Bluehost started in 1996 is a web hosting company owned by Endurance International Group. It is one of the 20 largest web hosts, collectively hosting well over 2 million domains. Bluehost has a long-standing relationship with the WordPress community. They are an official WordPress.org recommended hosting company since 2006. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners and for medium to large businesses with 24/7 customer support.
Now let’s talk about the product and Services provided by Bluehost.
WordPress
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that powers over 30% of the internet. WordPress makes it easy to create, edit and manage websites for beginners and advanced users alike. Built by a community of global developers, WordPress is continuously being improved and refined to provide the best functionality and performance for its users. This open-source approach has made WordPress the website creation and management platform of choice for new and skilled users all over the world. Whether you are looking to build your e-commerce website or start a blog, WordPress has all of the tools and resources to take your website from an idea to an achievable dream online.
Website Builder
The Bluehost Website Builder is a website creation tool that allows you to build a website with no coding or technical knowledge. Users are able to visually click, drag and drop the content to build a home page and additional pages of their website all while being able to access the full power, flexibility, and tools of WordPress. Regardless if you’re a newbie or an old pro to WordPress, the Bluehost Website Builder is an essential tool to use when creating a stunningly professional website.
Currently, the Bluehost Website Builder comes with a single theme with over 1000 different layout options. Price starting at $5.95/mo with a 12-month plan.
Benefits of using Bluehost Website Builder.
- Custom CSS: Manage your CSS rules directly within the builder dashboard.
- Stock Image Library: Enjoy access to hundreds of free-to-use photos.
- Live Editing: View changes to your website in real-time as you build, before publishing.
- Quick-Start Smart Templates: Forget cookie cutter. Generate custom templates around your preferences.
- Unlimited Uploads: Upload custom images, videos, music, etc. without limitation.
- 1-click WordPress Access: Easily jump back and forth between Builder and WordPress as you customize.
- Custom Fonts: Choose from our suite of fonts or upload your own favorites.
- Trusted Web Hosting: Every Builder plan comes with WordPress recommended Bluehost hosting at its core.
- 24/7 Support: Call, chat or email Bluehost support team anytime with questions or concerns.
Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared WordPress Hosting was designed for our customers who need the resources, products, tools, and support to create and manage their WordPress website. Bluehost offers affordable WordPress hosting backed by experts to guide you through the intricacies of WordPress. Whether it’s selecting a theme to design your website, updates to the platform, or ensuring you have the latest and most secure version of WordPress for your website, this hosting plan is great for any user looking to create a dynamic WordPress website. Price starting at $3.95/mo with a 36-month plan.
Benefits of using shared WordPress hosting.
- Automatic WordPress Installation: Bluehost automatically installs the latest and most secure version of WordPress.
- Microsoft 365 available: Boost your image and recognition with Microsoft email accounts branded with your domain name.
- Free Domain Name for 1 Year: It’s your name, but it’s on us. Enjoy a free domain of your choice for one year with your new account.
- Automatic WordPress Updates: Bluehost keep your WordPress hosting plan secure by always keeping your account up to date.
- Secure setup of login credentials: Bluehost help you securely change your login credentials from the WordPress default to whatever you choose.
- Get Verified on Google My Business: Connect with customers in your area, allowing them to see your location and hours of operation on Google Maps.
Managed WordPress
Bluehost managed WordPress platform is a fully-managed WordPress hosting environment, which means you can stay focused on building your website with content that is unique to you while we handle the daily maintenance of your server and the applications that keep your website running strong. Price starting at $9.95/mo with a 36-month plan.
Benefits of using Manages WordPress hosting.
Performance
- Auto-scalability: Welcome droves of visitors and surges of seasonal customers with built-in scalability to meet traffic demands.
- 200+ edge servers: It’s like hosting your site everywhere, with a CDN of over 200 global locations storing and quickly delivering content.
- Multi-layer caching: Bluehost custom caching solution optimizes your site to load content with maximum speed and efficiency.
- High availability: Full redundancy throughout the platform delivers better than 99.9% uptime.
- SSD Storage: Bluehost storage is configured for optimal speed with an SSD caching layer.
Security
- SSL: Help keep your customer data safe with free SSL Encryption included on all plans.
- Auto backups: Daily backups mean you can restore lost data, corrupt files or customer info with the click of a button.
- Multi-tiered security: Bluehost keep your site protected with Web Application Firewall (WAF), DDoS, brute force attack protection and bot blocking.
- Malware Protection: Daily automated malware detection and removal to give you peace of mind.
