Bluehost Web hosting service is one out of the many companies that are boosting its policies to stay intact to the market, by competing with its counterparts.
With its establishment in the year 1996, Bluehost has come up with hosting provisions, catering to the nascent, medium and large businesses, and this has, in turn, contributed to its path of reaching the top.
It currently powers over 2 million websites covering the world. Additionally, it provides marketing training, social media marketing, SEO services, graphic design, content creation, etc, which facilitates the traffic surge.
Tracing the performance based service of Bluehost Web hosting service.
Let us enter into some further details on Bluehost, and gather an outline on its performance ability.
Bluehost Overview
| Performance grade | A+ |
| Average load time | 1.47 ms |
| Average response time | 1.27 ms |
| Free domain | Yes |
| Free SSL | Yes |
| 1-click WordPress | Yes |
| Support | Phone / Live Chat / Knowledge base |
Bluehost Web-Hosting Plans – Features & Price
Find below the plans, their features and prices, offered by Bluehost:
VPS Hosting Plan
Bluehost’s VPS options serve the best for those who may be in need of more power and expect high traffic volumes, or have some issues opting for shared servers.
Unlike Shared hosting, VPS hosting has comparatively fewer sites on a server, where the provider to the least, guarantees server resources of a particular amount.
Bluehost incorporates three tiers of Linux-based VPS hosting.
It begins from the $29.99 per month Standard (30GB of solid-state storage, 2GB of memory, and unlimited monthly data transfers) to the $119.99 per month Ultimate (120GB of SSD storage, 8GB of memory, and unlimited monthly data transfers).
VPS hosting plans offer discounts in case of sticking to longer-term contracts. Bluehost, as a matter of fact, lacks the provision of Windows-based VPS.
Dedicated Hosting Plan
A Dedicated Web hosting service is undoubtedly a significant Web hosting service that acts as a surplus for the site, with provisions to garner full server resources. To expect a massive traffic surge, dedicated hosting is the central requirement.
Bluehost has several dedicated server configurations.
The servers start at $109 a month, which can be outfitted with a Linux operating system and up to 1TB of hard drive space, 16GB of RAM, including 15TB of data transfers a month.
Shared Hosting Plan
Shared Web hosting, which is common to many other web hosting competitors, is a plus point for those who are seeking out for a cheap Web hosting. Although cheap, there is a downside to it.
As multiple websites share a common server, one particular site’s better performance through a traffic surge might affect the other respective sites.
Bluehost does not come with a month-to-month shared Web hosting options. Instead it requires the users to sign up for an annual plan. And signing for two to three year plans, could be a discounted one.
If committing to the three-year plan, the service of $3.95 a month seems for a good trail. People not preferring long term commitments could lookout for another hosting service.
Bluehost incorporates four tiers of Shared hosting.
The beginning package of shared hosting starts at $7.99 per month, with a one year contract, and it includes a free domain name until one uses Bluehost, with free domain name transfer, 50GB storage, unlimited monthly data transfers etc.
The plus package starts at $10.99 per month, attached with a one year contract, and incorporates an antispam tool, and unlimited storage and mailboxes.
The other package called the choice plus package starts at $14.99 per month, attached with a one year contract, incorporated with domain privacy, to cover one’s physical location for security purpose.
The pro plan starts at $23.99 per month with a one-year contract, and it comes with all the features of the Plus package, with the addition of a dedicated IP address.
Reseller Hosting Plan
If someone’s looking to get into the web hosting business, but do not wish to directly deal with infrastructure matters, one should definitely look out for Bluehost’s suitable reseller hosting packages.
The servers are of the Linux variety, except for that Bluehost does not supply them with unlimited storage capacity and monthly data transfers. On the plus point, Bluehost allows one to apply for one’s own branding to the servers to rent, with 24/7 tech support.
Bluehost’s Reseller Hosting offers four plans
Starting from $18.99 a month, with unlimited email, web hosting and panel creation across the board.
WordPress Hosting Plan
As a content management system, WordPress powers a better portion of sites on the Web. With the ease in use, it has a thriving theme and a plug-in ecosystem for expanding the functionality of a site.
For people in search of creating a WordPress powered website, considering Bluehost’s Linux-based packages is necessary, which includes: Basic, Plus and Choice Plus.
Bluehost incorporates three tiers of WordPress hosting.
Basic, starts at $7.99 per month and allows one to host one’s website. It includes 50GB of SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, and a free domain for a year.
The following plan, called the Plus plan, starts from $10.99 per month and includes unlimited site hosting with unlimited SSD storage as well.
The topmost tier referred to as the Choice Plus plan starts at $14.99 per month and tosses in CodeGuard Basic backup software.
Another thing to be noted is that Bluehost also has an advanced WordPress hosting category, known as WP Pro. It is a managed WordPress offering, that provides the site with a back end and a white -glove treatment. It includes social media, SEO and email marketing tools.
It offers three plans, categorised as Build, Grow and Scale, all of which boost unlimited rite hosting, domains, storage, monthly data transfers and subdomains.
