Bluehost Review 2024: Is Bluehost ANY Good? [Including Speed & Performance Tests]

Are you looking for an honest Bluehost review in 2024? You’re in the right place.

I have been using Bluehost on a few of my blogs. And this is why you should trust my insights. 

Bluehost is hands down one of the most popular web hosts trusted by over 2 million users across the globe.

In this Bluehost Review, I will share my personal experience covering everything about Bluehost, including; all the major problems and benefits I faced during these years about Bluehost.

Don’t worry it’s not gonna take long for you to take your final call on Bluehost. You can read the quick summary in this review’s first section and decide. 

Ultimately, In this review we are going to talk about: 

• Bluehost performance (speed, uptime, support)
• Hosting features
• Ease of use
• Bluehost pricing 
• Backups
• Alternatives
• Benefits and drawbacks of using Bluehost
• And a lot more.

Without much ado, let’s dive into the honest review of Bluehost.

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Bluehost Review Quick Summary

• Entry-level WordPress blogs or new bloggers seeking affordable shared hosting with a free domain for a year.
• Entry-level businesses aim to establish online stores without any coding requirements.
• Budget-conscious individuals with an overall budget for web hosting ranging from approximately $25 to $120 for a year.
• Websites with traffic ranging from 5000 to 50,000 per month.
• Those in search of a dedicated server plan for their site. Bluehost remains one of the few services in the market still offering dedicated server-based hosting.

• You may have to compromise a bit on performance as Bluehost’s plans are shared-based, and their uptime tends to fluctuate a bit similar to other beginner web hosting services. 
• You’ll have to manage your site’s maintenance yourself because Bluehost is not a fully managed hosting service like Kinsta or Cloudways.
• If your requirement is to host numerous sites on a single web hosting license or more than 5 sites, you might face issues here because even Bluehost’s high-end plan allows installing only 5 sites with a single license.
• If your site is already hosted on another hosting service and you’re thinking of migrating to Bluehost, remember that Bluehost no longer provides free migration services. Now, you might have to pay up to $149 per site for migration. Their migration policy is very confusing, They do offer free migration if your website qualifies.
• Bluehost’s data centers are limited to a few locations – India, USA, London, and China. If you’re considering choosing a data center from somewhere else, you might face issues with Bluehost. Also, during the purchase of your data center, you can choose it only once, and you cannot change it in the future. So, think about it carefully before making a final decision.

Pros:

• Bluehost has really good customer support compared to other hosting companies with similar prices. You can contact them in many languages, and they have phone support.
• From 2024, Bluehost has started offering hosting for just one month. This option was not available before.
• Starting with Bluehost is easy & affordable
• Free Domain name for 1 year
• 1-Click WordPress installation
• Free SSL certificate
• Daily backups and fully secured
• 24/7 customer support
• Free CDN
• Daily automated backups for 1st year

Cons:

• If your site isn’t qualify for free migration, they charge $149 extra for this additional service. I Must say, It is a huge drawback of Bluehost.
• Bluehost does not give any guarantee related to uptime.
• Hidden pricing is another major disadvantage of Bluehost. Your final pricing may differ from your chosen plan because Bluehost offers many features like domain privacy, daily backups, etc., as paid add-ons, which can increase your annual charges.
• The charges for a 1-month hosting plan are high.
• Bluehost does not offer automatic backups in the basic plan.
• Renewal price is much higher
• You don’t get the option to choose the data center manually

Bluehost should be a first choice for low-traffic sites whose priority is budget and good performance. Regardless of any uptime guarantee, I found their servers uptime 99.978% and relatively fast. Bluehost comes with a free domain name, phone support, and a 30-day money-back policy. One should be aware of the extra charges associated with paid add-ons, migration, and those features that are complementary only for the first year.

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Bluehost: What You Need to Know

Bluehost is a web hosting and domain registration service that has been around for more than a decade and is recommended by WordPress itself. 

There was a time when Bluehost was highly sought after. However, in recent years, due to negative customer reviews, Bluehost’s reputation took a hit. Many customers faced problems, particularly with their hidden pricing (which I’ll discuss later).

But it seems like Bluehost is making an effort to regain its position in the market. Just a month ago, they reduced their shared hosting prices and have now become the most affordable web hosting service provider for a single website.

They offer a wide range of web hosting services, including Shared Hosting, Online Store Hosting, VPS hosting, and Dedicated hosting. What we like most about Bluehost offerings is that they have plans suitable for every kind of need. 

