Bluehost is the star of the Endurance group, a conglomerate that brings together similar services such as HostGator or iPage. It is a huge hosting, with figures that impress. For example, they have more than 750 employees and host more than two million websites .
It is an American provider
Bluehost claims to offer the best in shared hosting and they have a support team available 24 hours a day. But how will the whole set work? Let’s review this hosting and find out if it is a good alternative for your project.
Table of Contents
Bluehost prices
| Basic | € 7.30 / month | 50 GB of web space and 100 MB of space for email accounts. |
| Plus | € 10 / month | Unlimited web space and unlimited email space. |
| Choice Plus | € 13.50 / month | It comes with SiteBackup Pro, provides more flexibility when making backups. |
| Pro | € 22 / month | All of the above plus dedicated IP. |
Pros and cons
Pros:
Web space
They offer a lot of web space, even in their most economical plan.
No monthly traffic limit
We liked that they do not put a limit on the traffic you can receive.
First year very cheap
The first time you hire Bluehost it will be very economical, keep in mind that when renewing the contract the price will rise a lot.
Cons
Only available in English:
Neither your system nor the tutorials are in Spanish. Nor can you communicate with your support team in Spanish. To use it you should defend yourself with English.
Unstable speed:
In our speed tests we saw a lot of volatility. Sometimes it offered acceptable speeds and many times it was too slow.
Support quality:
Despite having 24-hour customer service, our experiences with the support team were not entirely good. We had to wait too long to be taken care of.
Aggressive Sales Policy:
They offer constant extensions and add-ons for your hosting that can be expensive.
Bluehost specifications
| CHARACTERISTICS | COMMENTS |
|---|---|
| Easy to use | Registering is more complex than it should be, it seems to me that your system is designed so that you end up buying extensions of the hosting you don’t need. In 2019 they launched a new interface that is a simplified version of cPanel. Remember that your tutorials, interface and customer service are only in English. |
| Domain names | All your plans include a domain name.Keep in mind that with the basic plan you can only have 5 parked domains and you can create a maximum of 25 subdomains. |
| Yes, you can have up to 5 email accounts and 100 MB per account with the Basic plan. The rest of the packages offer unlimited accounts and space. | |
| Databases | There is no limit on the number of databases you can create. You can use MySQL databases. |
| Applications | Through its one-click installer you can add apps like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others.Keep in mind that Bluehost adds some plugins to WordPress that you don’t need, and during installation it shows you templates, for a fee, that you surely won’t want. |
| Web space limit | With 50 GB of space in the Basic plan and unlimited space in the rest of the plans. It does not use SSDs, something that would improve speed. |
| Monthly data transfer limit | No plan limits the monthly traffic that your website may receive. |
| Secure FTP and FTP accounts | Only allow SFTP to be used with the main account. There is no limit on the number of FTP accounts that you can create with them. |
| Where are your servers | The server is located in the United States so your website will have an American IP. |
| Security aspects | Through the cPanel you can integrate SiteLock that scans your website to find vulnerabilities. Keep in mind that this is a payment option.All your packages come with free SSL (https) encryption. |
| Server speed | Having servers in the US, it is not as fast as it should. Actually, there are quite better alternatives in the market. |
| Server availability | Although we have tested other providers with better availability figures, Bluehost is solvent. |
| Backups | They make monthly, weekly and daily backups that you can download.You can integrate SiteBackup Pro for more advanced features, but this is only available in the Prime plan. If you want to use it with other packages it will cost you extra. |
| CDN (content delivery network) | Although it does not offer its own CDN, it pre-integrates the CloudFlare content delivery network. This even offers a free package. |
| Server performance | Bluehost allows operating with PHP 5.4, 5.6 and 7.0. Other programming languages such as Perl or Ruby on Rails can also be used. |
| Money back and guarantees | There is a 30-day money back policy. |
| Help and Support | They offer support over the phone (U.S. number) or via live chat. In our experiences, attention was a bit slow and not very decisive. |
| Global rating | The speed of Bluehost is disappointing, although other aspects are acceptable (eg availability). |
Final thoughts
Bluehost is one of the most popular hostings worldwide. But you have to keep in mind that you will have to communicate in English if you need personal help . This can be a great handicap for many users.
This web hosting is great if you need a lot of space or do not want to have a limit on the monthly data transfer . Another positive aspect is that they include the domain name and pre-integrate a connection with the CloudFlare CDN .
Other points have disappointed us a bit. For example, the speed of Bluehost is not the best , in part, this is explained because its servers are in the United States. User attention was too slow.
> Try Bluehost hosting for 30 days or take a look at the best alternatives .
Note : Please note that there are interesting discounts during the first period of the contract .
Our Bluehost hosting test
We have tested the performance of Bluehost hosting to give you an idea of how your system works.
Availability (Uptime)
This measures the interruptions that occur on your website. In other words, how much time was found without service. For technical issues of server administration, having 100% availability is very difficult. For shared hosting, having levels above 99.95% is acceptable .
As you can see, the availability of Bluehost was greater than 99.95%, and it was not bad. We are happy with these results and we believe that Bluehost has good availability.
Speed
Another very important aspect when assessing the performance of a hosting is the speed of this. So you know what to expect from Bluehost we do recurring tests with several tools such as Pingdom or GTMetrix.
We are not very happy with the results and we have to recognize that it is one of the hostings we have tried slower. Honestly, we expected much more, other alternatives such as SiteGround or Raiola Network offered more speed at similar prices.
When to use Bluehost hosting?
Bluehost is a good option if you focus on the American market. If, on the other hand, your visitors are in Europe, it is better that you look for an alternative since all their servers are in the US. UU. and this will affect speed negatively.
In addition, as we have said before you will need to use English to use this hosting.
When not to use Bluehost hosting?
Bluehost shared hosting is a solid product. But one of its main drawbacks is speed, and the truth is that we were not very satisfied with the attention to the user. Therefore, if you have a serious project in hand and you want the best hosting in the market there are options that will offer you better quality at a similar price.
Is Bluehost suitable for WordPress?
Yes, you can use WordPress without problems with this hosting. It has an installation process that will make adding WordPress quick. But there are better alternatives to host a WordPress website.