Okay, let’s be honest …
Sometimes we tend to take too much time to make simple decisions; These may include choosing a suit to wear, a gym to go to, the breakfast we eat, to name just a few.
And when it comes to making important decisions, such as a web hosting platform, most people go a little further: recently, a friend confessed that she used to spend a couple of hours a day comparing different server locations, prices, features , storage capacities, activity times and much more, just to finish without having almost any informed choice days later.
The truth is that all this information can be overwhelming and, in most cases, biased. For this reason, we decided to conduct a review of two heavyweights hosting – Siteground vs. Bluehost – to help you make an informed decision between the two.
Do you want to know who is the winner?
Follow me the flow …
Table of Contents
Bluehost vs Siteground: Main Features
To settle for our best choice of a hosting platform between the two, we analyzed some of the key features of these platforms and gave our unbiased assessments in each category.
And in case you want to compare any other hosting platform other than these two, do not hesitate to watch the following video to get some useful tips when selecting a hosting platform:
That said, let’s start with the first thing that most people look at when buying a hosting platform: the price. But remember that the price as a metric is largely personal; some consider it something fundamental while others have it at the bottom of the things that concern them.
An advice? Don’t be quick to go too cheap when it comes to accommodation, you will realize that most of the time it really isn’t that cheap after all.
Price
The price of Siteground: Essentially, when compared to Bluehost, Siteground is more expensive; But the good thing is that they have more to offer in each of their plans as shown below:
Note of the image of the first plan (StartUp), one is restricted to hosting only one website, while the other plans offer multiple hosting functionalities. In addition, the higher the level of the hosting plan, the greater its web space and web traffic capacity. There are a lot of other features that come with each plan; You can easily see them on the official website of Siteground.
Bluehost’s Price: The prices of Bluehost are lower than those of Siteground, but with each package come a little less features compared to the latter. Bluehost essentially offers the following prices for each of its three hosting plans:
Like Siteground, as you climb the ladder of hosting plans, you can enjoy more premium features. One of the most striking is that marketing offers are not included in the basic plan but in two other plans.
Essential tip: The prices mentioned above for each hosting platform only reflect the initial price of the offer at the time of registration; From that moment, you will realize that prices will rise. I thought I should know, since many people sign up for these platforms thinking that prices will remain the same after the initial period of 1 year has ended.
To more objectively compare Siteground vs Bluehost, we needed to include a table that would show your normal prices.
Below is a table that shows the normal prices of the respective accommodation platforms:
Siteground vs Bluehost prices (Normal prices)
| Plan level | Siteground / month ($) | Bluehost / month ($) |
| Entry | 11.95 | 7.99 |
| Means, medium | 19.95 | 10.99 |
| Tall | 34.95 | 14.99 |
| Cloud hosting | 80 | 9.99 |
| Dedicated Hosting | 269 | 119 |
Winner: To be honest, it’s a difficult decision. Siteground offers more for more, while Bluehost offers less for less. At this point, your choice will depend on what your needs are; If Bluehost offers exactly what you need with less, then go for it. But if you need more features, then you might consider separating with more money and opting for Siteground.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 4.5 stars
Bluehost – 4.5 stars
Easy to use
Ease of use of Siteground: This is especially useful for new website users; It is essential that you register on a hosting platform with an easy-to-use interface.
So how easy to use is Siteground?
The platform works perfectly with several content management tools such as WordPress, Weebly, and more to allow you to create your website in the shortest possible time. However, since 2015, Siteground works with Weebly as its official web creation tool, which guarantees drag and drop functionality when creating your site.
With Siteground, users can also transfer a domain from one host to another more easily; All you have to do is publish a support ticket in the transfer area of the website, and indicate it as “Website Transfer”.
In addition, Siteground has a 30-day money back policy for all new registrations with shared web hosting; The refund is usually credited to your respective account depending on the payment method you have used.
The ease of use of Bluehost: With Bluehost, you can decide to build your website using WordPress or its built-in tool powered by Weebly; Whichever path you choose, the process is quite simple.
When it comes to a transfer from a website to Bluehost, you can do it manually, which is absolutely free; Or alternatively, you can use the platform’s web migrator and transfer up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts at a cost of $ 149.99.
As with Siteground, Bluehost has a 30-day money back guarantee – if you request a refund within 30 days, you will receive a full refund, but if the window period expires, you can only get a prorated refund for the accommodation minus the cost of any paid plugin to which you have subscribed.
Winner: Siteground takes it with its refund policy being without a deduction of the costs of the plugins compared to Bluehost. In addition, the platform offers an absolutely free website transfer option to your web hosting service, while Bluehost will only grant you a free transfer ticket when you make a manual transfer, which can be quite tedious.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 4.7 stars
Bluehost – 4.5 stars
WordPress
This review would not be robust without a comparison of Siteground vs Bluehost for WordPress. Let’s look at some interesting comparisons in this regard.