Their Shared WordPress plans should be preferred when the budget is a problem and you are happy to share server resources among multiple sites. Perfect for small business sites, blogs, etc. Features like WordPress auto install, plugin updates, 1 click backup, etc have been given.

They also offer a special plan for Online Stores, helping you set up a fully functional digital eCommerce store with features like booking, appointments, and online payments. This is a big plus for small businesses aiming to grow in the digital eCommerce world without hefty expenses.

For websites with high traffic or over 100k monthly visitors, you might consider VPS or dedicated server plans. But from what I know, Bluehost’s main customers mostly go for shared hosting. Websites with high traffic often prefer services like Kinsta or Cloudways as they are considered more secure compared to Bluehost, especially for top-tier hosting needs.

So this is a basic overview of Bluehost web hosting. Let’s move ahead.

Bluehost Overview (Features)	Details
Pricing	Starts from $1.99/mo
Free Perks	Free Domain Name, Free CDN, Free SSL, Free Manual Backups
Uptime	99.974% (Last 30 Days)
Speed Score	97 (Desktop), 82 (Mobile)
Refund Policy	30 Days
Payment Methods	All International Debit & Credit Cards, PayPal UPI
Migration	Paid service
Bandwidth	Unmetered
Customer Support	Live chat, Telephone 24*7, Ticket Email System, Knowledge Base
Backups & Restoration	Daily automated backups & 1 click restoration via codeguard
Hosting Plans	Shared, WordPress, Managed WordPress, VPS, Dedicated, WooCommerce
cPanel	Included
Domain Registration	Possible
TrustPilot Ratings	4.2/5

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Bluehost Performance Test Results

Website Performance directly impacts the website’s SEO and rankings in SERP. Your site must be loaded at lightning-fast speed to deliver a better user experience. For this, you need a high-performance web host server.

Let’s check out the Bluehost performance test.

Bluehost Speed Test:

To find out what Bluehost has for you in terms of speed,

I have measured the real-time speed of a blog hosted on Bluehost for over some years now. I used the top 3 website performance testing tools: GTMetrix, Pingdom, and Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze the speed performance.

Bluehost GTMetrix speed test result:

I got 97% overall performance and below 1.0s loading time, which is just amazing.

Bluehost Pingdom speed test result:

I got a 91 (A) performance grade and .51s loading time, faster than the GTMetrix results.

Bluehost Google PageSpeed Results:

I got a 94-speed score for the desktop and 82 for the mobile version, which is impressive too.

Bluehost Uptime Test:

Many hosting companies promise a 99.99% uptime guarantee; Bluehost is one of them.

I want to verify the bluehost’s claims. I have set the uptime tracking for my blog hosted on Bluehost with the help of the UptimeRobot tool.

Here is a detailed look at Bluehost server uptime. Surprisingly, it was 100%.

You can see in the image above it’s been more than 1 year since I started tracking, and there was no downtime recorded.

This is just performance proof of one Bluehost-hosted site.

Bluehost Uptime Test By by HRANK

I used the real uptime tracker by HRANK to reverify the Bluehost uptime.

HRANK is a trusted platform that tracks millions of Bluehost websites every day, to bring you objective statistics about every hosting provider.

Here is the Bluehost uptime for the last 30 days: 99.978%, which is almost 99.9% as claimed by Bluehost itself.

Bluehost Server Response Time:

The Data Center (Server location) directly impacts the server response time. The closer the server is to your audience’s IP address, the better the website loading speed they will get.

Unlike other web hosting services, Bluehost never disclosed its server location to users. Yes, they won’t allow you to choose it as well during the website configuration process.

So, it’s not possible for me to disclose my Bluehost test site server location. But I can guess my server location is somewhere in the USA, as I purchased my hosting from Bluehost.com

Quick Note: Bluehost offers a free Cloudflare CDN integration, which means you don’t have to worry about server location. Cloudflare CDN ensures your visitors will get your webpage delivered from the closest data center possible.

To check server response time, I have used this amazing tool BitCatcha. This tool basically sends automated traffic to the site from various locations, which helps us to determine how well the Bluehost site performed in all scenarios.

• Read: How to Speed up Your WordPress Site: Top 10 Hacks

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Top 7 Benefits To Consider Bluehost

I found the following benefits after testing and analyzing each aspect of Bluehost hosting.

