Choosing the right web hosting service is never an easy task. While Bluehost is often recommended among the very best available options, it still comes with its limits. In this article, we will present you with some Bluehost alternatives in order for you to choose the one that best matches your expectations.
The popularity of Bluehost is widely associated with two factors: its recommendation by the world’s largest CMS – WordPress.org, and its pool of affiliate marketers actively telling people only the good stuff about the hosting company. And then you think, Bluehost must be the best. Well, that’s not entirely true!
Although, we can testify that Bluehost is a powerful hosting company that offers outstanding hosting services that range from shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Plus, they have been in the business for more than 20 years, and therefore have great experience in the field.
Nevertheless, that does not mean it will suit your needs or give you the best value for your money. This is where considering your best alternatives to Bluehost comes in. You would want to weigh your options, wouldn’t you?
Why Not Use Bluehost?
Before presenting you with the best Bluehost alternatives, let’s check out its limits and why some people might want to consider other options.
Aside from all the good news you have read or heard about Bluehost, people often forget to mention or purposely leave out where Bluehost lags and needs improvement. They often just hit you with the idea that they are very recognized in the business – they are on top of the 3 recommended hosting companies by WordPress.org – they give free domain and SSL certificates for the first year. However, this post will tell you the ugly truth about their services.
Here are a few reasons you should give Bluehost alternatives a chance:
Bluehost Has Terrible Speed and Performance; Cannot Handle High-traffic Websites
When it comes to how search engines and visitors perceive and enjoy your website, speed and performance are very important. Ideally, your website should not take more than 2 to 3 seconds to load, or else visitors will leave before the page is displayed. This results in a high bounce rate which, in the end, will impact your SEO performance.
During our tests with Bluehost, despite the advertised 797 ms load time, our test website could only be 1.4 seconds fast with a Time to First Byte (TTFB) of 589 ms. This is with only the Neve theme installed with no further customizations. We calculated our site uptime to only be around 99.963%, rather than the 99.98% they promised us. This is below the belt for a company that big, and the cost of their services. It calls for additional investments in caching plugins to perform better; a requirement that does not exist with most Bluehost alternatives.
Unimpressive Customer Support
One of the reasons that often comes up when people look for Bluehost alternatives is the very disappointing customer support.
With the cost of the services, you would expect more from their customer support team. However, that is not the case with Bluehost. Back when we were using their services, we once had a problem with their in-house caching that was displaying the wrong page to our visitors and kind of broke our site.
We contacted the support, but they couldn’t provide a permanent solution to our problem, and this haunted our site for months as we kept contacting them. In the end, we had to move to another hosting company; Hostinger.
Aside from their customer support’s low expertise in WordPress, using their support system is quite stressful. The live chat feature requires you to provide a validation token sent to your registered email address to confirm that you are who you claim to be, even if you are already logged in. That is pretty unnecessary to me. Plus, it usually took us extra minutes to get to our real point.
Bluehost Customer Support’s Response Time
Moreso, the support response time is not very encouraging. Imagine having to wait more than 30 minutes just to talk to someone about your problem. A service that you paid for, and a Live Chat for that matter.
Sometimes, they put it out on their Live Chat pop-up that you should not expect them to reply to you immediately because they are experiencing delays. To me, this can only mean two things; too many people are complaining about their services and the support staff is overwhelmed, or they fail to invest in customer services, and thus, have only limited support staff available. Besides, the time between their replies is pretty wide. It is almost as if an agent is replying to ten customers at once.
Ridiculously High Renewal Pricing
When choosing Bluehost alternatives, pricing is also an important factor. The Basic Shared Hosting plan at Bluehost starts at about $3 per month and renews at almost $11 monthly after the first year. The renewal price is a bit high because only one website, 5 parked domains, and 25 subdomains can be hosted on this plan. Plus, you will only have 10 GB of storage space which is pretty bad for a media-heavy website.
Navigation is a Bit Tricky
As a beginner, it is quite tasking to know your way around the Bluehost account dashboard. Firstly, you will often click through a lot of links and land on irrelevant pages before the right one. Sometimes, you still have to reload pages before you can get them to display the necessary information. It is very slow.