- Spam Protection: Powered by Akismet, Bluehost prevent harmful or unwanted content from ever reaching your site’s comment section.
Spotlight Features
- Free site migration: Transfer your existing WordPress website to Bluehost platform, hassle-free.
- Live Support: Chat through any issues that arise with a Bluehost expert at no cost.
- Site staging: Test new design or copy without impacting your current website in Bluehost staging area before it goes live.
- WP-CLI/SSH access: If you really know your way around WordPress and want advanced access, you’ve got it.
- Jetpack: This powerful plugin delivers many benefits, including enhanced site search and the ability to monetize your site with one-click ad creation.
Online Store Features
- PayPal integration: Manage payment processing in over 60 countries worldwide with industry-leading PayPal.
- Top shipping carriers: Make shipping your products cost-effective and seamless with your choice of carriers.
- Unlimited products or services: Sell as much as you like online with Bluehost Scale Managed WordPress plan.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that is primarily used for selling products or services online. Regardless of your products are digital or physical, WooCommerce makes it easy to build an online store that is customized specifically to your business needs. WooCommerce also makes it easy to manage your inventory, take secure payments, manage to ship, and will even apply taxes accordingly. Price starting at $12.95/mo with a 36-month plan.
Benefits of using WooCommerce hosting.
- Free SSL: Secures your online store with automatically encrypted transactions and visitor data.
- Multiple Caching Layers: Optimizes your site to load with maximum speed and efficiency.
- Site Monitoring and Statistics: Track trends and customer behaviors to optimize your selling experience and increase sales.
- Free Domain: A great website needs a great name. So we give you one free.
- Google My Business Verification: List your business online to quickly get found and connect with customers. (Included with Premium package)
- Unmetered Bandwidth: Grow your traffic without slowing down load times so you can jump on every opportunity. (Included with Premium package)
- Domain Privacy + Protection: Stay shielded from spam, identity theft, malware and unauthorized changes to your site. (Included with Premium package)
E-Commerce Plugins: Add capabilities with a host of powerful e-commerce plugins in the Bluehost marketplace.
- Product Add-Ons: Allow visitors to add more products to their checkout without leaving the cart.
- USPS Shipping: Make shipping methods and rates easily visible to your customers by state.
- FedEx Shipping: Calculate quotes worldwide and offer express distribution and reliable delivery in more than 220 countries and territories.
- PayPal Pro: Allows you to take credit card payments via PayPal directly on your site.
- Product Vendors: Upgrade your WooCommerce store into an e-commerce marketplace, or your social media community into a commission-based revenue stream.
- Software Add-on: Manage license keys and activations for your software offerings via your store.
- UPS Shipping: Calculate domestic and international shipping quotes with a range of delivery options from Standard to Next Day Air.
- Xero: Keep a full range of accounting functions up to date, from bank reconciliation and financial reporting to inventory tracking and payroll.
- WooSlider: Control every aspect of your slideshows, including transitions, directions, sliding speeds and pagination.
- Sensei: Launch online courses with registration and payment right on your site. No coding required.
- Table Rate Shipping: Extends WooCommerce’s default shipping options: Define multiple rates based on location, price, weight or item count.
- Product CSV Import Suite: Import thousands of products and support complex products and custom data from Bookings, Product Vendors, Brands, Google Product Feed and more.
- Amazon Pay: Allow millions of customers to use their existing Amazon accounts to conveniently checkout without leaving your site.
- Stripe: Accept payments directly on your store for web and mobile, so customers stay on your store during checkout instead of being redirected to an external checkout page.
- ShipStation: Make shipping and fulfillment faster and cheaper, with branding tools that will wow your customers.
- Currency Converter Widget: Uses money.js and the Open Source Exchange Rates API to dynamically pull exchange rates and substitute prices in real time.
- EU VAT Number: Provides your checkout with a field to collect and validate a customer’s EU VAT number, if they have one.
- Premium Plugin Bundle: Free with Bluehost Premium package, this bundle includes access to over $200 in top WooCommerce plugins.
Hosting
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is one of the most popular hosting packages because it provides an affordable way to get your website online. It works by allowing multiple users to share space on a single server maintained by the hosting provider (Bluehost). A Shared Hosting package can include multiple offers or combinations of features as offered by their hosting provider. Bluehost Shared Hosting is perfect for blogging, hobbies, and small business websites. Price starting at $5.95/mo with a 12-month plan.
Benefits of using Bluehost Shared Hosting.