1. Starting with Bluehost is easy & affordable

Starting with Bluehost is a hassle-free and cost-effective way to launch your website. You can get your website up and running with their starting plan at just $1.99 per month.

With accessible pricing, user-friendly tools, and the flexibility to expand as your website grows, Bluehost is an excellent choice for individuals and businesses to establish an online presence without breaking the bank.

Whether you are searching for shared web hosting for your small site or dedicated server hosting for a big complex site, you will get both at affordable pricing. Plus, domain registration is free for a year & domain transfer can also be done from a single place.

2. Easy to Install Websites

Bluehost provides 1-Click WordPress installation for popular website-building platforms like WordPress. You don’t need to have advanced technical skills or coding knowledge to set up your website. You can install and set up your WordPress blog and website with just a few clicks.

Bluehost also provides a user-friendly control panel (cPanel) that simplifies the website management process. You can easily navigate through various settings, install applications, manage email accounts, and perform other essential tasks related to your website.

3. Free Website Migration

Quick Note: Bluehost recently started charging for the “Migration done by agents” service. For one site you have to pay $145. If your site is eligible for the free migration then they will do it for free. You can clear this confusion through a live chat.

If you want to do it for free you can do it with any free WordPress migration plugin like All in WP Migration.

If you are eligible for free migration then, Migrating from one hosting provider to another can be time-consuming and complex, especially if you lack technical skills.

However, if you’re dissatisfied with your current hosting and wish to switch to Bluehost, you’re in luck. Bluehost offers a free website migration service, moving your sites from your current hosting provider to their servers.

I found the Bluehost migration service extremely easy.

Here are the simple steps to migrate your website to Bluehost.

Bluehost provides only 1 WordPress website migration upon the purchase of a Bluehost hosting account. You can migrate the website for free within 30 days after your Bluehost account purchase.

Personally, I feel only 1 free migration seems somewhat limited. Bluehost should consider providing up to five free migrations, especially for their higher-end hosting plans.

You also get access to a free domain for 1 year with every Bluehost Hosting. You can register a free com/net/org/info/EU domain for the first year.

It helps you save an extra $10 to $20 and also avoids the hassles of DNS configuration.

4. Plenty of security measures are available

I found almost all security measures available inside Bluehost work on an automated basis. If you are a beginner, then don’t have to worry about configuration and all.

The list of Bluehost Security Features that safeguard your site 24*7 are:

• Resource Protection
• CodeGuard Automated Backups
• Website Firewall
• 24*7 Malware Scanning
• 24*7 Network Monitoring
• Domain Privacy
• Spam Protection
• Hotlink Protection
• SiteLock

5. Free CDN & SSL Certificate:

Bluehost offers a free CDN (Content Delivery Network) as part of its hosting services that helps to improve the performance and loading speed of your website.

You also get a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate that ensures the data transferred between your website and your visitors is secure.

SSL certificate from Bluehost ensures the security and trustworthiness of your website, positively impacting SEO, and the overall user experience.

You don’t need to be tech-savvy to use CDN and SSL certificates. With just one click, you can enable CDN and SSL certificates on your website.

6. 24/7 Fast customer support

Bluehost is known for its speedy customer support, ensuring immediate issue resolution. You get 24/7 live chat support in addition to email and phone support.

I have personally tested their live chat support. The customer representative joined the chat within seconds, displaying their readiness to provide assistance..

Along with this, you get a vast knowledge base full of articles, guides, how-tos, and YouTube Channel on everything related to web hosting from the bluehost to resolve your issues.

7. Daily Automated Backups:

Some users had previously raised concerns about the lack of daily backup options. After that, Bluehost introduced a feature called “Daily Automated Backups” through Codeguard in all of its plans except Basic.

You get a daily automated backup for free for the 1st year. After that, you can purchase CodeGuard Backup for an additional $2.99 per month fee.

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Bluehost Pricing Review & Evaluation

Bluehost’s pricing depends on the type of hosting you choose, but as everyone knows, Bluehost’s shared WordPress plans are the most popular. That’s why we are reviewing those plans specifically.

Did you know that Bluehost’s pricing has changed since January 2024? Now, you can see shared plans starting from $1.99/month, which used to start at $2.95/month. Due to this change, Bluehost has now topped the list for the lowest charges for entry-level hosting for a single website.

Similar to other services, the longer the tenure you choose on Bluehost, the more money you can save. Bluehost offers hosting plans in three tenures: 1 Month, 12 Months, and 36 Months.