Moreover, the account area is not optimized for mobile devices. Thus it is impossible to use it on the go. Of course, unless you carry your PC around.
Besides, we didn’t like the redirection to cPanel particularly. Since Bluehost does not have a custom control panel, almost every setting not related to WordPress has to be accessed via the cPanel. This redirection is a bit distracting.
No Automated Backups on Starter Plans
Another reason users tend to look for Bluehost alternatives is the lack of automated backups on the starter packages in shared and WordPress hosting.
Nothing is scarier than the absence of a restore button. At least to me, because I am often trying something new on my website. Could be you too. Sometimes, I mess things up, or the site crashes due to a bug or attack. So, it is always a relief that I have an un-do button – a means to return things to how they were. This is where regular automated backups come in.
Although Bluehost has a backup feature for all its plans, we do not particularly like it. This is because it is not automated. At least, not until you subscribe to a minimum of the Choice Plus plan at about $6 per month. Yet, it is only free for the first year on the Choice Plus plan until you purchase the Online Store or Pro package to get it free forever.
As a result, you will have to dedicate time to start saving a backup manually from your cPanel. This is both time-consuming and stressful. It is even devastating especially when you miss your routine manual backup, and your website goes under attack and/or crashes. You may be stuck with an outdated backup of your site, at most. A disaster like that can throw your business into turmoil; especially for a regularly updated website!
No Free Site Migrations
Unlike other web hosting services that offer free migration services when you are transferring your existing site from a different host, Bluehost charges a hefty amount per migration; almost $150. This becomes burdensome, and expensive when you have more than one site to move to Bluehost.
However, it should be noted that Bluehost offers a one-time free migration offer to new customers for a single site. But it is just a hoax. They have stated that the site’s file size must be less than 2 GB, and the database should not exceed 40 MB. This is not an easy feat for established websites that are bigger than this. But do not be deceived, 99% of Bluehost alternatives offer free site migrations for multiple sites without restrictions.
Too Much Add-ons and Upsells
According to our research, what people might hate most and really push them to look for the best alternatives to Bluehost is the feeling of always having to pay extras.
Bluehost is synonymous with upsells. Some features like automated backups, domain privacy, and free SSL certificates that are free on alternative hosting services require additional payments or upgrades on Bluehost.
For instance, there is no free SSL certificate, malware scanning, or even a free CDN on the Basic plan. So you will have to purchase add-ons or a higher plan for these features.
Additionally, the starting prices for all plans are designed to get you to sign up and expect to be charged 3x the initial amount on renewal.
Multiple Data Centers, But You Cannot Choose a Preferred Location
Bluehost has about 6 data centers (DC) on 3 continents. These DC are located in Utah, USA (2), London, UK, Hong Kong, China, Mumbai India, and Shanghai, Mainland China. The locations are pretty good, but the power to choose which data center to host your websites on is not given.
As we know, data centers are the physical locations of your hosting servers. These are where the posts, media, and all other resources you host on your site or applications live, and where they are pulled from when a user requests them by visiting your web pages.
As a result, it is better if you have your website hosted close to where your target audience or visitors are coming from due to network latency issues – the delay before the transfer of data is initiated. Because this way, you can harness a fast initial response, and loading time, which will, in turn, decrease your bounce rate, increase page views, and boost SEO performance – there will be no problem with passing Core Web Vitals with flying colors.
Its Implications
Unlike some of the best alternatives to Bluehost, you cannot choose or change your data center(s) as they will be automatically assigned to you upon hosting account setup. This limits your options if you prefer a particular data center location because you are targeting a greater number of your visitors there or the market seems to be better there, and you want to give them a better experience in terms of speed.
For instance, if Bluehost hosts your website in Utah, USA but the majority of your visitors are from Germany, you may have trouble delivering the fastest loading speed to them due to the distance between Germany and USA. This could hurt your SEO rankings for your targeted audience too.
Nevertheless, Bluehost is still a very good hosting service. Below is a summary of our rating of their services in the most important aspects.
