While it is highly unusual to compare Bluehost and Wix, it is neither wrong nor inappropriate. The two companies are powerful providers for creating and managing a website for any purpose. However, despite being great, these companies target different groups of users for their services. Hence, it would be wise to learn much about them in order to know whether Wix or Bluehost will be better for your needs.
So, we cooked up this Bluehost vs Wix duel to explore the important areas common to both companies in order to determine the better one in each.
Bluehost vs Wix: General Info
Bluehost is a web hosting provider that provides a server for your website or application.
It offers services like hosting, security, customer support, storage space, bandwidth, performance optimization, etc. Bluehost lets you install any web applications on your server and build your website with or on them. Although, primarily Bluehost is one of the best hosts for WordPress sites.
In contrast, Wix is a website creator that lets you use a visual editor to build your pages. It is a drag-and-drop builder that simplifies the site creation process for both beginners and experts. Wix provides site builder features, hosting, customer support, eCommerce tools, blogging functionalities, SEO tools, etc.
The main difference between them, in a nutshell, is that while Wix is a site builder, Bluehost is a web host.
Wix vs Bluehost: Which One is Easier to Use?
Choosing a tool for creating your website should be based on its ease of use.
Doing this will ensure you use a tool that will make creating and managing your website enjoyable with no hiccups or a learning curve. So, we want to know whether Wix or Bluehost is easier to use.
Wix
As we have hinted earlier, Wix is a drag-and-drop builder that lets you create a website using the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) model.
With Wix, you can create a website using templates or its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI). You may also start your designs from scratch if you want.
When working with the templates, you can use the editor to change the layout of the pages easily. You will have access to several templates for sections and elements that can be added to your pages to improve the features and designs. Apart from the addition and arrangement of the elements/sections on the pages, you can customize them using their control options.
The ADI makes your design journey faster and easier since an AI will create it for you in seconds. All you need to do is provide some information about your business/brand and it will create a personalized website for you.
Aside from editing your pages, managing your Wix account and other parts of the site is quite intuitive. Wix has a control panel that is quite amazing for site management and you will get the best out of it.
One of the most notable things that make Wix easy to use is the fact that you don’t have to worry about server settings. So you won’t need to worry about the nitty-gritty of hosting your site or its maintenance.
Bluehost
Bluehost, unlike Wix, is a web host and not primarily a website builder.
In order to create a website with Bluehost, you need to first install a Content Management System (CMS) or a web app on your server. Afterward, the CMS or web app installed will determine how to build and manage your website.
After diving deeper into the Bluehost world, we saw that it has a builder for WordPress websites. So if you want to create a WP website, you can use the built-in builder to design your pages and write blog posts right from your Bluehost dashboard.
The tool tries to replicate the functionalities and features of the WordPress Editor, making it a fairly easy tool for site creation and management.
However, when we compare the ease of use of both tools in terms of site creation, we would notice that Wix’s editor is a lot better.
From our experience, it is a lot easier to build a page or website from scratch using the Wix Editor than the Bluehost Website Builder. Moreover, while you can use ADI on Wix, Bluehost lacks such a tool for website creation.
In addition, Wix has so much information and helpful guides that you can use for your website’s management.
Thus, the winner of the Bluehost vs Wix duel in terms of use is the latter.
Wix vs Bluehost: Hosting Types & Plans
Another important area to consider when building your website is how to host it and ensure it has access to the resources it needs to grow.
Web hosting services are often named based on the amount of resources available and how powerful the servers are. As a result, each hosting type or server is suitable for a specific type of project.
From our findings, Bluehost has many hosting types that can cater to the needs of website owners. The host provides shared, WordPress, Virtual Private Server (VPS), Ecommerce, and dedicated server hosting types. This means you will have access to any hosting types you need as your website grows and demands more resources.
Besides, VPS and dedicated server hosting give you the power to customize and manage your resources as you please.
On the other hand, Wix doesn’t have many hosting types available to its users. When you purchase a Wix plan, irrespective of your site’s purpose and needs for resources, you are sharing the power of some server with other users.
Additionally, if your website ever needs more resources, you cannot upgrade your plan in order to get a more powerful server. You will only be able to increase or improve the features of the website builder and other related functionalities.
Hence, the winner of this round of the Wix vs Bluehost comparison is the latter.
Which is More Affordable, Bluehost or Wix?
