So, why in the world should you be using a Bluehost for your new WordPress sites? Is this provider still good in 2020?
I keep on stumbling upon this question on pretty much any web hosting related forums and Q&A sites.
Bluehost has long been a choice number #1 when looking for a best place to host a WordPress site. There’s been a few good reasons for this provider to shine on a WordPress arena for the past 10 years.
The question is – should you even consider using a Bluehost for your WordPress blog or a small to medium business site?
Let’s find out if Bluehost is still worth to consider as a reliable and fast WordPress hosting solution.
What is Bluehost, and why is it so popular?
Bluehost has been around for many years. Since you’ve probably spent some time already to research the best hosting companies for your upcoming WordPress site, I bet you already familiar with this name.
Now it’s time to learn some brief history behind the Bluehost company.
Matt Heaton and his team were the first ones who established the Bluehost company in 2003, in a Salt Lake City, Utah in the US.
Prior to Bluehost, Matt already had an experience with 2 other less known hosting companies(0catch.com, 50megs.com) back in 1996.
In 2010, EIG successfully acquired the Bluehost company. Starting from than, there’s been some rumors about hosting quality degradation. A lot of negative reviews and bad feedback have been flying around the web.
Indeed, EIG had some problems in their early years, and some other hosting brands they own, are not recommended, as they suffer from significant page speed issues.
In regards to a Bluehost, our recent experience has proven this provider as a reliable, fast, and affordable WordPress hosting solution. With that in mind, let’s find out some of the reasons to start using Bluehost as your primary hosting service in 2020.
Why does Bluehost work so well, when used for a WordPress powered web-sites?
While Bluehost company offers various types of hosting plans, ranging from shared, to a more expensive and more sophisticated dedicated server plans, it’s main area of expertise is a WordPress hosting. Even their shared hosting plans are often marketed as the best plans for the WordPress sites.
In fact, since you are interested in Bluehost for WordPress, you may have found a lot of articles and videos, demonstrating a Bluehost as a solution for the WordPress. This provider is mostly famous among bloggers, small to medium e-commerce business owners, and other WordPress users alike.
What does that all mean for us? It’s easy to guess, Bluehost is a specialized platform for a WordPress. In fact, it’s even listed as one of only 3 recommended WordPress hosting providers on the official WordPress.org site. Bluehost is listed as number #1 (though that might just be an alphabetical order 🙂 ).
Now, as you already aware that Bluehost is specifically tuned for a WordPress, here are some more reasons to use this provider for your site:
#1 Bluehost is really cheap
When it comes to choosing the WordPress plan, Bluehost simply shines. Obviously, you won’t be looking for a hilariously cheap providers that won’t be even close to delivering a smooth site speed and stability. With that said, you don’t wanna pay $30 monthly for a Managed WordPress site either.
In fact, what you wanna be looking for, is something less than $10 per month, but not cheaper than $2. Bluehost is something exactly in this range.
Medium tier plan called “Plus” is offered for just $5.45 per month, if you choose to pre-pay for 3-Years! While this may sound a lot, think again – you are paying this amount to have a reliable hosting with multiple web-sites and unlimited SSD storage for the next 3-YEARS!
If you are looking for a cheaper option, Bluehost also offers a “Basic” plan with 1 web-site for just $2.95 per month if pre-paying for 3-Years.
All depends on your needs. For me personally, the “Plus” plan looks much more reasonable, since I have multiple sites that need to be up and running!
#2 It makes installing the WordPress a breeze
I dealt with different hosting providers, until I stopped my choice on Bluehost. You will find a few competitors that offer similar set of features, and about the same stability and page speed.
What I noticed special in Bluehost, is their account dashboard with 1-click app installer. Other providers have an overly complicated user interface for installing a WordPress.
Bluehost’s 1-click WordPress installation works like a magic wand. Basically, you just choose – “Install a WordPress”, fill in a few form fields, and click “Install NOW!”. This is basically it. After 3-5 minutes, your site is up and running. No additional actions, like setting up a domain name servers, are required, given you’ve chosen to get a free domain name from Bluehost (will talk about it later).
#3 Bluehost has recently upgraded their storage devices (SSD)
As of 2019, Bluehost has completed their transitioning from a slower HDD storage to a modern, high-speed SSD devices. It comes with no additional cost to you, since they include the SSD feature in every shared plan, even in the basic one. Isn’t it a good reason to go with a Bluehost straight away?
#4 Free SSL certificate
Let’s be honest. Most web-hosts grant the ability to install the Let’s Encrypt issued SSL certificates nowadays. This is not something unique to a Bluehost.
Still, it’s worth to mention that Bluehost provides an automatic Let’s Encrypt certificate renewal. Some other hosts would require you to manually set up and renew this certificate, because it’s a free SSL.