Bluehost Review Summary
| Features/Yardsticks | Ratings (1 - 10) | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | 8.0 | Bluehost has good introductory pricing but the renewals are terribly high. |
| Ease of Management | 8.5 | With the cPanel integration, the host makes managing your site relatively easy. However, it can do better. |
| Performance | 7.0 | Bluehost shows a great performance when hosting a site with small traffic. Yet, it is not suitable for bigger or more demanding site projects. |
| Security | 7.0 | It is quite hard to know the security features the host provides since there is no transparency. Yet, it has some good add-ons for security. |
| Support | 8.0 | Bluehost has a quite amazing customer support. However, the competency of the support agents is debatable. Their response times have worsened overtime as well. |
| Average | 7.7 | Overall, Bluehost is not bad. But it is not a great host either. |
3 Best Bluehost Alternatives to Consider
Now that we have explained some of the reasons why you may need to weigh your options when choosing a web hosting company, here is a list of the top 3 Bluehost alternatives, and why they may be a better fit for you.
1. Hostinger (Hostinger.com)
Hostinger is one of the best alternatives to Bluehost and currently ranks as our favorite web hosting service for 2024. It is built with the latest LiteSpeed server technologies, HTTP/3, and SSD storage, and offers unlimited bandwidth to give your website a blazingly fast speed to retain all your visitors.
They do not joke with security as all their servers are equipped with Web Application Firewall (WAF), brute force protection, and anti-DDoS attack measures. At the same time, their free Cloudflare-protected Nameservers feature allows Cloudflare to reroute malicious traffic away from your server. This way, your site continues to function perfectly even though the name servers are compromised. It helps greatly in DDoS attack mitigations as well.
As a WordPress beginner, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to WP installation. The Hostinger custom control panel, hPanel, has a one-click app installer for almost any CMS including WordPress. With this, Hostinger’s automated system does the heavy lifting for you. Besides, the drag-and-drop website builder allows you to build your website visually, on a WYSIWYG level – What You See Is What You Get. This means that you can customize your website as you want by just placing the elements the pages on for both desktop and mobile versions in minutes. And you can rest assured they will be optimized for both SEO and user experience.
If you prefer to build your site without using WordPress, the Hostinger beginner-friendly Website Builder is there to rescue you. It is a very intuitive no-code site creator which is perfect for novices that need to get a website up and running quickly. You will have free access to the website builder on any plan and Hostinger allows you to use other site builders or CMS for other sites on the same package or account.
Hostinger Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Affordable with Great Value for Money | No cPanel on Shared & Cloud Hosting |
| Free Domain, SSL | No Phone Support |
| Oustanding Uptime | No Dedicated Server and Windows Hosting |
| Excellent Customer Service | |
| High Speed & Performance | |
| Multiple Data Centers | |
| Easy Account Management | |
| Commercial-grade Security | |
| Free Hostinger Website Builder |
Now, let’s discuss some of the reasons why we picked Hostinger as one of the best Bluehost alternatives.
Hostinger’s Features
Here are the features that qualify Hostinger as one of the best Bluehost alternatives:
- Shared/WordPress/Cloud/VPS hosting
- Free unlimited sites migration
- Automated daily and weekly backups
- Unlimited bandwidth & Databases
- Optimized for WordPress and eCommerce with one-click installation
- DDoS protection through Cloudflare & free SSL certificates for life
- LiteSpeed Cache & Free CDN
- Prices start at ~$2 for 48 months and ~$3 for 12 months
- Customized control panel (hPanel)
- 24/7/365 support
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Staging sites
Hostinger Has a More Affordable Pricing Model
Hostinger is a better choice than Bluehost when it comes to pricing and the quality of services, and this makes it one of its greatest alternatives. Its shared hosting plans start from around $2 per month (Single) and renew at $4 monthly while Bluehost’s Basic plan starts at about $3 per month and renews at almost $11.
We discovered that the value of Bluehost’s Basic plan is unjustified because Hostinger’s Single is cheaper and offers free migration, email hosting, 50 GB SSD storage (40 GB more than Bluehost’s offer), LiteSpeed servers, and free SSL certificates for life. Most of these features are not available on the former.
Hostinger Delivers Better Performance
After putting both hosts through a series of tests, and doing a quick Bluehost vs Hostinger comparison, we discovered that Hostinger delivers better performance in all aspects. The host has a faster loading speed, greater uptime, and can even handle a high-traffic website better.
