WordPress Hosting

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Review

BlueHost WordPress Hosting ReviewIs BlueHost fast, reliable and secure enough for hosting WordPress?

Based on the BlueHost WordPress hosting review from our editors’ real experience, BlueHost is one of the best WordPress hosting providers for its usability, cost-effectiveness, high level of reliability, etc.

BlueHost is a strongly recommended shared web host for hosting personal blogs and small business platforms, but not only for hosting WordPress sites.

With a great industry reputation, they have become the top option among various hosting awards. Even, BlueHost is recommended by WordPress.org as the best hosting company since 2005. The following review information tells you why they become so popular and whether they are a good choice for you.

Who is BlueHost?

BlueHost, founded in 1996 and designed for small businesses, is one of the largest web hosting companies over the Internet. They are one of the companies that have rich technical knowledge and experience for development. They developed SimpleScripts by themselves for 1-click WordPress installation. And also, BlueHost customized Linux kernel for segregating CPU, memory and disk I/O to achieve better hosting performance, reliability and security rather than their competitors.

In 2010, BlueHost invested 8.5 million USD to build its first dedicated data center in Provo, Utah. So far, they have 3 dedicated data centers that had invested 20+ million USD. BlueHost is the first hosting company that has its own dedicated data centers. With 500+ staff and thousands of servers, BlueHost is serving millions of customers worldwide.

BlueHost WordPress hosting has a terrific reputation in the communities and has won 99.6% customer satisfaction rate.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Price

One of the important factors is the hosting price. Compared to other web hosts, BlueHost has three WordPress hosting packages (Basic, Plus, Prime), starting at $7.99/mo regularly.

Pricing Details

  • 12 months plan
    $4.95/mo
  • 24 months plan
    $3.95/mo
  • 36 months plan
    $2.95/mo

Payment Method

  • Credit Card
    Yes
  • PayPal
    Yes

BlueHost WordPress Compatibility

Before choosing a WordPress hosting, there is an important thing you must pay attention -WordPress Compatibility. BlueHost offers a 100% WordPress compatible hosting service which far exceeds the minimum technical requirements of WordPress with:

  • The latest versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP
  • 256MB PHP memory_limit.
  • PHP runs as suPHP for a higher level of security
  • cPanel & SimpleScripts to make WordPress sites setup much easier.
  • The mod_rewrite Apache module

All of those advantages make BlueHost support your website as well as possible.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Features

Besides cPanel and Fantastico used by most of the other web hosts, BlueHost provides their own SimpleScripts that allows you to 1-click install WordPress in only a few minutes. By partnering with many WordPress community sites, BlueHost offers 1000+ WordPress themes, widgets and plugins for free and also allows the 1-click activation.

The main features included with BlueHost WordPress hosting:

  • Sufficient disk space, bandwidth and GB file transfer.
  • Free domain for life & unlimited blogs hosted on 1 account.
  • CPU throttling technology for segregating CPU, memory and disk I/O.
  • PostgreSQL, FastCGI, Secure (SSH) Access.
  • 99.9% uptime & WordPress loading times that is average less than 2 seconds
  • 100% US-based technical support with holding times that is average less than 30 seconds.
FeatureBasicPlusPrime
Websites1UnlimitedUnlimited
Website Space50 GBUnlimitedUnlimited
BandwidthUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited
Email Account & Storage5 & 100 MBUnlimitedUnlimited
Money Back guaranteeyesYesYes
Marketing Offers$200$200$200
Spam Expertsno11
Domain Privacynono1
SiteBackup Prononoyes

BlueHost WordPress Installation

BlueHost has spent a large sum of money to develop a user-friendly 1-click installer called SimpleScripts. By using this software, you can avoid lots of complex steps when installing WordPress manually, such as creating databases and transferring files via FTP. Check the detailed steps in the following.

