Website

Bluehost Review–The Good and Bad

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported, which means we earn commissions from links on Crazy Egg. Commissions do not affect our editorial evaluations or opinions.

Bluehost is a great choice if you’re starting your first WordPress site. While you can host a WordPress site with virtually any host, Bluehost offers a range of features, plans, and capabilities that make it a better experience for beginners.

It’s definitely a good place to start, but is it right for you? Let’s find out.

Bluehost makes building your WordPress site easy and offers world-class speed for WordPress sites.

Bluehost Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services

Bluehost delivers everything you need to start a website and makes WordPress sites particularly easy, which is why it ranks second on our list of the best web hosting services. If you’re not new to WordPress, you can likely get a better value elsewhere.

Hostinger is our top pick–it starts at the same price but offers 10x as much storage space plus the ability to host 100 websites at no extra cost.

It’s just as easy to use and delivers a lot more value at the same price point.

If you’re creating a new WooCommerce store, HostGator offers affordable pricing with everything you need pre-installed for you. For very simple business websites, Web.com has a straightforward drag-and-drop website builder that simplifies the process. You won’t find as many bells and whistles, but it’s a breath of fresh air compared to ultimate freedom and flexibility with other hosts.

Bluehost: The Good and the Bad 

Every web hosting service has its flaws, even the most exclusive. Here’s an in-depth look into Bluehost’s top good and bad features. 

What Bluehost Is Good At

Bluehost is a very well-rounded hosting provider, offers a blend of superlative support, security, and reliability at a easy-to-stomach price point.

Great security: Bluehost has some of the best website security measures on the market to give you peace of mind. All plans come with resource protection, and CodeGuard Backup Basic can be added for an additional $3.99 per month fee. CodeGuard will help you with daily backups and monitoring while notifying you of any changes. On more expensive plans, you can also unlock automatic backups and 24/7 network monitoring.

Bluehost offers streamlined safety and security you can feel.

Fast support: We love Bluehost’s extensive and swift customer support portal. Quality support is paramount for any web hosting service to have, but finding a service that has fast and efficient support can be tougher than you might think. Most users rave that Bluehost’s customer support is very helpful when you need immediate resolution of issues.

Live chat support is available to you 24/7, and Bluehost also offers phone and email support. On top of that, you always have the option to browse the extensive knowledge base and forum for getting answers to FAQs and finding videos, in-depth articles, and resources on everything related to web hosting. 

Easy to setup: Not only is Bluehost one of the most popular web hosting services on the market, it’s also incredibly easy to get the hang of managing. Bluehost has an easy onboarding process that takes just a few minutes to complete and an intuitive interface.

If you utilize its site builder in addition to the web hosting service, Bluehost’s setup wizard will ask you to fill out a form that includes your website goals, what you want to add to your site, and what you want the name and tagline of your site to be. After answering these questions, you get to choose a theme of your choice from the Bluehost Marketplace, and then it automatically installs WordPress for you. All you have to worry about is customization, while Bluehost takes care of the backend and the technical nitty-gritty. 

High-performing servers: With Bluehost, you’re getting access to high-performance servers on the Pro plan and higher. Although it’s not always ideal for every user to fork over more money, we think you get what you pay for in this case, because it unlocks servers that utilize dual quad-core processors for swift loading speeds.

This is an excellent option for larger, more media-heavy websites because Bluehost makes sure there are fewer users per server—with an individual file count of 300,000—so there are no slowdowns for anyone hosting their sites on them. 

Reasonable pricing: The monthly price for most Bluehost plans is relatively low compared to their peers. You also receive a free domain name for the first year if you are a new customer, as well as a 30-day money back guarantee so you don’t have to worry about the risk if Bluehost doesn’t meet your needs right away.

Bundling hosting with domain registration: Normally, we recommend sticking with web hosts for hosting and domain registrars for domains—even though most providers of each service tend to offer the other. But Bluehost is one of the exceptions. For beginners and new websites, it’s a great way to get a free domain name for one year with an affordable hosting package from the same provider. This bundle is more than just a great value. It simplifies the website creation process, and it’s just one less thing you have to do when you’re getting started.

You can claim your free domain after you select a web hosting package from Bluehost. It takes just a few extra seconds, and you’ll have everything you need to proceed and go live. If you haven’t decided on a domain name yet, that’s ok. Bluehost still lets you sign up for a hosting plan, and you can always claim your free domain later.