Affordability is another factor we consider when choosing a new software to work with for our projects. The purpose of having a Wix vs Bluehost comparison in terms of pricing is to know the one that provides better value for money. This is because by spending very little on any of them, there will be more funds to take care of other important expenses.
Bluehost has many hosting plans and they have different pricing because of the distinct levels of features. While some are configured for low-budget users with small websites that need very few resources, others are for bigger projects for individuals or businesses with a bigger purse.
Bluehost’s pricing ranges from $3 to $140 monthly for the introductory billing period. However, for renewals, it bumps up to $12 to $260 per month, depending on the plan you choose.
These plans come with many hosting features that include control panels, server settings, security, speed optimization options, etc.
Additionally, if you choose to create your site using WordPress, you will get a free website builder within your Bluehost dashboard or account.
Conversely, Wix costs between $16 and $159 per month for its plans. These plans include the features of the builder, security, customer support, hosting, etc.
One of the main differences between both services is that while Wix is an all-in-one solution, Bluehost depends on a lot of third-party software to function. So while Wix provides hosting features and a powerful website builder with eCommerce and blogging functionalities, you need a CMS or a web app with special plugins to get the same features from Bluehost, irrespective of the plan you choose.
Therefore, even if you are on the most expensive plan on Bluehost, you will still need to spend more in order to get what Wix plans provide. Besides, since Wix has a Free plan, you can use it without paying a dime, unlike Bluehost which doesn’t even have a free trial.
In light of this, we declare the winner of our Wix vs Bluehost comparison in terms of value for money as the former.
Bluehost Pricing
Here are some of the plans available at Bluehost and their pricing;
- Shared/WordPress hosting packages: $12 to $29 per month; for simple WP and non-WP sites or online stores.
- WooCommerce hosting packages: $27 to $40 per month; primarily for WP eCommerce sites.
- VPS hosting packages: $80 to $143 per month; for bigger websites that need a larger chunk of shared/isolated resources.
- Dedicated server hosting packages: $180 to $260 per month; for bigger sites or online stores or any other powerful projects.
PS – the pricing reflects the regular rates and not the promotional prices.
Wix Pricing
Here are the pricing and recommended purposes for Wix plans;
- Light: $16 monthly; for personal sites or blogs
- Core: $27 monthly; basic eCommerce sites
- Business: $32 monthly; standard eCommerce sites
- Business Elite: $159 monthly; advanced eCommerce websites
Bluehost vs Wix: Which Service Has More and Better Features?
The availability of features was another yardstick we used during our Wix vs Bluehost analysis.
From our findings, the features provided by them are completely different, leaving one of them as the winner. While one of them has more features than the other, it doesn’t necessarily mean they would be the right option for you.
As we have already discussed, Bluehost is primarily a web host. This means its main features are about how your website is being hosted and you would need other software to add more functionalities or even create the site.
Some of the features you will get from Bluehost include;
- Control panel
- Ability to customize your server settings and storage space
- Customer support
- One-click app installer
- Databases management
- Domain management
- Site security features
On the other hand, Wix offers free hosting services, with a builder and other important functionalities you need to create and manage a website successfully. In essence, Wix does not require any third-party service for any functionality a website requires. However, if you need to use any specific services it is still possible to integrate them into your site.
Here are some of the features you would get from Wix;
- A powerful and feature-rich website builder
- Website security
- Ecommerce-specific functionalities
- Advanced Blogging tools
- Databases management
- Domain management
- Customer support
- Web hosting
- Intuitive control panel for site and account management
By comparison, we can see that Wix has more features than Bluehost, making it the winner in the round.
Bluehost vs Wix: Performance Comparison
Performance is part of the main determinants of the success of any website online. There are so many websites on the internet and the majority of them are constantly competing for the same spot or audience. This creates a need for a website to outperform its counterparts in order to achieve its goals.
For this section of our Wix vs Bluehost comparison, we will consider speed tests, uptime, and response times.
Wix vs Bluehost Speed Tests Comparison
Speed is one of the most common factors that point out the performance of a website. This is an indication of how fast the connection between your server and users is. Hence, it tells so much about your SEO performance and how much traffic you are able to get and retain in the long run.
