Powering over 2 million websites worldwide, Bluehost is a recognized brand name in bargain web hosting. By doing a large volume of business they’re able to offer steep price discounts.
In addition to offering a full range of web hosting services, Bluehost provides marketing training, SEO services, social media marketing, content creation, graphic design services, email, domain names, and local business listings to grow traffic.
Bluehost caters to everyone: from beginning bloggers to established e-commerce and more.
QUICK OVERVIEW
Bluehost was founded in 2003 and has since grown to become one of the world’s largest providers of reliable and cheap web hosting.
Bluehost offers a range of products and services to help you get started with your website or online shop: from shared and WordPress hosting to website builder tools. They have a special focus on meeting the digital marketing and training needs of small businesses.
Their value-priced hosting packages come with unmetered bandwidth, free global CDN and SSL certificates, and free daily, weekly and monthly backups on a powerful and proven platform that is built to scale and optimized for speed and security. Their cheapest hosting plan is $2.75/mo.
ENDORSED BY WORDPRESS
If you’re planning to create a website or blog, you’ll want to check out Bluehost because it’s one of only three hosting companies endorsed by WordPress.
Their cheapest shared hosting plan for a single domain costs only a few dollars a month. For a little bit more money, you can add unlimited domains and subdomains.
But Bluehost isn’t solely for beginners. They are staunch supporters of the Open Source community and they provide advanced developer tools like SSH Access, FTP, and a fully-customized Linux kernel.
Their corporate vision is to create “a better safer web for everyone.” Bluehost supports this vision by investing in open source projects, promoting web civility, and making their service easy for people of all ages to use.
WHAT IS BLUEHOST?
Bluehost is a large web host known for its WordPress expertise, variety of “one-stop-shop” services, and bargain prices. It has engineers who work on the WordPress core software itself.
CORPORATE HISTORY
Founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Utah, Bluehost was acquired by conglomerate Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2010. Suhaib Zaheer became the CEO in 2017.
That same year, EIG announced layoffs of over 400 people and a shuttering of Bluehost’s Orem, Utah office in favor of consolidating customer service operations. They are now officially located in Burlington, MA. They currently host over 2 million websites.
Endurance International Group 10 Corporate Drive, Suite #300 Burlington, MA 01803
888 401 4678
Official website
Facebook
Twitter
Founded by Matt Heaton in 2003.
WHAT MAKES BLUEHOST STAND OUT?
There are plenty of bargain hosts. So what’s the big picture of Bluehost’s offerings?
MORE THAN SHARED HOSTING
This company provides nearly every web hosting service that you could possibly need including advanced hosting like VPS, dedicated server, and managed WordPress hosting.
The “managed” part means they handle the technical details, like keeping those pesky WordPress plugins updated for you, updating the core, handling security, and optimizing performance.
ONE-STOP-SHOP FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Digital marketing services can easily cost five figures per project. There’s plenty of false and outdated information on the web about marketing tactics you should use.
Add to the mix the numerous solicitations that small business owners receive and the result can be frustration and lack of progress.
Affordable Results
The good news is that some critical digital marketing services can be commoditized and delivered at bargain costs. That’s a core part of Bluehost’s strategy.
These are some of their services:
Websites: You can use their easy DIY site builder to create your own or you can get their design pros to build a site for you.
SEO, advertising, social media marketing, and local business visibility: Bluehost provides professional marketing services, including creating content for your site. You can get monthly consultations with a marketing professional. And they measure progress so you can see your ROI.
Domains, email, and helpful tutorials: Including how-tos on website management, hosting, and marketing topics.
HOSTING TYPES, FEATURES, AND PLANS
The company provides you with more than what you can normally expect from bargain-priced hosting plans.
Here are the top Bluehost features:
Easy-to-use, customized cPanel
Dozens of site tool add-ons
Free site builders
Free domain-specific email addresses
99.99% uptime
Technology to support fast page load times
Cloudflare integration (speeds your site loading)
Free SSL certificate
Above-average security features.
BLUEHOST EXTRAS AND ADD-ONS
Bluehost has several extras. These include:
$150 worth of credits that you can use for Google Adwords, or Bing/Yahoo advertising.
Free domain name registration or transfer. This offer allows you to pick from 15 different domain extensions include .COM, .ORG, and .NET.
Free new drag-and-drop site builder.
No charges when it comes to upgrading to a better plan mid-contract. (With other host companies, you’ll normally have to pay the difference between the current plan and the new one you want to upgrade to.)
A few security and management features such as anti-spam filter, shared SSL, and CDN services which are rare to most hosting companies come standard with Bluehost.
WHAT DOES “UNLIMITED” REALLY MEAN?
Bluehost’s policy indicates that the company does not enforce any usage restrictions on plans and packages featuring unlimited websites, domains, and/or email accounts and that customers are free to utilize these features as desired.
However…
Customers must be operating within the Terms of Service set out by Bluehost. The company claims that those who do not abide by the Terms of Service will come up against limits for some of these features.
Translation: there is the potential for some users to exceed the unstated scope of “unlimited,” and they may need to opt for a bigger and more expensive plan depending on how they are using their plan and what they are using it for.
WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS?
Before selecting any hosting provider, do your due diligence to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal to suit your needs. So, is Bluehost any good?
PROS
Over 2,000,000 sites worldwide are hosted by Bluehost so the company is obviously doing something right
Offers a wide range of web hosting options
Easy to upgrade your plan to VPS or dedicated server without having to move your website
Offers free anti-spam solutions built right in cPanel
Provides you with integrated Cloudflare support
Includes several security features such as unique IPs, SSL, & SiteLock protection
Allows a 30-day (no questions asked) money-back-guarantee for all hosting plans
99% uptime guarantee.
CONS
Does not offer month-to-month shared hosting options
A few users have complained that tech support wait times are long and that the staff does not give customers much personal attention
Charges a fee to have your site migrated from a different hosting company to Bluehost. Most hosting companies offer this service at no cost
Bluehost only offer servers in Linux, Windows hosting is not available
You must do your own daily backups for full security
SUMMARY
Bluehost makes it easy and quick to get a website up and running, has an easy-to-use cPanel interface that’s ideal for beginners, features a wide array of great features, is generally fast, has reliable servers, and has some pleasantly surprising security features for a budget-friendly web host.
Additionally, Bluehost boasts of excellent uptime, a clean intuitive control panel (called cPanel) that allows you to create attractive and functional pages for your business.
So, if you have a business website, or need one, Bluehost is a solid web host that’s worth checking out. Find out what to expect from this web hosting provider by reading our Bluehost review.
Comments