Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting services in the world because of their user friendliness, one-click WordPress installations, and a 100% in-house support team.
They offer low cost hosting plans for beginner and intermediate website owners. Their biggest drawback is the wait time for customer service.
Name: Bluehost
Website: Bluehost.com
Year founded: 2003
Entry-level pricing: $2.95/mo
Visit Bluehost.com (Starting at $7.99 $2.95/mo)
Bluehost is ideal for anyone looking for a simple all-in-one solution that is catered to beginning or intermediate bloggers or small business owners.
Features
While Bluehost works well for advanced users, it’s geared for beginners (same class as Hostgator, Siteground, iPage and FatCow).
They’re also the biggest brand of the Endurance International conglomerate (1), alongside hosting companies A Small Orange, iPage, FatCow and Hostgator.
Their user experience, from the moment you sign up with your free domain to the moment your site is ready to go is insanely fast. They’ve calculated the process well and eliminated all unnecessary steps.
Bluehost, because of their pressures to remain profitable, will also try to “upsale” you on many pointless upgrades, but they’re not as nearly as ruthless as GoDaddy.
The biggest one to be careful of is their “quick start” add-on (UPSALE, cough!) service. For $79.99, you get a 45-minute session on how to set up a website. Obviously, you should never take this offer. Instead, sign up, and then call their support, and you can get the same service as getting your “quick start” service.
They’re also a super-savvy PR company, partnering with Grassroots.org membership (2) to offer free hosting for nonprofits and charities.
Customer Support
Their customer support is really kind and helpful, it just takes awhile to get a hold of them.
This is still a better situation than most hosts (which outsource their support to Barbados or wherever), but still not as ideal as, say, Siteground, who has killer support and super fast responses.
Some people who have had extensive experience with Bluehost accounts over the years noted that calling in the midnight hours (if you’re in the USA as their support team is based in Provo, Utah) is a good time to reach their support fast, although it still doesn’t guarantee a prompt response. Some have waited 15 minutes before someone attended their Bluehost support call, even though the call was placed at 2 AM.
Reviews
We looked at several online review sites to find out what customers were saying about Bluehost. We found that customers were most satisfied with the features and easy set up but had an issue with support wait times:
“It takes only 5 mins to setup then you are good to go, it is really easy to transfer or point domains to Bluehost as well so a lot of time is saved.”
“After switching a lot of hosts, finally joined Bluehost. Everything was easy, in a matter of minutes all of my website is transferred to the new one.”
“The customer service, if you can call it that, is horrible. When trying to get ahold of tech support either by phone or by web, the wait time has never been less than 20min for me, and two times yesterday it was over 30 min.”
“As of the last year or so no longer can I just reach tech support easily with a simple call. Getting tech support is like torture. You have to wait forever to talk to someone.”
Pros
1) Bluehost offers multiple plans for shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting
2) Bluehost makes it super easy to scale or move accounts, if needed
3) Bluehost is a popular choice for low-cost web hosting because they offer reasonable prices for their shared hosting plan, which is the most popular
4) Bluehost has a separate hosting plan for WordPress, which is hosted on their VPS platform with custom architecture, so WordPress users can enjoy special attention and fast speed
5) Bluehost has an extensive knowledge base (3) that you can consult before submitting a support ticket, and its one of the better ones in the hosting industry
6) Bluehost has one of the biggest affiliate offers in the hosting space, paying out $65 per sale (and more, if you hit certain tiers) and paying out over $30k per month to some affiliate marketers (4)
7) Bluehost offers a cloud hosting option that is slightly more expensive than their shared option, but is worth it if you’re building a for-profit venture where upload speeds are crucial
Cons
1) Bluehost is known to have slow wait times when calling in support
2) Bluehost has no uptime guarantee published
3) Bluehost offers many unnecessary “upsales” such as a $79.99 “quick start”, seo services and overpriced website “builders”
Summary
Bluehost is one of the better options for beginners, which is why they’re one of the more popular web hosting companies. They offer multiple plans to accommodate all users, but are geared specifically towards beginners, as proven by their add-on services.