Before we dive into the results of our Bluehost vs Wix speed tests battle, here are some of the metrics we used;
- Time to First Byte (TTFB): This indicates the total time it takes a server to deliver the first response to a browser’s query. An ideal TTFB should be 0.8 s or less.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): This measures how long it takes the first visible item on your web page to fully display on a visitor’s screen. A good FCP should be 1.8 s or less.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This is the total time it takes the largest visible item on your web page to fully display on the user’s screen. Ideally, LCP should be 2.5 s or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This indicates the degree of stability of a web page. It plays a big role in the perceived user experience and it is influenced by how responsive your web page is. An ideal CLS is 0.01 or less.
- Loading time: This refers to how long it takes your web pages to fully display all the items present on them. Ideally, a website shouldn’t load for more than 3 seconds in order to avoid high bounce rates.
Bluehost Speed Tests
Here are the results we got from analyzing our Bluehost test website using GTmetrix;
- TTFB: 589 ms
- FCP: 804 ms
- LCP: 1.0 s
- CLS: 0.00
- Loading time: 1.4 s
From the results above, we can see that Bluehost passed the tests with flying colors.
This means you can host a fast website on Bluehost. Nonetheless, when we compare the results with what we have recorded for some Bluehost alternatives, they indicate that the host needs to improve in terms of performance.
Wix Speed Tests
Here is what we recorded after analyzing our Wix website using GTmetrix;
- TTFB: 83 ms
- FCP: 258 ms
- LCP: 495 ms
- CLS: 0.00
- Loading time: 3.3 s
These results indicate that you can create a fast website with Wix.
The Wix website performed excellently in all metrics except the fully loaded time. In fact, by comparison, Wix performed better than Bluehost in all aspects except fully loaded time. In our opinion, we attributed the less appealing fully loaded time of the Wix to the fact that there were more elements that needed to load on the homepage. Thus, in terms of out-of-the-box performance, the winner of the Wix vs Bluehost comparison is the former.
Nonetheless, while it is possible to improve the performance of websites hosted on both platforms, optimizing a Bluehost site, especially using WordPress will yield better results. Hence, we recommend Bluehost over Wix if your website really needs performance and you are in for the best.
Uptime Tests
Another performance aspect where we had our Bluehost vs Wix comparison was uptime.
Uptime indicates how long your website stays online over a period and shows how reliable your visitors will perceive it. Generally, many web hosts or builders that offer hosting services promise at least 99.9x% which is acceptable. Nonetheless, it is always best to choose the one that delivers better uptime between the two options.
In order to know the more reliable service, we looked into their uptimes as measured or monitored by two different systems. We used Pingdom’s data for Bluehost and Atlassian’s for Wix. Upon comparison, we recorded 99.950% for Bluehost and 99.933% for Wix for the same period.
This indicates that Bluehost is more reliable than Wix in terms of uptime. Thus, it wins the Wix vs Bluehost comparison in this round.
Nonetheless, if you want better uptime, we recommend trying out SiteGround (99.998%) or Hostinger (99.997%) instead.
Load and Response Time Tests
Websites generally use different servers to host their files. These servers have their strengths and the particular quantity of traffic they can withstand within a period before failing.
Typically, it is possible to determine how a server will respond or perform during traffic surges by checking out its performance for normal visits. When we know this, we can anticipate the degree of decline in the website’s performance.
From our GTmetrix test, we recorded the TTFB for Bluehost to be 589 ms. This shows that with only one user, it took the Bluehost server almost 600 ms to respond. Thus, we can project that at some time, the response time of the server will go over one second and it will fail eventually. (We have confirmed this during a load test using 20, 50, and 1000 visitors)
In contrast, we recorded 83 ms as the TTFB for the Wix website. This means the Wix server is 7 times as fast as that of Bluehost. Hence, it will potentially perform better during traffic surges.
While it is unclear whether Wix uses different servers for its plans, the one that delivered this performance was on the Free tier. Similarly, we used a Bluehost shared server for the test and the higher ones may perform better.
Website Security: Is Wix or Bluehost More Reliable?
Security is an aspect that is crucial to every website. Keeping your website secure helps in SEO, traffic retention, building a sense of safety & loyalty with customers, safeguarding sensitive materials, avoiding the waste of resources involved in cleanups, etc.
Now, let us have a Bluehost vs Wix comparison to know the better one in terms of website security.
