Bluehost Hosting Review for 2022
Bluehost is a reputable and reliable company that offers powerful and inexpensive web hosting plans.
BlueHost offers website hosting plans in several categories such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, etc.
However, for the purpose of this review, we will only be looking at a few of their plans primarily related to eCommerce stores in an effort to scale.
For example, we'll be looking at the smallest WooCommerce shared hosting plan for businesses that implement the popular WordPress plugin, as well as the various WordPress hosting plans offered through Bluehost.
Now that you have a general idea of hosting for your business, keep reading to learn more about how Bluehost can save you money and time when building your e-commerce website. The goal is to create a fast, secure, and reliable online store, and Bluehost provides for all of the above.
Bluehost Pros and Cons
In a world where countless companies are vying for your money, there are dozens of providers offering a host of additional bonuses to attract new customers, including email accounts, guaranteed uptime, or a free domain name.
Bluehost stands out as one of the best hosting companies out there for a host of important reasons. The brand offers exciting hosting for businesses on a budget and an excellent level of reliability. However, Bluehost also has drawbacks.
Positives:
- Excellent and affordable prices, ideal for businesses that have a limited amount of money to spend on the performance of their websites.
- WordPress integration means you can easily set up a site with one of the world's most popular CMS solutions.
- Setup and education is simple with Bluehost. You have many resources designed to help you get the most out of the service.
- Bluehost also provides excellent customer support. This means that if something goes wrong with your site for whatever reason, you have the advice you need.
- Plugins and extensions are everywhere with Bluehost. You can unlock a full suite of products, with shared hosting, domain names, managed WordPress hosting, and more.
Negatives:
There may be additional costs when using Bluehost, such as add-ons to your checkout cart.
Storage isn't great for Bluehost, especially on the basic plan, which leaves you with very little space for content.
The backup tools, warranties, and extra peace of mind tools you get from Bluehost aren't as great as what you might find elsewhere.
Bluehost Pricing Review
Let's take a closer look at the kind of features you get from this web hosting service, depending on the price you choose.
Shared hosting is usually available for $7.99 per month, but Bluehost often offers discounts, so you only pay around $2.95. If you're on a budget and need the basics for a smaller website, Bluehost's shared hosting is very affordable.
Keep in mind that shared hosting is more for hobby sites than professional e-commerce stores.
Since Bluehost offers a wide range of offers, it separates them into certain sets of plans. The most popular plans they sell are known as shared hosting accounts, which means you will be sharing server space with other websites. It's a great starting point for businesses just starting out, and it's the cheapest option. You can see the shared hosting prices below:
- Basic - For $7.99 you get one website, 50GB of space, one domain, five parked domains, and 25 subdomains. You also get free SSL to protect transaction information on your online store.
- Plus - For $10.99 you get unlimited websites, unlimited SSD storage, free SSL certificate, unlimited domains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, and spam blockers.
- Choice Plus - For $14.99 you get unlimited websites, unlimited space, unlimited domains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, SSL certificate, anti-spam tools, domain privacy and backing up the site.
- Pro - For $23.99 you get unlimited websites, unlimited space, unlimited domains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, SSL, anti-spam tools, domain privacy, backup site and a dedicated IP address.
Bluehost Dedicated Hosting Pricing
Dedicated hosting is usually the most expensive option for those looking for absolute power and control when it comes to running their website. If you need extra tech support and incredible space, dedicated hosting is the right choice for you. BlueHost Dedicated Hosting comes with everything you need to thrive online.
Performance, security, speed, and technical features are much more powerful in dedicated hosting plans than anything else. Just like other Bluehost hosting types, you can choose from three dedicated hosting plans, which range in price from around $119.99 per month to $209.99 per month.
Remember that Bluehost offers a discount on the starting price in most cases. This means you can save a little money when you first sign up. The three packages available include:
- Standard: $79.99 per month, renews at $119.99 - Comes with 4 cores, 500 GB storage, 5 TB bandwidth, 4 GB RAM, 3 IP addresses.
- Upgraded: $99.99 per month, renewing at $159.99 per month - Comes with 4 cores, 1TB storage, 10TB bandwidth, 8GB RAM, 4 IPs.
- Premium: $119.99 rolling to $209.99 per month - Comes with 5 IPs, 1TB storage, 4 cores, 16GB RAM, 15TB bandwidth.
Bluehost Features That Can Help You With Ecommerce?
As you may have noticed in the pricing section, not all plans are suitable for online stores.
I'm sure a smaller shared hosting plan would be fine for a very small e-commerce store, but you usually want to get past that as soon as possible.
I recommend you take a look at Bluehost's e-commerce plans. If it looks like you can do most things (WooCommerce and installing themes), you might be better off skipping the higher price. However, you should keep in mind that you will lose the free SSL.
