Bluehost Review

Have you had enough of all those glowing Bluehost reviews, with all perfect five star ratings? Me too.

Imagine reading an honest review about Bluehost. Without all the perfect five-star scores, the bias, and the unnecessary and unhelpful fluff.

You are probably thinking, that this here is just another one of those Bluehost review sites.

No siree, uh-uh. This is not another one of those. Because this here is my personal, unbiased and brutally honest Bluehost review.

Hi, I’m Lisa, a freelance web developer who’ve been building websites for clients for the last 5 years. Over the years I’ve developed a hate-love-hate relationship with Bluehost. This here is my personal and brutally honest Bluehost review. Written by Lisa and last updated on September 22, 2017

Give me ten minutes of your time, and I will give you all the must-know facts and answer questions like.

When you have finished reading this, in about 10 minutes time or so. You will know if Bluehost is the right (or wrong) web host for you to sign up with.

What you’ll learn from this Bluehost review

Pros & cons of using Bluehost

Find out what the pros and cons of using Bluehost are. You should never put all your eggs in one basket also applies to web hosting.

I have lost many eggs over the years by not doing the initial research and checking the facts.

When you are getting web hosting make sure you do your research before you buy. You should weigh the pros and cons of using Bluehost and let the facts speak for themselves.

What does stand out about this company is that they’ve been around since 2003 and host over 2 million websites. They’re one of the most popular, inexpensive, shared hosting options available.

But is Bluehost any good?

As Bluehost originally just offered shared hosting plans, they now provide a variety of services including domains, cloud hosting, and a variety of hosting options including hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce.

Bluehost has their bells and whistles, they do offer simple, easy to use standard services for non-techies. What sent Bluehost through the roof with outstanding (mostly biased, 5-star reviews), however, is their affiliate program.

People all over world are joining this program, of which Bluehost paid out over $5 million in commissions in 2015 according to the company’s affiliate page. With a generous program like that, who wouldn’t want to boast glowing reviews?

Like every company, Bluehost has their pros and cons. As being one of the largest hosting providers in the world, it proves many have faith in them. According to Consumer Rankings Bluehost review September 2017, Bluehost is ranked at 9.7 out of 10 by users.

Some highlights were that Bluehost is easy to use, easy to signup, and their cPanel makes it easy to install WordPress and is very well organized. The reviews make it seem like Bluehost is, well, easy.

But I’m afraid it’s not all roses and sunshine.

There are some downsides Bluehost experienced of which they’ve learned their lesson. One being the two 2014 massive downtimes per their Utah data center and parent company, Endurance International Group (EIG).

With so many affiliates out there recommending Bluehost, it’s hard to find out the truth – meaning any negativity the company has.

So below are more of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Bluehost.

Pros of using Bluehost

Bluehost has a couple of really good things going for them.

Really cheap hosting

Bluehost has some of the most inexpensive initial hosting plans around. Plans start at $2.95/month at the time of this writing. They’re a really cheap web host.

Endorsed by WordPress

One of the largest hosting platforms, WordPress, recommends Bluehost. It is, of course, a paid endorsement (at least indirectly as Bluehost sponsors lots of the WP conferences), but nonetheless it’s an endorsement.

WordPress also endorses DreamHost, Flywheel, and SiteGround hosting providers.

Generous money back guarantee

Contrary to negative reviews, Bluehost is sticking behind their product and service by offering a 30-day full refund policy.

Even after 30 days, you receive a prorated refund of your plan. Since this is a monthly plan, there are no term commitments. You also won’t find pesky penalties or hidden fees.

Good uptime

I’m monitoring the uptime of 5 random websites that are hosted with Bluehost. 4 out of 5 websites have had zero outage, i.e. a 100% uptime, over the last month. 1 out of 5 has had a 99.6% uptime (this would equate to an approx 4h outage during the month).

Security is a priority

Bluehost offers good protection for your website. Bluehost has secure shell access (SSH) so web devs and admins can access config files securely. Spam Experts, Apache Spam Assassin, and Spam Hammer are their anti-spam tools of choice.

They offer other security features such as an IP address blacklist, password protected directories, email account and user account filters, and access to manage digital certificates and private keys.

Helpful user support portal

Bluehost offers 24/7 technical support. In addition to that, they have a knowledge database where users can check out video tutorials, review supportive documentation, and more.

The knowledge database works well for those who don’t want to wait around for phone or chat support.

Affiliate program

Bluehost is among one of the most sought after affiliate programs. It’s easy and free to sign up; no requirements are necessary to meet.

There is no cap on commissions, and they pay you $65 per referral.

A variety of hosting options

If you’re looking to stick with just one hosting company as your business grows, Bluehost has an answer for that. They provide four plans, so you don’t have to switch for server upgrades: shared, VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting plans are available.

Quick Start Plan

For those that have no clue where to begin, Bluehost has a Quick Start Plan for $79.99. This 45-minute session gives you 1-on-1 training with a Bluehost expert.

You’ll learn how to use all the tools in the account such as a cPanel guided tour, web builder recommendation, theme and plugin installation assistance, page creation tips, email account guidance, and other general advice you may have.

Now many hosting providers offer free training, so some could consider paying for Bluehost’s Quick Start Plan as a bad feature. But if you don’t have time to wait around and need all of this training in one sitting, it could be a plus for you.

Generous extras

As a part of their hosting plan, you get a free domain name for the first year. Also, for those looking to boost their business, Bluehost offers advertising credits on Google’s AdWords, Bing, and other leading sites

Cons of using Bluehost

Bluehost got loads of positives, but they do have their drawbacks as well.