Here is the side-by-side comparison of each Bluehost hosting plan;

Which Bluehost Plan to Choose?	Basic Plan	Plus	Choice Plus	Online Store	Pro Plan
Pricing	Costs $1.99/mo	Costs $3.99/mo	Costs $2.65/mo	Costs $6.25/mo	Costs $9.95/mo
Free Domain (1 Year)	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Websites	10 Sites	20 Websites	50 Websites	50 Websites	100 Websites
Website Space	10 GB NVMe	20 GB NVMe	50 GB NVMe	50 GB NVMe	100 GB NVMe
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
eCommerce Features	Not Included	Not Included	Not Included	Included (Store Analytics & $450 Worth eCommerce plugins)	Not Included
AI Site Creation Tools	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Free SSL	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Free CDN	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Domain Privacy	Not included	Not included	Included	Included	Included
Free Daily Backups	Not included	Not included	Included	Included	Included
Automatic WP installation	Not Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Dedicated IP	Not included	Not included	Not included	Not included	Not included
Discount	75% OFF	67% OFF	81% OFF	67% OFF	52% OFF
Best For:	1-2k traffic per month	2-5k traffic per month	5k - 30k traffic per month	5k - 30k traffic per month	30k - 100k traffic per month

Which Bluehost Hosting Plan is more money-oriented?

Out of all Bluehost hosting plans, The Choice Plus plan seems more fair in terms of money & features. Why?

Because, unlike the Basic plan, it offers multiple website installations, 30 GB extra SSD, Phone support, Free daily backups, Free domain privacy, and other perks. This plan is suitable for a new and growing website (let’s say 1-2 year-old). And its performance is also decent. 

The performance of the Basic plan is below average, and your site visitors will face slow loading time issues.

If you want pre-built eCommerce store features in your web hosting then an Online Store plan should be highly recommended. Their Pro plan is optimized for high traffic, it is a little bit expensive and only suitable for those who can handle over $100/year in the expense of hosting.

Bluehost also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee that allows you to try their services risk-free for 30 days.

Renewal Prices & Hidden Pricing

Despite cheaper plans, Bluehost has a bad renewal cost policy and some hidden charges.

You might think that the pricing table you saw for the plans is final, but that’s not the case. 

Your overall billing could be different because of hidden pricing associated with Bluehost plans:

1.) Addons Extra Charges:

When you choose the Basic plan, you will notice additional add-ons on the checkout page.

• eCommerce feature addon: Cost an additional $59/year  
• CodeGuard daily backups addon: Cost an additional $59/year
• Single domain SSL: Cost an additional $39.96/year
• SiteLock Essentials: Cost an additional $35.88/year
• Yoast SEO: Cost an additional $23.88/year
• Professional Email: $2.49/mo after 3-month free trial ends

If you look closely, you can avoid extra expenses by skipping some of these add-ons. However, avoiding it for daily automated backups can be a bit challenging. 

That’s why there might be a difference in your overall billing. These add-ons are available in all plans and can directly impact your final billing.

2.) Extra Renewal Charges

As a new user, the plans you are currently seeing will change once your first tenure is complete. In short, renewals will cost you almost double. This is a fine thing because every other web hosting service gives discounts to new users and charges regular pricing for renewals.

Pricing	Basic	Choice Plus	Online Store	Pro
Regular (12 Months)	$1.99/mo	$3.49/mo	$6.99/mo	$8.99/mo
Renewal (12 Months)	$3.99/mo	$8.99/mo	$15.99/mo	$19.99/mo
Regular (36 Months)	$2.99/mo	$3.99/mo	$7.99/mo	$9.99/mo
Renewal (36 Months)	$6.99/mo	$11.99/mo	$17.99/mo	$22.99/mo

Furthermore, Bluehost’s plans include many free features that are free only for the first year; afterward, you’ll have to pay extra for these features. 

For example:

• Free Domain: $10/year afterward
• Professional Email: $2.49/mo afterward
• Daily Website Backups: $59/year afterward
• Domain Privacy: $11.88/year afterward

You must have understood why we were saying that Bluehost has hidden charges. So keep aware of them before swiping your credit card.

Quick Note: Compared to Bluehost, We have found zero hidden charges with Hostinger web hosting. Check out my 2024 Hostinger Review to more.

3.) Migration Charges

Bluehost is used to provide free migrations. However, things have changed. In 2024, they now state that if your site failed to meet the free migration criteria, then you have to take Bluehost’s paid migration service. For this, You will need to pay $149 per site.