- The biggest benefit for a Shared Hosting package is purchasing hosting at an affordable price.
- The shared hosting platform is managed which means users don’t have to worry about server management and platform patches.
- Bluehost Shared Hosting package also includes an SSL certificate, domain name and more!
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is a website hosting environment that provides the highest level of resource allocation, privacy, and control. Dedicated servers are completely isolated from one another, so users get full access to configure their server any way they want without affecting another user or being affected by the actions of other users. Price starting at $79.99/mo with a 36-month plan.
Benefits of using Dedicated Hosting
- Free domain for the 1st year: One year of domain registration is included with each new plan. After that, renewal is market price.
- Extreme speed: Each server is custom-built using the latest open source technology, allowing the flexibility to upgrade performance over time.
- Storage upgrades: You are able to increase the available storage on your server on-the-fly, in realtime, without any server admin assistance.
- Free SSL certificate: An SSL provides a secure connection to your website, allows for eCommerce, and protects personal information.
- Fast provisioning: Bluehost team of specialists custom builds and racks your server, connecting it to the network within 24-72 hours.
- Root access: Advance user? Optional full root access gives you unrestricted access to perform custom installs and more.
- RAID storage: Bluehost high-quality storage configuration uses RAID1, mirroring your data for improved security and protection.
- Dedicated support
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server hosting, aka VPS hosting, is a website hosting environment that allows for resources such as RAM and CPU to be dedicated to your account. This is achieved by virtualizing a Dedicated server and splitting the resources amongst the users on that server. Price starting at $19.99/mo with a 36-month plan.
Benefits of using VPS Hosting
- Host unlimited domains and websites: Fill your VPS to capacity, with full access to divide and organize your server environment as you see fit.
- Dedicated Power: Your server resources are yours alone, and every plan comes with the RAM, CPU and storage to get the job done.
- One simple dashboard: All the tools to manage your websites, analyze performance and more are on one easy-to-use VPS dashboard.
- Unlimited Bandwidth: There are no limits on the amount of traffic your VPS websites can receive so long as your website complies with Bluehost Acceptable Use Policy.
- 24/7 VPS Support
- Solid State Drives (SSD): Much faster than standard SATA disk drives, Bluehost provide all virtual private servers with high performance SSD hard drives for lightning fast performance.
Domains
A domain name is an online address for your website. The IP address is a unique string of numbers and other characters that are used across the Internet to access websites from any device or location. Think of a domain like a contact number on your phone. Instead of typing a series of complicated numbers (IP address) into a browser, you type in a domain name. A domain name can be followed by many unique TLDs, giving you a chance to stand out online.
Benefits of using Domains Service on Bluehost.
- Lightning-fast search: Quickly find that perfect domain among the multitude of options available.
- Domain Privacy: Keep your personal info concealed from possible spammers and identity thieves.
- Huge Selection: Bluehost make it easy to find a unique, creative domain name that helps your site stand out.
- Peace of mind: Have confidence in knowing you’re working with a trusted global domain provider.
- Microsoft 365 integration: Look like a pro by using your domain in your email address. Ex. you@yourdomain.com
- Geo-location domains: Let everyone know where you’re located right in your domain, for example yourwebsite.uk.
Pros and Cons of using Bluehost.
Pros
- Pricing: Their hosting plans are well within the reach of most users, particularly those who are just starting out.
- Reliability: They power a large number of websites with minimum downtime.
- No hidden charges: There are no hidden fees when signing up for your account.
- Free domain: You get a free domain name for the first year when you signup.
- Free CDN + SSL: For each website, you get a free SSL certificate and free Cloudflare CDN to block malware and improve security.
- Money Back Guarantee: They offer a 30 day money back guarantee on all plans.
Cons
- Higher domain renewal price: Their free domain renewal price is higher than average.
- Upselling Addons: They have an aggressive upsell process during signup. But you can easily uncheck all the addons if you don’t need them.
Conclusion:
Bluehost is often ranked #1 web hosting provider by many websites. They offer a wide range of hosting options with tons of features that can help you easily to build your website.
All their hosting plans include expert 24/7 customer support from knowledgeable staff.
A very important point, they offer affordable starter plans that fit any budget requirement.
If you are just starting out, then you cannot go wrong with signing up for a Bluehost shared hosting plan. It’s easy on your pocket and comes with all the right tools. As your site grows you can easily upgrade your hosting plan accordingly.
Ready to start your website with Bluehost? Click below to select your Bluehost plan.
Note: This post has been included as an entry into a giveaway/sweepstakes.
