Bluehost WordPress Hosting Review

Disclaimer: Our reviews are not sponsored, as we used our own money to purchase hosting subscriptions. Our reviews are 100% based on our sole opinions. Reviews contain affiliate marketing links where we get a commission when you purchase or subscribe to that service. Read our Affiliate Marketing Policy here. Also, please verify all product and pricing information directly with the linked brands, as product offerings change often. FastestWP.Website is not responsible for errors or product discrepancies.

We proudly host our website on Rocket.net.

Bluehost has been around since 2003 and is one of the most famous WordPress hosting providers. In fact, it was our first WordPress host when we launched our first WordPress website in early 2021. Bluehost claims they host over 2 million WordPress sites, which makes sense: they are one of the cheapest providers. However, does that mean they are good?

In this review post, we will detail Bluehost’s services, how they performed on our performance benchmarks and speed tests, and our overall ranking of their web hosting services. If you are beginning your WordPress site, you’ll also want to compare Bluehost to Hostinger, which also offers cheap but good-performing WordPress hosting.

Bluehost General Features

One of the reasons Bluehost is cheap is that they unbundle many features that higher-tier web hosts include in their pricing. “Standard” features such as a web firewall, email hosting, daily backups, and SSL certificates are not standard on several Bluehost WordPress plans. So, while the “headline” price is low, you may want to compare to other mid-tier providers by the time you add on these extra features.

Note that Bluehost now includes the basic Cloudflare CDN on all its Shared Hosting plans plus all WordPress Managed Hosting plans except for the lowest-tier Basic plan. We appreciate this addition by Bluehost. Note that although we don’t recommend the lowest-tier Bluehost plans, if you do want the lowest-tier plan, get the lowest-tier Shared Hosting plan instead of the specific WordPress Managed Plan. You can host WordPress on the Shared Hosting plan, but it also comes with Cloudflare, while the Basic WordPress managed plan does not. As Cloudflare is included in the Basic Shared Hosting plan, we chose that plan to run our performance tests below.

When things go wrong – which they will – it is important to consider the website host’s support policy. We appreciate that Bluehost offers 24/7 support via email, live chat, and by phone. This is the ultimate support and is much better than other WordPress hosts that offer 24/7 support but by email only.

However, our experiences with Bluehost live chat support have been frustrating as it has not been easy to communicate with Support for any non-basic issues. Support agents often get confused, requiring repeated tries to get an answer beyond anything basic. We did not try out Bluehost’s phone support, so we cannot comment on the phone support.

If you are starting out, you may not have thought about email hosting, but you should. If you are starting or running a business, it is much more professional to have an email address that uses your website domain rather than a generic Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook domain. For example, does mybusiness@gmail.com or info@mybusiness.com look better to you? We believe that info@mybusiness.com looks far more professional.

Bluehost does not include email hosting in its WordPress plans, but you can add an email plan for a few dollars per month. You can also choose email hosting from another provider, such as through Google as part of Google Workspace. If you choose Google Workspace – not the free Gmail version – you don’t need to worry about email hosting – Google is your email host. But if you host your own email server, you must buy a separate email hosting plan from either Bluehost or another provider. This adds cost and complexity to your WordPress setup, so keep that in mind.

Bluehost Optimization Features

Bluehost offers relatively standard optimization features, including bundling Cloudflare’s basic CDN on most of its plans. CDNs are standard on mid and higher-tier plans across WordPress hosts, but CDNs are often not included on lower-tier plans, such as Bluehost’s plans. Furthermore, we love that it is Cloudflare’s CDN, one of the world’s largest CDNs.

Note that Bluehost includes Cloudflare’s basic CDN, not the Premium or Enterprise versions that high-end web hosts use, such as Rocket.net or Kinsta. Bluehost offers the option of upgrading to Cloudflare Premium for $13/month, which includes Cloudflare’s firewall (WAF), minification, and Cloudflare Polish image optimization.

We are unhappy that Bluehost does not include other standard optimization features, such as minification and image optimization, nor standard security features, such as a firewall, daily backups, and malware detection. You can get some of the features through additional WordPress plugins, such as LiteSpeed or W3 Total Cache. Both of those plugins offer minification and some image optimization features.

However, you’ll have to upgrade to Cloudflare Premium to get a firewall; you’ll have to add on SiteLock to get malware detection and removal; and you’ll have to add on Jetpack or CodeGuard to get daily backups. If you add on these features, you’ll be paying an additional $23.57/month. You would be better off just getting a basic plan from a premium WordPress host like Rocket.net or WPX for the same or less money!

If you choose to buy add-ons for Bluehost, be careful not to duplicate features. For example, Cloudflare Premium includes image optimization and a firewall for $12.99/month. However, if you also get the middle or top-tier SiteLock plan because you want malware detection, you also get SiteLock’s CDN, image optimization, and firewall protection. Now, you are paying for duplicative features, so note what you buy.