WordPress Siteground: WordPress officially recommends the use of Siteground as one of the hosting platforms of your choice; The two platforms work perfectly to improve your web hosting and construction experience, ensuring that your website is ready and running in minutes.
Users who register on Siteground will obtain a one-click installation of the WordPress extension in their browsers. Whichever plan you choose, you will start using WordPress in a matter of seconds.
Website owners who have used Siteground in WordPress confess to having experienced higher processing speeds compared to most other hosting platforms. Siteground relies on its built-in plugin to increase the speed called SuperCacher that works with WordPress to vastly improve the processing capacity of a site.
Bluehost’s WordPress: Bluehost is another web hosting platform recommended by WordPress and comes with a WordPress hosting rate for beginners starting at $ 2.95 per month. WordPress has worked with Bluehost for more than a decade with millions of websites now running on both platforms.
After selecting your preferred plan and paying the hosting fee, you can install WordPress with just one click and you can start developing your website instantly.
Bluehost also has a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that integrates with its WordPress website to produce lightning processing speeds.
Winner: In our comparison of Siteground vs Bluehost with WordPress, the winner is Bluehost . This platform offers some of the best packages for beginners looking to operate websites with a limited budget. But as I mentioned before, if you require some more advanced features for a few extra dollars, then Siteground is definitely for you.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 4.3 stars
Bluehost – 4.5 stars
Customer Support
All service providers strive to meet the needs of their users; But although this is obvious, not all platforms do well with customer service. For now, let’s compare Siteground and Bluehost customer service.
Siteground customer service: Apparently, the platform maintains a relatively high number of customer service representatives to ensure that each query is answered in a timely manner. They also maintain a database of useful resources in the form of videos, audio files and documents. In this way, users can get help in relation to previously treated problems.
Users can call the customer service number directly, obtain support tickets or chat live with a customer service representative. The waiting time for tickets is 10 minutes on average, while live chats and phones are in real time. Your customer service team is always on hold 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Bluehost customer service: Bluehost has a diverse customer service base ranging from experts in e-commerce websites, personal blogs, the site’s security team, and many more. This ensures that inquiries are answered by the right people to get quick and more useful answers.
You can get help from the platform through its official phone number as indicated on its website, a live chat, or by email. Like Siteground, the Bluehost team of experts responds instantly to customer inquiries received via chat and telephone, while those received via ticketing do not have a specified timeout.
Winner: In fact, the two platforms worked almost similarly to the point where we did not obtain information about the timeout of the input communication channel in Bluehost. While it may be longer or shorter, it would be great to keep the general public informed about the average waiting time.
So we decided on Siteground in this case, since all the necessary information is provided to analyze their customer support, which makes it easier for users to choose their preferred mode of communication and with an adequate knowledge of the average waiting time.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 4.5 stars
Bluehost – 4.4 stars
Speed and uptime
Anyone wishing to create a website always considers speed and uptime as key metrics to measure the success of their online presence; But unfortunately, most people never know how to make this comparison. This review will show you what matters when it comes to the speed and uptime of a hosting platform so you can evaluate what is convenient for you.
Let’s look at the speed and uptime of Siteground vs Bluehost:
Siteground’s Speed and Uptime: Siteground servers use solid state disks (SSD), which are 1000 times faster compared to conventional storage disks. These fast-loading disks are distributed on three continental servers belonging to Siteground and one can choose the closest server for faster loading speeds.
In addition, Siteground has the new HTTP / 2, which greatly increases the loading speed of a website. Together with an SSL certificate, HTTP / 2 increases the loading time of web pages and reduces downtime. Both the HTTP / 2 and the SSL certificate are free when registering on Siteground.
The speed and uptime of Bluehost: Unlike Siteground, Bluehost does not come with SSDs for its users’ websites, but its databases are fully compatible with SSDs, which means that the processing speed may not be as tall as Siteground’s, but overall it is decent.
Our investigation revealed that Bluehost has 23 servers distributed in four different locations, namely, China, Europe, India and the United States.
Bluehost is enabled for HTTPS but is currently not running on the new HTTPS / 2. However, each registration comes with a free SSL certificate.
Winner: And there is another tie: Siteground runs on the current HTTPS / 2, while Bluehost is still running on HTTPS. However, Bluehost comes with numerous servers (23 instead of the 4 of Siteground), and this somehow cancels with HTTPS / 2 of Siteground, making Bluehost the winner.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 4.5 stars
Bluehost – 4.5 stars
Security
The security of any website is paramount; Whether it is a personal blog, a news website or an e-commerce store, you must ensure that you register on a hosting platform that has irrefutable security.