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Other Customer Reviews & Rating

Bluehost has received mixed reviews from customers across the web. While one segment of users has expressed satisfaction with the service, another segment has rated it poorly.

Here are a few of Bluehost reviews from real customers on the major review platforms;

4.2 out of 5 score on Trustpilot

On Trustpilot, Bluehost gets 4.2 ratings out of 5 from over 9100 customers.

About 66% of users give it 5 star rating. On the other side, 26% of users also give it a poor rating of 1 star.

Bluehost Customer rating On Capterra;

On Capterra, Bluehost got an excellent rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars.

Bluehost Customer rating On G2;

Bluehost has received an average rating of 3.6 out of 5 from over 250 reviews on G2. The diverse ratings indicate that customers have had varying experiences with Bluehost, with some expressing satisfaction and others experiencing issues or concerns.

I have read a lot of Bluehost reviews on different platforms to summarize all the positive and negative feedback from the customers.

Plus Points:

• Users are highly impressed with the Bluehost performance & security they get at affordable pricing.
• Not a single person feels difficulty in operating the Bluehost cPanel or completing the onboarding process.
• Users are die-hard fans of Bluehost customer support. You can contact Bluehost even in Midnight, and they will respond in seconds for sure.

Negative Points:

• Plenty of users have an issue with their confusion about what features or add-ons they should install or not. Bluehost has tons of tools in its marketplace, and because of extra charges, users won’t feel motivated to buy them.
• 80% of them are complaining about the absence of manual data center selection options.
• Many customers complain about the higher renewal charges.

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Bluehost is an excellent option for beginners, but to explore other top recommendations, see our best web hosting for beginners guide.

Top 3 Bluehost Alternatives

So many web hosting services are available in the market. If you still feel Bluehost is not for you, here are best Bluehost alternatives you can go for;

1. Hostinger

If you’re really tight on budget, then you can choose Hostinger, which starts from only $2.69 per month. Not just in starting, Hostinger can save your pocket in further years because of low renewal costs compared to Bluehost.

Unlike Bluehost, Hostinger allows you to manually pick a data center of your choice, which ultimately is another good reason to go with Hostinger instead of Bluehost. We are using Hostinger on one of our side blogs, and we genuinely found it very cost-effective.

• Read: Hostinger Coupon Code 2024: Up to 90% Discount + Free Domain
• Read: Bluehost vs Hostinger: Which one is better in 2024?

2. A2 Hosting

If budget is not an issue, then you can go for A2 hosting, having Turbo Servers featuring up to 20X faster page loads compared to competing web hosting services. The shared plans of A2 are more rich feature-wise than Bluehost shared plans, starting from just $2.99/month

 3. HostArmada

HostArmada is one of the best web hosts and a great alternative to Bluehost Hosting. HostArmada uses cutting-edge Cloud Technology to provide faster, more secure, and affordable web hosting solutions. HostArmada shared hosting offers 3 different plans starting from $2.49/month

Few More Web Hosting Services You Might Wants to Consider:

• MilesWeb Review 2024: Is This Hosting Worth The Hype And Money?
• WPX Hosting Review With 50% OFF: Our 8 Years Hosting Experience
• ChemiCloud Review: Honest Opinion
• InMotion Hosting Review 2024 with Uptime & Speed Test
• Cloudways Review 2024: Is It the Best Managed Cloud Host?
• Liquid Web Review: Experience, Pros & Cons, Performance & More
• WordPress Blog Hosting Review [Is it Worth it?]

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FAQs About Bluehost Web Hosting

Who is Bluehost For? Final Words on Bluehost

After testing & reviewing Bluehost hosting in-depth, I can say beginners should give a shot to Bluehost. All the required resources with a high performance server are available. The technical hurdles won’t bother them at all as everything (from wordpress installation to backups) is automated here.

Starting with Bluehost is easy, you just need a couple of bucks for onboarding.

For high traffic requirement sites or eCommerce sites, Bluehost top tier performance oriented plans are available. There won’t be any lack of resources. 99.99% uptime ensures smooth web page deliverability across all parts of the world. 

Avoid Bluehost if you are looking to purchase hosting for a year only. Purchase the hosting for 36 months, which will give you a relief from Bluehost’s most disappointing thing: High renewal cost.

Do you have any more questions about Bluehost Hosting? Let us know in the comments.