  • Go to BlueHost’s official site to click the “Control Panel Login” button in the top right corner of the homepage. Input your domain ID and password and click “Login”.
  • Go down to the “Website Builders” directory, and then give a click on the “SimpleScripts” icon.
  • Click the green “Install” button. Choose the domain where you would like to click “Install” and then install WordPress. Wait for SimpleScripts to tell you the installation is completed. Take note of your user ID and password of WordPress.
  • Navigate the control panel of WordPress and use your temporary username and password to log in (that is not the same as your BlueHost account name and password). Start to build your WordPress site.

If you want to get the more detailed steps and check the screenshot, you can have a look at this WordPress installation tutorial.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Reliability

Based on our survey, no one is patient for 3 downtimes in a month. If that happens, 85% of the customers will choose to move to another web host. The reliability is the most important factor in an online business, especially for those who are using a Pay-Per-Click advertising system like Google AdWords or Facebook AD. You can simply think in this way. If BlueHost is not reliable, they couldn’t keep millions of existing customers.

In fact, BlueHost guarantees 99.9% web hosting uptime in the real world. In the past 16 years, they had committed their guarantee consistently by leveraging their facilities, knowledge and experience. A few months ago, we have set up a website monitoring for testing the reliability of BlueHost. The results can be found from the following statistics chart.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Speed

By leveraging their dedicated data centers and rock-solid web hosting knowledge and experience, BlueHost is one of the fastest WordPress hosting providers. Their self-built data centers come with 4 separate physical fibre lines, building through 2 diverse entrances with access to all major IP/transit providers. Thus, the bandwidth capacity can exceed 7,500Mbits on average. In addition, all of their servers are built with 24x AMD Opteron CPUs, 64GB memory and RAID 10 SATA3 disks.

Our editors tracked WordPress site loading speed with almost all the shared web hosts that we have reviewed so far. Actually, BlueHost is the fastest WordPress hosting provider of all that prices under $10/month. For a better reference, we listed the performance comparison among BlueHost, HostGator and GoDaddy, all of which are historical and well-known in the industry.

With the same WordPress script and the same content hosted by BlueHost, HostGator and GoDaddy, the WordPress site hosted with BlueHost is approximately 90% faster than HostGator, and 145% faster than GoDaddy.

BlueHost WordPress Technical Support

BlueHost has more than 500 staff located in their Provo Utah office, serving for 2 million customers worldwide. They have devoted into the shared web hosting business for 16 years so far. They know what customers’ expectation is and how to serve customers in a good manner.

BlueHost provides 24×7 100% US-based technical support through toll-free telephone, live chat, email and ticket system. With holding times that are average less than 30 seconds and 100% on-site staff, you can be assured that the staff can help you perfectly and has been well-trained for WordPress site support.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Security

Actually, WordPress based websites are easily hacked by hackers. In this case, BlueHost ensures the safe and sound WordPress hosting solution with various security options. For instance, you can prevent potential spam using tools like Spam Experts, SpamAssassin and Spam Hammer. If you enable the available CloudFlare CDN service from the cPanel, you can prevent the DDoS attacks that cause the downtime with a large number of unexpected traffic.

In addition, the daily backup service is available. And also, you can use the Hotline protection to avoid content-stealing, the IP Blacklist to block the suspicious addresses and the SSH access for the worry-free web sessions.

BlueHost WordPress Hosting Usability

It is true that BlueHost provides the cPanel and the script installer so that you can set up, run and control your website easily. Moreover, they offer plenty of add-on features that are not available from all the hosting providers, such as the phpMyAdmin, 404 settings, language preferences, Weebly, Solo SEO and many more.

In addition, this web host runs a clear and intuitive knowledge base, from which you can find the comprehensive documentation quickly and check their YouTube channel for video tutorials easily.

Summary

BlueHost is a good option for building a WordPress blog because of its WordPress compatibility, cheap price, rich features, outstanding support, fast speed, good uptime record and easy WordPress installation. If you sign up right now, you can get the best discount off the original price by clicking the given promotional link mentioned above.

Rick Hammond

I'm a marketing consultant by trade and also own a portfolio of over 20 websites. Over the years I have tested most of the well know hosting companies for my sites and therefore can give insight into which are good and which are not from my personal experiences.

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