Bluehost Web hosting has been around since 1996 and has established itself as a reliable and long-standing force in the industry. With three core packages, plus VPS and dedicated hosting available to those with more substantial and technical hosting needs, this host offers a full service, designed to be clean and simple to use.Offering the standard free year of domain registration and first-term discounts you’d expect from most hosts, Bluehost’s optional backup options are a nice perk, keeping your site safe and accessible at no extra charge.
Ideal for
Bluehost takes its technology very seriously, offering a wide range of hosting packages, options, and extras to suit all-comers, from first-time website builders with no technical experience, to experienced webmasters seeking advanced capabilities. Bluehost’s WordPress hosting integration makes it easy to build a site with the world’s most popular content management system, and Bluehost’s SSH functionality offers increased encryption and security for sensitive information. Whether you’re a newly-minted blogger or a frustrated webmaster, you’ll find a full complement of services to suit your requirements here.
Bluehost Hosting Features
Techie Features Marketing & Bonus Features
Unlimited Space Up to $200 Marketing Offers
Free Domain for 1 Year Up to $180 in Extras (with Business Pro Plan)
Unlimited Bandwidth 2 Premium Website Builders: Concrete5, Weebly
Unlimited Domains WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, RoundCube, Zen Cart, PrestaShop
Unlimited FTP Accounts Great Website Stats Tools: Awastats and Webalizer
Unlimited MySQL Databases SEO Submission
Intuitive cPanel Control Panel Anytime Money Back Guarantee
Unlimited Email Storage Advanced Capabilities (Secure Shell (SSH) Access, Log FileAccess etc.)
POP3, Web Mail, Alias, Mail Forwarding, Mailing Lists, IMAP Automatic Daily Account Backups
Bluehost offers a wide range of plans designed to support every user, from first-time bloggers to major enterprises. The three central plans, however, cater to beginners, regular bloggers, and SMBs respectively. All plans come with a free domain for a year and unlimited bandwidth. And if you already have a domain name purchased from a different registrar, Bluehost domain transfers are easy to initiate and confirm.
Basic ($5.99 after 1st month)
This is BlueHost’s most basic package, suitable for first-timers who are just dipping their toes into digital waters. Especially good for bloggers and individuals looking to set up a personal site, this option is much more limited than the other plans, offering 10GB of website space, 5 email accounts, and 50MB of email storage per email account. Bluehost email setup is a breeze, and if you want to run additional Web-based services with Bluehost, the Google Apps integration can open up a new world of possibilities. While the other plans entitle you to $200 worth of free ad credits, however, this option comes with just $50 and no serious security features.
Plus ($9.99 after 1st month)
When you’re ready for a bit of an upgrade, Bluehost’s most popular plan – Plus – is a good step up. Featuring $200 in free marketing offers, 100 email accounts and 100MB of storage, 100 GB of website space, 20 parked and 50 sub-domains – this is a fully rounded package suitable for small businesses and organizations with moderate needs. With Global CDN and SpamExpert included, this is a strong plan with plenty of room for users to grow an impressive, and active, online presence.
Business Pro ($19.99 after 1st month)
If your goals are a little more ambitious, an extra $10 will give you access to Business Pro. Virtually unlimited in every respect and bundled with an SSL certificate, SiteBackup Pro, a dedicated IP address, and domain privacy, this is a package for business owners ready for some serious online growth.
Advanced Plans
With VPS hosting ranging from $12.99 per month to $119.99 per month, and dedicated hosting options spanning from $149.99 to $249.99 depending on your choice of package, Bluehost offers high quality services to customers with more intensive demands and specialist requirements.
Bluehost Technology
There’s a lot of technology under the hood at Bluehost (take note: this provider uses a Linux operating system) – and plenty of expertise to back it up. Virtual private server (VPS) hosting gives businesses their own operating system, controls, and flexibility. Dedicated hosting allows for a huge amount of power and space. Both Bluehost hosting types are readily available with a range of high-performance options.
Bluehost’s Sign Up
For users not looking for a major technical solution, there’s still a lot going on behind the scenes on Bluehost’s nameservers, which might prove useful to you. Resource protection will safeguard your website’s performance and minimize shared-server risks. It will also afford you access to controls that allow you to assign passwords to different areas of your account for extra security. Automatic backups in a range of formats will keep your creation safe and sound no matter what happens – all at no extra cost.
The one crucial downside of Bluehost’s DNS (domain name servers) may be reliability. The host once offered a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but this is no longer available. Reviews and tests across the web’s major hosts place BlueHost firmly in the middle of the pack when it comes to page-loading speed, but this is by no means the slowest service on the block.
If you’re not seeking bullet-proof uptime and can handle the odd few minutes of downtime, this really is a good all-around host. But if uptime is the most important factor to you, a money-back guarantee is offered anytime to users frustrated by infrequent downtime. You can even test drive the control panel with a helpful demo before you commit.
Bluehost Pricing
While Bluehost offers some of the cheapest hosting plans amongst the major providers, the rates you see displayed on the homepage are discounted “first month” rates. Following your first month of use, Bluehost hosting plans will cost a few dollars more.