Bluehost pre-installs WordPress, automatically updates WordPress, and gives you a free domain for one year.

What Bluehost Is Lacking

Here’s where we’ll dip into some downsides of Bluehost. Some of these may not affect your hosting provider decision much, but others may find one or more of these flaws to be a deal-breaker.

Free migrations: Bluehost only offers free migrations for WordPress websites that meet specific eligibility criteria. Even if you do meet the criteria, the free migration still requires some DIY steps on your end involving the installation of Bluehost’s migration plugin. Lots of other hosting providers on the market offer free migrations without so many stipulations.

Otherwise, you can expect to pay a hefty $149.99 for Bluehost to migrate up to five websites and 20 email accounts. Although this service comes with 24/7 support, a complete review, and an uninterrupted transition, it’s still quite expensive for most users—especially when many other web hosting services will transfer your website for free. What’s also not ideal is that this migration service does not cover higher-octane hosting options like VPS or dedicated. 

No uptime guarantee: Unlike most other web hosting services, Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee on any of its plans. Downtime can be quite costly for website owners, as you can lose potential customers if your website is experiencing this. 

An uptime guarantee gives users that extra peace of mind and shows them that the provider will keep your website up and running in the most efficient way possible—and that they’re serious about meeting their customers’ needs. Even though this may be an issue for some folks, many users have still applauded Bluehost for its uptime, regardless of the lack of guarantee. 

Constant upsells: Once you select a pricing plan from Bluehost, you’ll get constant reminders of other features that you can buy during the checkout process. And it doesn’t end there, with popups and other marketing communications that try to convince you to subscribe to a more expensive package. It’s a bit annoying, but these pitches ultimately don’t affect the quality of hosting and service you get in other facets.

No managed WordPress hosting: Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress since 2005, and they do offer WordPress hosting plans. However, they no longer offer managed hosting plans.

The best managed WordPress hosting providers offer additional services beyond one-click WordPress installations and optimized servers. Bluehost’s WordPress plans are essentially an enhanced version of the shared packages with WordPress-specific features. But it doesn’t come with the extra service enhancements that you’ll get from a fully managed host.

Bluehost Pricing and Options 

Bluehost offers quite a few different hosting packages, like most other providers. We’ll break down a few of the most popular options below, with their benefits and pricing.

Bluehost Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared hosting is an affordable place to start and is the most popular among first-time Bluehost users. This specific package is best for blogging, hobbies, or small business websites.

Bluehost Shared Hosting website page

Every plan inclues a free domain name for the first year, a free CDN, malware scanning, and 24/7 support. On higher tiers, you’ll enjoy a free-forever SSL certificate, daily website backups, free domain privacy, staging and invoicing tools, and phone support.

Bluehost offers the lowest per-month price when you sign up for a year. However, it’s still cheaper in the long-run to go with a three-year contract if you can.

Bluehost’s shared hosting plans include:

  • Basic: $2.95 per month for one year; $4.95 per month for three years 
  • Plus: $5.95 per month for one year; $7.45 per month for three years
  • Choice Plus: $5.95 per month for one year; $7.45 per month for three years
  • Pro: $13.95 per month for one year; $18.95 per month for three years

Bluehost Online Store

Bluehost’s offers two ecommerce plans. The difference between them is storage space and the ability to manage inventory across multiple channels, like your online store, Etsy, Amazon, and eBay.

Both come with a free store theme, ecommerce analytics, gift cards, unlimited product listings, shipping labels, appointment booking, a boatload of unique WordPress plugins, free daily website backups for a year, and a whole lot more.

Bluehost online store landing page with image of a woman planting flowers and an image of a woman taking a photo of baked goods

The cheapest plan is $9.95 per month for one year an $12.95 per month for three years.

Bluehost’s full marketplace plan starts at $12.95 per month for one year and $19.95 per month for three years. This gives you 100 GB of storage and multi-channel inventory management for selling across different market places.

Bluehost WordPress Cloud Hosting

Bluehost’s newest offering is cloud hosting specifically for WordPress sites that need more resources, power, and performance. These plans include a 100% uptime guarantee, automatic daily backups, and are fully managed by Bluehost.

As such, you won’t have to worry about managing or maintaining the servers on your own. You don’t have to be a developer or IT pro to use them, which isn’t the case with a lot of other cloud hosting plans.

You’ll also enjoy full DoS protection, a free SSL certificate, and 2FA to keep your sites secure.