WP Pro accounts additionally come with staging areas to test sites before they go live to the web. Build, Grow, and Scale start at $29.99 a month, $39.99 a month, and $59.99 a month, respectively.
To begin with Build plan, it comes with provisions of 100 free WordPress themes, daily scheduled backups, malware detection and removal, and domain privacy protection.
Following the Grow plan, it uses the Build plan as a foundation and adds SEO tools, 10GB of video compression, and live ticket support.
Last but not the least, Scale plan tops the chart of all WP Pro plans, by adding live chat support, unlimited video compression, PayPal integration, and unlimited backups and restore.
Cloud Hosting Plan
With the provision of cloud hosting, the resources required by a site to operate are supposed to be shared across multiple servers. This is a benefit as one can scale resources in real-time, as one’s site isn’t limited to physical server constraints. But unlike other web hosts, Bluehost does not provide the option of cloud hosting.
Features & Services Offered by Bluehost
Find below the various features and services offered by Bluehost:
Site Creation
Bluehost is abundant with tools for filtering spam, building sites, collecting site statistics, managing email, and managing domains. For building a website, one can use the WordPress content management platform or Weebly (an excellent website-builder) and upload files using FTP or File Manager, or either opt for goMobi Mobile Web builder if the add-on is purchased.
Weebly’s function of drag-and-drop allows one to swiftly build an attractive page, complete with slideshows, contact forms, social media links etc. Weebly’s free version gives one the basic function (where one can create six pages and add custom HTML), but upgrading it to the $8.99 per month Professional tier, offers even more flexibility, which includes custom themes, password protected pages etc.
With an alternate option, one can also go to the Mojo Marketplace to download other content-management systems or site builders. It is an entirely separate interface, but if one is willing to expand the capabilities of one’s site, the marketplace seems a good place to start with. Using Bluehost’s Mojo Marketplace is similar to running sister-site iPage’s marketplace.
E-commerce
One can easily get hold of email-marketing tools such as DaDa Mail, which starts at $34.95 per year. This software allows one to send email-based newsletters to the subscribers list.
For an online store to have the ability to accept payments, one can get access to e-commerce applications, such as Magento, ShopSite and TransFirst payment gateway. With Magento’s access, one is able to create an attractive store with the drag and drop website element.
Magento probably has more flexibility than ShopSite, but if one isn’t after the elaborate online storefront, ShopSite’s simpler interface could do the work.
One impressive fact about Bluehost is that it supports PostgreSQL along with the more popular MySQL. This means one need not be limited to installing software that runs only with MySQL.
Security Features
The security features put forward by Bluehost is something to look out for. It comes with three antispam tools: Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Experts, and Spam Hammer, with an additional hotlink protection.
One can also create filters for email accounts and users, with provisions for password-protect directories and create IP address blacklists, manage private keys and digital certificates. It is pleasing to see secure shell’s (SSH) access, because it implies that administrators have a secured manner to access specific configuration files.
It is impressive how Bluehost offers CloudFlare, which enhances performance and security features. If one wants SSL on one’s site, or if one is worried about distributed denial of service attacks against the site, CloudFlare is worth the trial.
Uptime
Website uptime is considered to be a vital element for any Web hosting experience. If the site goes down, clients or customers would have a difficult time to find and access the products or services.
There have been trials on tracking the test sites’ uptime, over a 14-day period, with the use of website monitoring tool. It is to be found that after every 15 minutes, the tool would automatically ping the websites or send an email, if unable to contact a site. The data further confirms that Bluehost is stable. In fact, Bluehost does not even go down in a period of one to two weeks. Hence, Bluehost is something to count for.
Customer Support
Bluehost offers 24/7 telephone support, online web chat, a ticket-based system, and a knowledgebase.
With the conduction of tests, it has been found that the web chat feature of the customer service is active and quite quick in approach. The solutions offered have been satisfying as well.
The telephone support system, on the other hand, is also impressive. Responses are quick, especially within a 5-minute range, and they gently provide the steps. That’s something people should look out for.
Money-Refund Policy
When it comes to hosting packages, Bluehost’s packages comes with a 30-day money refund guaranteed, which is quite a standard fare in the web hosting space. This provision could also prompt the users into opting for a trail session.
Bluehost Hosting Pros & Cons
Find below the Pros and Cons of Bluehost hosting:
Conclusion
One could definitely grab quite a clear picture of how Bluehost as a hosting service performs.
It undoubtedly stands out in providing impressive, dedicated and WordPress hosting services, along with its proper listing of plans; one could look out for better security services, site creation tools, e-commerce facility, prompt customer care services, with stable uptime rate and money refund policy.
Its downside lies in the lack of cloud hosting, month-month shared hosting plans and lack of VPS in Windows-based servers.
Although not considered for Editor’s choice award-winning category, the Bluehost Web hosting service does not falter much to not be considered a good choice. It’s only lacking in a few but has more upside to look to. Based on an overall evaluation, one can make a better choice.