Here are the best features that mainly help in e-commerce:
1. Bluehost Migration and Direct Installs
One of the best parts about Bluehost is that you don't usually need to know much about development, or hosting for that matter, to get it all with an ecommerce hosting plan. The company provides support for migrating from an old site to Bluehost, and you can choose a plan where tools like WooCommerce and ManageWP are already installed.
Not to mention, if you plan to run your site on WordPress, Bluehost's backend has an easy one-click install button, which speeds up the process for just a few minutes. After installation, it gives you your WordPress login credentials and you can start selling online.
When it comes to eCommerce stores, all WooCommerce plans come with the popular plugin already installed on your host. Although the plugin is not difficult to install, Bluehost takes care of it for you. This is especially useful if you have minimal experience with WordPress to begin with.
There are many one-click installs or managed install offers from Bluehost. All you have to do is go to the dashboard to see what the host can do for you.
2. Bluehost Review: Nice Themes
Bluehost has plans that offer free themed products. For example, eCommerce pricing plans offer installs of the popular storefront theme. It doesn't save you any money (since the theme is free), but it takes the process of building the online store even further.
If you want access to premium themes for free, the WP Pro Hosting package is the way to go. Plans tend to change, but Bluehost currently gives you 100 WordPress themes with the WP Pro plan. It's a bargain, considering you'll typically pay between $50 and $100 per theme, and it comes with a fully managed WordPress site.
3. Allocate IP addresses
A dedicated IP address is a good idea for most online stores. This is because online starter stores are more likely to run on shared servers.
Shared servers host many other websites, so you may find that some sites on that server store all the resources. Sure, Bluehost solves that problem, but a dedicated IP address protects you from those annoying neighbors because you won't have to share the same IP address anymore.
This should essentially improve your website performance, as well as better SEO and user experience.
4. Marketing and PPC Credits
Bluehost is known for foregoing pay-per-click marketing on almost all hosting plans. This is especially true for e-commerce plans, as many of them have between $50 and $200 in marketing credits.
PPC credits are based on driving traffic to your site using search engine ads. You will pay for advertisements with your credits and try to promote something like a new product or product line.
Marketing Credits are also meant to let the company know about your business, so you should check how many Marketing Credits you receive with each plan.
5. Domain Privacy
It depends on the plan you choose, but you always have the option to pay for domain privacy. The eCommerce plans are great because they all come with built-in domain privacy.
What does it mean?
When you buy a domain, your personal information is saved online. This information includes things like your name, address and contact details. The reason this exists is for better communication between site owners. However, many people dislike it because it invites spam.
Therefore, Bluehost offers to hide this information from other people and spammers and replaces your details with Bluehost's contact information. Usually this means that if a legitimate message appears about your site, Bluehost will let you know. However, most of them are spam, so you delete all of that from your inbox.
What about WooCommerce hosting?
Bluehost's managed WordPress hosting is perfect for anyone who really wants to get serious with their WordPress site. It is not a solution intended for amateurs who are new to the Internet. If you're looking for a way to grow and extend your website with e-commerce functionality, managed WordPress hosting might be the right choice.
If you sell online, you can also consider using the Bluehost plan which combines WordPress and WooCommerce. Starting at $5.95 per month at the time of writing, BlueHost WooCommerce hosting typically costs $13.99 per month.
WooCommerce hosting is easily the best option if you sell items online. There are even additional plans to consider. Here's what you get from each package:
- Starter: $13.99 per month ($5.95 with discount): Online store support, 1GB SSD storage, storefront theme, free SSL, domain and privacy protection.
- Plus: $17.99 per month ($7.95 off): Everything you get with Starter, including unlimited storage and unlimited online stores. You can also get Codeguard website backup for your store.
- Pro: $31.95/month ($11.95 discounted): Everything from the Plus plan, including Bluehost SEO tools, a privacy and security solution, and more.
WooCommerce has plans from Bluehost that are definitely worth considering if you can't stand any load time and downtime issues on your websites. It's unusual to see a WooCommerce package from a hosting provider, with few competitors like GoDaddy, Drupal, and HostGator offering similar solutions.
If you sell through WordPress and WooCommerce, these plans may not make sense to you. However, it's worth upgrading to a slightly more expensive plan if you can. This will give you more security features to work with.
Customer Support
Bluehost's support team is always kind and knowledgeable, which is great because they're usually available at all times. So if you have a question at 3am, just open a ticket or chat box to get your answer. Self-help resources are there to do your own research, and the company has forums for chatting with other users. Support is offered via phone, chat, and email, and you can always submit a ticket if you don't mind waiting 24 hours for a response.
In terms of quality support, Bluehost is the best you'll find, as their reps know what they're talking about and don't seem to refer you to other people if they can't figure out the problem. The thing is, you can rely on the first person you start talking to.
You can check the BlueHost website by clicking here.
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