Besides, the ability to choose the data center location of your choice on all of Hostinger’s hosting plans makes it one of the best Bluehost alternatives. You can choose your server location either at your initial account setup or when you discover your audience is more pronounced in a particular and you want to reduce the network latency for your visitors.
Fortunately, Hostinger also analyses your traffic and lets you know where the majority of your audience is located. The best part is that you can do this all for free! However, you can only change your data center once a month per hosting account, and it takes about 48 hours for your new Domain Naming System (DNS) to propagate worldwide. The DNS is what tells browsers where your files are located. If your domain is not registered at Hostinger, you will have to change your nameservers to the new ones that will be provided to you.
Hostinger Has an Improved and Optimized Control Panel
The hPanel is a very incredible alternative to the cPanel, and Hostinger has greatly optimized it. We think it is one of the reasons they have cheaper plans; no extra money is charged for cPanel services.
On the hPanel dashboard, navigation comes very easily since we do not have to redirect to any third-party software (cPanel). You can add domains, change DNS records, upload files and folders to your File Manager, and create FTP and email accounts easily with just a matter of clicks. We also particularly enjoy the free drag-and-drop website builder because it is very beginner-friendly and anyone can design a beautiful-looking, optimized site in a matter of minutes.
Why Hostinger is a Good Bluehost Alternative
- 9 data centers on 4 continents, and Cloudflare CDN
- Best value for money
- Free email hosting
- Free unlimited sites migration
- Greater speed and uptime
- Improved control panel (hPanel)
- Save $200+ yearly on shared hosting
- Perfect for high-traffic websites
- Better customer support
Another reason why Hostinger is one of the best alternatives to Bluehost is that it has an outstanding rating of 4.7/5 on Trustpilot from about twenty thousand customers. This is a great indication of the quality service they provide as more than 85% of their users gave a 5-star rating. They particularly commend their onboarding process, customer services, site migrations, uptime, and hosting services in general.
Bluehost Alternative: Hostinger (At a Glance Comparison)
| Bluehost | Hostinger | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings (1-10) | 7.7 | 9.6 |
| Hosting Plans | Shared/WordPress/WooCommerce/dedicated/VPS | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/VPS/CyberPanel/Minecraft/cPanel |
| Pricing | Starts around $3 per month | Starts around $2 per month |
| Renewal | Renews at around $11 per month | Renews at around $4 per month |
| Website Migration | 1 Free & Premium $150 per website | Free unlimited sites |
| Data Centers | Choice of Location | the USA, UK, India, China | No | the USA, Europe, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the UK, Brazil, Singapore, India, and France | Yes - on setup, and relocation request free of charge |
| Account Management/Dashboard | Unoptimized account area with cPanel integration | Modern, customized and beginner-friendly hPanel |
| Loading time | 1.4 s | 769 ms |
| Customer service Expertise and Response Time | Average | Excellent |
| Freebies | A free SSL certificate and domain for one year | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, free domain for a year, email hosting, automated daily and weekly backups |
2. PlanetHoster ( PlanetHoster.com)
While searching for a credible list of Bluehost alternatives, PlanetHoster must pop up. PlanetHoster is a big player in the hosting industry that specializes in shared web hosting and HybridCloud hosting; otherwise known as Dedicated Cloud Hosting. It focuses on security, speed, performance, and the provision of high-quality hosting services to clients to meet their personal needs.
What makes PlanetHoster so special, is the never-ending features it has packed in even in its lowest plan. The degree of flexibility and affordability of the services is unmatched. You can customize it to your needs. Besides, they offer a free domain for life! Yes, you read that right!
It readily supports multiple Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, Drupal, Magento, XenForo, Moodle, and Bulletin with a state-of-the-art optimized environment.
PlanetHoster also allows users to choose which server-side programming languages to use; be it PHP, Python, Ruby (RoR), or Node.js. All without a fuss! So, if you have some custom applications to deploy as a developer or site owner, you are good to know!
Try out PlanetHoster’s hosting plans
PlanetHoster Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free Domain & Privacy for Life | No Phone Support |
| Highly Scalable | Limited Data Centers (Non in the US) |
| Great Speed & Uptime | |
| Commercial-grade Security | |
| Free Site Migrations | |
| 24/7 Excellent Customer Service | |
| Multiple Data Centers | |
| Intuitive Account Management | |
| Unlimited Sites, Storage & Bandwidth |
Now, let’s see some of the reasons PlanetHoster is better than Bluehost.