Bluehost offers unmatched power, speed, and control with WordPress cloud hosting at special early access prices

There are four plans to choose from, including:

  • Cloud 1: $29.99 per month; 1 website, 10 GB of storage, 2 vCPUs
  • Cloud 10: $49.99 per month; 10 websites, 125 GB of storage, 20 vCPUs
  • Cloud 25: $89.99 per month; 25 websites, 175 GB of storage, 75 vCPUs
  • Cloud 50: $109.99 per month; 50 websites, 225 GB of storage, 150 vCPUs

Bluehost VPS Hosting

Bluehost’s VPS plans are perfect for high-performance websites or developers and designers who want to manage multiple sites under a single plan. These virtual private servers also come with root access, so devs can make changes at the server level without limitations.

The best part about Bluehost’s VPS is that it offers tons of flexibility and customization options without the enterprise-level price tag.

You can use it to host unlimited domains and websites while dividing your server resources and environment in any way that you see fit.

Bluehost VPS hosting landing page with a man with a beard in a blue coat picking up small boxes in a retail shop

There are three different VPS plans to choose from:

  • Standard VPS: $31.99 per month for 36 months
  • Enhanced VPS: $41.99 per month for 36 months
  • Ultimate VPS: $71.99 per month for 36 months

Just be aware that like most of Bluehost’s hosting products, the renewal rates are a bit steep at more than double the promotional price—renewing at $81.99, $116.99, and $144.99 per month, respectively.

All plans come with cPanel and a single dashboard to manage all of your tools in one place. You’ll also benefit from unlimited bandwidth with no restrictions on traffic.

Bluehost Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is an excellent package for large businesses that need a massive increase in storage, power, and control from their hosting plan.

A dedicated hosting server provides the highest level of protection, security, and control to its users. These servers are separate from one another, so each user gets full access to the server without being affected or affecting another user’s experience.

With Bluehost dedicated hosting, it guarantees every user stable and predictable website performance, with full control and privacy. 

This package is best for users that have high traffic websites, as you will need the full spectrum of RAM and CPU to run your website efficiently—which is exactly what dedicated hosting does.

Bluehost Dedicated Server Hosting website page

Some additional features and benefits you get on dedicated hosting include:  

  • Extreme speed 
  • Fast provisioning 
  • RAID storage 
  • Root access
  • Dedicated support
  • Storage upgrades
  • Free domain for one year

This package is on the high-end side of web hosting, so it focuses on performance and security while coming at a steeper price than the previous options: 

  • Standard: $91.98 per month with 1 TB storage, 8 GB RAM, and 4 core CPUs
  • Enhanced: $121.88 per month with 2 TB storage, 16 GB RAM, and 8 core CPUs
  • Premium: $141.99 per month with 2 TB storage, 30 GB RAM, and 8 core CPUs

The Enhanced plan is the a better value compared to the Standard option when you consider the fact you’re getting double the storage and computing power for just $30 more per month.

Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on these plans, which isn’t common in the web hosting industry at the dedicated server level.

Expanding Your Knowledge: Bluehost

Comparing the Best Web Hosting Services 

We spent hours reviewing different web hosting services. You can check out our comparison guide here.  

  1. Hostinger – Best web hosting for lots of storage
  2. Bluehost – Best for new WordPress users
  3. HostGator – Best for scaling your small business easily
  4. Web.com – Best for simple business sites
  5. DreamHost – Best for straightforward web hosting needs
  6. SiteGround – Best hosting for 99.99% uptime
  7. InMotion – Best price for hosting two websites on one plan
  8. Nexcess – Best for experienced WordPress users
  9. A2 Hosting – Most dependable web hosting for global traffic

Overall, Bluehost a great choice for those who are new to WordPress because it comes with everything you need to get started with WordPress—from a free domain name and automatic WordPress installation to a free drag-and-drop page builder and thorough step-by-step instructions for every step of the way.

With extensive product offerings like WordPress hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and multi-tiered pricing plans, we think most users will enjoy the Bluehost experience. 

Even though Hostinger is our top recommendation in this category, Bluehost is definitely a web hosting service worth looking into.


Cait is a banjo player, snowboarder, climber, cat mom, and (former) engineer who lives in Olympia, WA. She's been a professional writer for more than five years, specializing in B2B software with a technical yet empathetic approach that puts data and hands-on experience at the heart of every review.

Make your website better. Instantly.

Over 300,000 websites use Crazy Egg to improve what's working, fix what isn't and test new ideas.

Free 30-day Trial