Bluehost WordPress Hosting Plans

Honestly, we are not impressed with Bluehost’s plans. Although the “headline” monthly prices are cheap, there are two main caveats. First, as we mentioned above, several plans do not include “standard” features bundled in plans from other companies. You’ll need to add up the prices of these add-ons to get your total monthly price and then compare them to other WordPress hosting companies. The main features are SSL certificates, site backups, malware detection, email hosting, and web firewall (WAF).

The second caveat is the plan pricing. Let’s start with our disappointment that Bluehost does not offer monthly plans for you to try out their services. You must commit to a one-year or three-year plan from the beginning. Yet, there lies the main caveat. While the one-year plans have cheaper monthly prices than the three-year plans, Bluehost notes that the renewal prices are much higher than the monthly prices you get for the first year on the one-year plan. In fact, Bluehost shows on its website why a three-year plan is cheaper over three years than a one-year plan for three years.

While we appreciate Bluehost being transparent with its three-year pricing, we also feel that the pricing structure forces you into a three-year plan when you may not be ready – or want to – commit to a three-year plan. You’ll want to compare renewal pricing on the one-year plan with other comparable WordPress hosting providers since renewal pricing is often much higher than the introductory monthly pricing on the one-year contract.

We don’t believe Bluehost’s plans are terrible, but they aren’t that great either. Be careful to compare apples-to-apples when researching Bluehost’s and other providers’ plans. You want to make sure that your budget includes all of the add-on pricing for both Bluehost and other providers in this price range.

Bluehost WordPress Performance Tests

As with all of our web hosting reviews, we tested Bluehost using our test WordPress website to see how Bluehost performs in real life. We ran all of these tests using the Basic Shared Hosting plan, which is the cheapest Bluehost WordPress hosting plan. We wanted to see how the cheapest Bluehost plan works. Note that the Basic Shared Hosting comes with the basic Cloudflare CDN service, but the Basic WordPress Managed Hosting plan does not.

There are three components: Google Core Web Vitals, GTMetrix Performance, and worldwide speed testing. The results are below, and you can see our detailed testing specifications on this page.

Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores

Bluehost performs okay on the Google Core Web Vitals compared to the other WordPress hosting providers. The top-tier WordPress hosts we tested had performance scores of 89-94, compared to Bluehost’s score of 81. Note that the scores above are not the actual Lighthouse values but rather the scores Lighthouse assigns to each metric. We chose to display these scores instead of the actual values to make comparing scores across web host providers easier. Below is the chart showing the actual Lighthouse values for those of you who are more technically minded.

GTMetrix Performance

Bluehost did surprisingly well in our GTMetrix testing! All locations loaded our test website site under three seconds, with six locations loading in less than two seconds. This performance matches the performance of some top-tier web hosts, which is amazing. There is no doubt that Bluehost’s strong performance is due to it bundling Cloudflare with its WordPress hosting. Especially compared to the price of Bluehost’s plans, Bluehost’s performance is stunning.

If we upgraded to Cloudflare Premium, we would expect performance to be even better. However, if you are looking to upgrade to Cloudflare Premium, you should consider looking at a top-tier host instead, like Rocket.net or WPX. If you are price-conscious, stick with Bluehost’s basic Cloudflare CDN plan because you are getting amazing performance for the price. In this price range, Hostinger also had amazing performance!

Worldwide Load Testing

Bluehost performed extremely well in the global load test, again on par with top-tier WordPress hosts. Overall, we believe Bluehost’s performance for a WordPress provider on the cheap end is extremely valuable.

Our Bluehost WordPress Review Recommendation

We have a love-hate relationship with Bluehost. On the one hand, we love Bluehost’s performance for a lower-cost WordPress host. This is perfect for beginners or those who don’t want to pay for flashy features just for a simple WordPress site or blog. Bluehost’s prices are cheap, and with 24/7 live chat support and Cloudflare’s CDN included on most plans, we know why many websites recommend Bluehost for people starting out. Plus, Bluehost’s real-world performance was amazing!

Yet, on the other hand, we don’t like Bluehost’s pricing structure. Many “standard” features included by other WordPress hosts cost extra on Bluehost, including SSL certificates (on some plans), daily backups, firewall protection, and malware detection. The “unbundling” of options allows Bluehost to charge extremely low “headline” prices, but this can come back to haunt you as you have to pay for features. We recommend you add up the costs of Bluehost’s plan and the necessary upgrades you need and then compare that to some top-tier providers such as Rocket.net or WPX. If the price difference is negligible, you are better off going with a top-tier provider instead of Bluehost.

Nonetheless, we recommend the Choice Plus plan if you want to go with Bluehost. You’ll probably want to add on SiteLock for around $7/month for malware detection, bringing the total price to $12-20/month depending on whether you are on a one-year or three-year plan, and whether you are on introductory pricing or not. Bluehost is solid in this price range with amazing performance compared to other mid-tier WordPress providers, such as GoDaddy. But don’t get duped by the standout $2.99/month WordPress hosting – it isn’t worth it! You will also want to compare to Hostinger in this same price range.