Bluehost Hosting Services Review
One of the most popular names in the web hosting space is Bluehost Company. They specialize in offering comprehensive and easy-to-use hosting services to help people get their sites up and running within the shortest time possible.
Since its establishment, the company has grown and now hosts more than 2 million sites. Because of Bluehost’s partnership with WordPress, the biggest percentage of the sites hosted there are WordPress. It offers a once-click WordPress install in most of its hosting packages.
It is important to mention that Bluehost belongs to the Endurance International Group that is also associated with other top brands such as Constant Construct, iPage, and HostGator. This post is a comprehensive review of Bluehost to establish its features, hosting plans, pros & cons, and much more.
Bluehost performance
The most important factor when looking for a hosting service provider is performance. This can be gauged in terms of server uptime and speed. While there is no hosting service out there can assure you of 100% uptime, you should go for the highest possible levels. What is even more important is how effectively the hosting provider expert team fixes issues and gets sites up and running again.
At Bluehost, the company management promises 99.9% uptime to all clients. To enhance the performance, Bluehost has added the CloudFlare functionality for all the Bluehost accounts.
Even if you are using a shared hosting plan at Bluehost, the performance is still admirable. However, the company should consider installing cutting-edge technologies such as LiteSpeed that are making other brands more competitive.
The user interface
Bluehost has a very user-friendly control panel. By using cPanel design on its UI, it is very easy even for new users to manage one or several sites. This helps users to integrate multiple services based on their needs. You can easily access and manage emails, domains, databases, and install useful software such as Joomla and WordPress right from the cPanel.
The hosting provider has a drag-and-drop site builder that works like Weebly. This is very helpful for users who want to upgrade or build new sites. The control panel’s Mojo marketplace also allows users to download important CMS tools such as Drupal and Joomla.
To ensure that your site performance is even more enthralling, Bluehost provides automatic daily backups. This is a great fallback point in case something happens to the main website. You can also backup the website data and files manually.
The hosting service security
Bluehost has partnered with CloudFlare to offer enhanced security to all clients’ data and sites. The CloudFlare feature is particularly crucial for webmasters who require SSL to enhance their operation security against DDOS attacks. It also helps to protect malicious attacks such as SQL injection, and excessive bot crawling.
Bluehost took security to another level by implementing three anti-spamming tools for all the user plans. These tools, Apache Spam Assassin, Spam Hammer, and Spam Experts, help site owners to design and set filters for their emails. Other important security efforts used by Bluehost in its services include:
(a) 2-Factor Authentication. This is an optional feature that users are allowed to turn on to prevent illegal entry to the hosting account.
(b) Huge discount on SiteLock products. Bluehost provides a discount of up to 80% on SiteLock products that helps to keep the content as well as signup pages more secure.
Other security features in various plans help to protect passwords for directories, managing digital certificates, and preventing unauthorized access to private keys. You can also create IP address blacklist to block sites those that tried to attack your website. These security efforts by Bluehost have made its hosting services one of the best in the market today.
The customer support
All webmasters and site owners want to receive the best customer support from their hosting providers. Whether it is a clarification, the website is down, or issues with the hosting, the support should always be there to listen and address the issue professionally. Bluehost has installed multiple lines of communication that makes it easy to get help and operate like a pro.
If the issue you want addressed is not complex, the first option should be using the self-help section that comes with lots of info for clients. You can pull out related posts, blogs, and pre-answered questions from their databases.
Other levels of support include the live chat that allows you to talk directly with the support staff for immediate answers. If you were encountering a problem with your site, the support staff would walk you through on how to fix it. You can also reach the company for help on its direct phone lines or social media pages especially Twitter and Facebook.
The Bluehost hosting plans and costs
There are a number of hosting plans that clients can go for at Bluehost. You can opt for the shared, dedicated server, VPS, or optimized WordPress.
1) The shared plan: Unser the Bluehost shared plan, there are three options for clients to pick from. You can opt for the basic plan of $2.95/month, the plus plan of $5.45/month, or prime plan of $5.45/month. There is also a special plan referred as GoPro that costs $13.95/month.
2) VPS hosting plan: Under this plan, users get dedicated portion of the server as well as space and resources. There are four main options on this plan. You can go for the standard plan that costs $19.99/month, Enhanced plan at $29.99/month, Premium plan at $44.99/month or Ultimate plan at $59.99/month
3) The desiccated hosting plan: This means that your site is hosted on a private dedicated server. Though this plan has very good services, it comes at a very high cost. You can opt for the standard desiccated plan of $79.99/month, the enhanced plan of $99.99/month, or Premium plan for $119.99/month.
4) Other hoisting plans include the Optimized WordPress hosting plans and Cloud hosting that cost between $6.95/month to $49.99/month depending on personal preference.
To pick the best web hosting plan, it is important to factor crucial factors such as expected monthly traffic, the required bandwidth, the nature of the products, and vulnerabilities. You could also reach the Bluehost team for assistance. The good thing about these plans is they have a very wide range so that everyone can enjoy the services no matter the level of the business.
The pros of using Bluehost hosting services
The hosting company provides free domain for one year. This comes with the shared hosting plan.
It has premium anti-spam solutions for its clients.
Free unlimited email accounts for the top end plans.
Automatic daily backup.
Highly configured servers.
24/7 professional support.
Multiple user-access control.
Account isolation technology.
30-day money back guarantee.
Cons of using Bluehost hosting services
Though Bluehost indicates that it offers unlimited hosting there are some caps in different sections. For example, there is a 50,000 files limit for every account. The database tables are also capped at 1,000.
The discounted prices given by Bluehost are only good for the first year. When the plan is up for renewal after the first 12 months, you are required to pay for the non-discounted default price.
Bluehost only allow auto backups and site migrations with paid upgrades.
The final take
Bluehost is one of the best options for small enterprises and personal websites because it is affordable. However, it is less suitable for sites that attract very high traffic. If you are shopping for a hosting services provider, it is advisable to compare Bluehost with other competitors in the market.