Confusing pricing

As cheap as $2.95 may sound, users often do not read the fine print to notice this is an introductory price based on a term of 36 months. You do have options to select 12 or 24-month plans, but they do increase.

For example, you can select the most popular Plus plan at $4.45 for 36 months. However, for 24 months or 12 months, the price increases to $5.45 and $6.45 respectively. There are no three and six-month deals to take at all.

No automatic backups

While Bluehost does offer backups, the backups are a courtesy so you can’t depend on your data to be backed up daily – so no guarantees here. You must set up and run your own backup via the cPanel and to your own local device.

Another bad feature here is that any data Bluehost backs up within the past 30 days is overwritten. Bluehost’s Terms clearly state that they will hold no responsibility for this.

Site Backup Pro is a paid add-on offered by Bluehost. It creates regular and automated backups of your site.

‘Unlimited’ really means ‘limited’

Bluehost’s Plus, Prime, and Business Pro plans boast of their unlimited number of websites, and “unmetered” storage, email accounts, email storage, and subdomains given to clients.

However, their User Agreement, Clause 7 Usage Policies and Definitions, explain otherwise. It’s only unlimited up to a certain level.

Their unlimited plan is comparable to most providers (i.e. Bluehost isn’t the only web host that promises “unlimited” web hosting).

Draconian CPU throttling / protection

Bluehost rolled this out in 2009 and had a few customers bewildered. You may not have heard of CPU throttling beforehand either. You can find your CPU throttling log in the cPanel.

Simply put, if Bluehost thinks your website is taking up too many resources, they might decide to preserve the server resources by freezing your CPU usage.

No Windows hosting

Bluehost only offers Linux-based servers. I.e. you can’t get Windows hosting. This isn’t a huge concern as Linux is the most used and popular operating system for web servers.

No uptime guarantee

Bluehost does not offer an uptime guarantee. When selecting a hosting provider, you want an uptime of as close to 100% as possible. Bluehost does not give you a guarantee, but their Network/Server Uptime Agreement states that “most issues are resolved in approximately 15 minutes”.

Bluehost averages about a 99.94% uptime. This .05% outage means that over a full year your site is down for 4.4 hours. Overall, Bluehost’s uptime is reliable.

Load times are slow

Bluehost’s load times are not always the fastest either. According to a Kissmetrics study, 47% of consumers believe a site should load in less than 2 seconds. And 40% of consumers will leave the site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Up-selling is a business model

Bluehost up-selling practices are designed to make you purchase them. I.e. there will be annoying popups and alerts appearing. They have up-sells to select before you check out. Also, there are install add-ons you’ll purchase that normally are included with other hosting providers.

Slow support response times

Although Bluehost does have 24/7 technical support, they aren’t always easily accessible. The response times can vary from ten minutes up to an hour. The initial response is auto generated in some instances.

Expensive renewal rates

Like other hosting companies, Bluehost introductory pricing is to lure customers in. It’s also quite misleading. So, when it’s time for renewal, you’ll be shocked to discover the pricing is almost 90% increased.

If you decide to signup with Bluehost you are better off signing up for a 24/36 month period on the discounted introductory pricing.

Site migration is not included

If you’re looking to switch host and leave Bluehost for whatever reason they do offer site migrations, however for a fee.

Bluehost will transfer up to 5 sites and 20 email accounts for the price of $149.99. Comparing this to other web hosting providers, this is a rip-off as most do not charge anything at all for migrating your site.

Hosting packages

Now I’ll explain a bit of what you can expect in each of their shared hosting plans. There are four plans: Basic (or their starter plan), Plus, Prime, and Business Pro.

Many reviews do not even mention Bluehost as having four plans; typically they cover just three.

If you only intend to run a small business website or personal website, then you really should not need to go for a more expensive package.

Out of these four plans, most people find that the Basic Plan suits them best. Most people don’t intend to host multiple websites, so your needs should be met with this plan.

If you do find yourself growing (or if you intend to host multiple websites), then the Prime or Pro Plan would be your best bet if you want to stick with Bluehost.

Bluehost FAQ

Here you will find answers to some of the most common questions asked about Bluehost. Think of it’s as the unofficial Bluehost FAQ.

Do I recommend Bluehost?

Would I sign up with Bluehost to host this site? Probably not. Should you get web hosting with Bluehost? Maybe.

I can’t give you a straight up “yes use Bluehost” or “no don’t use Bluehost” answer because it all depends on your situation and what you need hosting for.

I think yes you should definitely go and sign up with Bluehost if you are going to start a personal blog or a small business website.

They are cheap (really cheap), have a solid uptime track-record and it’s very easy to get started with Bluehost (especially for beginners).

Also their generous 30-day money back guarantee lets you “try before you buy” and extras such as a free domain name are are solid features worth considering.

On the flip side, however, there are three major reasons why I would think twice before signing up with Bluehost.

One, if you have a website that will get high traffic (such as a commercial or ecommerce site). Then I suggest that you don’t deal with Bluehost at all.

Secondly, if you need to get hold of someone in support, waiting for upward times of 10 minutes or longer in crucial situations is not worth the cheap pricing. But you do get what you pay for.

Thirdly, it’s a let down that website migrations and automatic backups only come as paid upgrades. I know these are straightforward things you can do yourself but it should be included. Again, you get what you pay for.

So what’s next? Well you have two options ..

 

Sign Up with Bluehost

Best Bluehost alternatives