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BlueHost is on the market since 1996 and nowadays is one of the largest providers in the industry, hosting over 2 million websites.
This provider is praised for its affordable starter plans, the fact that it uses top-notch technology, it is reliable and trustworthy.
The company was originally founded by Matt Heaton, but under a different name. It became the web hosting company we all know only in 2003 and it is presently owned by Endurance International Group. It's been the official partner of WordPress since 2005.
BlueHost puts at the disposal of their clients all the types of hosting services you may need, from shared hosting, to cloud, WordPress, Woocommerce, VPS and dedicated hosting.
The shared hosting service offers four plans: basic, plus, prime and pro.
The basic plan costs $3,95/month and it includes benefits such as: 1 website, 50GB website space, unmetered bandwidth, one included domain, 5 parked domains and 25 subdomains, 5 email accounts and an email storage of 100 MB/account.
The plus plan can be purchased for $5,95/month and it includes the following: unlimited websites, unmetered website space and bandwidth, one included domain, unlimited parked domains, sub domains, email accounts and email storage, 1 SpamExperts, over $24/year in extras and $200 worth of marketing offers.
The prime plan is the real bargain, since it now has a generous discount and comes at the same price as the plus plan: $5,95/month, from its original price of $14,99/month. In this price BlueHost offers you unlimited websites, unmetered bandwidth and website space, one included domain and unlimited parked domains, sub domains, email accounts and email storage, $200 worth of marketing offers, over $80/year in extras, 1 SpamExperts, 1 Domain Privacy and SiteBackup Pro.
If you are willing to go the extra mile and pay 8 more dollars, you can sign up for the pro option. For $13,95/month you get all the goodies from the prime package, plus dedicated IP, SSL Certificate, Domain Privacy. All this services will be delivered on a higher performance server.
For more information on their web hosting services go to: https://www.bluehost.com/shared
BlueHost is very open source software friendly and comes with one-click installation scripts such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more. It has a cPanel interface that is very easy to use and intuitive.
One cool feature of the BlueHost is Use Weebly, which allows you to quickly build up a website, even if you are a beginner with no knowledge in programming languages. Weebly has hundreds of templates that will help you build up a simple site in a matter of minutes. You can create a slideshow, add an image gallery, a contact form, google maps and so on.
The shared hosting also comes with migration services, but we've got to admit, they're not the cheapest. While other companies offer this service free of charge, BlueHost is a bit pricey: $149,99. For this price you can transfer up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts. If, however, you are in a hurry and not a tech savvy, this can be a useful tool.
They also make it easy for customers to upgrade from their initial hosting plan to a VPS or a dedicated server, with nothing more than a click of the mouse.
For customers who want to create an e-commerce site, BlueHost offers plenty of choices. With the help of the one-click installer you can easily choose from various shopping carts such as Megento, OpenCart, OSCommerce, Zen Cart, PrestaShop and others.
WordPress users will find that BlueHost is a joy to work with. Since the web hosting provider is endorsed by WordPress and has been an official partner for the last 12 years, BlueHost offers an optimized hosting service for WordPress, making it work at its full capacity.
The company has a 30 day money back guarantee policy and offers a prorated refund. What that means to you is that if you decide to close your account after 30 days, you will still get a refund for the unused remaining time.
The basic plan costs $3,95/month
The plus plan can be purchased for $5,95/month
The prime plan is $5,95/month
The pro option is $13,95/month
As we mentioned before, BlueHost takes technology pretty serious and strives to constantly keep up the pace. On their shared hosting they use servers with 16-core ADM Opteron processors, with 256GB DDR3 SDRAM and 64TB SSD database storage. They score an average of 99,99% uptime and occasionally even 100%. Speed wise, tests show that sites under BlueHost take only 23-26 milliseconds to respond, so rest assured that the company can deliver high quality services in this aspect, too.
When it comes to security, BlueHost uses SiteLock and performs daily scans of your website, to check for malware and viruses. If you want to be extra careful, you can have your website build in the cloud. That way, it will be copied automatically to 3 devices, so in case one of them crashes, a copy will be taken over by one of the other 2 devices. Therefore, your site will keep running while the failed version is rebuilt.
One disadvantage is that you have to perform your own daily backups, because the company's backups are at its own discretion, so you shouldn't rely solely on them.
Another security measure that you won't find in all the other providers is the fact that once you signed up, BlueHost requests verification by providing them a photo/scan of the back of the credit card you used for paying them. Only after passing this test you will get full access to your account.
As any reputable provider, BlueHost offers a solid, 24/7 customer service, via phone, email, live chat or support tickets. You also get help from their FAQ section, video tutorials and forum. The wait-time varies from problem to problem. Billing issues are solved faster, while questions related to functionality and tech aspects may require a longer responding time. Some customers complain that the staff isn't quite the friendliest out there and it doesn't always offer easy to grasp solutions and thorough explanations, but they strive to serve you the best they can.
Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.
By: Tamara | Last updated April 12, 2017 