PlanetHoster’s Features
Here are the features that make PlanetHoster a qualified alternative to Bluehost:
- Shared/WordPress/Cloud hosting
- Free domain and WHOIS protection for life
- Unlimited websites, bandwidth, SSD storage, email inboxes, and FTP accounts
- Free SSL certificates and automated backups (twice daily)
- LiteSpeed & LiteSpeed Cache (LSCache)
- 24/7/365 support
- Free site migration
- One-click activation for CMS (WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento, etc)
- Data centers in Canada, Switzerland, & France
PlanetHoster Pricing: It Offers Better Value for Money
Being one of the best Bluehost alternatives, PlanetHoster does it better in terms of value for money. For instance, the lowest plan on PlanetHoster starts from around $7 per month (Standard) for the introductory and renewal prices, while Bluehost’s lowest plan (Basic) starts from around $11 monthly (neglecting the introductory $3 price). However, even at this price, PlanetHoster gives more features than Bluehost will ever give without emptying your pocket.
First of all, you will get a free domain for life and unlimited free SSL certificates, website capacity, hosting accounts, bandwidth, email accounts, disk space, and databases. What’s more, you will enjoy LiteSpeed Cache, a one-click installation of any CMS, site migration from Bluehost or any other hosting company at no extra cost, and automated daily backups. Whereas, the more expensive Bluehost plan (about $11) will only allow you access to host one website and 10 GB of disk space. You will need add-on purchases or upgrades to enjoy other features.
Try out PlanetHoster Hosting Plans
Further, the admin area is easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices. Besides, you can easily manage your services and domains without requiring much expertise.
PlanetHoster Provides Great Customer Service
During our investigations, we contacted PlanetHoster support by opening a ticket, and our concerns were tended to in under 50 minutes. Pretty impressive considering that we opened the ticket during the weekend; 10 hours before their usual support schedule. Thus, their support is super excellent, maybe one of the best in the market, and they are quick to answer.
PlanetHoster Speed and Performances; You Can Choose Your Preferred Data Center Location
During our tests, PlanetHoster gave an impressive load time. We experienced the Time to First Byte (TTFB) at 302 ms, and the page was fully loaded at 991 ms. This is almost 0.3 s faster than our experience with Bluehost. This is not surprising since all PlanetHoster Pro servers use LiteSpeed technologies and LSCache for improved speed and performance. As a result, you can rest assured that your website will pass Google’s Core Web Vitals test, be SEO-ready, and load with the speed of light.
Additionally, PlanetHoster includes the data center choice in all its hosting plans to prove its claim as an alternative to Bluehost. During account setup, you have the option of choosing between the Canada, France, or Switzerland data centers. You can choose the Canada data centers if you have most of your visitors in the Americas, and France or Switzerland if the majority of your visitors are from Europe.
Try out PlanetHoster’s hosting plans
How PlanetHoster Competes Against Bluehost
- 3 data centers and CDNs on 2 continents
- It is a cheaper alternative
- Better value for money
- Beginner-friendly dashboard
- Free email hosting
- Better performance (~0.3 s faster)
- Ultra Fast and competent support
- Save about $200 on hosting and $25+ on domain plus Privacy yearly
As additional proof that PlanetHoster is a great alternative to Bluehost, they have an outstanding rating of 4.6/5 on Trustpilot. About 81% of these reviews carry a 5-star rating; an indication that most customers are happy and satisfied with their services.
