to the people around the world. The company was first launched by Matt Heaton back in 1996 under the domains 50megs.com and 0catch.com and in 2003 Bluehost was founded. After its acquisition by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2010, therefore it’s now an EIG brand and included among the world’s 20 largest web hosting companies in the world.
3. Hosting over 2 Million Domains
Bluehost now empowers more than 2 Million websites around the world with more than 700 employees providing 24/7 support around the clock. As stated earlier, it’s officially recommended by wordpress.org for the reason that Bluehost is fully committed to WordPress. Above all, Bluehost offers great plans for wordpress hosting that I’ll discuss in the hosting section. Bluehost servers are powered by the latest hardware and software stacks including PHP 7, HTTP/2, and NGINX+ caching.
End of the story, Bluehost being an official partner of wordpress for 10 years, if you have a wordpress website or blog, it is my No.1 recommendation.
4. Best Performance & Uptime
Whenever I explore a web host, performance & uptime are my first priorities. Because these are the 2 major facts that will increase the number of website visitors and eventually it will result in business growth. For the reason that nobody likes a slow or down website, therefore, Bluehost highly focuses on excellent performance and 99.9% uptime.
Bluehost offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and the server monitoring people are the men of their words.
The uptime for the current year starting from January 2019 till date has been 99.9% and that’s amazing. Additionally, you can always check the server where your website is located & how well it has been performing from Server Status Notification.
Just enter your domain and submit and you’ll get the details about the server load and its status. Furthermore, it’ll also update us about any ongoing issues with the server.
Related:
Finally, multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections, Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers and highly optimized Apache web servers are the core technologies that Bluehost uses for fastest loading speeds.
5. Hosting Plans Breakdown
Bluehost is offering the best hosting plans in town starting at highly affordable prices. There are a number of hosting plans with a variety of features with a tiny difference in price.
Web Hosting Plans
Bluehost currently offers the following plans in their web hosting fleet:
Before going deeper into each plan’s characteristics, I’ve a good news for ya! All the shared web hosting plans have:
- Unlimited Domains & sub-domains
- Staging Environment
- Unlimited websites & storage
- No Traffic Limits
Now let’s check what each web hosting plan has got for us & which one will be more worthy to go with.
These are probably the best web hosting plans in the hosting industry. I am not just saying it with emotions, check out the features in the following snap.
There are 4 shared web hosting plans:
- Basic @ $2.95/month
- Plus @ $5.45/month
- Choice Plus @ $5.45/month
- Pro @ $13.95/month
Basic @ $2.95/month
If you are just a beginner and want to learn about wordpress or hosting stuff, the Basic plan will cover up everything for you. It has a very low introductory price, a free SSL certificate, a free domain, 1 website with 50GB SSD storage.
The total cost will be $106.20, you’ll save $181.44 on a 3 year plan.
Plus & Choice Plus @ $5.45/month
Furthermore, both plans come with the same costs but there are more features in Choice Plus plan with standard performance. So why shouldn’t we go with Choice Plus as we’ll have unlimited domains, storage, websites, Spam Experts, Domain Privacy and Protection,Site Backup, CodeGuard Basic and 1 Office 365 Mailbox free for 30 Days. So if you got multiple websites and multiple domains, Choice Plus is a great plan to start with.
The total price for 3 years is $196.20 and you’ll save $343.44
Pro
Though a bit costly price but it is suitable for business websites or online stores as it offers high performance for websites with high volume of traffic. In addition to it, the plan is packed with all the unlimited features adding 2 Spam Experts, a dedicated IP address and a Comodo PositiveSSL.
Pro is a great fit for E-commerce Websites and Online Stores.
Pro starts at $13.95/month, the total cost for a 3 years term will be $502.20 and you’ll save $361.44 if you sign up for 3 years.
Just to clarify, all the prices and savings mentioned above are for 3 years term and the costs for 24 and 12 months are slightly high.
There are a number of reasons why Bluehost is favorite for wordpress hosting and it’s worth paying. The prices are the same as shared hosting but here you’ll have a full wordpress taste.
WordPress Hosting Features:
Bluehost holding the official recommendation of wordpress.org has a variety of awesome features. WordPress is as we know dominant over the internet globe and it’s absolutely important to choose a web host that has a lot to offer. Bluehost solves all our problems by providing the promising wordpress features:
- Fast, easy, secure and automatic installation
- Automatic updates
- WordPress Staging Environment
- Fully installed and functional upon sign up completion
- Secure Configuration of Login Credentials
- Hundreds of wordpress themes
- Prompt support by wordpress experts
- Microsoft Office 365 available
- $200 Marketing credit
The plans prices and savings are the same as I’ve mentioned in Bluehost reviews under shared hosting.