Bluehost
Bluehost is not a very secure web host according to our research. The security measures available at Bluehost are SSL certificates, malware scanning, and daily backups.
Despite how scanty these features are, not all hosting plans or types include them out of the box. Hence, you may have to purchase add-ons to have access to them. This means you will need to employ the services of many third-party solutions if you want to build a secure site, especially with WordPress.
Wix
Wix is one of the most secure website builders to use in 2024. It has many security measures put in place to ensure that your website is fully protected against any external attacks.
The best part is that all the security features are available free of charge irrespective of the plan you choose even on the Free tier package. Some of the security measures include SSL certificates, daily backups, site history, anti-DDoS protection, two-factor authentication (2FA), and password-protected pages.
Bluehost vs Wix: Customer Support
Needing the help of customer support agents for any product being used is inevitable. The issue might be related to the technical, billing, etc., aspects and require the attention of someone like a support agent with access to special tools.
So, let us look into the companies to see whether Bluehost or Wix provides better customer support.
Bluehost
Bluehost provides 24/7 customer support via live chats and phone calls. In order to contact Bluehost’s support department, you only need to place a call to (+18884014678) or initiate a live chat session via the bubble at the bottom of any page on their site.
From our experience, Bluehost has reliable availability but experiences some delays occasionally. Most of the time, you will get connected to an agent almost immediately or in a short time.
Nonetheless, the main issue Bluehost needs to work on is the competency of its agents. A lot of them from our previous conversations have little knowledge about the product and wasted time doing research, hence causing bad response times. In the end, most couldn’t provide the requested information.
If you are unable to access the agents via live chat and phone calls, you can use the articles in the Knowledge Base to learn how to troubleshoot and resolve some FAQs.
Wix
Wix, on the other hand, provides customer support via live chat, emails, and bot assistance (WixBot). While the email channel and WixBot are available 24/7 officially, Wix’s live chat support is active between 2 AM to 6 PM EST, from Monday to Friday only.
Wix’s actual availability is nothing to write home about. After numerous attempts to get in touch with Wix’s support via live chat, we noticed that they are sometimes not available during their official availability hours. Aside from that, they reply really slowly to emails most time.
Nevertheless, the agents we have been fortunate to get help from were very competent and experienced enough to provide outstanding assistance. The WixBot also provides links to the resources needed to perform a few tasks most of the time.
In addition, there are other channels like the Wix Learn Blog, Help Center, and YouTube that you can use for general issues.
Conclusion: Which is Better, Bluehost or Wix?
Our Wix vs Bluehost comparison has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of both services. By now, we know which of them performs better in the areas we care about for our website or business.
Hence, we can use this to determine which one to go with. That said, by comparison, Wix emerged as the winner in 6 out of the 9 main areas we considered. Thus, it takes the overall win.
Who Should Use Wix or Bluehost
In our opinion, Wix is a great option for users who want to build from simple to advanced blogs, portfolio websites, or online stores really fast and simply. Wix makes it possible to do this using its built-in tools and without any technical or coding knowledge. This makes it a complete solution.
Conversely, Bluehost works great for users who need to host a website that is to be built using WordPress or any other CMS. To use Bluehost, you have to rely on many third-party software and you need some technical knowledge even though it is not so compulsory.
Bluehost vs Wix Comparison Summary
| Yardsticks | Winner |
|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Wix |
| Availability of Hosting Type | Bluehost |
| Pricing | Wix |
| Essential Features | Wix |
| Loading Speed | Wix |
| Uptime | Bluehost |
| Load & Response Time | Wix |
| Security | Wix |
| Customer Support | Bluehost |
FAQs About Bluehost and Wix
Is Bluehost Compatible with Wix?
Bluehost is not compatible with Wix as they don’t need each other to function. Bluehost is a web host while Wix is a website builder that provides its own hosting service.
However, if you have a WordPress website on Bluehost, you can import its content (posts or pages) to your Wix site using the Import tool.
Wix or Bluehost for Blogging?
Out of the box, Wix is better for blogging since Bluehost doesn’t have any tools that bloggers can use. So, whether Bluehost is better than Wix for blogging will depend on the CMS you install on your server (site) with the former.
Why Don’t People Use Bluehost Website Builder?
The main reason why Bluehost Website Builder is not the favorite of most users is that it is not very advanced. It is possible to get more features and customization power when they use WordPress or any other CMS.