Bluehost deals nicely with the SSL. You just check the “Install SSL” option during site’s initial set-up, and forget about dealing with renewals for good.
#5 WordPress optimized server setup
Bluehost utilized a modern web-server architecture, including the modern PHP 7 version, and the fastest NGINX instead of Apache. These technologies are nicely tied together by Bluehost tech gurus to deliver an outstanding response time and page loading speed.
In 2020, the faster web-site wins the SEO ranking battle (given other SEO factors, such as keywords, and article structure are in place).
#6 Free Domain name for one year
In case you are just starting a brand new web-site, and still don’t have a domain name yet, here is the Good News: Bluehost offers a free domain name for the first year, upon signing up.
In fact, many other WordPress hosts do also offer this benefit. With that said, about half of hosting providers do miss this nice addition.
It’s just good to know, Bluehost decided to give that free domain name to every new user. Just one more good reason to choose the Bluehost.
#7 Huge storage space
Most of my WordPress sites take only about 1 GB of disk space. I don’t actually put a lot of media items in my site, that’s why any hosting provider with at least 10 GB of disk space, would work just fine, as I’ll be having a reserved area for future content.
While 10 GB is a pretty good hosting storage space with SSD drive, and it works for many bloggers, I’ve decided to migrate from SiteGround to a Bluehost, to get more SSD storage space.
Even though, I don’t have a lot of files to utilize Bluehosts’ large 50 GB storage, I am planning to add a lot of high quality graphics later on. That’s why I feel pretty much satisfied because of the bigger storage area for my site.
So, basically, if you want to have a WordPress site with a lot of high-res content in future, it’s gonna be beneficial for you to go with the Bluehost.
#8 24/7 customer support? You are going to have all your questions answered
Though, I personally never had any reason to contact a Bluehost’s customer support, those who did, were highly satisfied.
Bluehost is a highly experienced WordPress hosting company with a long history. Can such huge hosting company last long without having a proper customer satisfaction department?
Not at chance! That’s why, Bluehost offers a 24/7 Worldwide customer support via email, chat and even over the phone.
WordPress experts would be happy to assist, should you encounter any trouble, or simply need some help with your site setup.
#9 Multiple databases with one hosting account
Bluehost is so generous to offer 20 MySQL databases with a single hosting account. Pay no more.
You might want to have different databases swapped instantaneously within your site. Thanks to Bluehost’s multiple databases feature, now it is done with ease, and at no extra cost to you.
#10 Money Back Guarantee
No company that takes client’s money, would be taken seriously without having a fair refund policy.
With Bluehost – you are getting a 30-days no questions asked money back guarantee. Actually, Bluehost would ask you to fill in a refund form, but you can always skip it, and proceed to getting your money back.
Having that said, you shouldn’t have any worries. Bluehost won’t let your WordPress site down. That means, you will almost never want to quit the Bluehost.
For years, clients choose to stay with this provider, to ensure their WordPress based-online business always stays online.
#11 UpTime is just great with Bluehost
When browsing through a home page of pretty much any hosting provider for WordPress, you are likely to see something like this: “98% or 100% uptime guarantee).
Uptime is the percentage of time over one year period, when your site goes down.
Any respected hosting company would offer you with something close to 100% uptime.
High uptime is especially crucial for sites that must always be up and running to never miss a new visitor.
Bluehost is honest with their up-time. They claim to keep your site up and running for 99.9% of total time during 365 days. If this promise is not kept – you are eligible for a refund for those months that had uptime decrease.
In my usage experience, Bluehost never failed to hold the 99.9% uptime.
#12 Fast loading speed
Bluehost powered WordPress sites never had any issues with the page loading speed. While this is something that any trusted WordPress provider would offer, there’s still a lot of scam in this regards nowadays (in 2020).
Bluehost, will ensure an acceptable site response time, to make sure you never loose the SEO ranking because of server lag. This is especially true, when running a US targeted site, because Bluehost’s server farm is mostly located in the US.
Bottom line
Why would you ever choose a Bluehost to run your WordPress site?
You’ve already seen the key parameters that bring a Bluehost in top #5 or even top #3 of the best shared WordPress hosting companies.
Bluehost offers a solid user experience when working with the dashboard, as well as the latest version of cPanel.
Site loading speed, and the uptime are quite good for the shared hosting provider in $5-$10 price range.
50GB of SSD storage is more than enough for any single WordPress site. If you need more – there is a “Plus” plan that makes your storage space unmetered. Bandwidth (read “amount of monthly visits”) is also unlimited.
If you want to know how Bluehost compares against another similarly priced and feature-rich hosting provider called the SiteGround – kindly check the review and comparison of the Bluehost vs SiteGround.