WP Pro
The WP Pro is a fully managed wordpress hosting platform built for wordpress speed and excellence. More importantly, there are managed wordpress hosting plans, Build, Grow and Scale with $19.95, $29.95 and $49.95 monthly prices respectively.
WP Pro Features at a Glance:
Bluehost’s managed wordpress hosting is fully equipped with the great wordpress features:
- All-in-one marketing center and dashboard
- Manage everything from one dashboard
- Jetpack Site Analytics
- Business Review Tools
- 100+ Free WordPress Themes
- Bluehost SEO tools
- Malware Detection and Removal
- Blue Sky ticket support
- PayPal Integration, Elastic search and chat support in Scale plan
- Unlimited Backups and restores
- Easy Google Analytics integration
- Free SSL & 30 day money back guarantee
iii) VPS Hosting
Bluehost offers VPS hosting with extreme performance & instant provisioning along with full root access. That will be your own server where you can install the desired software programs and host unlimited websites. VPS hosting is available as per 3 plans.
- Standard @ $18.99/month
- Enhanced @ $29.99/month
- Ultimate @ $59.99/month
VPS Hosting Features
Let’s have a look at the features and resources of VPS hosting:
- 2 to 4 core processors
- 30GB to 120GB SSD disk space storage
- 2GB to 8GB RAM
- 1TB to 3TB bandwidth
- 1 to 2 Dedicated IP addresses
- Instant provisioning in seconds
- High availability of resources
- Free SSL & a Free domain for one year
- Multi-server management for multiple VPS servers
- File and database management
- 24/7 technical support
- 30 day money back guarantee
- Easy upgrade to more resources from the dashboard
v) Dedicated Hosting
A dedicated server means a fully manged physical server coupled with hardware and software resources. Gladly Bluehost has 3 dedicated hosting plans suitable for large businesses and websites with large volume of traffic.
As we know the shared and VPS plans have certain limits and capacities. If you continuously work and your blog or website grows with a fast pace, there will be some day when your blog might need a dedicated infrastructure. But that totally depends on traffic, there are popular blogs I’ve seen have 2 to 3 million visits in a month. Therefore, such high traffic websites need dedicated and super powerful servers with ultimate performance resources.
Dedicated Hosting Plans
Bluehost has the following dedicated hosting plans.
- Standard @ $79.99/month
- Enhanced @ $99.99/month
- Premium @ $119.99/month
The prices are really high but no worries, this is not for beginners as I said earlier. It is the best option for online stores or E-commerce websites with huge volume of traffic.
6. A Free Domain & SSL Certificate
Bluehost is among those few web hosting companies that offer a free domain name and Let’s Encrypt powered SSL certificate on all plans. So either you move with shared, VPS or dedicated hosting, you’ll enjoy a free domain name and an SSL certificate. That means a saving of around $20 USD straight away. However, keep in mind that free domain is only for 1 year and then regular charges will be added.
7. Live Chat Support 24/7
Bluehost provides support both via live chat and phone to its customers over the globe. Live chat is available for existing and new customers.
And there is a good news for ya! Bluehost now does not provide technical support over tickets, whatever your problem is, it will be resolved over live chat and phone saving a lot of our time. I think that is a great step for helping customers on immediate basis rather waiting for tickets to be updated.
There is a button down below at the right corner of the site saying Help Me, click on it and start getting answers to your questions.
8. Best WordPress Guide
There is no doubt that WordPress is loved by millions. It’s just because wordpress is very simple, highly SEO optimized and much easier for non-techies. Since Bluehost is the official partner of wordpress.org, therefore it has built a great wordpress guide for the beginners. It starts from scratch & there are video tutorials about wordpress, building posts and pages, securing the account, permalinks, widgets and more.
9. Build an Online Store
With a wide variety of available Woocommerce themes, Bluehost makes it very easy to get started with Ecommerce hosting. Woocommerce will be installed on your wordpress website with a free SSL certificate to make transactions and the online store more secure from digital threats.
Moreover, here are some of the great features are offered by Bluehost to create a great online store.
