When it comes to finding a good platform to host your website, then one such service that many businesses will recommend to you is Bluehost – but is this website hosting provider actually any good?
Here we are going to be taking a closer look at Bluehost and its services to see how it works and what are the pros and cons of using this hosting service.
This way, you can either rule it out or opt for it to power your own business’s website.
So, let’s jump right in!
What Is Bluehost?
Bluehost is a widely known website hosting service, powering over two million websites and often praised as one of the best services to use to set up your website – especially if you are a beginner in the world of online business.
First set up in 2003, the company has now grown to be one of the largest web hosting companies in the entire world.
Despite this, it’s had its fair share of controversies including security breaches from cyber attacks – but these issues have been very few and far between.
As a result, many businesses still use Bluehost and have praised it for its services and customer service.
They offer a range of different plans for very affordable prices per month, allowing everyone to start up their own online businesses through platforms such as WordPress (one of the biggest free to use platforms used for blogging and e-commerce).
This means that businesses can receive help and support building their websites, access tons of unique plugins and themes, and integrate it with VPS hosting so you can have complete control.
With free domains and access to a range of useful tools, it’s no wonder that many businesses would opt for Bluehost after some surface level research.
However, we are going to dive in deeper to really see if this is a good website service to use.
Features
When it comes to finding a great website hosting provider, it’s important that you find one that gives you access to a lot of important features for a low cost.
With Bluehost, you can choose between a range of payment plans that are all pretty affordable and each one is tailored to your needs.
If it’s hosting that you want, then Bluehost offers a plan that will give you a free domain for one year and an SSL certificate.
If you need help building a website, then there are plans on offer depending on the platform you want to use and each one contains templates, free 1st year domain, access to plugins and more.
Bluehost has also made extensive strides to try and sort out their security after the infamous breach in 2015.
Now, they offer plenty of backup and security features with their plans to help provide their customers with complete peace of mind.
However, there are some features unavailable that we would love to see Bluehost introduce.
Currently, there is no guaranteed uptime (unlike other web hosting services, which is a huge factor why some businesses choose to go elsewhere).
There is also no free way to migrate your website, which means that once you choose your web hosting service you are stuck there – unless you want to pay a huge amount of money.
For small businesses starting out, this can be a disappointment.
Ease Of Use
Because Bluehost hopes to appeal to small and new businesses starting out online, they have purposefully made their services super quick and easy to use.
Whether you are using the drag and drop WordPress Builder or onboarding your website, everything is built with beginners in mind.
This allows you to get your website up and running in no time at all and you can even use the interface to tell Bluehost of your goals and ambitions for the website.
This way, they can point you in the right direction of useful additions and improvements you can make over time as your business grows.
Customer Support
One of the most heavily praised parts of Bluehost is its amazing customer service.
As the company wants to cater to new start-up online businesses, they have also created a support base that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – meaning that if you run into trouble and you don’t know what to do, then support will always be available.
We found Bluehost’s Live Chat to be very quick and responsive (especially when compared to other hosting services) and we received support within five minutes.
As a result, we found using Bluehost’s customer support to be very fast and efficient, as well as incredibly helpful.
If you’d prefer to use Bluehost’s email or phone support then this process may take a bit longer but you will receive the high quality care and attention provided by this company.
Not only that but Bluehost customers also have access to plenty of support forums, FAQs, articles and videos that can help you learn more about the basics of online business.
It’s a great feature to have in your hosting plan, especially if you are still pretty new to this part of the business industry.
Final Thoughts
So – should you use Bluehost to host your website?
It all depends on what you look for in a hosting service.
For beginners and those who are new to online business, then Buehost would be a solid choice because you can access so much support and so many features for such a low monthly cost.
As your business grows, so can your payment plan and thus, you can gain more useful features and pay for them when you actually need to use them.
With handy malware detection softwares, backups, and privacy protection, Bluehost handles a lot of the things that can slip your mind when setting up a new online business.
So, it’s easy to see why so many new businesses opt for Bluehost – especially if you are planning on using another hugely popular platform, WordPress.
Although there is room for improvement, Bluehost offers a lot for such a low price, making it a great choice for new online businesses.
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
