Bluehost Review: Reliable For Speed & shared Hosting for WordPress in 2020
Bluehost Webhosting is most favored and officially recommended by WordPress hosting page, and it’s the best choice for your WordPress CMS sites.
Bluehost Information:
Bluehost is currently responsible for hosting more than 2 million websites all over the world and is one of the most popular and least expensive shared hosting services available.
Founded in 1996 by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah, they have a staff of 750 employees working around the clock to ensure the highest quality of service possible.
While the company’s long history and dedicated support staff provide a certain degree of confidence, I’ve noticed a serious problem with most Bluehost reviews.
They make glowing recommendations for the service without taking any objective data or metrics (like load time and uptime) into account.
This review is based on actual statistics and data, gathered over the course of more than 3 years of testing Bluehost’s cheapest ‘shared’ plan.
Table of Contents
Features of Bluehost Hosting:
Strong Uptime of >99.99% (#1)
Bluehost has improved its uptime so profoundly that it’s darn near perfect (>99.99%). With only 5 outages in the past 10 months, Bluehost’s phenomenal uptime is well over the industry standard of 99.94% and resulted in only staggering 9 minutes of downtime out of the 7296 hours that we logged over the period of our review.
Bluehost: Page Load Speed and Uptime (Last 10 months, full data can be found on pingdom.)
Fast Page Loading – 424ms (5th Fastest)
With an average load time of only 424 ms, Bluehost has managed to pull itself up by the bootstraps and rise through the ranks to the 3rd fastest web host that we’ve ever reviewed.
Surprised by this sudden and unexpected jump in their page load times, I personally reached out to their team and asked how they managed to improve their speeds so drastically.
That’s not bad. In fact, Bluehost hosting ranks 5th in speed.
You can find the statistics for the full 16-monthreview.
Low Pricing ($2.75/month)
In 2018, not only has Bluehost kept its impressive uptime and load times from 2017, but they’ve also positioned themselves as one of the most inexpensive web hosts on the market.
You can get about 65% off of Bluehost’s retail price and host your website for only $2.75 a month.
Best Security Options
Hackers are continuously trying to do cyber attacks and hacking the website to steal the data, so finding a niche web hosting with sufficient security options is more important now than ever before. Luckily, Bluehost offers some great tools to combat and prevent some of the most common attacks and risks.
Several Integrations, Apps, and eCommerce Features
In addition to the many security features listed above, Bluehost also comes equipped with an application-rich dashboard that allows you to integrate different services such as Google Apps and the aforementioned CloudFlare directly in the cPanel.
By integrating Google Apps into the Bluehost platform, you’ll be able to bring all of the perks of Google to your business right from the heart of your hosting account.
Bluehost also says that you can use MOJO Marketplace to install shopping cart software, manually install software on your own, or hire a developer to install and/or manage it for you.
Simply choosing Bluehost allows eCommerce sites to obtain a free SSL security certificate, OpenPGP/GPG Encryption, and more right away.
WordPress.org Recommended Host
The world’s largest CMS WordPress recommends a hosting provider, it’s typically a good idea to take it into consideration.
The WordPress official site (WordPress.org) recently re-made their hosting page and listed their 3 favorite hosting providers. Among those are SiteGround, Dreamhost and – you guessed it – Bluehost.
Easy to Use
Bluehost is simple to use and very beginner friendly.The cPanel interface is just about as simple as web hosting can get. All you’ve got to do is click on the icons and get to work.
Free SSL Certificate:
Bluehost offers free SSL certificate to every new & existing user. This is very important for any blogger who is starting a new site on Bluehost or migrating an existing website to Bluehost. For the new site, Bluehost will automatically install & configure SSL certificate.
Bluehost plans and Pricing:
Bluehost shared hosting comes in three different packages, and you can choose the one that is right for you according to your unique needs.
In-built caching feature:
Another cutting-edge feature of Bluehost is the inbuilt caching feature. With Bluehost hosting, you don’t need to use any 3rd party caching plugin like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. Also, depending on the kind of website that you have, you can configure the level of caching.
Unlimited Hosting resources
Bluehost offers unlimited hosting resources. This means that you can host unlimited files, (Disk space) and use unlimited bandwidth. Remember, however, that they have certain fair usage policies (Bluehost limit). But the fair usage policy limit is so high that you will probably find it to be the same as “unlimited”.
30-Day Free Trial and Money Back Guarantee
For the commitment-phobic among you, Bluehost offers a 30-day money back guarantee, allowing you to take their services for a spin before committing your hard-earned cash.