Bluehost Alternative: PlanetHoster (At a Glance Comparison)
| Bluehost | PlanetHoster | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings (Trustpilot) | 4.2/5 | 4.7/5 |
| Hosting Types | Shared/WordPress/dedicated/VPS | Shared/WordPress/cloud/VPS/dedicated |
| Introductory Pricing | Starts around $3 per month | Starts around $7 per month |
| Renewal Pricing | Renews at around $11 per month | Renews at around $7 per month |
| Website Migration | 1 Free & Premium $150 per site | Free unlimited sites |
| Data Centers | Choice of Location | the USA, UK, India, China | No | France, Switzerland, Canada | Yes - on setup, and relocation request free of charge |
| Account Management/Dashboard | Unoptimized account area with cPanel integration | Modern, customized and beginner-friendly Client Area |
| Loading time | 1.4 s | 991 ms |
| Customer service Expertise and Response Time | Average | Excellent |
| Freebies (On Starter Plans) | None | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, a free domain forever, email hosting, two automated daily backups |
3. SiteGround (SiteGround.com)
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© SiteGround
SiteGround is one of the biggest contenders on the list of Bluehost alternatives. It uses high-end, latest, and customized technologies that are designed to improve the speed, security, and performance of any type of website.
SiteGround hosting technologies give your website and online store the power they need to be ultrafast and thrive even under harsh conditions. Thanks to their experience in the hosting space, Google Cloud services, solid-state drive (SSD) storages, and Brotli compressions, they can deliver sites 5 times faster than the normal sites with Ultra PHP & MySQL configurations. Besides, they pull a 99.998% uptime and never fail for a second.
As a result, they are highly recommended by WordPress.org, and of course, have my vote of confidence too – I have had my personal experience with them, and I have never regretted being a customer.
SiteGround is one of the best Bluehost alternatives if you are looking forward to a site that loads in under 1 second, and you are willing to pay a little more than usual for that extra performance. In our expert opinion, it is completely worth it, and I will help you see that in a moment.
Moreover, you do not have to worry if you have a thousand sites to migrate either from Bluehost or another hosting company. SiteGround is also one of those Bluehost alternatives that allow you to migrate unlimited WordPress sites free of charge with their Free Migration plugin.
Discover SiteGround Hosting Plans
SiteGround Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Great Uptime | Pricey for Beginners on Renewals |
| Outstanding Customer Service | Limited Storage on Shared Hosting |
| High Speed & Performance | Paid Server Migrations |
| Multiple Data Centers | No Free Domain |
| Easy Account Management | |
| Great Value for Money | |
| Commercial-grade Security | |
| Unmetered Traffic | |
| Free Website Migrations with a WP Plugin |
Here are some of the reasons SiteGround is one of the best alternatives to Bluehost:
SiteGround’s Features
Here are some features that make SiteGround one of the best Bluehost alternatives:
- Shared/WordPress/Cloud hosting
- Unlimited bandwidth, databases, and email accounts
- Free WP migrator plugin for unlimited sites
- Free CDN & out-of-the-box caching
- One-click WordPress installation and WP auto-updates
- Free automated daily backups (5 on-demand backups on GrowBig & GoGeek plans)
- Enhanced security (free SSL certificates, AI anti-bot system, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and anti-DDoS attack protection)
- Free email migrator tool
- 30-day money-back guarantee
SiteGround Provides Better Value for Money
SiteGround’s plans are StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek, while Bluehost has the Basic, Choice Plus, Online Store, and Pro packages to choose from. During the comparison of the plans, we noted that StartUp starts from about $3 per month, and renews at almost $15 monthly while Basic starts at $3 per month, and renews at $11 monthly. On the surface, SiteGround seems to be more expensive but that is not the case.
In our Bluehost vs SiteGround comparison, we discovered that the StartUp plan has more value for money than the Basic plan. For instance, while StartUp gives your features like free email hosting, SSL certificates, CDN, automated daily backup,
SiteGround Speed and Performances
During our speed tests with a test website hosted on SiteGround under the same conditions as Bluehost’s, we recorded a TTFB of 229 ms and a total load time of 731 ms. This is almost 0.7 s faster than Bluehost. SiteGround serves our pages with lightning speed, thanks to its out-of-the-box caching. So, we do not need to use an additional caching plugin.
Additionally, SiteGround allows you to choose the data center you prefer your files to be hosted during your onboarding process or account setup without extra charges. If you missed that or later discovered that a particular data center might serve you better, you can still change to a new location by simply requesting it via Site Tools. Do note that you will have to pay an extra $30 to initiate a relocation.
SiteGround Has Better Account Management and Control Panel (Site Tools)
Another reason to consider SiteGround a great alternative to Bluehost is Site Tools.