- Get free detailed assistance to set the store up and running over phone call
- Fully customizable themes
- Choose from hundreds of WooCommerce storefront designs
- Customized shipping cart with variety of payment and tax options
- A free SSL and a dedicated IP address
- Centralized analytics dashboard to monitor sales
- Add and remove products from the online inventory
- Create unlimited stores in Plus and Pro plans
- The lowest plans start at an introductory price of $6.95/month
10. Easy to Use Control Panel
Bluehost has a customized, nicely developed and easy to use control panel to fully manage the hosting account. Whether you want to upload files, going to create email accounts, want to create additional sub-domains or parked domains, see the billing activity, you have it all.
At the top right corner of the website, there is login button in order to login into the control panel or you can simply click here to login.
There is a sign in option with Google if you’ve signed up via google. Put the domain name and password to enter. That’s what you can perform with the help of control panel:
- Account management
- Email management with integrated Gsuite
- One click wordpress installation
- WordPress tools
- DNS and IP management
- Scripts installation
- Create FTP accounts
- Manage databases
- Get immediate help without logging out
- Manage account billing
11. Daily Backups & Site Protection
Bluehost provide website backups on all hosting plans on daily, weekly and monthly basis. If you wish to have daily backups manually, there is a tool called CodeGaurd in which you can manually backup the website files and restore them whenever you need.
Besides all our data, emails and account information are protected. The technology used identifies websites consuming excessive resources and temporarily re-assigns them to isolated systems. Also there is spam protection for every account that filters out harmful and unwanted content.
12. Money Back Guarantee
Finally there is a 30 day money back guarantee in which you will get a full refund if the account is cancelled within 30 days. Just to clarify, there is no refund on domain or other add-ons purchased.
There will be NO refund after 30 days, though I hope it won’t be the case with you.
13. Bluehost Cons
Being at the TOP in the hosting industry does not mean its perfect from every aspect. There are some cons that make upset a little bit. What are those cons, let’s check them out:
A Little Slower Chat Support
Since Bluehost now provides technical support via live chat and phone, you’ll experience a delay in response by the chat support reps in the peak hours.
No Free Site Migration
Website migration is not free and there is a fee of $149.99 in which Bluehost migration expert will migrate up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts.
A Lot of Add-on Up-sells
Like other hosts, there are so many add-on up-sells at the time you sign up.
Prices Hike
There is a hike in renewal prices after your first term ends up. That’s why you’ll get more savings if you sign up for long term which is 3 years.
Also the prices go higher if you sign up for 2 years or 1 year respectively. So just keep in mind that prices listed on the website are for 3 years plan.
Bluehost no longer provides cloud hosting and you can see here for other best cloud providers.
14. Do I Recommend Bluehost?
Yes absolutely!
Bluehost is a great web hosting service provider and very popular among the world’s largest hosts. It has excellent features coupled with industry’s best hosting plans.
Most of the features Bluehost offers are unlimited.
Above all, it has an official recommendation of wordpress.org, therefore it is a perfect fit for a wordpress blog or a website. Most noteworthy, for online stores WordPress is per-configured with Woo commerce and you’ll get a perfect guidance via phone to set it up. The hardware and software stacks run on the latest technology infrastructure, SSD storage, high performance servers and highly optimized and cached enabled web servers.
Finally, I don’t have more words to say in favor of Bluehost, I’d just say, its time to go live and
Bluehost is my NO.1 Recommendation
If you are ready to beat all the odds and getting started with your online journey, signing up on Bluehost is just a few clicks away. If you are a WordPress learner and wanna get your hands dirty on it, the basic shared web hosting plan will fulfill all your initial requirements.
Though the recommended plan is Choice Plus but it’s for people having a number of websites. I will not recommend it for the beginners, just trying to save some of your bucks.
The next step is to setup a domain name. There are multiple options to do that, either you can buy a free domain for the first year or use a domain that you own or you can create a domain later.
Now put the required information in the next step, name, address, phone number and email address will be required.
Confirm the plan and check its total price. As I’ve discussed earlier, you’ll get more discount on 3 year plans.
There are 2 payment methods to pay the hosting charges. You can pay via credit card or via Paypal. Therefore choose the method that is more convenient for you.
Check the box to acknowledge the terms of service and policy and click the submit button at the end.
Congratulations! Your signup is complete.
16. Wrapping Up
Finally it’s time to wrap it up. Bluehost is one of the fastest web hosting service providers in the world. It’s fast loading speeds, it’s love for WordPress, high performance servers, instant live support and unlimited features at affordable costs rank it at No.1
There is a 99.9% uptime guarantee and it’s easy to monitor the status of the server where your sites are hosted, Bluehost also offers a 30 day money back guarantee.
Therefore I am saying with full confidence, Bluehost will be a great host for your website and you won’t regret it. Thank you for reading.
Let’s get started with Bluehost.