So, which one should you go between Siteground and Bluehost with? Let’s find out..
Siteground Security: All websites hosted on Siteground are entitled to a daily backup of the data that is done at irregular intervals but automatically. Of course, you will never notice when the process is taking place. Whenever necessary, the backup files can be restored on a user’s website with minimal effort.
In addition, Siteground contains SSL certificates that authenticate your website and provide security against malicious attacks. In addition to that, users also receive the free Distribution Denial Of Service (DDOS) tool, which ensures that your website has a hardware and software firewall, keeping failed logins under control, as well as minimizing the number of logins Host session at any given time.
Bluehost Security: Similarly, Bluehost has the website backup functionality to ensure that your data can be restored if you lose it. Here you have the option to schedule when the backup will be performed, that is, daily, weekly or monthly.
As mentioned earlier, websites hosted on this platform also obtain free SSL certificates, which increases the security and authenticity of a website. A website without a valid SSL certificate will indicate just before your web address the words “Not secure”, which could call into question the credibility of a website; And, honestly, there is no way for someone (or should) open a website with a clear security warning in their address.
Below is an example of a website without a valid SSL certificate
In addition to having SSL backups and certificates, Bluehost has a Sitelock plug-in that protects your websites against DDOS-related attacks.
Winner: And it’s a draw. We found that both platforms had similar security controls that were robust and had no negative comments online. For this reason, we thought that both deserved a 5-star rating for it.
Our Rating:
Siteground – 5 stars
Bluehost – 5 stars
Bluehost or SiteGround? Which to choose?
Both Bluehost and SiteGround performed tremendously well in our analysis and offer a number of benefits that your generic hosting provider cannot offer.
They use the best technology in their class, but SiteGround’s ability to keep their marketing promises pushes our verdict in their favor.
SiteGround is the best of the two hosting service providers, but only by a small margin. With faster updates, marginally better uptime and security features, we would recommend SiteGround over your competitor.
Price is an important factor for a large number of users who want to launch a website, and on that Bluehost front, WordPress packages may be slightly more affordable.
Your shared hosting plans are something you can look for if you want a cheap solution with first class features.
Both service providers offer access to third-party plugins and scripts through the MOJO market, and you also have access to CDN, cPanel for WordPress websites and security features such as SiteLock.
| SiteGround | Bluehost | |
| Performance | Faster updates and take advantage of the latest technology. | Slower in updating to the latest frameworks. |
| Security | Standard set of security protocols together with additional AI-bot to prevent cyber attacks. | There are no proprietary measures, but it comes with all standard security protocols. |
| Activity time | 99.99% uptime. | 98% uptime. |
| Server quality | Constant performance with extremely low response times. | Response times may be inconsistent with some minor peaks. |
| WordPress | Ideal for WordPress with proprietary migration plugins. | More affordable WordPress plans compared to SiteGround with an identical set of features. |
| Data management | Free daily backups of the server. Additional backup copies may be requested. | Server backups cost an additional $ 8 per month – unlimited backups. |
| Cost | The basic plans start at $ 3.95 per month and 10GB / month. Shared server plans available. Free support included. | Basic plans start at $ 3.95 per month (with 3-year packages) and 50GB / month. Shared server plans available. The backup service costs are additional. Free support included. |
| Server location | London, Chicago and Singapore | Not disclosed |
| Built-in Caching | Available | Not available |
| Site transfer | Free on all plans on the basic package | $ 149 transfer fee |
| Server Location Change | Available | Not available |
| Free domains | Not available | Available |
Final Verdict
We always strive to make our verdicts as fair as possible; If you have read this review up to this point, then you should be able to understand the following analysis that shows how each platform performed in the respective areas discussed above.
| Characteristic | Siteground | Bluehost |
| Price | Medium high | Medium-low |
| Easy to use | Great | Okay |
| WordPress | It works perfectly | It works perfectly |
| Customer Support | Great | Okay |
| Speed and uptime | Great | Great |
| Security | Great | Great |
From the table above and our ratings throughout the review, the winner is Siteground with a rating of 4.6 white bluehost comes in second with a 4.5 . Clearly, both platforms are great web hosts, and can only be chosen depending on the user’s personal preferences.
If you need a website with additional features for a couple of extra dollars, then Siteground could be perfect for you. On the other hand, if you are starting and looking to build a website with a budget with fewer features, then Bluehost should work.
In the end, before choosing your preferred platform, make sure you understand what you need from a website; This will inform you of your decision on the platform that Siteground should choose against Bluehost .
For now, happy web hosting!