From our firsthand experience, we find SiteGround’s Site Tools to be more effective and easier to use than the traditional cPanel offered by most hosting companies. We can quickly solve our problems through the intuitive navigation of the control panel, and layman’s terms used in the customization of the interface. If you are used to cPanel, spending an hour or two with Site Tools will change your mind or make your life easier.
SiteGround Has an Outstanding Customer Service
In conclusion, SiteGround has excellent customer service that easily beats Bluehost’s. This is based on my experience, and I can confirm from reviews that everyone is also enjoying this. I have always experienced swift responses from the support team and got my issue resolved every time. They typically reply within seconds and are happy to solve your problems for you.
Purchase a Plan from SiteGround
Why SiteGround is a Better Alternative to Bluehost
- 11 data centers and 17 CDNs on 4 continents
- It is optimized for better performance
- It is faster (~0.7 s faster)
- Better customer support
- Free email hosting
- Great value for money
- Great for hosting unlimited websites
- Improved account dashboard and Site management tool
- Save about $240 yearly for more relevant features
Siteground’s outstanding reviews from current users make it one of the best alternatives to Bluehost. On Trustpilot, the hosting company has an average rating of 4.7/5, with more than 92% giving their services a 5-star review – with an emphasis on customer services.
Bluehost Alternative: SiteGround (At a Glance Comparison)
| Bluehost | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings (Trustpilot) | 4.2/5 | 4.6/5 |
| Hosting Plans | Shared/managed WordPress/dedicated/VPS/Woocommerce | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/Woocommerce |
| Pricing | Starts around $20 per month | Starts around $3 per month |
| Renewal | Renews at around $30 per month | Renews at around $15 per month |
| Website Migration | 1 Free & Premium $150 | Free unlimited sites |
| Data Centers | the USA, UK, India, China | the USA(4), Brazil, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore Australia |
| Data Center Location Choice | No | Yes - on setup for free, and relocation request ($30) |
| Uptime Guarantee | None | 99.99% |
| Account Management/Dashboard | Unoptimized account area with cPanel integration | Modern, customized and beginner-friendly Site Tools |
| Loading time | 1.2s | 893ms |
| Customer service Expertise and Response Time | Average | Excellent |
| Freebies | A free SSL certificate and domain for one year | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, a free domain, email hosting, automated daily backups |
Bluehost Alternatives: The Bottom Line
Truly, Bluehost is a powerful hosting company. However, lately, they are not keeping up with their promises, and their services are a bit overpriced. As a result, you can try some Bluehost alternatives mentioned in this list to see the one that suits your personal needs. Luckily, they all have a money-back guarantee, so you do not have to worry about losing money if you do not like their services. You only have to make sure you cancel the hosting services before it passes the money-back guarantee period, usually 14, 30, 60, or 90 days to get a full refund. Else, you will have to settle for a partial refund. Also, note that there is no refund on domain registration.
In our expert opinion, Hostinger is great if you want an alternative that ticks all the boxes. It is quite affordable and unsurprisingly one of the best cheap web hosting services in 2024. SiteGround is amazing for a site where performance, security, and ease of use are paramount.
Bluehost Alternatives FAQs
What is the Cheapest Alternative to Bluehost?
The cheapest Bluehost alternative is Hostinger with a starting of only $2 per month and features that surpass those you will get on Bluehost’s most expensive package. Hostinger is not only cheaper, but it is better than Bluehost in all aspects too.
Is Bluehost the Best Option?
Absolutely not! Bluehost is not the best option for hosting a website. Although, the host is fairly reliable for hosting low-traffic websites. If you have a high-traffic website, hosting it with Bluehost would be a mistake.
What is Bluehost Used for?
Bluehost is a hosting company that supports many content managing systems (CMS) and web apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupa, PrestaShop, etc. So, if you have a website that you need to build using these CMS and web apps, Bluehost is a good choice.
Is Bluehost Slow?
From our firsthand experience, Bluehost is slower than its alternatives like Hostinger, SiteGround, and InMotion Hosting. So it is safe to say it is slow. If you really need speed for your website, we suggest trying one of its alternatives as Bluehost just won’t cut it.
Hostinger
